Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Love Will Tear Us Apart (again)


LOVE WILL TEAR US APART (AGAIN)
When the routine bites hard/ and ambitions are low/ and the resentment rides high
But emotions won’t grow/ and we’re changing our ways, /Taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again
( Ian Curtis/Joy Division)

            One of my recent `finds’ on `YouTube’ was an amateur  video clip from a concert in which U2 joined Arcade Fire for a cover version of Joy Division’s `Love Will Tear Us Apart.’ I was attracted by the raw immediacy of the images from what I guess is a phone with built in camera   held up among the swaying, jostling audience.  I was also struck by the way the audience sang along on the chorus, giving the song an almost anthemic feel.  This struck me as a useful way of beginning these reflections on faith and technology.  Because of these images, images shot during a concert in Madrid and beamed to me here in Northern California via the internet, I got a strong sense of solidarity and connectedness conveyed to me.
  It was a bittersweet experience, listening to Bono and audience make something very joyous and anthemic out of such a melancholy song. I spent a few more minutes online and found radically different cover versions of the same song, performed by a variety of artists.  It was a good example of the way in which themes, images and artwork are subjected to re interpretation, and reappropriation in new contexts. It happens all the time….especially in our culture of late or post modernity.  However, for me, it is the original Joy Division version that gives me an authoritative `read’ on this   song. I came way from watching the 1970s video clips of that band, fronted by the late Ian Curtis, with a sense that I was watching something unravel before my eyes.
Actually, I had gone onto YouTube in quest of a different song. I was tracking down various examples of David Bowie performing `All the young Dudes.’ I found several, and again, in some of the more recent concert footage, I saw audiences caught up, and singing along almost joyously with the chorus of a song , that, in its original `context’ struck me as a  rather melancholy reflection on the death of 1960s idealism. Here again was an example of a pop culture artifact in which radical re interpretation creates a context for enthusiasm and nostalgia.
I had just begun at Art School in the 1960s when   a counterculture with new ideas about reality, belief, politics, art and life exploded into public awareness at this time. Some of these ideas   were rooted in spiritual exploration; others were grounded in deconstructive skeptical analysis. Artists and musicians as diverse as David Bowie, the Who, The Beatles (etc) began to draw together elements of `high’ and `low/pop ‘ culture and collage them together in  post modern pastiche as a way of exploring and commenting on these ideas.  Many of these ideas, birthed in a different time, and communicated by a different technology, nonetheless have a profound impact on some of our discussions about faith and life today. As I look at a U2/Arcade Fire cover version of a  Joy Division song, literally `phoned in’ by an enthusiastic fan, I remind myself that  the Beatles album `Sergeant Pepper’ was recorded on  a couple of analog four track recorders slaved together in the studio. As I listen to `All the young Dudes’ I remind myself that some viewed this song as a melancholy reflection on the failed idealism of `All you need is love.’
            In spite of this failed idealism, I have suggested above that some of the ideas have lingered, influencing some of our current conversations. I see a resemblance between the exploration of the expanded ideas about `art and life’ and our expanded ideas of church and mission. The Twentieth century was rocked by scientific, social and political revolution as well as corresponding  cultural ones, and I feel that some of our discussions about the nature of the church are unfolding in the shadow  of those revolutions. The way some of us talk about redefining the relationship between church/mission and world reminds me of some of the conversations I used to hear about overcoming the barriers between `art’ and `life.’
Let me touch briefly on three examples. Someone like Avant Garde composer John Cage wanted to change the way we listen to `ordinary sounds’ and silence.  He thought that listening in the right frame of mind was a step towards recognizing there are no barriers between art and life. Cultural and social theorists like Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, on the other hand, describe our experience of `real life’ as a market driven illusion. We live in `the society of the spectacle,’ and the `realm of the simulacra.’ They are proposing that our experience of `real life’ is something socially structured, and grounded in the all embracing logic of the image. Then again, German performance artist Joseph Beuys tackled the art-and-life issue in a completely different way.  When Beuys proposed his theory of `social sculpture’  he undertook a body of practice that included  sculptural objects, drawings,  tree planting ,live performance, interviews and blackboard lectures, all with the express intent of awakening  people to their own latent creativity  in order to create real world social transformation.  . While, in retrospect, some might say that Beuys and his project was flawed with the same kinds of utopian thinking that we touched on earlier, I find his work to be more stimulating as I reflect on the way some of our discussions about art in relation to life are faintly echoed in our conversations about some of the emerging forms of church and `mission’…   Nonetheless, when I take an admittedly partial, biased and superficial stroll through books, articles, wikis and websites to do with all things emergent and missional, I never trip over the name Joseph Beuys. This perhaps, is understandable. It is a bit of a leap from  a round table conversation  about new emergent forms of mission  to living in a room with a coyote for three days (`I like America, America likes me’) It is quite a jump to go from dissecting the obsolete forms of the Constantinian /Christendom paradigm to sitting in a gallery with  gold leaf all over your face and whispering stuff about art history to a dead animal in your arms (`Explaining pictures to a dead hare’) However,  when Beuys suggested in an interview at the time (1964)  that he thought that the dead hare  stood a better chance of understanding and appreciating what he had to say than some of the people walking through the gallery, he made a point  that I think hits dangerously close to home today.   
Someone else I never see mentioned is Thomas F. Torrance.  This omission is much more bewildering than my previous example.  Torrance has written extensively, comprehensively and lucidly on the history of scientific discovery, and the changing shape of approaches and ideas in the realm of the sciences. Not only has he cogently demonstrated the relationships between adopted `scientific’) worldviews and resultant theological formulations, he has also drawn parallels between the cosmology and worldview of the early church and the newer discoveries in physics.  His `ancient /future’ approach suggestively links Patristic thought with Post Einsteinian ideas about time and space. Our ideas about God, Torrance argues, are influenced by the kind of box we try and put Him in.  Torrance asks us to take off the conceptual straitjackets fashioned from obsolete, Newtonian ideas, and linear `instrumental rationalism’ and head (kind of) back to the future. In short, the guy is the Nazz of the paradigm shift. He does much of the heavy lifting in exploring and describing the kind of reality some of our newer ideas about the nature of church and mission spring from. However, I bring up Torrance not just to draw attention to the conceptual groundwork he has done on our behalf. I want to mention an earlier monograph of his called `The concept of Grace in the apostolic Fathers’ This brief work, originally published in the late 1940s described a rather sad `paradigm shift’ in the early church. He describes  how the idea of `grace’ as the personal quality of a gracious God was emptied out, and replaced with the idea of `grace’ as an abstract and malleable  quantity….something  that would need to be channeled  through sacramental and institutional frameworks….guarded and administered  by `special’ people.  For me, Torrance’s patient dissection of this root problem in some areas of earlier church thinking and practice has direct application to us, whatever model or paradigm of church we subscribe to. I am not, for one minute, discounting Torrance’s monumental contribution to mapping the conceptual ground out of which all things `emergent’ move and have their being.  I am suggesting, however, that his writings on the changing understandings of `Grace’ also speak to us today, and further, bring us  closer (much closer) to what the Apostle Paul was talking about  when he `beseeched’ the church at Rome  to be `transformed by the renewing of (their) mind.

