We have recently started reading a new book for my Art in Christ class entitled It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God (the revised and edited edition) which is a compilation of essays exploring ideas such as truth, goodness, and beauty in art. In the first chapter, entitled “Good”, I ran across a quote by C.S. Lewis that really caught my eye: “[E]vil is not a real thing at all, like God. It is simply good spoiled. That is why I say there can be good without evil, but no evil without good…Evil is a parasite. It is there only because good is there for it to spoil and confuse.” We talked at length about this concept in class. It interested me because I liked the idea that evil isn’t being “bad”, rather it is the absence of goodness. As people choose goodness, they become more themselves, more whole, and as they choose to walk the path of evil, they lose who they really are and become ghosts of themselves.
Ted Dekker
Funny enough, the day after we had this conversation, I attended a talk by Ted Dekker, my favorite author, in which he enforced this concept. Dekker talked about the idea that our bodies are not our identity, they are more like a costume. Our job, our likes and dislikes, our stresses and problems, the way we look are not us, that is just our costume. We think of ourselves as physical beings who occasionally have temporary, spiritual experiences, when in reality, we are spiritual beings who are having a temporary physical experience. It is the physical world that distracts us and bogs us down from our ultimate spiritual reality. What he had to say really resonated with me, and it also explained a lot of the ideas and concepts in his books. All of his books are about exploring these really deep and dark themes that take major roles in our lives, like judgement and good vs evil. He creates these very troubled characters in order to tell these stories too, characters who have walked so far down the path of evil that not only are they ghosts of themselves, but they have let that evil consume them entirely. Dekker wrote a book with Frank Peretti, entitled House, in which they took this idea of exploring good and evil to the extreme.
All of this reminds me of 2 Thessalonians 1:9, “They will be punished with eternal destruction, forever separated from the Lord and from his glorious power” (NLT). One of the things that I have always believed is that hell is not a cave of red flames and a man with a red pitch fork and horns, rather that it is a void. An existence completely without God. As we become less and less of ourselves, we set ourselves on the road to hell because ultimately being less and less of ourselves means being more separated from God.
We have finally reached the end of Grace and Necessity, so this will be my last post on Rowan William’s book. It has been a very challenging book, to be sure, and I can’t say that I enjoyed reading all of it, but I am glad that I did read it. He had a lot of really good points and concepts that I am sure I would have never considered had I not read this book. Maybe I will even come back and read it someday.
Chapter 4 was one of the more challenging chapters for me, partly because I seemed to be latching onto the most confusing parts rather than focusing on the parts that I actually understood. For that reason, I seem to only be able to remember the parts that I didn’t really understand that well. For instance, in section 3 of this chapter, he says, “Art is not functional to the self, but it does function; and any account of what the production of art involves has to recognize that it is also the production of the self.” This makes no sense to me. The way that I interpret that in my head is that art is not functional on an emotional level, but it is on a physical level. That doesn’t make sense though because it seems contrary to what Williams talks about in the rest of the book. It doesn’t make sense if you flip it around either and say that art is not functional on a physical level, but it is on an emotional level. People use art to vent emotions, to work through thoughts, to calm nerves, to express themselves all the time, and it is even an accepted form of therapy, so it is absolutely functional on an emotional level. It is also functional on a physical level in many ways: paintings, encaustic art, and assemblage are hung on a wall and used to be aesthetically pleasing, pottery has any number of uses from drinking your morning coffee out of a mug to serving dinner to sitting on your mantel, and there are many other forms of art that have many other functions. So what does this quote mean? Several people tried to explain it to me, but it still didn’t make sense.
Seung Mo Park: Detail of aluminum wire sculpture
All that aside, there was one thing that we talked about in class that I really liked a lot. The point was made that the phrase, “We create because we were created” doesn’t really work because we are not God and as such, we will never even come close to being capable of creating as God does. We are not endless and all powerful, we have enormous limitations, however we do have an incredible freedom within those limitations. Pastor Eric D Naus at Moody Church in Chicago, IL talks about the idea of having freedom within the rules of Christianity and of life on their church website, and I love what he has to say about the matter. For his first example, I shall quote him at length because he put it so eloquently:
“Have you ever been captivated by a concert pianist as she gracefully runs her fingers up and down the keys? She seems to play by intuition, effortlessly producing beautiful melodies. When I watch such a performance, I immediately feel a sense of jealous awe. “I wish I could play like that!” I think to myself. And so, going home that evening, I dust off the old piano books, sit down at the upright in my living room, and attempt a song or two. Of course, I keep hitting wrong notes, and have to play far too slow to be enjoyable. Frustrated at the reality of practice-makes-perfect, I give up within five minutes! By contrast, the freedom I watched on the stage was only the result of submission to the rules. That pianist subjected herself to countless hours of practice. She gave up other activities to specialize and focus on her craft. She dedicated herself to an understanding of notes, and chords, and theory. Only after strict adherence to discipline over time did this pianist develop the ability to play with such joy-filled liberty.”
