Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Comics, Icons, and Art

I've been reading a book called Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by Scott McCloud. Since my own MFA is in computer animation, I have a particular interest in this odd corner of the world, although I don't really know much about it. So when a student offered to lend me his copy, I eagerly agreed.

schematic drawing of a face
a schematic face
One of the ideas that has caught my attention is the author's contention that it is the very schematic nature of comics that lends them their evocative power. Referring to highly abstracted images, such as a circle with two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth, as "iconic", he suggests that the more iconic an image, the more universal it becomes. And, he goes on, the more universal an image, the more the audience can identify with it.

photo of deborah sokolove
my photo
Conversely, the more an image resembles everyday reality, the more the viewer is able to put it at a distance, to objectify it. This effect is especially strong when the image represents a human being. As he puts it, "When you look at a photo or drawing of a face -- you see it as the face of another. But when you enter the world of the cartoon--you see yourself."[p 36]

The reason for this, McCloud argues, is that a photograph, or a photo-realistic drawing or painting, is fairly close to what we see when we look at another person. But except when we are looking in a mirror, we don't see ourselves that way. In fact, mostly, we don't see ourselves at all. Rather, our usual awareness of our own face is a sketchy sense of general placement. We know how it feels to be inside our own skin, but we don't really know how far apart our eyes are, or the shape of our smile. That's why we are often startled by a photograph or a portrait -- what the artist or the photographer captures does not always correspond to our inner sense of what we look like.

icon of Christ Pantocrater from Monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai id=
icon of Christ Pantocrater
from St Catherine's


I find myself wondering whether McCloud's usage of the word "iconic" describes what happens when we encounter religious icons, such as this image of Christ enthroned. It has more detail, of course, than a circle with two dots for eyes. But, like a cartoon, it is a highly abstracted, formulaic representation of a human being, not a photo-realistic portrait. Does at least some of its power lie precisely in its lack of detail? Does the fact that we do not know anyone who looks exactly like this help us to remember that Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully divine? Does the schematic nature of religious icons make them more universal, allowing us to enter into them in a way that is more difficult when Jesus looks like someone we could meet on the street? Once again, I have more questions than answers.


Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Visions of Church

This afternoon, towards the end of our annual faculty retreat, we were asked to reflect on our images of church. In a gesture familiar to many who have been on church retreats, visioning committees, or even some bible studies, the Dean put construction paper, markers, scissors, tape, and crayons on tables around the room where we had been meeting. She said that in the next 15 minutes or so, we should make something that would be a visual representation of our idea of what church is or might be.

The response to this request was not surprising. Some people suddenly got deep into conversation and ignored the whole thing. Others obediently sat around the tables, but stared at the materials with that deer-in-the-headlights look that people who don't think of themselves as artistic get when confronted with the demand to "be creative." The "artistic" ones dove in, happily playing with whatever caught their fancy. Sooner or later, most got in touch with their inner child, or, at least, considered what their own school-age children might do in the same situation, and began to scribble or cut or tear paper or draw more-or-less conventional symbols that conveyed, in some mysterious way, the ideas that had been circulating around the room in words all morning.

The results, of course, bear only the slightest resemblance to the kind of art I've been writing about in this blog so far. My colleagues are accomplished scholars, much more accustomed to putting their ideas into words than into pictures. While some are dancers, musicians, or actors as well as theologians, none of the projects I saw this afternoon evidenced any engagement with the visual  or conceptual discourse that fills galleries and museums of contemporary art. Like the children's art that they resemble both in material and in style, the things my colleagues made this afternoon were not particularly well-designed or well-crafted. They were, however, the products of sophisticated minds, and they carried more meaning than one might suspect at first glance.

construction paper visions of church
At the end of the art-making session, we were invited to gather in groups of five or six to talk about what we had done. As each person shared his or her intention, the others listened intently, adding their own observations about what they saw in the colors, shapes, and symbols, and the relationships among these elements. A kind of passionate poetry emerged out of the conversation, in which a seemingly simple diagram stood for such complex notions as "the church is the place of struggle in the heart of God", or "the church is a spiral shell that draws us into a center where the divine voice may be heard". As people talked about their experience of drawing or tearing or cutting and pasting, it was clear that their ideas had changed in the process. New ideas had been engendered not by manipulating words, but by the physical manipulation of matter.

I do not want to say that this is the only, or the best, or even the most accessible way that art intersects with the church or with theological education. It is, however, a tool, a method, one of many invitations into the truth that that the Church already proclaims and that artists know in their hands and eyes and ears and bodies: that the Word of God is much, much more than words. In joining words to matter, these simple artworks became a sacrament, the outward and invisible sign of an inward and invisible grace.



Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Disturbing Beauty

As I write this, Alexandra Sherman is putting the finishing touches on the fall show in the Dadian Gallery, Strength and Struggle: Haiti Continued, works by Lavar Munroe. Alexandra has been working with Mr. Munroe for months, and knows much more about him and his work than I do, so I will leave it to her to write more specifically about the artist's background, concerns, and processes.

