God in the Modern Wing: Viewing Art with Eyes of Faith

By Cameron J. Anderson and G. Walter Hansen

Should Christians even bother with the modern wing at the art museum? After all, modern art and artists are often caricatured as rabidly opposed to God, the church—indeed, to faith of any kind. But is that all there is to the story?
In this Studies in Theology and the Arts volume, coeditors Cameron J. Anderson and G. Walter Hansen gather the reflections of artists, art historians, and theologians who collectively offer a more complicated narrative of the history of modern art and its place in the Christian life. Here, readers will find insights on the work and faith of artists including Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, and more.
For those willing to look with eyes of faith, they may just find that God is present in the modern wing too.
The Studies in Theology and the Arts  series encourages Christians to thoughtfully engage with the relationship between their faith and artistic expression, with contributions from both theologians and artists on a range of artistic media including visual art, music, poetry, literature, film, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9780830850709

Book preview

Image de couverture

GOD IN THE

MODERN

WING

VIEWING ART WITH

EYES OF FAITH

EDITED BY

Cameron J. Anderson and

G. Walter Hansen

To Bruce and Meg Herman,

whose love and gracious hospitality is a source of deep and longstanding encouragement.

Contents

Foreword

Shannon Johnson Kershner

Preface

G. Walter Hansen

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Being Modern

Cameron J. Anderson

1. Visitation: Engaging Art as an Epiphanic Leap

Tim Lowly

2. Chagall's Cathedral: Faith, Hope, and Love in the Art Institute's Modern Wing

Matthew J. Milliner

3. Transcendence and Immanence: The Sculpture of Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti

Cameron J. Anderson

4. Cubism: The Real Figuration of Being

Joel C. Sheesley

5. God in the Wasteland . . . and in the Seaside Paradise: The Late Works of Philip Guston and Richard Diebenkorn

Bruce Herman

6. Theological Imagination: The Paintings of Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman

Linda Stratford

7. The Impossibility of Mark Rothko: Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura

8. Hidden in Pop: Andy Warhol's Art as Modern Religious Iconography

David W. McNutt

9. Who Is My Neighbor?: The Art of Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White

Steve Prince

10. André Cadere: Am I Bothering Us? Arts as Protest in the Gallery

Leah Samuelson

Afterword: Making Space

Cameron J. Anderson

Color Plates

Bibliography

Editors and Contributors

Figure Credits

General Index

Scripture Index

Notes

Praise for God in the Modern Wing

About the Authors

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Foreword

Shannon Johnson Kershner

Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

I love words. I am sure that will not strike any readers as strange or off-brand. I am, after all, a Presbyterian minister. That particular vocation means that a large piece of my work involves writing and public speaking. Every week, I approach the words of Scripture in a posture of prayer, asking that I might be shown the living Word through all of the biblical words. And then, as Sunday creeps closer and closer, I create word pictures of my own as I write the sermon, trusting and hoping that my words will be faithful or that they will harmlessly slip away. Words give me life. Words are my life.

And yet I am also very aware of how words can be used to crowd out all silence, to squeeze out all mystery, and to overwhelm and overpower spaces of contemplation. These dangers are why I am very thankful for this provocative study of noticing where divine presence intersects with modern art.

I have always experienced modern art as rather experimental. Sometimes I look at paintings and wonder how the artists felt the first time they discovered that particular technique that they eventually perfected into their composition. Did they feel elation? Were they surprised at what came out of their imagination? How did the artists experience their own act of creation? And I cannot help but think of the poetry of the first creation story as these questions surface.

I am also drawn to the honesty and candor of the work I find in modern art, particularly the work found in the namesake of this book’s title: the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. As Walter Hansen himself reflects in his preface, there are pieces that take your breath away by their starkness and sense of loneliness or gloom. In the Modern Wing, I get the sense that few of those artists pay much attention to the pressure of making things nice or palatable. They sculpt or paint exactly what they think and employ little pretense. Perhaps it is because I grew up in the South, where passive-aggressive forms of communication are themselves works of art, that I find this honesty of modern art to be refreshing. It reminds me of the unvarnished cries of Job, the truthful petitions of the psalms of lament, and the feelings of godforsakenness that Jesus expressed on the cross.

I know that many people expect a wide chasm between a church community and the Modern Wing. And yet in my own experience, faith, like modern art, also has great potential for making the space needed for honesty and candor. Faith, like modern art, also calls on us to be creators of beauty and holders of mystery. The God in whom I trust does not expect me to bifurcate my mind from my beliefs, nor my heart from the pain and beauty of the world. We do not need to choose between the church on Michigan Avenue and the Modern Wing on the other side of the river. They can function as conversation partners as we all keep walking each other home.