PAUL

When the apostle Paul wrote to these Christians about `renewing their minds,’  in the 11th and 12th sections of his letter to this church, he spoke into a very specific  historical situation. Jewish Christians were returning to Rome (having been told to leave in 49 AD by Claudius, I believe.) When they got there, they found a flourishing  community of  non Jewish  believers. Paul found himself addressing a delicate `cross cultural’ situation in which Gentile believers with no background in Jewish custom or law were acting as if they were `superior’ to those Jewish believers who still emphasized some traditional practices. Paul acknowledged, and argued comprehensively that both groups were `saved by Grace’…..but  he also allowed that some of the Jewish Christians were still `weak in conscience’ when it came to the food laws, and were still in process towards  experiencing the full liberty that God had granted them in Christ. Paul wrote   to the Gentile believers who believed that God had made an end of the law `in Christ’ and was therefore `done’ with Jewish concepts and traditions and pointed out to them that God, in His grace, had `grafted the `wild branches’ of the Gentiles into the true vine. If, however, these Gentiles became complacent and arrogant, God could break them off, just as He had done with the `natural branches’ of Jewish stock (Romans 11:17-23). Paul regarded the arrogance, `high mindedness’ and `spiritual one upmanship’ of some of these Gentile believers in relation to their `weaker brethren’ as nothing more than `conformity to the world,’ and accordingly pleaded with them to radically change their thinking and behavior(Rom 12: 1-4) This `renewal of the mind’ that Paul  wrote of had little to do  with forms of ecclesiology,  systems theory, quantum physics,  Plato, Constantine, Christendom, centers, margins and the like, and plenty to do with real world relationships between  groups of believers drawn from different cultural  traditions.
Maybe you have read this far, and are wondering what this possibly has to do with issues of faith and technology. Perhaps, if you will allow that Paul qualifies as an `Apostolic Genius’ you will also allow that he  has  some relevant insights into  what the core issues are,  regardless of our form of worship or conceptual model of `the Church.’ If we fail to grasp the relevance of these insights for our own time and church paradigm, then I suspect that when we think of faith and technology in the future, we will largely be celebrating how easy it is to go online and plug back into some kind of virtual celebration that weaves together a sense of solidarity with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia as we sing along and celebrate the way things ought to be, the way things could have been.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

When the kissing had to stop.

This is the draft version  .....

When the Kissing Had to Stop: Converse Dialogues with Balinese Art

An Asian proverb says `If you want to learn about water, you do not ask the
fish...". It is hard for a convert to be objective about the process they
are going through. Skeptical observers of the conversion experience
invariably ask "to what, from what, and for how long?" I try to keep these
things in mind as I talk about my experiences in Bali and Java. I also keep
in mind some of the traditional art forms we associate with that part of
the world: shadow theater puppets, masks, and elaborate dances sometimes
performed in a `trance state.' Hopefully, the hard questions and my strong
attraction to some aspects of the culture will bring some balance to these
remarks.

The traditional approach to arts and culture in Bali seems very different
to the `museum and gallery' approach in the Fine Arts which we have in the
West. Due to the intertwining of several intellectual and cultural
developments in our culture, we have separated art from many other aspects
of life. We have tried to protect the aesthetic dimension from the different schools
 of thought that wanted to analyze truth and `reality’ in linear terms. In doing this, 
some say that we have cut beauty, truth, morality and utility adrift.
 