Seung Mo Park: Wire mesh portrait
Really, this example applies to artists, doctors, nurses, historians, martial artists, and any practice in which someone can become a master of anything. For things to come naturally, for you to feel free within the restrictions of your practice, you have to put in the time in order to gain knowledge and skill. You have to know your limitations so well that you don’t necessarily think of them as hindering you. One of the things that my ceramics professor, Don Sprague, is always telling me, particularly when I am making teapots, is that before I do something funky or different with the handle, spout, or general form I have to know what makes a good teapot so that I know what I am compromising. I have to know all about the limits of the clay, where the center of gravity should be while pouring the tea, what shape the pot should be in order to have the optimum liquid to surface area ratio. I have to know all of that before I can start changing things up. In the last couple of years, I have had a lot of practice making pottery on the wheel, and I am getting a lot better, but if you watch me throw, and then you watch Don throw, you can’t even compare us. The clay is like butter in his hands and he moves and shapes it. He makes it ripple to life like it is nothing. He is clearly a master and I am clearly still learning.
Speaking of masters of their trade, I discovered a new artist today while I was browsing Colossal, an art blog, and his art is SO COOL, I can’t even get over it! His name is Seung Mo Park, and he is a Korean artist whose medium is aluminum wire and wire mesh with which he makes two really amazing kinds of artwork. The first is made out of aluminum wire in which he creates these large, lifelike, 3-D sculptures out of a continuous coil (they are absolutely fabulous…well everything he does is fabulous). The other is made of the wire mesh in which he layers it on top of each other and strategically clips out portions of it to create portraits. I couldn’t find a lot of information on him that was in English because he doesn’t seem to be very popular in the United States, or if he is, he doesn’t have a lot of presence on the Web, but I did manage to find a great video of him that shows the process he goes through to create the wire mesh portraits. He makes it look almost effortless. I would love to try doing something with it, but realistically I know that it would take YEARS of practice to even come close to gaining the skills that I would need in order to make it look half as effortless as he does.
In my Art and Christ class, we had the assignment of interviewing, or really just having a conversation with, an artist of faith, preferably one that works in the area that we are interested in, and finding out how they incorporate their beliefs into their artwork as well as how they hope to affect people through their artwork. I was privileged to meet with Ron Linn, a wood fire artist here in Oregon who has made some of the most beautiful and inspiring artwork that I have ever seen come out of a kiln.
Palce Teapot
Linn has a long and rich history in clay, starting back in high school. After continuing on to college, he realized that rather than majoring in business (the degree he had chosen upon starting college) he wished to pursue art, which is a lucky thing for us or the world would be short an amazing potter. About 12 years ago, he was invited to participate in an anagama wood fire in Washington, and he fell in love with the process, going on to build two kilns of his own (one is a small wood fired soda kiln, the other is a much longer train kiln, I think he said about 100 feet). He is now teaching high school art classes full time and is able to, with the support of his very encouraging family, continue to make work for himself out of his own studio with the rest of his time.
Faceted Bottle
Something that I have always struggled with and wondered about as a potter, is how do you communicate your faith and personal beliefs through jars and other vessels. Pottery on the wheel isn’t like painting or drawing. You really aren’t working with images or symbols. Is it possible to show your faith with such limitations? Linn said that, for him, the work he makes isn’t so much an explicit expression of his faith as it is the fact that his faith is so much a part of who he is that it is impossible to separate the two. The creative process is an expression in itself and he gains an incredible amount of piece from that act. It is his hope that when people handle his work, they have a meditative moment in which they experience that peace that he felt.
Wood Fired Teabowl
One of the things that Linn said that really resonated with me was, “Wood firing feels like life to me.” In life whenever you try to take control of things, or when you think you know better than God, situations don’t turn out well. You have to learn to leave things in his hands and trust that he knows what he is doing. Like the very organic nature of wood fire, nothing is ever going to turn out the same way twice, and it is so much better if you learn to just let go. I have heard many beautiful metaphors for wood firing, namely the idea that it is like birth, but for some reason, what Linn was just so much more potent and impacting.