Preface

G. Walter Hansen

If you walk south from Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue for about one mile, cross over the Chicago River on the DuSable Bridge, and pass by Millennium Park, you will arrive at the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago on Monroe Street, one block east of Michigan Avenue. My wife, Darlene, and I often take this pleasurable walk after worship at Fourth Church and enjoy lunch at Terzo Piano, a fine restaurant on the top floor of the Modern Wing. Then we spend the afternoon looking at art in the Modern Wing and other galleries of the Art Institute.

When we worship at our church, we enjoy a delightful abundance of visual art: colorful banners bearing words and images, stained glass windows, large wood carvings of angels overlooking our sanctuary, and stone symbols, each in their way retelling parts of the Christian story. The stunning architecture of our Gothic Revival cathedral turns my eyes upward and away from the chaos outside in the world. While listening to the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor organ prelude, I focus on the angels above the sanctuary, and my spirit soars heavenward. During Holy Communion I look up to the colorful windows above the chancel and see the image of Jesus with outstretched arms welcoming all to come to the table and receive the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. After worship in the sanctuary, I walk down to the church gallery to see the latest exhibit of artwork by Christian artists. The aesthetics of our church invites us to contemplate the beauty of God.

You will, of course, find religious art if you enter the Art Institute of Chicago from the main entrance on Michigan Avenue instead of entering the Modern Wing on Monroe Street. When you up walk up the steps from the main entrance toward the galleries of Impressionist art, you will see Auguste Rodin’s dramatic bronze statue of Adam (modeled 1881, cast c. 1924), inspired by Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome (1508–1512). Nearby you will be amazed by the spiritual power of Zurbarán’s The Crucifixion (1627) (fig. P.1); painted for the monastery of San Pablo el Real in Seville. I stand in awe before these and many other religious paintings in Art Institute of Chicago, especially those in the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque galleries. Obviously, they were intended for religious purposes and communicate religious themes.

P.1. Francisco de Zurbarán, The Crucifixion (1627)

But when you enter the Modern Wing on Monroe Street, you will not easily find religious art. A first time walk through the Modern Wing will seem to confirm that secular modern art is art that departs from religious subjects belonging to the institutional church and artistic forms commonly featured in traditional art. So, I understand the skeptical responses that I received from some people when I launched a series of Sunday morning seminars at Fourth Church titled God in the Modern Wing, which were the origin of this book. Where is there any reference to God in the Modern Wing? some skeptics asked. One well-read woman reminded me of a book titled Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. ¹ Modern art was done by artists who accepted Nietzsche’s assertion that God is dead, she asserted.

James Elkins, E. C. Chadbourne Chair of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, questions any credible connection between religion and contemporary art. He writes, God is almost always the wrong word when it comes to modern art, and every viewer has to find her own way among other options. ² According to Elkins, Contemporary art, I think, is as far from organized religion as Western art has ever been, and that may be its most singular achievement—or its cardinal failure, depending on your point of view. The separation has become entrenched. ³

According to my Apple Watch, it is only one mile from our church to the Modern Wing, and yet many in both the religious world and the art world feel that the spiritual distance between the two is much greater. Some see an unbridgeable chasm between Christian faith and secular modern art.

P.2. Fourth Presbyterian Church (c. 1914)

Until the DuSable Bridge was built in 1920, it was not easy to cross the Chicago River going from Fourth Presbyterian Church to the Art Institute of Chicago. A photo of Fourth Church in 1914 (fig. P.2), the year that the massive Gothic Revival church structure was dedicated, shows that the church sat in isolation on the future Michigan Avenue. Today, thirty-eight moveable bridges span the Chicago River, and heavy traffic flows back and forth across it. In this spirit, the chapters in this book serve as bridges connecting Christian faith to secular modern art.

I attend Fourth Church because I experience the mystery of God’s presence there. I reach out to God in prayers and songs. Sometimes I seem to hear a whisper from God when the choir sings and the pastor preaches. Eating the bread and drinking the wine at Holy Communion, I receive God’s love and forgiveness. I cannot find words to adequately explain this mystical experience.

I visit the Modern Wing (fig. P.3) often because modern art delights, confronts, disturbs, and guides me. As I enter the first gallery on the third floor, I’m deeply moved to see, again and again, Bathers by a River (1909–1917). I was struck recently by the way that the solid black vertical wall in the center of that painting separates the two faceless figures on the right from the two on the left. I felt the alienation Matisse experienced in the First World War and the pain caused by walls separating people today. I turn around to see Picasso’s Old Guitarist (1903–1904). The blue mood expressed in that painting causes me to feel the loneliness and emptiness of the outcasts of society. Giacometti’s Walking Man II (1960) (Plate 9) makes me cringe. He is so alone and fragile, and yet he doesn’t stop; he keeps on walking. These favorite images and many others have become old friends: I never grow tired of them. In them, I always see something new.