In Bali, by comparison, there is no word for `Art.' It is said that the
Balinese try to do everything beautifully, or artfully. Wooden masks and
the leather shadow puppets are carefully carved and painted. Performances,
from rudimentary village ceremonies to complex music and drama, are
precisely and gracefully handled. Every ritual, from simple rice offerings
made at a roadside shrine to the elaborate temple dances inviting the gods
to descend, is part of this dynamic continuum. Social, cultural and
spiritual practices seem to interpenetrate in a way which holds the
personal, social and cosmic worlds in dynamic balance. Furthermore, the
cultural forms and imagery draw heavily upon the lush surrounding nature for inspiration.
 

Is it any wonder that naturalists, explorers, and anthropologists have come
here in days gone by and declared Bali a paradise? Or that artists, writers
and musicians have arrived to celebrate the idyllic quality of Balinese
life and culture, as they found it? They have also gone on to mourn the
culture's inevitable change and decline, blaming everything from
Eurocentric cultural imperialism to the growth of the tourist economy.
Which makes one wonder: did the 'real Bali' ever even exist?

So, back to our skeptical questioner. Are we converting `from’ the sterility 
and bankruptcy (as some would see it) of  our Museum based and increasingly  
market driven art world? If so, in the light of the lamentations  of some of those 
who have discovered Bali…..can we be sure of what we are converting to?  
Before I go on , I would like to say that in spite of the marked
differences between our `museum-based' approach to the arts and the more
contextualized approach associated with cultures like Bali, both approaches
have produced wonderful art.  However…on with my personal testimony.

My personal encounter with Bali came about as a result of two International
 Christian arts conferences.  These conferences drew
people like moths to a particularly enticing flame. Artists came literally
from all over the world to share their faith, their visions and their
struggles. And what better place than Bali to do it in? We could observe,
`up close,' a culture in which art, life and spirituality were still
interwoven. We could interact with Balinese Christian art makers and dream
our own dreams of what such an integrated approach to culture might look
like once suitably redeemed and transformed. Personally, I left both
conferences `fired up' with the potential I caught a glimpse of there,
making my own side trips to Java to gain a little more exposure to these
cultures which so attracted me. However, in my travels and my subsequent
reflections I was haunted by questions. Was this the real thing? How could
I be sure?

In Jogjakarta I purchased the book Bali 1912 , a collection of photographic
prints made from the glass slides taken by anthropologist Gregor Krause in
the early 1900s. Perhaps here, in these crystal clear black and white
prints of temples, children, waterfalls and faces, I would find `the real
Bali.' But even here, was I looking at what was `real' or was I up against
the selective framing and the acute focus of a sympathetic, but paternal,
observer?

Perhaps the `real Bali' is not so easily documented. Not only does nature
and culture weave together to paint a picture of integration, but so do the
visible and the invisible dimensions of existence. To speak of the 'real
Bali' is to speak of its underlying spirituality. An important aspect of
that spirituality, for many, is the trance state. Would I find the `real
Bali' here, in those practices centered on going into trance or `entering
the other mind?'

I had the chance to observe some things firsthand, and heard and read about
others.
I watched Balinese priests writhe on the floor, seemingly intent on
lacerating themselves with sacred knives. I know that in some villages
young girls perform the fabled sangyang dedari trance dance, allegedly
possessed by the spirits of `heavenly nymphs.' But even here we should ask
 about the tangled relationship between the
observer and the observed. Who is truly in trance here? 
Is it the priests and the young girls caught in the spiritual dark side of.
the 'real Bali' or is it us, hypnotized byour own unfulfilled wishes, hopes and dreams? 
If we are the ones in trance,is this trance state merely a byproduct of our 
unexamined assumptions about beauty and art, or some form of `cultural imperialism'
 attracted to the exotic orientalism of this culture? 

Or is there something deeper?

The Balinese shadow puppet drama weaves together God, 
clown figure, history and myth in a way that some Balinese feel
 is more `real’ than the audience watching it..
 Perhaps, in a similar way, our longings to
know and experience the `real Bali' may be a truer indication of those
unanswered questions and unrealized aspirations lying close to the core of
our being--truer than all the heated sermons about `cultural imperialism'
and `Orientalism.'

Perhaps its is something closer to the analysis of some aspects of Romantic
Love offered by Denis De Rougemont in Love in the Western World. De
Rougemont argues (among other things) that when we "fall in love" we in
some ways project our "felt needs, hopes and aspirations" in a somewhat
idealized form onto our prospective partner. They become "the answer" to
our question. De Rougemont and Anders Nygren (Eros and Agape) both write
about the Eros-driven experience as a distorted parody, rather than a
possible parable, of Agape love. Is something like that driving us? Is our
entranced infatuation with some aspects of Balinese or other exotic
cultures simply an idealized projection of what we want and feel we need to
find in art, life and society? . Is it little more than a mask to hide our 
own nagging sense of incompleteness?
 How long before the mask comes off? (asks our skeptical questioner) 
and what happens then?

When Christian artists gathered together on Bali for a time of sharing and
discussion, we all broke bread together in a eucharistic
service heavily influenced by Balinese cultural forms.
Painter and puppeteer Nyoman Darsane performed a dance and broke
through layers of Balinese tradition by removing his mask before inviting
us to join him in the rest of the dance and the communion celebration.

