Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles (Mona)

Hi
i'm posting a `work in progress'....a semi re edited version of an essay  that I wrote (and got published by PRISM magazine) back in the mid 1990s. I'm reworking it for inclusion  in the book `Each with our own brush'........ Here's where we are `at' so far. Bear with occasional typos and format glitches.



 I'D WALK A MILLION MILES FOR ONE OF YOUR SMILES (MONA)


`The question of whether or not art will change the world is not 

a relevant question anymore. The world is changing already, in 

inescapable ways. We can no longer deny the evidence at hand. The 

need to transform the egocentric vision that is encoded in our 

entire world view is the crucial task that lies ahead for our 

culture. The issue is whether art will rise to the occasion and 

make itself useful to all that is going on.'

  Suzi Gablik `Making Art as if the world mattered'


In the early 1970s I was in Paris, France, as part of a 

city wide evangelical outreach. Almost every day we would be out, 

passing out tracts, putting up posters for meetings and talking 

to people on the street. When we weren't doing that, we were in 

Bible studies, prayer meetings and times of worship.

On one of the few afternoons we had a little spare time, some of 

us made our way to the Louvre museum.  I have forgotten a good 

deal of what I saw. One thing that sticks in my mind

is the large crowd gathered round a small painting known as `The 

Mona Lisa'

As we made our way back from the museum I can remember glancing 

into the window of a record store, and noting that David Bowie's 

new album, `Aladdin Sane' was now out. This recollection sets the 

tone for what I want to say, because it reminds me

of those of us who were Christians  and art students at the time, 

looking for ways of bringing the three worlds of Fine Art, Pop 

culture and evangelical Christianity  together.
 

 In what follows I try to briefly sketch out some of the 

differences that are emerging in contemporary culture in the wake 

of what is called `Post Modernism,' because I believe that an 

understanding of these differences is vitally important to the 

three worlds I mentioned above. 




           












1: A Crash Course for the Ravers 


 `It is impossible to say precisely when one can speak of the 

existence of two distinct and bitterly conflicting modernities. 

What is certain is that at some point during the first half of 

the nineteenth century an irreversible split occurred between 

modernity as a stage  in the history of Western Civilization-a 

product of scientific and technological  progress, of the 

industrial revolution, of the sweeping economic and social 

changes brought about capitalism- and modernity as an aesthetic 

concept. Since then the relations between the two modernities 

have been irreducibly hostile, but not without allowing and even 

stimulating a variety of mutual influences in their rage for each 

other's destruction.' (Matei Calinescu `The Five Faces of 

Modernity' Duke University Press, 1987)




Calinescu goes on to map the landscape of what he is talking about.

The first modernity was 

driven by the idea of progress,increasing confidence in benefits 

of science and technology, a marriage of reason and pragmatism, 

resulting in an `instrumental rationalism.'
 

The other modernity (for which I will use the term `modernism' 

to help cut down on the clutter)was the birth place of the avant 

garde in culture and art. It often combined  radical social ideas 

with radical approaches to art. It set out to confront and 

challenge the cultural and social conformities that were 

springing up in the wake of modernity's relentless expansion.



When Marcel Duchamp painted whiskers onto a reproduction of the 

Mona Lisa, he was throwing down the gauntlet to a system of 

cultural values and inherited good taste that seemed increasingly 

irrelevant to an era rocked by social upheaval, revolution and 

war.  Not only was Duchamp and those like him responding to his 

time, but they were also opening the door for all those hard 

questions and increasing uncertainties that were starting to 

impact the worlds of the sciences.  As the `big picture' began to 

change in the areas of cosmology and physics, other pictures 

began to change also.  A revolution in ideas began to take hold 

in areas as diverse  as Cultural anthropology, linguistics, and 

the philosophy of science that revealed to us  both the 

complexity and the smallness of the world we inhabited. It also 

revealed that our way of describing things  (already under review 

in the hard sciences) was simply one among many.  We came to see 

that knowledge was `personal,' influenced by consensus and 

convictions, and our  big picture, controlling paradigm, or world 

view had a particular  history, and had even been shaped at some 

levels by the language we used to describe it.  This crisis in 

our world view cast a shadow across the unquestioned assumptions 

that drove the engines of modernity.  The various attempts to  

regroup  and rethink our relationship to the past, and come up 

with a new model or paradigm for the future come together under 

the umbrella term `Post Modernism.'

