Modern Art and the Life of a Culture

This book is part of a new series on Studies in Theology and the Arts (STA). The book, written by an artist (Anderson - professor of art at Biola University) and a theologian (Dyrness - professor of theology and culture at Fuller Seminary), responds to Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (MA&DoC).

MA&DoC was a ground-breaking book written over 45 years ago. It was even one of Malcolm Muggeridge’s Books of the Year in 1970. It is testimony to its legacy and impact that it is in print and is still written about today. Rookmaaker drawing off Dooyeweerd’s Christian philosophical framework analyses art and culture. Art for Rookmaaker needed no justification. By that he meant that art (and music) was a good cultural activity for Christians to be involved in. Art wasn’t only useful as an apologetic or evangelistic tool: the aesthetic is an important part of creation.

However, Rookmaaker had a largely negative view of modern art. This book has a much more positive view - hence the change from death to life in the title. MA&DoC was a polemical work, modern art represented a decline; this book is much more eirenic. As they put it:

‘In what follows we intend to pay tribute to Rookmaaker’s pioneering study and to the generative thinking it fostered for many Christians, yet at the same time we will critique and supplant the central theses of that book’ (p.10)

Anderson and Dyrness see modern art as a ‘theologically meaningful project’ and look at the various religious beliefs underpinning several key modern artists. They hope to ‘decipher’ the way that ‘“spiritual values,” even theological values, are already in play and at stake throughout modern art, even (perhaps especially) in artworks that do not set out to convey any such thing’ (p.40).

They maintain that the crises and labours of modern art were essentially ‘theological crises and labours’. The book is split into two main parts. Part I takes an appreciative but critical look at Rookmaaker’s approach. Part II takes a geographical journey from Europe to North America and examines several key artists. They begin in France and Britain (Chapter 3) and look at, for example, Gustave Courbet, Paul Gaugin, Van Gough and Georges Rouault; the British artists examined include the Eric Gill and Graham Sutherland. What is noticeable in this chapter is the influence of Roman Catholicism. Whereas, in Germany and Holland (the focus of Chapter 4) the influence of Protestantism is more marked. Here they examine the works of Caspar David Freidrich and see the influence of German Pietism on his work.

Their analysis of Fredrich’s Monk by the Sea and The Abbey in the Oakland is particularly interesting. They write:

‘This decrepit manmade structure [The Abbey] was built to celebrate the glory (fullness) of God, but it is now a wreckage, undone by the centuries-long inertia of social transformation and natural entropy. The “soft wind” that Friedrich had in mind erases both footprints and cathedrals alike. And in Abbey the two are in fact drawn together: the ruined body of the man being carried through the doorway is directly analogized with the broken body of the cathedral; both are images of God that are finally unable to generate their own lives or to contain that Life to which they refer. Both human life and human theology are thus faltering pointers toward realities beneath or beyond what is speakable and thinkable. … Whereas Monk pushes the religious seeker to the brink of the abyss, Abbey pushes him to the brink of death; and, in both, religious structures and rituals are found outstripped by the unspeakable Beyond to which they point’ (p.152-153).

They also revisit van Gogh in this chapter, tracing the influences in his work of northern romantic Protestantism. Piet Mondrian, raised in a Dutch Calvinist home, was later influenced by Rudolf Steiner, also comes under scrutiny in this chapter. They note that Mondrian wouldn’t recognise his work in Rookmaaker’s assessment. They assert that: ‘Mondrian’s theory of art could have found its grounding entirely in Kuyper’s neo-Calvinism'. This is an interesting and intriguing assertion - but I think it needs a little more justification than Anderson and Dyrness produce here.

They then move on to look at Kandinsky. Next, in Chapter 5, they look at the developments in Russia and in the, alleged, nihilism of Dada. This chapter looks at the work of Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich and Hugo Ball. Ball one of the forerunners of the Dada movement was born into a devout Catholic family. In his later years he reconverted to Catholicism. Anderson and Dryness pose an important question: 'How should we understand Hugo Ball’s Dadaism in relation to his Christianity?’ (228). The authors here show how these artists were rooted in Christian traditions.

The next two chapters move from Europe to look at North America. They explore the artists Thomas Cole and Fredric Edwin Church and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Alfred H. Barr Jr, a practising Presbyterian, was the key figure behind MoMA. We are then moved onto a discussion of John Cage’s work. Particularly helpful is the discussion of Cage’s (im)famous 4’33” and the relationship between noise and music. Cage was originally a devout Christian, but the churches he attended were ‘were anemic institutions preoccupied with otherworldly sentimentalities’ (p.197). The authors thus see Cage’s work as ‘oriented toward the practical recovery of a more thoroughgoing creational theology’ — a far cry from the view of Cage espoused by Francis Schaeffer! Another artist that comes under close scrutiny is Andy Warhol. Again the authors reveal Christian perspectives that come through in Warhol’s work.

