Comment
Watch this space for regular news about
the world of contemporary art and faith.
Art and Sacred Places will be publishing short articles on relevant topics by eminent contributors.
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Professor John Haldane, Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of St Andrews, talking about the Bristol City Council commissions at Roman Catholic Faith Schools, traces the history and influence of artwork for schools.
Professor J. J. Haldane writes:
From the early part of the twentieth century it was realised that art might have a special role in general education, both as practice, and as object of study: in each case introducing pupils to the idea of creative expression.
In the 1940s the School Prints movement championed by Herbert Read and Brenda Rawnsley brought original lithographs by Henry Moore, Picasso. Braque and others into British classrooms and since then there have been other schemes to bring art into schools.
The commission by Bristol City Council of two unique artworks for two city Catholic secondary schools (St Bede's and St Bernadette's) marks a new development in the interplay between art and education. The two artists, Michael Pinsky and Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, have each engaged imaginatively with the physical, functional and cultural environments of the schools.
Pinsky's' Intersection' weaves together an image derived from crosses hand-drawn by pupils of St Bernadette's. The particular religious symbolism of the cross is obvious enough, and a mainstay of Christian art and decoration; but it is also a universal mark, an element of drawing, a means of signing, a method of marking place and position. All of these are recalled in the work but beyond that it brings them together into a net(work) a fabric of signatures representing an actual school population and their successors.
Hadzi-Vasileva is also concerned with symbolic meaning but in the form of a stucco and gilt wall and ceiling relief. The ramifying lines suggest patterns both branching above and rooting below ground, and the design manages to be both figurative and abstract, and on both accounts a representation of growth and development, referring externally to the landscape beyond and internally to the progress of pupils through the school and into the fertile ground of knowledge.
Art has a special role in introducing and keeping fresh the alchemy by which matter is transformed into objects and places of wonder and beauty. The City Council, the schools, the artists, and Art and Sacred Places which was involved in the commissions, all deserve thanks and congratulations on playing their part in providing the opportunity for that alchemy to be practised.
November 2011
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The Revd Keith Elford, the founder member and former director of Art and Sacred Places, takes up the theme of Bishop John's July commentary. Keith is now Honorary Vice-President of Art and Sacred Places.
The Revd Keith Elford writes:
Bishop John speaks of the role that art can play in adding the voice of contemporary feeling and concern to the complex story of faith and culture embodied in the church building. I would like to consider another reason why artists have a great deal to offer the church and its community.
For centuries the church was at the centre of public life. It defined it and provided both public and private meaning. In these days the church is no longer at the centre of our culture and no longer a focus of unity. (There will be many, including Christian believers, who do not regret this change reflecting a conviction, sometimes borne out in history, that political power does not bring out the best in religion.) Instead, even though the Church of England remains established and its leaders are still public figures, the experience of being in the church is often that of being part of a rather embattled minority.
The story modern believers live with is one of decline. The Church is adept at ignoring this much of the time but the facts remain: fewer people believe or even understand what the church believes than in the past; fewer people attend church and the Church has far less influence on what happens in society. In this atmosphere church people have tended to do what embattled people often do: they have retreated into safer places, that is, into the congenial world of the Church. They focus on internal concerns and keep their heads down.
Churches are now, typically, intellectually and culturally conservative. And if the thought that they might be anything else surprises you then it shows how far we have come from the revolutionary teaching of Jesus, from the subversive impact of the early Church and even from the reforms of the sixteenth century which gave rise to the creation of the Church of England and spawned a number of other protestant churches. The Church changed the world.
And now, at just the moment when the Church most needs to be engaging with the meaning of the world around it, thinking new thoughts and addressing the vital question "what does it mean to be a Christian in a world like this?" it is least willing to respond. Asking and answering this question intelligently is the only possible foundation for a renewal of the Church.
I am not suggesting that a conversation between
art and faith is 'the answer', but it can help. It is one way in which
the Church can help itself to think differently, to engage. When a contemporary
artist creates a work of art in response to a Christian building, or simply
shows a work in that environment, the artist brings modern convictions,
ideas, perceptions and questions into the Church. The physical proximity
of the work and the sacred space sets up a dialogue between the traditional
and modern worlds. It provides an opportunity for the Church to engage
with a voice from outside and is a real opportunity to learn and grow.
Of course this is a two way street. Each acts as a challenge and stimulus
to the other. The dialogue between ancient and modern offers "insiders"
and "outsiders", believers of all stripes, agnostics and atheists
even, the opportunity to arrive at a deeper and richer understanding of
things that are important to us all. We might all learn something.
October 2011
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We are delighted that our first contribution is from the Rt Revd John Gladwin, under whose auspices Art and Sacred Places was founded:
The Rt Revd John Gladwin writes:
Buildings speak. They tell us not only what they exist to achieve but also something about the vision and beliefs of those who created them and about the prevailing culture in which they are set. Churches are no exception to this truth.
When a work of contemporary art is placed in a church building it adds a further sentence to the story of the building. Just as the building is not simply a functional reality but a statement of truth and of culture so a work of art placed in an established place of worship is not primarily about adding to the beauty but entering the meaning of the place.
Churches are about God and about our human understanding of the divine. They are rooted in the Christian tradition and history. So entering them we encounter many worlds of meaning within these bounds. Those worlds may have been shaped by the communities' experience of plague or of triumph in war. The mystery of the unseen being of God is transformed into images in human life as we try and make sense of what is happening.
When I was Provost of Sheffield we had two exhibitions in the Cathedral organised by the Contemporary Arts Group in the city. The second was more successful and challenging than the first because the community of artists had come to a deeper understanding of the meaning of the church. That was not easy because Sheffield Cathedral is an architectural nightmare! 20th century efforts at turning the old parish church into a massive new and modern Cathedral thankfully ground to a halt with the outbreak of the Second World War. So only a part of the 20th century vision was embodied into the building.
Yet, for all its complexity the church spoke profoundly of crucial aspects of the spiritual history and journey of the people of Sheffield. So even a temporary exhibition needed to understand all of that.
This is what makes the work of Art and Sacred Places important. The movement takes its time to try and interpret what a church or Cathedral is all about and then bring into it something new from the world we are in to add that crucial contemporary sentence to the meaning of the place.
This is important because we must do what we can to bring the life and dilemmas of the 21st century world of spiritual life and faith to bear on our churches. Generations to come will then have the opportunity to know something of what our life was all about.
July 2011
Michael Pinsky's 'Intersection' for St Bernadette's Catholic Secondary School is installed.
See here for blog>>