The floor of the church was taken up by a huge Cross of interwoven
fruit and flowers. This cross was emblematic of what drew us all together
in our common faith. It also spoke of the redemption of these natural
elements and cultural forms, and gave us a foretaste of their eventual
transformation and renewal in Christ. In this cross--and by implication,
through THE cross--utility, function, beauty, truth and goodness are
reconciled........I do believe that we in the west can learn  a lot about 
art and life from cultures as integrated as the Balinese one appears to be….
However, whatever the `real Bali' is beneath our Romantic projections
 and their mythic constructions
 --it is but a dim and distorted mirror image of the kind of
 integrated and transformed reality
that is only possible because of, and through, the Cross.




conversion

What I'm posting here are writings, transcripts of talks etc  from the last 20+years ....some published some not....some reworked or still in process.Eventually  I want to gather the materials together into a `companion' volume to `Crying for a Vision' and `Like A house on fire.' The addition that follows (When the kissing had to stop) began life as reflection on `conversion' for a newsletter put out by CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) some time in the early 90s. The Bali conference it refers to was  in 1989, and (other) insights from this conference and subsequent experiences in Bali and south East Asia informed  some of the material  in my two books mentioned above.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010




WORKING IN THE GAP

When the preacher told me that nearly everything I did was a sin,
dancing in particular, I said I didn't know why he was so down on
dancing. There is dancing in the Bible. It’s an important part of
life. I said I didn't feel dirty when I was dancing-when I'm
dancing, I’m dancing. And then I got the lecture: When some people
see you having a good time, you might lead them astray because
they might think your intentions are different. That's when I
Left the church. I said, I can't lead my life figuring out why
when any time I'm enjoying myself, it's bad.’

               Robert Rauschenberg.
 
 

 
 
During the summer of 2006 I was at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena for some classes in my degree program. One weekend I took the Metro into downtown Los Angeles to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the `combines’ exhibition by Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008) `. This was a show of Rauschenberg's mixed media pieces from the 1950s and 60s, and I spent several hours learning about the different ways this  artist built bridges between painting and sculpture,   individual artistic mark  making  and found objects and images.
Rauschenberg has been described as being on the cusp of several of the important developments in recent modern and postmodern art. He is seen by some as a `transitional figure,’ moving on from (older) abstract approaches to art making, to something more   engaged with the poplar imagery of the surrounding culture.  He explored different kinds of mixed media, including theater, dance and performance at different times throughout his career. The work on display in the `Combines’ show drew upon his media experiments of the 1950s and early 1960s. Not only did it hint of more radical experimentation to come, it also carried traces of what the artist had put behind him.
The filmed documentary accompanying the exhibition made several references to Rauschenberg’s Fundamentalist religious upbringing and his early aspirations to be an evangelical preacher. Rauschenberg very publicly left his fundamentalist religion behind, but we can sense a more inclusive sense of moral and social purpose in his art work and also his efforts to use the arts in promoting inter cultural dialog. When an interviewer asked him to state his goals he replied that he wanted to be someone `working in the gap' between art and life. (Rose  1987)
 Rauschenberg was responding in part to the previous generation of abstract expressionists. These artists attempted to pursue and express the Romantic Sublime in what they painted, and in some cases, how they lived.   His combinations of found objects and popular imagery seemed a far cry from such an endeavor…He found value in ordinary things and cast off objects…and he hoped to create poetic `meaning’ out of their juxtaposition. ..  In his mixed media art  he combined  his personally made marks and images with found objects, and pictures in ways that seemed humorous at some levels, and yet wistful at others. I thought I even felt traces and heard whispers of Biblical themes in some of these combinations and juxtaposed surfaces in his art. Even the famous (or infamous) Monogram' piece from the late 1950s, with the Angora goat that Rauschenberg `rescued' from a thrift store, and installed on a platform with paint on its muzzle and a rubber tire around its middle seemed to resonate slightly (sadly? angrily? satirically?) with the kind of imagery the younger Rauschenberg might have encountered in `Sunday School' reproductions of `Christian Art' from days gone by. In several recent presentations and talks about modern art, I have suggested such connections by projecting an image of Rauschenberg’s `Monogram' next to that of a painting called `The Scapegoat’ by British Pre Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt (1827 –1910).
 

ART NEEDS NO JUSTIFICATION?

I vividly remember Hans Rookmaakers' public lecture at the Royal college of Art in London in the early 1970s. He was critiquing trends in modern art and society, but also taking time to skewer what he perceived as the maudlin excesses of much religious art. To illustrate his point, he projected an image of a religious painting from the Victorian era. This was `The Light of the World,’ one of the more famous paintings by the artist I mentioned previously, William Holman Hunt. In this painting, the Christ figure is holding a lantern and knocking on a door to a rustic cottage. This image, according to Rookmaker was a visual catalog of the problems in `Religious art'... It was cloyingly sentimental, it was overly illustrative and `preachy’ it was little more than a maudlin sermon set down in line and color. .  To be fair, Rookmaaker directed his most trenchant criticisms not so much at the artwork itself, but the uses the believers had made of it since. This painting, popular in the mid 19th century, had , over the years, acquired an almost sacred aura in some pious circles and could be seen in reproductions in the homes of many of the faithful, and perhaps illustrating the Sunday school lessons read to their children.
If Rauschenberg redeemed a throwaway stuffed animal in his avowed attempt to bridge the gap between art and life, then, here, according to Rookmaaker a Christian church exhibited a failure of imagination in its choices of art worthy of the name `Christian'.  Here, in Holman Hunt’s `The light of the world’ was a painting,   hijacked from its late Victorian context, bubble wrapped in sanctimony and put to work in helping the `truly spiritual’ avoid both art AND life.