I went away from my interview with Ron Linn impressed with the honesty of his answers. I appreciated his willingness to talk with me about his artistic process and look forward to applying some of his insights to my own work.
All of the images were taken from Ron Linn’s website: http://www.ronlinn.com/ronlinn/index.cfm
One of the things that Williams keeps coming back to in Grace and Necessity is the idea of the Christian Artist working with the element of shock. In the first chapter, when discussing Maritan, he warns us to be cautious of working with jarring images, “The danger for art is not in the production of the shocking or the jarring, but in the pursuit of what is shocking as an exercise of the artistic will; a complex discernment is required here.” Later, in the third chapter of the book, he touches upon the issue again while discussing Flannery O’Conner. “‘You have to make your vision apparent by shock,’ says O’Connor given that ‘the supernatural is an embarrassment today even to many of the churches.'”
Andres Serrano is a good example of a christian artist who has gotten in trouble for the use of shocking imagery. His most famous piece being Piss Christ (1987), in which he photographed a crucifix in a bottle of his own urine. Most take one look at this photograph and dismiss it immediately as vulgar and blasphemous. In fact, there was so much controversy over this piece, that in May of 1989, it was denounced in Congress as the result of a campaign spearhead. Even today, almost 30 years after its creation, a man attacked the piece with a hammer as it was hanging in a gallery in France. The same night, a group of Catholic protesters gathered outside the gallery opening to oppose his work. Though many people who look at it take immediate offense, the interesting thing is that the Roman Catholic Church itself never denounced him over this piece, instead while he was showing it in an exhibit in Italy, an officer of the papal court at the Vatican told reporters that he was, “a transgressive artist but not a blasphemous artist.” Regardless of his intent, Serrano’s piece captured the attention of the world due to its shocking nature, illustrating both William’s cautions and O’Connor’s assertions.
Sister Wendy contributes to the conversation by bringing in the concepts of “pure” and “comforting” art. “Comforting” art provokes little thought, but inspires knee jerk reactions like “that is beautiful” or “I hate that.” Pure art on the other hand, may be either ugly or beautiful (depending largely on the eye of the beholder), but requires something from the viewer. Each time you walk away from it, you are more enriched. Wendy notes that it is difficult to ascertain what works will be known in the future as “pure” art, but that “comforting” art is more easily identified.
So here we have two ways of viewing at: shocking and non-shocking, pure and comforting. Somehow these two continuums work together; not all pure art must be shocking, and some shocking art is comforting (Wendy thinks Piss Christ is such a piece). For the christian artist, both of these concepts are of use, but not without forethought. As Williams said, shock ought not be pursued for its own sake. However, to refrain from its use entirely would be to water down both the art and the message it is trying to send, making the entire exercise pointless.
Below is a truly wonderful interview with Sister Wendy. If you don’t know who Sister Wendy is, she is a nun who has devoted her life to the study of art. She has some really great insights as to art and the world as a whole. I very much recommend that you watch the video.
“Animals (the ant, the spider, the nuthatch) produce work of outstanding beauty, but it is like the beauty of the natural world because it is ‘transitive’, it has a definable and general function; human activity aims at the embodying of meaning by deliberate choices, and other creatures. It is, [David] Jones further suggests, something to do with the fact that, for Christian theology, God’s act of creation is utterly gratuitous, describable as a kind of play.” (Grace and Necessity, 86)
God created us, not out of necessity, but because he chose to as an act of play and love. He created us in such a way that we would have the desire to seek him out, to want him, and not because it was natural, but because it was our choice. It is the quality of choice that sets us as humans apart from the animals. Animals create because they must create in order to survive. The same can be said about humans, to an extent, however, we create through deliberate choices, animals create because the designs for their survival are imprinted in their very being. Take the ant for example. Ants are tiny creatures, that are disgusting, annoying, and absolutely incredible at the same time, for they are some of the grand architects of nature. Walter Tschinkel, one of the leading experts on the study of the behavior of ants and the structure of their colonies, pours molten aluminum into ant colonies so that he can better study their structure and so that he can educate other people on them as well. However, the ant colonies are not just well designed, but beautiful as well, looking almost like a coral reef. As beautiful as it is, the ants do not design it to be that way, they design it to be purely functional. All the little tunnels and “caverns” have a purpose, whether it be for depositing waste or storing food.
While the ants create thing of beauty out of necessity, Humans tend to create beautiful things because they have the desire to do so. For example, a Ferrari 458 Italia and a AMC Pacer perform the same basic function. However, the Ferrari is a thing of beauty, not because it has to be, but because someone wanted it to be (this frankly brilliant example is courtesy of my husband, but I thought it worked quite well).