Sometimes I cannot find words to express my response to modern art. In fact, words expressing preconceived notions about modern art often hinder reception of it. When I walk through the Modern Wing with friends, I am distressed when someone categorizes and dismisses modern art by quickly labeling each work: I like that one; it’s beautiful. I don’t like that one; it’s ugly.

Wait, I say. Let’s pause here and look at this one again for a while. What do you see? What’s going on here? What do these colors, forms, and lines say to you or make you feel? Modern art breaks and upsets simplistic judgments if we take time to really see it.

Of course, I am not favorably inclined to all modern art. When I take friends on a tour of the Modern Wing, I avoid some galleries. I see no good reason to show them the work of some shock artists, competing to outdo each other in producing lewd and crude work. I seek to be discerning so that I will not be conned to value art that appeals merely to commercial interests, serves only political ends, smashes beautiful objects in anti-art displays, or makes cynical jokes that degrade human dignity.

P.3. Lobby of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago

I live in two worlds. I spent my career happily exploring the world of ancient literature. My official title is Professor Emeritus of New Testament Interpretation at Fuller Theological Seminary. I still enjoy reading and teaching the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament. My lectures and books express my love for Hebrew and Greek texts.

I also love modern art. For fifty-two years, I have followed my artist-wife in her art world. I have spent wonder-filled days with her in art museums, read books on art, and attended numerous lectures. I am a patron and collector of art. I’ve taken courses on art history, drawing, painting, and color theory at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I’ve attempted some painting, and written articles and even one book on art.

But sometimes I have felt that there’s not much of a connection between my two worlds: my experience of worship in church and my pleasure in the galleries of modern art. I know others who have this experience. They enjoy modern art and regularly worship in church, but they are still seeking ways to reconcile these two dimensions.

The desire to connect the religious world and the modern art world motivated me to initiate the series of talks at Fourth Church: God in the Modern Wing. In collaboration with Cameron Anderson who was, at the time, executive director of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts), and with the guidance of the Adult Education Committee of Fourth Church, we invited artists, art historians, and theologians specializing in the theology of art to come to Fourth Church. During ten sessions they enlarged our understanding so that we could discover new ways to integrate our two worlds—worship at church and enjoyment of modern art in the Modern Wing.

Each presenter in the God in the Modern Wing series offered a unique perspective as members of faith communities and leaders in the art world, the latter evidenced by their acclaimed works of art and their publications about art. They spoke with respect and love for artists and their art. They drew fresh insights from the multiple meanings inherent in all great art without forcing the art to confirm their preconceived notions. Where the art was irreverent or nihilistic, they pointed to the dehumanizing aspects of modern life and demoralizing failures of the church that motivate such subversive art. Whenever possible, they guided us toward charitable interpretations.

When we cross their bridges into the secular modern art world, we encounter art that challenges us to question glib religious clichés. We begin to laugh at the absurdities of human existence, observe icons of contemporary gods, and gaze into an abyss of despair. We enter stories of human suffering and tenderness. We are enchanted by the sheer luscious beauty of line, form, texture, and color. Modern art provokes us to rethink our beliefs and to renew our commitments to love and serve God and one another.

Where is God in the Modern Wing? In this book we invite you to enter the world of modern art—a world of honesty and rawness, but also a world of beauty—and listen to what God may be saying.

Acknowledgments

Cameron J. Anderson and G. Walter Hansen

Over the years, meeting for lunch at the Terzo Piano—the light-filled restaurant designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano located on the top floor of the Modern Wing—has been a regular pleasure for us. Following our meal, we almost always head toward the galleries beneath for a stroll and quiet conversation. It was during those times that the idea for hosting a seminar series to consider the remarkable work in the Modern Wing was conceived. We began by noting artists and works of art from the collection we found especially engaging and matched these to artists and scholars we believed could read these pieces well and lead us to deeper understanding of them.

In framing this project, two books deserve special recognition: Jonathan A. Anderson and William A. Dyrness, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism (IVP Academic, 2016) and Daniel A. Siedell, God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Baker Academic, 2008).

We pitched the idea to our friend Linda VanderWeele, who enlisted her friend, Laura Sterkel, and as members of the Adult Education Committee at Fourth Presbyterian Church they put the project into orbit. The committee established the timeline for the seminars in the program of the church, promoted it to our church community, provided tech support for the speakers, and extended warm hospitality for each seminar.

In partnership with Fourth Pres, CIVA (Christians in Visual Arts) produced high quality flyers and emailed its entire membership to inform them of the seminars. Under the leadership of its Executive Director, Lawan Glasscock, and Board Chair, Joe Cory, the organization continues to be a source of encouragement to many artists and scholars who navigate the complicated space that exists between Christian faith and the visual arts.