(Artists like)Duchamp challenged the accepted notions of art with `anti art,' not

only opening the door for  future generations who would challenge

the conventions of artistic taste,, but  (by)also forging the beginnings 

of a link between the general crisis in modernity and the 

eventual demise of (cultural)modernism.




How and why did this happen?


The failure of modernism in the arts is linked back to at least 

three things. 



 Firstly:In spite of the variety of its imaginative expressions, 

modernism in the arts was necessarily rooted in the same cultural 

and philosophical soil as the overriding modernity it sought to 

challenge and critique.  This `soil' was a world view haunted by 

a profound dualism. In the ancient days of philosophical 

idealism, this dualism opposed  the realm of eternal truths and 

ideal forms  and  the realm of contingent material reality.  As 

modern `rationalism’ supplanted ancient tradition, then the dualism  

re surfaced as a split between `faith' and `reason' creating 

separate, self contained worlds of `neutral facts' and `inner 

values.'  

Secondly , many of the underlying dynamics that drove modernity 

in its quest for ongoing progress and expansion  ended up 

Unconsciously(?) influencing the vocational agendas of artists who 

have made their `careers' attempting to confront and challenge 

modernity. 

Thirdly, modernism's attempts to confront modernity, whether 

through `rebellious' imaginative expression, shocking anti art,  

or extreme self reflexive abstraction invariably ended up being 

neutralized and assimilated by  the gallery system and prevailing 

critical discourse.  The artists were drawn back into the very  

system they were trying to confront..




         
 How does Post Modernism differ?

 How does it retrieve(or take up??) the challenge that modernism failed to rise

 to, and what  new things does it try to tell us about art at the end of modernity?

I would like to offer four  suggestions as to how it does this.



           
 1:It challenges, retrieves and recuperates aspects of its 

own history. If the larger crisis of modernity is calling into 

question the controlling assumptions of our world view, then it 

may well be that an art history written as if those assumptions 

were unquestionably correct and universally valid may need a 

thorough overhaul. Artists and movements marginalized by 

`official history' may be due for reappraisal.  




  
 2: Also due for reappraisal and evaluation are those social 

and historical factors that influence  the way we decide 

something is art, and the way we look at it.

The entire complex of gallery and museum exhibition, art 

criticism, and all the other factors that affect how we approach 

something we have been told is `art' are undergoing scrutiny as 

part of the larger crisis of modernity, and as part of the post 

mortem on `modernism.'  The concept of `the artist' is also 

undergoing critical reevaluation . Inspired genius? Cultural 

worker? What does their art work reveal or hide about their  
 
social and historical situation?




          „---------------„---------------
 3:In the light of the critical rethinking of our fine art 

tradition , and radical re evaluation of our cultural history 

what do we make of the previously held distinctions between 

popular culture, mass culture and high art?  There has always 

been exchange between these three cultural trajectories.

Some examples of popular culture inspired fine artists, or, over 

time came to be seen as fine art itself. Some fine art has been 

genuinely popular, and has also provided raw material for 

assimilation into `mass culture.'

`Mass Culture' should be understood as an aspect of modernity. In 

the name of `democratizing' culture, it targets the `felt need' 

of a community  for some kind of cultural dimension and markets  

culture conceived of as a commodity to the lowest common 

denominator  in the spectrum of that `felt need.'   This approach 

to culture will borrow from popular culture, high art, and in 

some cases `social relevance' to come up with a marketable 

commodity, or marketing strategy.  In spite of all the exchanges 

that have gone on between these three cultures the boundaries 

have always been firmly in place. Or at least they were until the 

Post modernist artist and thinkers began to redescribe the 

cultural landscape.  In this new landscape the moral indignation 

of Duchamp's defaced Mona Lisa gives way to the deadpan irony of 

Andy warhol's silkscreened  Mona Lisa.  Duchamp questioned 

cultural values in an era of social upheaval while Warhol  

questioned the sanctity and aura of the unique art object in an 

era of mass reproduction. 




4: Another aspect of our cultural landscape that is 

undergoing  redescription involves our relationship to other 

cultures.  While some  artists have felt free to borrow from 

artistic forms in other cultures, some museums  have 

(traditionally)put cultural artifacts on display as ethnographic 

data that in some way supports our assumptions about cultural and 

social evolution. 

We have also tended to view other cultures in the light of our 

own artistic preferences. As we rethink our relationships to 

other cultures we are realizing that our particular view of what 

good art is, and how it relates to a society is just that: a 

particular view. 