What Anderson and Dyrness have done in this volume is to highlight the deep religiously held views of many of the exponents of modern art. The book provides an excellent compliment, and corrective, to the pioneering work of Rookmaaker. They have shown that modern art is theologically significant and modern art cannot be written off as symptomatic of nihilism and secularism.

Summary: A response to the classic work Modern Art and the Death of a Culture by H. R. Rookmaker, arguing that Rookmaaker was unnecessarily pessimistic in his assessment of modern art, overlooking the religious impulses that shaped much of modern art.

A number of us of a certain age were thrilled when we came across H.R. Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, originally published by the same publisher of this work. Rookmaaker provided an analysis of modern art that made sense in terms of the wider movement from Reformation faith to Renaissance to the rise of the modern, existentialism and ultimately nihilism. Rookmaaker argued that this shift in worldview was reflected in the changing character of art. At the same time, Rookmaaker was not calling on Christians to abandon the world of art but rather to think Christianly in their art. There were just two problems with this. For one thing, almost no one outside the Christian community credited Rookmaaker’s analysis, nor did it reflect the actual thinking of many of the artists about which he was writing whose art often reflected profound spiritual, and even Christian insight. It also often left Christian artists in a quandary between what their artistic practice in the studio led them to do versus what they thought Christians in the arts ought to be producing.

This book, the first in a new series on Studies in Theology and the Arts, is written as a response to and reappraisal of Rookmaaker’s work. The authors, one of whom studied under Rookmaaker argue that the fundamental defect of Rookmaaker’s work is that he did not grasp seriously what artists themselves were saying about their work. After two introductory chapters on the intersection of faith and modern art and the particular work of Rookmaaker, they survey the artists and periods covered by Rookmaaker moving from France to Germany, Holland, and Russia (particular work with icons and Dada liturgies) and finally on to the North American scene. They draw upon what artists themselves are saying about their work, and surprisingly, upon the spirituality, often Christian, reflected in works of which Rookmaaker was dismissive.

I was intrigued for example, with their handling of the work of Andy Warhol. They write:

“However, as with all of his other works we’ve seen thus far, Warhol’s subversive parodies are aimed not at this subject matter but at the systems of mediation and the “handling” of that subject matter. We argue that Warhol’s late religious paintings are best understood as the work of a devout Christian [earlier they cite evidence of the devotion in Warhol’s regular mass attendance, service in a church’s soup kitchen, and well-thumbed prayer book] wrestling with the problematic visuality of his faith, submersed as it is in a bog of visual kitsch and cliche’, and profoundly vulnerable to the visual culture of commercial marketing and advertising. In the age of mechanical reproduction, religious imagery is every bit as exposed to the latent nihilism of the “vernacular glance” as photos of celebrities or of human tragedies. The sharp, ironic criticality of these religious paintings is that of a believer scrutinizing the common signage of his faith as it passes through the machinery of mass media. Warhol subjects this signage to the logic of vanitas painting, not for the sake of attacking belief but for the sake of ‘labeling’ one of the major modern obstacles to it.”

What Anderson and Dyrness are proposing is that the case Rookmaaker made was not quite so simple. Yes, there is a devolution of worldview in the culture and yet artists often find themselves at the intersection of this devolution and deep spiritual values and their art reflects that complex response to “the givenness of things.” While we may not appreciate all in the art or life of these artists, it is unjust to the work of many to simply associate it with a decaying and dying culture, when artists in fact are seeking to bring life or to question the ways of a dying culture.

The book concludes with an afterward by Dan Siedell, author of God on the Gallery, reflecting on why the work Anderson and Dyrness have done is important not only for the Christian community but also the broader artistic community. At one point he poses a question with which I’ll conclude this review:

“Is it possible that scholars who are thinking theologically might be able to offer a more compelling history of modern art, one that can show the contemporary art world that the modern tradition of artistic practice is not a progression of stylistic innovation but a belief system, a way of understanding the self and its relationship to the world that continues to be viable and can address the present situation in the art world, and connect with them as human beings.”

It seems to me that an affirmative answer to such a question might indeed be life and life-giving to our culture.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher via Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”