TO THE DEFENCE

In its day, however, this painting ultimately proved to be very popular with the British public. It even went on tour. Nonetheless it was not without its critics and detractors. Those who despair of genuine cultural engagement among Christians today can take comfort in the fact that this painting was attacked by wooden literalists who wanted to know why `The Light of the World' needed to carry a lantern. The eminent art critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819 –1900) wrote a detailed letter to the London Times in 1854, defending the painting, and the skills of the painter. Ruskin wrote at length to make clear the spiritual and moral significance of the imagery and the symbolism of the artwork, while also giving due praise to the artist’s unerring eye for natural detail, and his skill in depicting it. At one point in his impassioned defense of the work, Ruskin writes
`I believe there are very few persons on whom this picture, thus justly understood, will not produce a deep impression. For my own part, I think it is one of the very noblest works of sacred art ever produced in this or any other age.’ (Ruskin /Herbert 1964)
In case we suspect that Ruskin was unduly swayed by the spiritual temper of the times or biased in favor of this artist we should note that he could be quite severe when turning his critical eye upon other pieces of the artist’s work.  Of the `Scapegoat’ painting I mentioned earlier Ruskin wrote
`This picture regarded merely as a landscape, or as a composition, is a total failure. The mind of the painter has been so excited by the circumstances of the scene, that like a youth expressing his earnest feeling by feeble verse (which seems to him good, because he means so much by it), Mr. Hunt has been blinded by his intense sentiment to the real weakness of the pictorial expression; and in his earnest desire to paint the scapegoat, has forgotten to ask himself first, whether he could paint a goat at all.’ (Ruskin/Herbert 1964 op cit)


SO…WHO WAS JOHN RUSKIN?
Victorian art critic and social theorist John Ruskin is perhaps best remembered for his incisive analysis of   the complex relationship between spirituality, culture and the marketplace in Victorian Britain. He offered a sustained and powerful critique of the economically driven social and cultural agendas of his day He lamented the declining artistic standards and the disintegration of social and personal values.  All this was occurring, according to Ruskin, in the shadow of the industrial revolution.   He tried to counter these trends by arguing for true(r) standards of beauty, while promoting and defending the artists and arts movements he felt had genuine merit. He also framed many of his conclusions about art and society while looking at the world around him through Biblically informed lenses. 
Ruskin’s ideas about art and beauty have been influential at different times throughout the last century,   and his ideas on society and economy profoundly resonated with thinkers as diverse as William Morris, Mahatma Gandhi, Tolstoy and Arnold Toynbee.  It has been said that the first British Labor party to gain seats in Parliament were more familiar with Ruskin’s treatise on economics (`unto this last’) than they were with Marx’s `Das Kapital’
However, some of Ruskin's ideas on art and society also took a more practical bent on occasion.  He once took a group of Oxford students, including Oscar Wilde and Arnold Toynbee, and attempted to connect two small villages on the outskirts of Oxford by digging and creating a road. Ruskin wanted to expand the student sensibilities beyond rowing  boats and cricket matches....He also wanted to  demonstrate `the nobility of labor' to these young men, and also the inhabitants of the villages. (Wilde 2003) While it is easy in hindsight to detect a certain ‘paternalistic’ tone in Ruskin’s approach and rationale, we have to keep him in the context of his times, and remember that his larger analysis of art and society was both astute, and comprehensive.  Whether he was trying to connect two villages by building a roadway, or writing about art and society in an age of declining values,  John Ruskin was also someone who attempted to `work in the gap'....but in a way very different to Robert Rauschenberg.


BUT IS IT ART?

While Ruskin’s insights and ideas were  and are regarded as valuable, they did not prevent  what he described as ` gathering storm clouds’ from casting their long shadows over the closing years of that century  and contributing much to the confusion and darkness in the next.
Many of the social and conceptual revolutions of the twentieth century reverberated through the cultural expressions, both in the form of trenchant social analysis, and also in the various forms of avant Garde artistic expression. Settled concepts of tradition, progress, life and art were turned upside down by a number of intellectual and social revolutions, and horrendous international conflicts. Some artists attempted to creatively acknowledge  the horrors of the twentieth century by offering outrages of their own. It was as if artists were attempting  to rethink  the purposes of art in the increasingly darkening shadow of `life.’  Some wanted to repair what they felt was the organic relationship between art and handicraft. Others wanted to suggest that abstract form and raw material were the only viable content for art in an image saturated, alienated society. Others tried to tear down the barriers between art and life, moving from confrontational theater, mixed media `happening’  and out into different kinds of performance that attempted to purify art even further  by moving away from reliance on the gallery system, away from even working with artistic  materials, and closer to exploring ideas in a social and public context.
When I was at art school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I found myself in the middle of some of these historical breakthroughs and emerging trends in modern and postmodern art. It was here I first encountered the work of Joseph Beuys.

German Performance Artist Joseph Beuys, (1921, - 1986,) might have had no trouble including Ruskin’s road digging exercise under the umbrella term `Social Sculpture.’
Beuys found a way of `working in the gap’ that benefitted broadly from the modes of analysis that Ruskin and others put into motion, and also from some of the mixed media explorations and practices, traceable through the avant Garde art makers of the 20th Century…and evidenced in a different way, incidentally, in the mixed media combines of Robert Rauschenberg.. Beuys wanted to expand the idea of art so that it tapped into everyone's creativity and (latent) capacity for critical thought and social analysis.  He dubbed his experiment `social sculpture' and  some of his art events included lectures, discussions, performances and tree planting, all with the somewhat utopian intent of critically  engaging a creatively awakened `public' in  a shared  attempt to bridge art and life. Beuys built upon the work of the critical theorists who dismantled the machinery that linked truth and power, as well as its corresponding market driven, sentimental `mass culture’ (Kitsch).  Beuys, unlike some, did not view `art' as this privileged, self referential sphere or platform from which the artist attacked this dominant (false) rationality with pure art..,. Beuys, and some others after him, wanted to rebuild a more direct relationship with the public, and try and suggest to that `public’ that they could be informed, critical agents participating in their own transformation. However, just as we might detect paternalism in Ruskin’s efforts, some have found an impractical utopianism in some of the work and ideas of Joseph Beuys. Nonetheless, Beuys, in ways very different to Robert Rauschenberg, and John Ruskin, attempted to `work in the gap.’(Beuys 1990)