In one sense, the Sunday morning lectures by the seven artists, two art historians, and two theologians who led them were too dynamic to be reproduced in a book. We acknowledge the exceptional work of each presenter in drafting an essay that attempts to capture their interactive multimedia presentations. At the same time, the virtue of this book—these ten lectures now carefully researched and edited and supplied with a proper introduction and afterword—is that it has become a rich body of work and now available to a substantially larger audience.

Along the way, others joined in the effort. The Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation, ably led by John Terrill, its executive director, added critical institutional support. Bob and Sandra Bowden, Bobby and Charlene Gross, John McCray, Bill and Ellen Montei, Mark and Beth Sprinkle, and Tom and Lisa Yearwood made generous financial contributions both to offset the substantial cost of gaining copyright permissions for the thirty-seven images contained in the book and for the sixteen pages of full-color plates that resulted.

David McNutt, himself a contributor to this volume, is the editor of the Studies in Theology and the Arts series at IVP Academic to which this book belongs. He guided us in our work as coeditors, supervised his own staff in their copyediting, paid exacting attention to every detail, and brought the whole project to completion. Without his guidance and the remarkable skill of everyone at InterVarsity Press, this project would not have been possible.

Finally, we are grateful for wives, C. K. and Darlene, who remain central to every dimension of our lives and gave us the direction and energy we needed to complete this work.

Introduction

Being Modern

Cameron J. Anderson

To be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction.

MARSHALL BERMAN

One hopes for something resembling truth, some sense of life, even of grace, to flicker, at least, in the work.

JASPER JOHNS

In his book Real Presences, literary critic George Steiner declares, Any coherent understanding of what language is and how language performs, . . . any coherent account of the capacity of human speech to communicate meaning and feeling is, in the final analysis, underwritten by the assumption of God’s presence. He continues, The experience of aesthetic meaning in particular, that of literature, of the arts, of musical form, infers the necessary possibility of this ‘real presence.’ ¹ In a secular age, these are bold pronouncements.

Bearing the spirit of Steiner’s conviction and over the course of three years, ten theologians, art historians, and studio artists took their turn on November Sunday mornings at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago to address one animating question: Could it be that God is—as a word or image, sensation or emanation, aura or perception—somehow present in the collection of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago? Each year in this series one morning lecture was paired with an afternoon museum tour during which a second question naturally arose: Could it be that the Art Institute and Fourth Presbyterian Church, two of the city’s most venerable institutions, share some common mission or witness?

In an earlier age, say the Italian Renaissance, this pair of questions would have seemed out of place or curious, at best. After all, the divine presence was routinely depicted in frescoes, panels, tapestries, paintings, carvings, and castings. Pigment, fiber, stone, bronze, and gold were plied to recount the biblical narrative and to produce holy icons. But what of abstract, nonrepresentational, modern art fashioned in a secular age?

The chapters that follow explore these questions in the context of works of art selected primarily from the collection of the Institute’s Modern Wing. Even for enthusiasts, modern art can be difficult to understand and not infrequently this obfuscation is intended. That challenge notwithstanding, this book aims for engaged understanding. As a prelude to the inquiries that follow, this chapter supplies a basic introduction to modern art and its century.

THE MODERN SPIRIT

Every art epoch or movement occupies a spatial, temporal, and cultural location. Modern art was born in the closing decades of the nineteenth century amid gathering phenomena that would coalesce in the first half of the twentieth century to become a potent social, economic, political, and intellectual force. Mass production and standardization; advances in medical science and the legitimation of the social sciences; capitalism and global trade; the technological transformation of warfare; a communications revolution, beginning with radio and gaining wider scope with television; shifting mores concerning sex, marriage, and family; and migration from rural agrarian settings to teeming metropolitan centers all contributed to sweeping cultural change. ²

Accompanying this was a paradigmatic philosophical shift. Poet and theologian Malcolm Guite summarizes it like this:

From the living, sacral view of the cosmos as an interconnected web of human and angelic consciousness all participating, to a greater or lesser degree, in an all-pervasive divine presence, expressed in and through the physical, to the modern mechanistic, instrumental view of nature in which matter is dead, inert, and essentially meaningless, its motion caused by blind mechanism and its apparent flashes of beauty and meaning no more than a mirage. ³

The painters and sculptors considered in this book alternately witnessed and fomented the breathtaking displacement of a sacral understanding of the cosmos with one that was modern, mechanistic, and instrumental. Said differently, these artists were not themselves necessarily mechanistic or instrumental in mind and spirit, rather their making, thinking, and being existed amid this transitional space. Like artists in every generation, they were interpreters and translators of all that they witnessed.

The actual genesis of modern art is open to a wide range of causes, but here I propose a pair of possible beginnings: one philosophical and the other aesthetic. Regarding the former, an event of cultural significance was Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) bold assertion in 1882 that God is dead. A century and a half later, some may find his oft-cited protest too readymade, even cliché. And yet