The collapse of modernity as a universal technological panacea 

and the  failure of (cultural)modernism to effectively critique and 

challenge the cultural status quo clears the way for a 

reappraisal of other world views and other cultures. Post 

modernity and cultural pluralism go hand in hand.

Post modern cultural theory  calls into question all the 

previously held assumptions about  history, culture and cultures. 

Accordingly, much post modern art  attempts to keep its footing  

by keeping moving.  It borrows images, styles and themes from  

the newly leveled cultural and historical landscape, sometimes 

appreciatively, sometimes ironically, in its quest to combine the 

ongoing relentless criticism of the old order, with the 

celebration of  the new order, or of no discernible order. 


                   
As we begin to conclude this somewhat sketchy overview, we might 

ask ,where does that leave the  world of `evangelical 

Christianity'  in terms of the three worlds I was hoping to see 

brought closer together?



Of course Christianity suffers as a system of truth and ultimate 

values in an intellectual and cultural climate which seeks to 

deconstruct any claims to certainty and `absolutes' and reveal 

them as historically grounded fictions or thinly disguised grabs 

for power.  And of course, it is important that Christians  risk 

telling and doing the truth  in such a climate. What is at stake 

is not just a particular idea about high art, or even a shared 

consensus about right and wrong.  Under this kind of 

deconstructive scrutiny the very idea of the `self'  or `human 

being' may end up looking like a linguistic formulation, or a 

socially mandated fiction. Will Christians respond, though? Will 

they step into the marketplace of ideas at the end of history, 

with a message that redeems the concept of the individual, and 

places it in the context of a community,  and accountability 

before a personal God?  If the current cultural efforts of what 

has been dubbed `the evangelical subculture' is anything to go 

by, the picture is not too bright.  Why?


I want to suggest that much of what finds expression in this 

subculture suffers in the same way that the rest of the cultural 

and intellectual world suffers.  It not only feels the effects of 

`the end of modernity' it also  experiences a crisis similar to 

the one modern art went though.

 ((Really??????))What are the similarities?


           
 I suggested earlier three  factors that contributed to the  

failure of modernism in the arts. How do these factors impact  

the Evangelical subculture?

Firstly, this subculture is haunted by dualism. 

The ancient philosophical dualism that divided the world into a 

realm of ideal truths, eternal forms and a world of appearances 

and contingent reality still haunts much of this Evangelical 

subculture in the guise of the `sacred/secular' distinction. The 

more modern dualism with its split between `facts' and `values' 

builds upon this `sacred/secular' distinction by building a wall 

of separation between emotional feeling and critical thinking.  

This dualism in both its ancient idealist/gnostic  and its modern 

rationalist/skeptical forms attempted to separate the Jesus of 

history from the Christ of faith.  If we operate  as  if this 

dualism (in whatever form it presents itself) is true  then we 

risk  opening the back door to a version of this error. We also 

risk setting up a conflict between an orthodox verbal confession 

and a heretical mindset and practice.


 Secondly, some of this subculture's idea of expression and 

effective ministry is severely compromised. Not only is some of 

our thinking paralyzed by the ancient and modern dualisms but 

some of our thinking and doing is compromised by being `unequally 

yoked' to some of the driving forces and underlying agendas of 

the culture we are trying to reach. Those forces might convince 

us that bigger is better, whatever works must have some truth to 

it, and the ends do, in fact, justify the means. 


 Thirdly, in the light of points one and two, this subculture 

is assimilated back into the very system it seeks to critique.

This `evangelical subculture becomes useful only insofar as it 

helps prop us the existing status quo. Or, conversely it becomes 

viable as a commodity, one option among many in the fragmentary 

pluralism  that follows in the wake of modernity's collapse.  

And, also  in the light of points one and two  as this subculture 

surrenders the option of deep an consistent Biblical thinking and 

replaces it with  an approach to the surface of scripture  as 

fragmentary and misleading as any advertising slogan or political 

soundbite, then it ends up  resembling a symptom of the very 

problem it claims it wants to address….

 How do we change?  How do we move beyond mimicking the 

symptoms of Postmodernism, or merely reacting to some of its 

effects? How do we engage with and respond to some of these ideas 

as Christians, and how, ultimately do we link all this back to 

art?   I want to wrap this up by asking if there is anything 

we can possibly learn from  the Post modern position?  I am going 

to make some suggestions based on the four points I made about 

Post modernism and art history earlier.