CONVERSATION PIECES

These things were at the back of my mind as I spent about an hour in the MOCA bookstore after several hours in the Rauschenberg `Combines’ show. It was here that I began to read through a book called `Conversation Pieces’ by Grant H. Kester. (Kester 2004) This book    describes and analyzes some of the different ways that some recent artists had attempted to re imagine and reconstruct a relationship with a public. Later, I ended up buying a copy of the book. As I read through this book, it took me on a journey from the `self referential’ and `self contained’ art world in the gallery and museum to the attempts by some to use the arts in different kinds of community settings, such as hospitals, prisons, or with at risk groups. The author then mapped   a further shift from those approaches to art-use in community to an approach in which `art’ is not `for’ a community, but in some way comes into being and is given shape  because of the  critical and interactive presence  of a proposed community.. In some cases, the community itself is called `into being’ or is proposed by whatever it is the artist initially puts into motion. `Art’ gets redefined and reframed, as a community is engaged as participants, critical thinkers, and co creators. In all cases, the artist, is not the sole final arbiter of `the artistic value or meaning’ of the resulting work. That `meaning' arises out of the relational networks formed, and the issues explored in the context of this expanded definition of `art.’ Accordingly   the artwork itself expands and overflows neat media specific or even clear cut conceptual categories.   Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija organized a gallery show that consisted of him cooking a Thai meal for the visitors. He also initiated a large scale project that involves community living on land in Northern Thailand, meditating, engaging in creativity…a piece that involves natural systems intertwined with cultural systems intertwined with real life. Perhaps this can be seen as a model of social sculpture, and certainly a utopian one….but it is also as down to earth as road digging. Another artist, Felix Gonzales Torres, built  a provisional `sculpture’ in a gallery( in one case, bags of candy) that grew and shrank as interested individuals took parts of it away, and the artist replenished it.  In another example, an artist like Loraine Leeson worked with specific communities in East London, creating mixed media images based on interviews and dialog with female (migrant/immigrant) Asian clothing factory workers who in many ways find themselves `representing’  but caught between overlapping cultures.  She has also worked with older original working class residents of a particular London neighborhood and engaged them as participants in describing, preserving and honoring their memories. In these cases…a meal,  an expanding and shrinking sculpture of candy,  or the use of  mixed media to valorize and commemorate  a community’s lived experience, we can see it is not a question of artistic form, `product’ or choice of media  that  underscores this approach, but a commitment to a kind of social engagement  in which the incidental documentation, (everything from a display of dirty dishes and pots  to posters of digitally composed mixed media images) is present, but complementary to the relationships formed in `real life.’
A key example Kester cites is the work of Stephen Willats, who in his book on `art and social structure’ (Willats 2000) very consciously describes the desire to move `art’ out of its self referential loop, and into conversation with local community, not in a patronizing or condescending way, but in a way intent on critically and aesthetically engaging the community in how it sees itself, and what it would like to change about its living situation. . Willats organized a team (The West London super Girls) and sent them door to door with questionnaires, got interested parties to sign up and commit to filling out a series of worksheets, and compiled a dossier on particular localities. The results were exhibited in local libraries, and generated a secondary round of interest, as well as creating new networks of affiliation and connection among neighborhoods. To an extent this resembles Beuys’ Social sculpture, not least because it takes an approach resembling a bureaucratic local government survey (or like Beuys and his classroom and blackboard) and uses it in an emancipatory, almost playful way.
Kester (and others who have written on this subject) uses examples like this to move our thinking from the gallery, past a passively recipient community, and out into the idea of a public sphere that makes room for a genuinely critical engagement.  Even in these few examples, we can see, that this approach to art not an extension or variation on a stylistic or an art historical `problem’…..except the perennial problem of how to find new ways of working effectively in the gap between art and life
 Nicolas Bourriaud, theorist, and author of `Relational Aesthetics’ (Bourriaud 2002) sums it up like this
 `Every artist whose work derives from relational aesthetics has his or her own world of forms, his or her problematic and his or her trajectory: there are no stylistic, thematic or iconographic links between them. What they do have in common is much more determinant(sic)  namely the fact that they operate with the same practical and theoretic horizon: the sphere of interhuman relationships. Their works bring into play modes of social exchange, interaction with the viewer inside the aesthetic experience he or she is offered, and processes of communication in their concrete dimensions as tools that can be used to bring together individuals and human groups' (Bourriaud 2002)
However, this approach is not without its limitations and blind spots. Critics of `Relational aesthetics’ suggest  that some of  its thinkers and practitioners  leave themselves little room to actively criticize the dominant social order, because they have adopted  much of its open terminology (networking, empowerment etc) in their attempts to frame an expanded theory of `form.’ (Svetlichnaja 2005) Also, the ghosts of paternalism and utopianism potentially haunt the fringes of some of these approaches as well, in spite of the best efforts of the artists.
It may well be that the vulnerabilities and the duplicities of the art system are fair game for the critically reflective practices by artists like Joseph Beuys.  Perhaps they are appropriately sidestepped by some proposing alternative structures and re imagining of `art' as an expression of the relationships and networks within a critically awakening or engaged community. But could it be possible that `art’ as it is more traditionally understood, and `framed’ in an institutional context still has untapped potential? Does  the gallery experience and the contemplation of art (as `Art’) offer anything in the (genuine) public interest?  
Polish psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that it does. He has written on the potential benefits of the `aesthetic experience’ comparing it to his descriptions of the experience of `flow’. In this `flow’ experience people are beneficially immersed in an activity (like sports or music or…) for its own sake rather than with an agenda or specific outcome in mind. They are caught up in the experience of liking what they do. (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) The psychologist goes on to suggest that the (similar) act of contemplative immersion when we view an art work might be considered beneficial in its provision of psychological integration and restoration of the person. This in turn would bring value to that person’s involvement in the larger community. Art experienced as art has the potential of fulfilling its restorative and critical role. (Csikszentmihalyi 1991)