Lavar Munroe, Awakening Spirits,
acrylic and collage on paper
What intrigues me about Munroe's work, among many other things, is the juxtaposition of his lush color palette and impeccable composition with the disturbing nature of what is depicted. Glorious sprays of blue and green  that might at first be identified as bouquets reveal themselves as the carefully arrayed feathers of a bloody, partially-beheaded chicken. Elsewhere, a being with a bird's head, horse's hooves, and human hands, dressed in a patched yet flowing garment, leads a flock of bandaged, red-combed chickens that somehow also resemble a crowd of saints in some half-remembered, byzantine icon. A look at his website, http://lavar-munroe.com, reveals images that are even more disturbing, and equally beautiful.

Lavar Munroe, Thanksgiving, graphite drawing,
digital color, Ultrachrome K3 ink on velvet paper
All of this raises the question that I have, more than once, put to my students: What does it mean to make a beautiful artwork about something that is terrible to contemplate? Does the attractiveness of the image make the subject matter more horrifying by shocking us after inviting us to draw near? Or does our appreciation of  the delicate colors, fine drawing, and intricate composition inure us to the terror of what is depicted? Do the luxurious fabrics, well-muscled flesh, and intricate intertwining of arms, legs, and bodies in Peter Paul Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents invite us to identify with the burly soldiers, the screaming women and children, or the angels who hover above waiting to bestow flowery wreaths of victory on the innocent martyrs? What does a beautiful picture say about an ugly situation?

I think I'll wander back down the hall to the gallery, and see if the disturbing beauty of Lavar Munroe's extraordinary images offers any answers.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The Real Purpose of Art

In a recent Washington Post article about his current installation in the Dumbarton Oaks garden, North Carolina artist Patrick Dougherty talks about his relationship with the people in the organizations that commission his work. He says,
I find myself helping the organizers move toward the real purpose of art. It's not to buy or sell. It's not to last, really. It's the immediate impact. That they're really stirred by the impact, by the immediacy of it. They want to walk around it, want to talk about it, want to touch it, want to go get their family and bring them back to it.
 Dougherty's installations are part of a larger movement among artists who work with ephemeral materials like bamboo, willow saplings, roots, or even water, ice, or leaves. Like the short-lived works of Andy Goldsworthy that are documented in the 2001 film Rivers and Tides, these things cannot be collected, bought, or sold.  Existing only for a brief period before melting, disintegrating, or otherwise returning to the earth, they invite the viewer into a heightened awareness of the fragility of each moment.

This sensibility values process over product, yet the actual products -- the objects, arrangements, installations --are as aesthetically pleasing, evocative, and visually compelling as many more permanent works. What intrigues me about them is that this intentional impermanence undercuts the common assumption that artists seek immortality through their works. If the artwork is intended to last only minutes, hours, or at most a season, the ancient maxim ars longa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short) is turned on its head. These artworks will be dust long before their makers.

As Dougherty notes, however, the purpose of art is not to last, to be a monument to an idea, a person, or an event. Rather, it is stir up ideas and emotions, to make people think and to feel, in the moment of encounter. The question is not whether the object will last, but whether the encounter will leave a lasting impression on the viewer. If an artwork can open one person's eyes, raising awareness not only of its own tenuous hold on existence but that of the world surrounding it, then perhaps it has served its real purpose.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Beauty and Truth

As the new academic year approaches, I am renewing my intention to write regularly about art, faith, culture, and the places where they meet. Actually, I have been writing all along, but not here. Instead, I've been working on a book about exactly those things, which I've been calling Sanctifying Art. Lately, I've been a bit stuck on the book, so it occurred to me to return to this short form in hopes that it will help me get unstuck as well as inviting others into the conversation.

One of the topics I've been wrestling with is the place of beauty in so much theological writing about art. It seems to me that many in the church assume that art and beauty automatically go together. For artists, on the other hand, beauty is often not the point of what they are doing, or even a desired outcome. For instance, in "The Sublime is Now", his essay for the December, 1948 issue of The Tiger's Eye, Barnett Newman dismissed any attempt to define beauty, whether in nature or elsewhere, as an outmoded question. He wrote,
I believe that ... some of us ... are finding the answer, by completely denying that art has any concern with the problem of beauty and where to find it. The question that now arises is ... how can we be creating a sublime art? We are reasserting [humanity's] natural desire for the exalted, for a concern with our relationship to the absolute emotions.
For Newman and some of his contemporaries, art was about an encounter with the absolute ground of being, which he called the sublime. He was more interested in truth than in beauty.

Since then, of course, many artists have denied that art has any concern with the problem of the sublime, either. Rather than evoking exalted emotions, many artworks today evoke revulsion, confusion, or outrage. Sometimes, the artworks that arouse these baser emotions do so out of the artist's passion for some issue of social justice; other times, they are created out of a desire to shock an audience that is perceived as numb and complacent into feeling anything at all. Such art may be broadly described as prophetic, calling the viewer to action through the uncomfortable truths that it expresses.

Still, some artists do aspire to make objects of beauty. And for those with other aspirations, beauty is often an unintentional yet not undesirable side-effect. It is not that I think that art cannot or ought not be beautiful. It is rather that I have noticed that those who expect to find beauty when they encounter contemporary art often walk away outraged and disappointed. It would be more helpful to the church and to artists if the we began to look for truth, rather than beauty, when we look at art.