Rock sculpture by Andy Goldsworthy
On a more artistic level, observe the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Like the animals, he creates things that are of a transient nature, literally. He creates them, photographs them, and sometimes, not an hour after finishing them, they are completely destroyed, such as his ice sculptures. However, for him, it is the process that matters just as much as the product. He has an awareness of and a desire to understand nature without destroying it. Thus, the reason he photographs his work. He works entirely with the materials that nature has provided him with, and then photographs it so as to capture that moment in time. On his website, he opens it with a great quote that really embodies his work and illustrates the point that I have been trying to make: “At its most successful, my ‘touch’ looks into the heart of nature; most days I don’t even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient; only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete.”
Ice Sculpture by Andy Goldsworthy. You can see the process of him creating this sculpture in his documentary Rivers and Tides.
Below I have included the video that CBS posted earlier this week about the man who makes the casts of anthills. It is actually a really interesting video. He sells them to museums to put on display for educational purposes.
For those of you who are more interested in Andy Goldsworthy, check out his website. There is also a really wonderful doccumentary out about him called Rivers and Tides.: http://www.ucblueash.edu/artcomm/web/w2005_2006/maria_Goldsworthy/TEST/
I have been assigned for my Art and Christ class to read Grace and Necessity by Dr. Rowan Williams, the late Archbishop of Canterbury. The book contains some really wonderful concepts, most of them I have barely even begun to translate let alone understand, but I really like the themes of the first chapter: beauty, creation, and the artists job.
One of the things that I really like about what Williams is saying is he really calls out artists as a whole. He doesn’t say it in a malicious way, but describes what a true artist should be, and it is really humbling. He says the pure artist should be making art just to make art. They should not have any agenda other than to be creating art because that is what they are called to do: “And the artist as artist is not called on to love God or the world or humanity, but to love what he or she is doing. In a rather extended sense, the activity of the artist does have a serious moral character simply because it pushes aside the ego and the desire of the artist as an individual. Art is fundamentally opposed to the will to power as it is to the cult of personality. But the nature of the case, this happens only when it is not a conscious goal…” That is what a pure artist should be. They should be humble, and not go spouting their knowledge about reality to the world. This is an incredibly hard feat to accomplish.
Another thing I love that he says is that the artist’s goal cannot be to make something beautiful: “If the artist sets out to please, he or she will compromise the good of the thing made. If it is well and honestly made, it will tend towards beauty…” As an artist, this idea takes a giant burden off my shoulders. It means that I no longer have to worry about making something beautiful, I can just make art purely because I want to. I can get on the wheel and simply try to throw the best pot that I can. If i can do that honestly and purely, then by its very nature it will be beautiful. Obviously that doesn’t mean that I get to stop thinking about things like structural integrity, or even the way it looks, but I don’t have to worry about making the “coolest” pot or anything.
Ultimately, Rowan Williams makes some really excellent points, but I hesitate to say this next part, because I know that my professor will be reading this, but I honestly cannot say that I like this book for one major reason: it is way too smart for me. It was not written to be read by college undergraduates, rather it was written for people who hold a PhD in Theology or Philosophy, and if I held a degree like one of those, I am sure that I would love it to death. The concepts in this book are amazing, but they are buried among a mass of lofty words and phrases, names of historical figures, and philosophical ideas that I have never learned. So, if you are looking for a light read, I cannot recommend this book (though there are many other books that I can recommend if that is what you are looking for).
A self portrait Bernini did in which he burned himself repeatedly with fire in front of a mirror so that he could get the expression right.
Bernini was a 17th century Baroque artist. He was a painter, architect, and playwrite, but what he is most famous for is his sculptures. In fact most of Rome’s grandeur can be attributed to Bernini. It is said that when he was 8 years old he carved a bust that marveled everyone who saw it. Only a few years later, many people were saying that they hoped him to be the next Michelangelo. He first trained under his father Pietro, an Italian sculptor at the time, assisting him with his pieces, but quickly found commissions of his own. He went on to do work for 8 different popes, and spent his entire career in Rome. In fact, he only left Rome once as an adult, to travel to France. He was invited by King Louis XIV to design an addition to the Louvre, which he rejected. He didn’t like France much. The entire time he was there, he complained that, “All of Paris was worth less than a painting by the Itallian artist Guido Reni.” Now I can’t say I found out a whole lot about Guido Reni, except that he was a realist painter who did idealistic paintings that were highly sought after by the wealthy class, but I am assuming that this is highly insulting. He did compliment Francois Mansart (the French architect who remodeled the louvre), but said that he would have been even better had he been from Rome.