 1: I mentioned `deep Biblical thinking' above. This is 

necessarily preceded by close reading. A close reading of the 

gospels reveals a social world in which, from a Roman point of 

view, nothing was sacred. One could believe in as many or as few 

Gods as one liked, debate customs, culture, fasting, food, 

clothing and ceremonial law, so long as one remembered,

at the end of the day, all kidding aside, Caesar  was God.

The Gospels also reveal a world in which, for the Religious authorities, 

nothing was secular.  The revealed Law was interpreted in such a 

way, and channeled through an infrastructure of Rabbinic 

commentary and tradition, so as to impinge on most areas of an 

ordinary person's life.  The Gospels reveal hoe Jesus set in 

motion a series of events that questioned the foundational 

assumptions of both these world views, while at the same time  

retrieving and recuperating those elements of society who were 

pushed to the periphery and marginalized by those world views.  




          „
 2:  We can begin to understand how the New testament might 

be relevant  to our attempts to analyze the power centers and 

established worldviews in our own day. Is it possible to train a 

more analytical, critically distanced eye upon church history?  

What would we learn about the development of this institution?  

We saw earlier that social, historical and economic factors  have 

some bearing upon the role art plays in our culture.  How have 

they impacted the growth of the church, with all its forms, 

different emphases of ideas, doctrines and ceremonial practices?




           
 3:As we retrieve a New Testament worldview that balances 

`holism' with sharp analysis, and start to lay bare some of the 

influences and agendas that impacted some of developments in 

church thought and practice, then some of the previously held 

distinctions between `sacred' and `secular' (just like the 

distinctions between high art and popular culture) undergo deep 

revision.  I am going to suggest that we have to do a couple of  

things.

 Firstly we  have to balance a deepened appreciation for 

what the New testament actually teaches about  those two  

spheres, with a more exacting critical analysis of the underlying 

social and historical factors that led the church community to 

declare certain things `sacred' and `secular' at different times  

in its growth.  Secondly, we have to remain sensitive to how 

these categories function  in cultures different than our own.






 4: If, as Swedish Minister and writer Olov Hartman says, the 

ideas of `sacred' and `secular'  were nailed to the cross  with 

Jesus Christ, then in my opinion, we should read the account of 

the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the second Chapter of Acts 

as a decisive deathblow to any  notions of a single, definitive 

`Christian culture.'   Everybody there heard something they could 

understand, regardless of their linguistic or cultural 

background.  True worship and proclamation  found culturally 

plural expression, and laid the foundation for us to retrieve the 

concept of cultural pluralism, without succumbing to any form of 

relativism in the area of Truth. The early church did this by 

anchoring the many culturally distinct expressions of the faith 

in the historical and social particularity of  Jesus of Nazareth.  

For the church to speak effectively into a culturally diverse, 

cosmopolitan situation, it had to be built upon  the foundation 

of a leader and teacher who claimed to be  the embodiment of God, 

and also the definitive demonstration of God's intention towards 

His creation.  This leader and teacher was not only born into the 

human family, but also willingly underwent adult 
 
baptism/immersion into a particular community, in a particular 

historical and social situation.  

We Christian artists and thinkers should pause here, and 

reflect.  we often refer `the incarnation' when alluding to our 

own struggles to make or justify our art.  We often talk about 

the graciousness of God, who revealed his power in weakness, 

taking on the limitations of human form. We use this allusion to 

undergird our own struggles with giving material expression to an 

idea.  We are used to drawing upon the mystery of `the two 

natures in one person' to somehow anchor our own  concerns with 

the relationship between form and content in an artwork.  If we 

are going to have anything to say to the postmodern condition we 

need to move our understanding of incarnation, and our 

understanding of art past the questions of  form, content, 

humanity and divinity, and move into the questions of history, 

community, context and reception, questions that necessarily come 

to the surface when we consider the Biblical story of the True 

god who chose to become a particular man, in a particular culture 

at a particular juncture in history.  Anything less, is merely a 

sophisticated version of the `Christ of Faith/Jesus of history' 

heresy I allude to above.

Can we as Christian artists and cultural workers overcome this 

implicit dualism in our own thinking in order to (in Ms Gablik's 

words) `rise to the occasion, and make ourselves useful to all 

that is going on?'  

This question is still with us, and like the Mona Lisa's 

mysterious smile, it threatens to haunt us for some time to 

come.