In this article from 1993, Brian P. Kennedy seeks the soul of art, placed within falsely constructed proximities by museums, and asks – in a world where exhibitions and art are commercialised to suit the business needs of museums and their benefactors, if we cannot instead propose a manifesto for art and the sacred.
Brian P. Kennedy is an art museum director whose prestigious postings have included heading the National Gallery of Australia, the Hood Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Peabody Essex Museum. Born in Dublin, he has published numerous books and in 2001 received the Australian Centenary Medal for his service to Australian Society.
Brian P. Kennedy, ‘Towards a Manifesto for Art and the Sacred’, Studies: An Irish Review, Vol. 82, No. 327 (Autumn, 1993), 311 – 322. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30091009
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The art museum is the secular temple of the modern world. From the mid-nineteenth century, art museums have been constructed and opened to the public in conscious imitation of the ancient Shrines to the Muses, sacred to the nurture of the imagination. Museums provide art with its social status. By their construction, they declare the moral nature of the society that required them. Their activities aim to educate, to convince society that art is not a cultural curiosity but a special, life-enhancing experience. It is no accident that avant-garde architects consider museum design to be one of the greatest challenges of their careers.
Among the most notable examples of art museum design in this century are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, J.M. Pei’s constructions at the Louvre in Paris and at the National Gallery, Washington, Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Museum at Fort Worth, Texas, and Robert Venturi’s Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, London. If these buildings are the secular temples of our time, it can reasonably be asked if they and their contents have any soul? It should always be recalled that museums are artificial constructs bringing/together objects which were never intended to be placed in close proximity to each other. The emphasis of many art museums today on organizing elaborate temporary exhibitions, courting private collectors, establishing membership organizations for friends of the museum, managing bookshops and restaurants, demonstrates that they have become, in essence, commercial businesses, seeking to maximize the exploitation of their ‘product’, the output of artists throughout the ages. Perhaps it is time to inject a dose of idealism into museums, to remind those who manage them that the highest form of art is sacred. Perhaps it is time to propose a manifesto for art and the sacred!
The question ‘what is art?’ is one of the most debated of our time. Art is primarily intellectual in that for the artist to make a work of art, there must be the will to make it. The formal cause is the concept or idea in the artist’s intellect. The Christian Church, adopting the explanation of St Thomas Aquinas, has traditionally regarded God as the supreme artist, not only Creator but also Maker, for, through Him, ‘all things were made’. St Thomas argued that the ‘end’ of art coincides with the aim of the artist, the making of a work of art.
When the concept in the artist’s mind has been executed, the artistic purpose is complete. The art work can then be used by others, serving any number of possible ends. Although art can never be isolated from the community, the artist comes first, then the art. In the twentieth century artists have emphasized the importance of the senses and the emotions. Spiritual movements such as theosophy, symbolism, occultism, hermeticism and mysticism, which were current in the 1890s and early 1900s, gave birth to a revolution in art, the pursuit of pure abstraction. The most influential teacher was the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky who, in his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), proclaimed the affinity between the pure painter of modern times and primitive artists, because they had sought to express only their inner and essential feelings. For Kandinsky the work of art had two elements, the inner and the outer. The inner is the emotion in the soul of the artist. This emotion is stirred and aroused by what is sensed. The senses act as a bridge between the immaterial, that is the artist’s emotion, and the material, which results in the production of a work of art. The sequence generated by the pure artist is that of emotion which, through sensed experience, produces an art work, that, in turn, is sensed by those who observe it, stimulating an emotion similar to that generated by the artist. It is indicative that we speak of a ‘work of art’, that is, something that is made by art but is not art itself, for art is in the artist, the knowledge by which works of art are made.
Every age is one of belief and unbelief, but our own century has been characterized by restlessness and uncertainty…Some have claimed that art may even be a privileged starting point for the religion of the future. The nature of art is powerful, the essence and spirit of art is truth…The critic Walter Pater wrote that ‘all art aspires to the condition of music’ and the capacity of art to intermingle the human senses has fascinated many creative spirits. The artist impresario Richard Demarco has recently revised Pater’s dictum with his assertion that ‘all art aspires to the condition of prayer’. The experience of viewing art works can be, for many people today, a prayer encounter.
…It must also be said, however, that art cannot provide a final answer to the question of meaning unless art itself becomes a religion. In 1850 Richard Wagner claimed that ‘Man’s supreme purpose is art’. This exaggeration, with which many others have concurred, is based on a falsehood. Who would reasonably suggest that churches should be replaced by museums, priests by artists, religion by aesthetics: in short, religion by art? In a brilliant diagnosis, Hans Küng has written that:
Art is no longer regarded as religion, as absorption of man into the divine world, as man’s supreme purpose. Art has now become the expression of man’s estrangement, his isolation in the world, of the ultimate futility of human life and the history of humanity. Art is seen then no longer against a pantheistic but against a nihilistic background.
Theodor Adorno has asked, in his book Aesthetic Theory, whether works of art can be meaningful in an age of so much meaninglessness. The answer must be a forthright, affirmative one. Artists who search for meaning, challenging themselves by asking the crucial questions about human existence, will, perforce, create meaningful works of art. The principal role of art today is to challenge meaninglessness by a rigorous, vigorous examination of human existence.