Apollo and Daphne 1622-25
Bernini started making a name for himself and establishing his style from the get-go. One of his first independent commissions was requested by Cardinal Scipione Borghese to do a series of larger-than-life Marble statues. One of these was his famous statue Apollo and Daphne (1622-24), which illustrates the myth about Daphne, the nymph who caught the unwanted attention of Apollo. The statue depicts the moment when Apollo finally has her within his clutches, which is also the moment that Daphne’s father turned her into a laurel tree, so as to escape his lustful intentions. Bernini did a beautiful job showing the subtle changes, transforming the cold marble into warm flesh, showing her skin changing to bark, her turning into root tendrils and her fingers becoming leaves. Apollo is depicted with an expression caught between lust and a realization about what is happening. Everything is carved with painstaking detail, to depict exquisite perfection. Though this is his one of his famous works, the interesting thing is that the works most acclaimed features cannot be attributed to Bernini. He focused mostly on the two main figures, while his assistant, Guiliano Finelli, did much of the work on the roots, branches, and hair. Finelli was bitter about the lack of credit that he was given, so he went on to have a successful, independent career of his own, mostly doing busts, but keeping the same level of exquisite detail.
Pluto and Proserpina (1621-22). Bernini was 23 at its completion.
Bernini was passionate in the work that he did. “According to a friend’s description, the sculptor could carry on a lively conversation about the topics of the day, all while ‘crouching, stretching…marking the marble with charcoal in a hundred places, and striking with the hammer in a hundred others; that is, striking in one place and looking in the opposite place.’” The interesting thing is that when he was working, he almost never made a terra-cotta model first, and sometimes he didn’t even use a human model at all. He was also obsessed with the idea of overcoming the restrictions of a material. When he worked with white marble, he would try to suggest color. He would transform the cold, hard material, into soft fleshy tones, making it appear as though the surface was rippling and lively, filled with warmth and movement. As though it could jump to life at any time.
Bernini really had it all. He had talent, charm, and connections. But he did not get all this without making some enemies. In Bernini’s time, there was a call for artists to remodel St. Peters. Francesco Boromini, the Roman architect who designed many of the baroque buildings in Rome, was much more qualified, for he had trained as an architect and already made a name for himself in Rome. However, Bernini got the job. Why? Well, partly because he was an amazing sculptor, partly because he was charming and could talk circles around the socially inept Boromini, and partly because he was the Popes best friend.
Bust of Costanza Bonarelli (1630s)
The image to the right is one of the few busts that Bernini carved. He preferred to work on larger, more dramatic, sculptures. If he was going to do a bust, it was generally of someone that he couldn’t say no to, such as the Pope, or a king. However, this particular bust is really something else. It was done of his lover, Constanza, wife of one of his assistants. A beautiful sculpture, lovingly carved, etching her beauty in history. You can see the fire and passion on her face, succulent lips parted slightly as though she is about to speak, and the fabric of her blouse falling away from her breast. It could possibly be the most erotic busts in European history. However, this bust is also surrounded by scandal. Bernini, while being charming, and talented, was also known for having a quick temper. When he found out that his younger brother, Luigi, was also sleeping with Constanza, he attacked his brother, almost murdering him, and sent a servant to slash Constanza’s face to ribbons with a razor blade. What was the penalty for this? A slap on the wrist and an order for the Papacy to marry the woman of his choosing, who just happened to be the most beautiful woman in Rome. His new wife would not have the bust of Constanza in the house, and before he could smash it, a Medici buyer from Florence snapped it up.
Bernini later went on to do The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, in which he brings to life a quote from Teresa’s biography. “Very close to me, an angel appeared in human form. I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.” He wanted to show the image of a woman longing for her soul to be satisfied by God, for she wrote in such a way that it made it sound as though her soul and body were the same thing. So he showed her locked in the only expression that he knew of that could even come close to duplicating the tide of engulfing feeling that was going on in side her, with the face of a woman in the hight of orgasm in liquid bliss. This statue was made for a church in Rome, the first one to be built in memory of St. Teresa, who was a modern Saint at the time.
Ecstasy of St Teresa (1647-52)
Below is a really great documentary about the life of Bernini that is actually a really good biography of Bernini. They cover everything from examining the pieces to little gossip tid bits about him. If you have the time, and are interested, i know it is long, but it is really good.
Below is another video in which they talk about my favorite piece, Pluto and Proserpina (also known as The Rape of Proserpina). It is a short clip, but they go into a lot of detail about the exquisite nature of the piece.
Figuili Es 