REDEEMING THE MUSEUM?

Curator and art theorist/historian Daniel  Siedell  would agree with this, and goes on to suggest to us that  there might be theological and historical reasons for this being true.
Siedell suggests that the early church’s use of images in the form of icons might have something to tell us about how to approach art. He also suggests that a greater appreciation of the historic traditions of the Church…notably those associated with the Nicene expression of faith might throw some light on how we can think theologically about looking at art.
As I have explored these ideas, I have tried to frame the artist or writer within their own context in order to suggest some clues as to how they formed their perspective.  Rauschenberg fled a fundamentalist upbringing, but also responded to the art of the previous generation with his mixed media constructions. Rookmaaker was commenting on modern art, but also critically reflecting on the religious mindset  of those that clung to the imagery of Pre Raphaelite painters like Holman Hunt. Daniel Siedell is writing in response to art/culture social theorists (Like Rookmaaker) who `use’ individual artworks as part of their dissection of a larger social and historical temper.  Siedell is proposing, instead, that there can be as much value in contemplatively looking at an art object or installation in an institutional setting.  To make his point further Siedell contrasts the overly diagnostic or even didactic uses of art in some church circles with the approach to images and icons in the early church. Just as there is a context and frame of reference for the icon and the receptive attitude of the worshipper, so there is also a number of factors to keep in mind when contemplating the modern art object.  Some of the examples he describes in his book   `work’ as an artistic totality, partially in the light of what we come to know about the ideas, process and materials involved in the making of the work. Siedell is asking us to have a spirit of receptive hospitality in our approach to some modern art. He also suggests that this open and receptive approach to the art object will be strengthened  as we explore  the deeper layers of our Christian heritage. (Siedell 2008)
  In summary, perhaps we could take a more contemplative/receptive attitude in front of the artwork, as did the early believers in front of Icons. Perhaps some artists could distance themselves from the role of paternalistic or utopian social critic and learn something from the humble attitude of the early icon makers.
Siedell would agree with Csikszentmihalyi  concerning the benefits of looking at art to both the individual and the community but would also ask us to include a larger sensed continuity with the Christian Tradition  in our  understanding of community…. perhaps something akin to what the writer of Hebrews  intended in his reference to `a cloud of witnesses.’ (Heb 12:1)
Siedell is proposing this larger conversation of the faithful because, as I suggested above, in his opinion, some of our more recent attempts to think about art and faith have led us into some blind alleys.  He points out that the emphasis on art and imagery as an adjunct to verbal and print communication  is a legacy of our Protestant tradition, and might cast a shadow over our initial attempts to contemplatively  look at an art object (`…but what does that tire around the goat mean??’)
While the author  would not ask us to blindly embrace Rauschenberg’s stuffed goat, he would not have us (alternately) attempt to simply boil the poor creature down to  a sociological or theological footnote.
And while it would be similarly reductive to merely break the `aesthetic experience’ down to a list of its social and psychological benefits, I think it is possible to suggest that between the insights of Mihayi Csikszentmihalyi, Daniel  Siedell, Grant Kester and Nicolas Bourriaud we can find good reasons for looking for creative ways of `working in the gap’ between individual contemplation and transformed community relations. Art can help.

POST PRODUCTION.

But we now live in a media saturated, globally connected `village.’ Is this a good or a bad thing for artists according to thinkers like Bourriaud?
In his recent writing he acknowledges the strains of critical theory that led thinkers like Guy DeBord and Jean Baudrillard to describe a society of alienated consumption held together by the glue of imagery and spectacle….but he refuses to view this as a cul de sac. Today’s artist, if I understand Bourriaud correctly, tacitly acknowledges there is no primary or privileged relationship with `nature.’  All signs and imagery are `second hand.’  He uses the term `Post Production’  to describe this  socially constructed reality….as if it were a giant film set or media event (think `Truman Show’)Also, just like a film or media event, people collaborate in  helping it all to work meaningfully. Today’s artist acknowledges this media saturated condition, and understands that `meaning’ arises out of interactions and networks of response within  the community. Such an artist uses signs , images and communication systems with the same generous, open ended generative approach as an open source computer programmer, and the same tacit awareness of DJ who mixes and `mashes’ sound samples from different discs into an overall sonic event.(Bourriaud 2007)
 Elsewhere, he describes  today’s art maker as a `Radicant’….someone who in their artistic practice  redefines ideas of rootedness, not so much in terms of historical origins, but in terms of being rooted and engaged by the context she or he is moving into.
This `new world’ Bourriaud and others argue compels us to rethink not only our methodology, but also our relationship to recent worldviews and ideas. Twentieth Century Postmodernism and related  ideas about multiculturalism (is?) now being described by some   as simply a late, dying phase of modernism…and in some cases, a subtle disguise for  certain kinds of cultural imperialism. (Bourriaud 2009).   But for the twenty first century artist, all that stuff is history.