…The experience of art works involves going beyond mere looking and, instead, entering the discipline of seeing. Seeing and not just looking is a discipline which can be learned by spending time with art works. Many museums today are too preoccupied with art history, the world of art facts, and neglect art appreciation, the emotional and intellectual response to art works…Factual information is, of course, excellent, but the power of communication, inherent in the art work itself, must be the primary teaching instrument. The vocation of art museums is not to teach facts about particular works of art but to care for our heritage and to communicate a love and understanding of the nature of art.
The terms ‘religious’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘sacred’ art have frequently been used interchangeably and this has been a mistake. There can be overlap, of course, for a work of art may be religious and spiritual, and indeed may also be sacred. More frequently, however, the terms are exclusive and therefore require special definition. The most obvious example of religious art is perhaps the Orthodox use of the ikon. Although the ikon artist paints according to traditional canons and as a conscious spiritual process, the majority of ikons would be judged by unbelievers as having little artistic power. Their power is in the faith of the viewer, not in the art itself. Equally, in western European painting, religious symbolism and iconography have been employed extensively to produce what is generally called religious art. These images are signposts to particular religious beliefs but they do not necessarily deepen faith in God although they may activate it. The effect of most religious art on the viewer is in proportion to the depth of the viewer’s faith…
…Religious art is not necessarily liturgical art. Although liturgical art must have a religious theme, it also takes its inspiration from the liturgy so that it can serve the Church in its divine worship. Liturgical art is essentially symbolic because it points to something else and derives its meaning from that to which it points.
The explanation of what spiritual art means in the twentieth century is inextricably linked to the interest of artists in abstraction and, more particularly, to the artistic revolution which occurred in Paris between 1908 and 1914, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were working together, exploring a new way of seeing…A remark by the art critic Louis Vauxelles to Henri Matisse gave the new style a name: Cubism. The new kind of art included broken images, ruptured picture surfaces, disjointed letters and numbers, strong and often distasteful colour combinations; all in all it sought to echo the chaos and eccentricity which was evident to many gifted artists in the early years of this century.
…The German Expressionist painter Franz Marc, who was to die at the Battle of Verdun in 1916, wrote of the modern artist’s aspiration to create works that have a ‘mystical inner construction’ but he noted that it was ‘terribly difficult to present one’s contemporaries with spiritual gifts’. Henri Matisse described the years from 1905 to 1910 as ‘a time of artistic cosmogony’. The science of the origin of the universe fascinated artists like Matisse, Picasso, Constantin Brancusi and Georges Rouault.
Gradually throughout the 1920s and 1930s, spiritual issues became less important for artists as they became concerned with their material role and position in society. The 1940s saw the re-emergence of spiritual terminology with the appearance of so-called Abstract Expressionist painting in New York. A new wave of artists, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Adolf Gotlieb, rejected the manner in which abstract painting had become what Newman described as ‘an ornamental art whereby the picture surface is broken up in geometrical fashion into a new kind of design-image’. Newman echoed Baudelaire in elaborating the concerns of the new abstract painters: ‘The present painter is not concerned with his own feelings or with the mystery of his own personality but with the penetration into the world mystery. His imagination is attempting to dig into metaphysical secrets. To that extent his art is concerned with the sublime. It is a religious art which through symbols will catch the basic truth of life’. Since abstract expressionism, most movements in painting have not been rooted in spirituality. The advent of minimalism, the logical conclusion of the attempt to strip art bare, has left most abstract artists victim to constant repetition. For many artists, abstraction has proved to be a cul-de-sac and, in consequence, figurative painting is pre-eminent.
The essence of spiritual art is that, as Wendy Beckett explains: ‘We are taken into a realm that is potentially open to us, we are made more what we are meant to be’…The expression of truth in art is difficult for the artist. If the artist aims for truth self-consciously, it will never emerge because truth is the inner mind and heart revealed. Such revelation cannot be cloaked, even by intention…Some of the finest spiritual art of this century contains no religious imagery and this makes it incomprehensible to many religious believers. But for those who have no religion, spiritual art may be a valid means of entering into dialogue with truth. Meyer Schapiro has remarked that such art does not so much ‘communicate’ as ‘induce an attitude of communion and contemplation’. It offers ‘an equivalent of what is regarded as part of religious life: a sincere and humble submission to a spiritual object, an experience which is not given automatically, but requires preparation and purity of spirit’.
Anything which serves to lessen the loneliness of incomprehensibility and mystery in our world is surely desirable. This places a huge burden of responsibility on those who are charged with presenting art works to the public in museum displays. The museum curator must ‘use’ art works in a manner which shows reverence for their power to impart truth to their viewers. The greatest challenge facing the curator is that of encouraging a prolonged engagement with each work. A novel may take an author months to write and it requires a few hours for the reader to read it. A painting may also take months to execute but most museum visitors spend less than one minute before each art work. Appreciation of the spiritual in art involves prolonged, silent dialogue, questions and answers, looking and seeing.
