Book Review – God in the Gallery

In his book God in the Gallery, Daniel Siedell explores how Christians can better engage the modern gallery context. Firstly he calls for believers to have a better grasp on current art practices and trends by thinking clearly and deeply about the ways Protestantism have shaped our incarnational imagination, and employing richer vocabulary in exploring the already present “sacramental and liturgical identity of human practice” revealed in the arts.

Furthermore, he challenges us to question our assumptions about the meaning of accessibility, specialisation and elitism, and to disrupt the conservative evangelical bias for popular communication at the cost of rich, more rigorous forms of expression.

Thirdly, Siedel urges us to expose ourselves to (and thus re-train ourselves in) the art of sacramental and incarnational practices. This includes contemplation, communion and other pre-modern, or what he calls ‘analogical’ faith expressions.

One cannot read Siedell without appreciating contemporary art more for it. I found his understanding of art nuanced and wise and one I could resonate with as a creator. For example, on why artists make art, he does not point to communicating and expressing (“I have an idea that I want to translate into a picture”), but rather leads us towards communion and contemplation (“I am seeking and learning ineffable things in the process of making this picture”). In his own words, “Artists make art not because they have knowledge they want to ‘express’ but because they want to discover or learn something through the practice of art. Communion and contemplation, then, are disciplines not merely for viewers but also for artists as they make their work” (162)

“The twentieth century shows that the American public likes its modernity everywhere but in its museum art” (Siedell 36)

The sense that there is a conflict between church and gallery – something we often discuss among ourselves as artists –  Siedell believes, is not caused by contemporary art being elitist or ‘removed from everyday life’. Christians would typically say that art was more accessible when the pre-reformation church still commissioned the arts. Instead, we are simply unused to sacramental practices, that is, communing with something rather than understanding it.

As Siedell makes clear, we are trying to force a communicative, rather than a contemplative framework on contemporary art, and therefore bump up against that which is cryptic, unclear and multifaceted. I am oversimplifying the argument, but his implied warning is this: dismissing modern art for not being ‘accessible’ reveals how deeply we view the Image as being supplemental (and secondary) to the ‘word’.

One thing Siedell is emphatic about is understanding how the avant-garde has changed the context in which art is consumed and interpreted. He traces this development from the church, to the art museum, to the gallery, and explores in each case how these institutional contexts enable us to interpret the art. For the avant-garde the move away from peer-reviewed salons and academies to the freedom of directly appealing to the public (as in a gallery) became a crucial part of how contemporary art functions.

Siedell writes, “Avant-gardists may indeed do anything they want, but in order to call it art, […] they must create and maintain the interpretative context that makes it meaningful as a particular cultural practice. Avant-gardists must not only make art; they must also make the context within which their art must be interpreted” (43).

Understanding and interrogating these contextual spaces explain why just ‘relocating’ contemporary art into a liturgical setting is not that simple. What is fitting for the museum context is not always fitting for the church.

“Art is not only a cultural practice, it is also an institutional practice. Therefore, any discussion of art must take into account its institutional framework. Modern art’s primary institutional framework is the art museum” (Siedell 24)

His chapter on art criticism was invaluable to me. He convinced me that art writing (so often experienced as high brow ‘art speak’ by people like myself), is in fact an imaginative, creative literary genre, and artists statements, curatorial statements, journal and magazine articles essential to the interpretive framework that the avant-garde needs for its existence. For the formalists there was Clive Bell, for the action painters Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, names I was vaguely familiar with but never afforded the importance they merited in the modernist movement. Artists and critics need each other.

Art criticism as a term can be misleading too. Contemporary art critics do not ‘critique’ art (a thumbs-up or down evaluation, as Siedell explains). Rather, art criticism is a literary genre, an imaginative practice of cultural interrogation, of moulding and shaping society and its aesthetic taste. Art criticism, he maintains, “is a creative practice, parallel to, not derivative of, the art it addresses.” (Siedell 111)

“Art critics write about art because they love art, desire it, need it, and it is through writing that they can articulate this love, desire, and need.” (Siedell 110)

Daniell Siedell’s critique of the current way in which Christians (in the evangelical West) are engaging the arts is harsh but valid. Art, he maintains, cannot be re-purposed in faith settings without the hard work of comprehending artistic practices and faith practices well. Siedell is provocative when, throughout the book, he somewhat caricatures Christian art heroes Shaeffer and Rookmaker and their ideal of the ‘Christian Artist’. He contends that good art and art criticism does not dream to “change the world, transform the arts, or participate in any other utopian or ideological movement. Criticism serve[s] much more modest, and personal, needs.”

Rather than transforming culture, he suggests, we can merely work and hope for a “few small islands” where art is mature, serious and committed. His chapter on The problematics of church art raises not only the typical points of concern among critical believers (i.e. the hollowness of figurative, thematic bible art) but suggests that our fervor for the reverse (edgy, ‘seeker-savvy’ art in our liturgical spaces), is also not the answer. He offers a “warning to those in the Christian community whose zeal is for bringing to fruition Rookmaaker’s and Schaeffer’s dream of an army of “Christian artists” who would transform the contemporary art world and abandon the ideals of artistic and critical practice for the sake of “success”.

What this means for the South African and African church context I am not sure. SA, like most modern African states precariously blends modern, postmodern and traditional beliefs and practices, and the interaction between these in church and gallery is complex. To me, the popularity of the Zeitz MOCAA with people from all walks of life suggests that those on our continent does not struggle as much with contemporary art as elsewhere. I would suggest that the reason therefore is that Africa never fully de-incarnated itself (what Siedell calls Descartian rationalism at the cost of embodied experience). Therefore the arts blend more seamlessly with life and life with church.

I conclude with Siedell’s that “art works are not merely objects but products of institutional intention and belief, made under certain conditions and intended to be viewed in specific contexts.” (143) If we as artists are to imagine a better synergy between our vocation and faith and dream of better ways in which artistic practice can take hands with religious practice, we need to be willing to do the hard work of doing it wisely.