 `Finally, once the millennial clock has turned its back on the twentieth century, just maybe we’ll be able to put postmodernism into its proper perspective as the inevitable endgame of modernism. That in itself is an exciting prospect, for once (post)modernism is finally laid to rest we can really set about asking the question: what comes next?’ Keith Patrick (`Contemporary Visual Arts no 26’ ‘)




WHY ARE WE STILL HERE?
 
The French artist Paul  Gauguin (1848 –1903 ) abandoned a life of middle class conventionality in order to find and paint  an earthly paradise in the South Sea Islands. Nonetheless  one of his most famous paintings is haunted by the questions about identity and purpose that he first heard framed during his childhood religious upbringing.
`Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?’
Here in the twenty first century, this side of a number of failed apocalyptic predictions, and somewhat beyond  the stormy debates about post modernism and multiculturalism that rocked some circles in the 20th Century, we might still be asking those questions….and this additional one `Why are we still here?’
We  are here to be what Andy Crouch calls `Culture makers.’ We can imagine new practices in the arts, and new practices in the life of the Christian community, in the light of present opportunities and freshly discerned futures. Whether we are making objects for reflection and contemplation, or working in communities to envision and enact transformation, we are called to the mission of `making culture.’
In making his plea for us to become `culture makers’ Crouch describes four ways in which the church has reacted to culture in the past.  I am going to use  Crouch’s observations  to help sum up  some of the things I have been trying to say throughout this article.
 Separation:  As we can see from Robert Rauschenberg’s early religious experience, some sections of the church wanted nothing to do with `culture’ as it was corrupt and of the world. These sections of the church tried to avoid contamination by steering clear of culture altogether. 
Analysis: For others (or perhaps, next…) analysis replaced wholesale avoidance. People like Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker gave sections of the church fresh eyes with which to look into the underlying dynamics of the society around them. …as discerned in the art forms and expression of the day. Some of us  look back now, and wonder if the exegesis these thinkers made of these cultural forms was a little too reductive. Others of us are learning that there is more to making good art than analysis and ideas.
Embrace: What some find ironic is the emergence of a Christian `pop’ subculture in the shadow of, or running slightly behind the `culture of analysis’ that Crouch describes.  In fact, this is Crouch’s third category of church reaction; The religious marketplace . This enterprise  might have started as an attempt at  a genuinely redemptive /missional embrace of popular cultural forms. Unfortunately  it  now seems more like an attempt to market identifiably religious content  in  forms approximated from the `real ‘ marketplace, and sanitized for the Religious consumer (where are those thrift store stuffed Angora goats when you really need them?) The irony consists  of the coexistence of this culture of market driven religious `product’ and the culture of analysis. All that theory was somewhat reductive in its handling of the real world, and  did not prevent the growth  of the market driven religious one.
Drift:  This zone  is inhabited by  people burned out by the first three responses. They are disdainful of the `legalism’ of the first, suspicious  of  the `left brain’ nature of the second, dismissive of the transparent manipulation and wretched taste of the third, and therefore simply  `drift with the tide’ when it comes to cultural consumption. Their spending viewing and listening habits are just like every one else’s. (Crouch  2008)
Crouch critiques all four `positions’ and proposes that we are called to proactively make culture. Crouch asks that we fulfill our creative calling to make culture and I believe it would go against the spirit of what Crouch is asking for to insist our culture making take a particular shape. I believe that museum space, gallery wall and potentially transformed community all have something to offer to our understanding of what kind of culture we can participate in making.
We are all looking for new ways of working creatively and redemptively in the gap between art and life.     Perhaps we can blend the generous approach of  Nicolas Bourriaud’s open source computer programmer with the inventiveness of the DJ remixing  found  sound sources, and  further combine it with some of the devotion and humility of Daniel Siedell’s early icon makers.
It is a good thing to learn to see transformed and empowering  relationships within a community as beautiful, and worthy of celebration, while also learning to appreciate  the harmony of color, line and material  in the quiet space of the museum.
Perhaps we can gain something from the whimsicality of a Beuys or a Rauschenberg, while at the same time  be energized  by the comprehensive thinking, and the down to earth practice of a John Ruskin. There are still plenty of paths to be cleared, and gaps to be bridged. And finally, perhaps Ruskin’s trenchant observations about Holman Hunt’s `The Scapegoat’ will keep us from confusing  mere good intentions with genuinely creative  expression.


CODA:
The artist Robert Rauschenberg died last year. As I was working on  this article, I went online to see if  there might be anything else about him that might be relevant to what I  was thinking about.  I found this reference  to  a 1990s magazine interview.
 "I don't ever want to go," he told Harper's Bazaar in 1997 when asked of his own death. "I don't have a sense of great reality about the next world; my feet are too ugly to wear those golden slippers. But I'm working on my fear of it. And my fear is that something interesting will happen, and I'll miss it."

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