All the great art in the world’s museums is spiritual because it embodies truth, but not all great art is sacred, the most intense form of spiritual art. Sacred art has traditionally been defined by its function, for example the Instruction De Arte Sacra issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1952 stated that: ‘It is the function of sacred art, by reason of its very definition, to enhance the beauty of the house of God and to foster the faith and piety of those who gather in the church to assist at the divine services and to implore heavenly favours’. The Second Vatican Council, in the statement Gaudium et Spes (p.62) called on the church to ‘acknowledge new forms of art which are adapted to our age and are in keeping with the characteristics of various nations and regions’. This more open attitude had been current for some time before the Council and the French review L’Art Sacré had ventured that, in a secular age, it was possible for a non believing artist to produce genuine religious art. In Church terms, sacred art is always religious because its theme is religious.
There is a wider explanation of art and the sacred. What is it that makes Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride and Picasso’s Guernica examples of art that is sacred. The function of these works is not to enhance the beauty of the house of God. They do not seek to foster faith or piety but most viewers would agree that they have something of the sacred in them. Rembrandt’s painting is a profound meditation on conjugal love, and Picasso’s mage expresses his outraged protest about man’s inhumanity to man.
These works are sacred because they provoke the imagination to wonder. All of us can recall moments which were wonderful, in other words, full of wonder. These are moments which the believer might say were ‘touched by God’ and it is in these moments that the believer experiences the gift of faith. The sacred is found on those occasions which stimulate the emotions to wonder, moments experienced which can be so powerful, they can change your life. Sacred art provokes wonder, encouraging us to imagine the nature of the eternal reason of things, to search for eternal meaning.
The theologian, William Lynch…invites the recognition of imagination as a form of understanding: ‘images and the imagination that creates them must be seen as bearers of cognition, truth and knowledge’. Michael Paul Gallagher has proposed that it is through imagination that we can find the meeting point of faith ‘between a hidden God and a fallen humanity’. A new apologetics may be necessary, one which grasps ‘that the language of knowing God is primarily the language of images’. The God of the bible ‘recites poems and tells stories and invites to freedom by way of images. Out of this revelation springs faith, a revelation where imagination is a central strand in the communication of mystery and in its continued life – both as receiving apparatus and as fostering agency’.
A manifesto for art and the sacred involves a call to action, to theologians, museum professionals and artists. Perhaps the most important call is that made to theologians.
More than any other contemporary theologian, Paul Tillich wrote and lectured on the subject of the visual arts. He made the arts relevant for many by his brilliant theological interpretations of particular works of art. His focus was exclusively theological however, and he did not demonstrate a deep understanding of the nature of art. In contrast, theologians like Karl Rahner have focused on the arts as an essential key to theological understanding. Rahner wrote that the non-verbal arts, architecture, sculpture, painting and music, are essential to theology: ‘if and insofar as theology is man’s reflexive self expression about himself in the light of divine revelation, we could propose the thesis that theology cannot be complete until it appropriates these arts as an integral moment of itself and its own life, until the arts become an intrinsic moment of theology itself’. Unfortunately Rahner died without ever writing fully on how the arts were to be incorporated into theology.
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The need for aesthetic theology is apparent to churchgoers because few priests and ministers ever draw the attention of their congregations to the power of art. The idea of visualizing the Gospels has not impacted adequately among those whose vocation is the religious life. Some seminaries have realized the need to train their students in the discipline of seeing but others ignore it. Any unwillingness to challenge congregations in a visual way represents a failure of understanding of the basic principles of modern living. Visual culture is all around us and theological education must include the seeing eye as wen as the spoken and written word. Teachers and educators have, likewise, a key role in the promotion of art appreciation. Educational systems today tend to emphasize the technological subjects as against the humanities. Art is pushed off the curriculum after primary school in many countries. In consequence, the discipline of seeing is not taught. Visual culture threatens to inundate our society yet we do not train ourselves to control it. The truths inherent in great art, in sacred art, will be unseen if educational systems do not make serious efforts to translate an understanding of their importance into practical teaching methods.
Curators in museums and art historians in universities can work towards an understanding of art and the sacred, by training themselves in the discipline of seeing, by participating in courses on aesthetic theology, and by communicating a love of art before any facts about art works…Museums must not be afraid to create display conditions which allow for a complex interplay between images. Adherence to policies of hanging pictures by chronology or by national school may not assist the process of evaluation by museum visitors. The dynamics of art are rooted in its timelessness and artistic concerns become clear when works are displayed by focusing on artistic themes, and on the motivations and convictions of artists.
The call to artists is a vital one. The makers and creators of works of art assume an inestimable responsibility because the objects that they create have the power to change attitudes, to alter perceptions, to influence lives. Museums need to assist evolving artists who require, more than anything else, to be exposed to the best in art, so that they can evaluate and contemplate it.
The assertion that the sacred is the highest form of art is a controversial one for museums and artists today. It can easily be misinterpreted as a wish to impose religion on art. But the direct linkage between art and the sacred, tangible by the universal truths inherent in great art, is one of the most important guides available to museum professionals. The museum is indeed a secular temple, for like a house of God, it is properly a place of wonder.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons