Sanctifying Art. Deborah Sokolove

Sanctifying Art - Deborah Sokolove


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While both the poetic quality and the musical settings of such metrical psalms could be of high artistic quality, this was not always the case, and even when it was, such excellence was not always appreciated. Indeed, the primary value for the Reformers was that such songs allowed congregations to more easily memorize and internalize the psalms. This insistence on simplicity and accessibility continues to be an important criterion by which all the arts are evaluated in the church, often to the exclusion of any other value. Too often, the sensory elements through which meaning is also conveyed are completely ignored, as when exultant words are set to somber melodies.

      This emphasis on using art to instruct does not mean that all Reformation hymns and images were artistically worthless. Indeed, many hymn texts from the Reformation onward were poetically well-crafted and much of the music similarly excellent. When Martin Luther published his German translation of Scripture, he enlisted the eminent artist Lucas Cranach the Elder—best known for his Isenheim altarpiece—to provide the illustrations. However, this tendency to instrumentalize art, to see it as simply illustrative or a way to make a didactic point rather than to lead to new understandings through metaphoric and sensory qualities, has permeated the Protestant churches.

      By the late nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church had fallen into similar habits. As Colleen McDannel has shown, both Protestant and Catholic visual materials became increasingly bland and instructional in this period. As may be seen throughout McDannel’s lavishly illustrated volume, Material Christianity, the visual materials used by American Protestants and Catholics were virtually indistinguishable, and, indeed, often shared. In her discussion of the institutional and cultural structures surrounding the distribution of water from Lourdes following the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary to the young peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, McDannel notes

      An examination of some visual materials from the late nineteenth century that McDannel shows will demonstrate the point. For example, an illustration of the church and shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes from the Catholic Herald, April 24, 1880, which McDannel reproduces as illustration 88 on page 134, and the print of visitors at the grave of David W. Gihon at the Laurel Hill Cemetery, printed in 1852 and reproduced as illustration 70 on page 112 in the same volume, exhibit similar visual devices, such as exaggerated poses, unequivocal directional cues, and sentimental references.

      This denominational eclecticism continues into the present day. Having spoken about art in a wide variety of church-related venues and conversed with priests and pastors from all over the country, I have observed that today there is an even greater openness to a wider selection of visual materials in many Christian churches, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. However, all too often even excellent, evocative, multivalent artistic materials are subverted into didactic readings as congregations are encouraged to look for the one, true meaning of an artwork. This is parallel to a method of biblical interpretation that insists on a single, correct meaning for each chapter and verse, rather than a hermeneutic of questioning the text. Rather than allowing the arts to open conversations that lead to exploration of multiple ideas, artworks are overexplained, reduced to sermon illustrations rather than allowed to stand on their own as biblical interpretations or analogues of spiritual experience.

      Such single-message interpretations lead, too often, to a preacher or Sunday School teacher showing a Renaissance painting that depicts some scriptural narrative with no regard to the intrinsic meanings of the painting itself. Instead of attending to the specific ways that this painting tells the story in color, spatial emphasis, the visual relationships among the various characters, and any other telling details, the preacher will simply say, in effect, “I’m preaching on the Prodigal, so here’s a picture of that story,” while completely disregarding any potential conflict between the preacher’s interpretation and that of the artist. Equally disregarded is the potential for the image to illuminate the understanding of the text by either the preacher or the congregation through attention to the exegesis offered by the artist.

      This attitude devalues good art by refusing to recognize that anything other than its subject matter might contribute to its meaning. It also leads to joyless felt banners with the word “Joy” stitched across them; moralistic children’s stories that are so predictable that even the children are bored by them; and hymns of praise that are sung like dirges, more out of duty than any sense of delight in the presence of the living God.

      Commercializing Art: Making Art a Commodity

      There is a certain kind of art that is created solely for the purpose of aesthetic contemplation. Such works have no other purpose than to delight, to elicit the particular thrill that is felt by many in their presence. This is often termed high art, and is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the artistic enterprise.


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