Geoffrey, I notice that you avoided my santa claus question, so perhaps you think he has been scientifically proven not to exist– not so!– In fact that cannot be proven. (We should unpack that assumption right away.) So why do you believe that he doesn’t exist? Let’s focus on that. He has had an enormous impact on the lives of millions of children! They believe in him! I’m not really just talking about the fat man with the white beard, either. I’m talking about a transcendent, invisible santa– a santa for grownups. Sure, Twas The Night Before Christmas was written by a human hand, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t dininely inspired, and you can’t prove that a word in it isn’t true. And I can find you a scientist who will admit that it can’t be proven that reindeer really don’t know how to fly. Etc.

I don’t have the time or inclination to try to grapple with all of the other rhetorical script-flipping that you might be considering (borrowing from Tim Keller and?) throwing at me. Even if I had the time, ability and patience to dismantle it all, what would be the point? You seem like a good guy, and I have no real reason to want to change your beliefs in particular. I have no intention of asking you to prove them.

It is my fault the conversation went to this place– I should have left santa alone!

It’s been a pleasure conversing with all of you. Thanks for all the thoughtful words, sincerely.

All the best,
Ken

What I would suggest to you is to honestly unpack the assumptions that underly your question. I don’t know you, so I’m not sure — but it sounds to me like at least one of them would be something like the idea that a supernatural God (or Jesus’s miracles or what have you)is scientifically impossible, has been proven not to exist (like Santa, the toothfairy and the Easter Bunny before him). And we might inquire deeper than that still — are you simply convinced beyond a doubt that God doesn’t exist (that would be an article of faith to an extreme degree)? Or perhaps you can’t believe there could be a God who does miracles, or who would create only one true religion, or who would allow suffering or who you need to be much concerned about one way or the other. If you could tell me a little bit about the ideas that structure your doubt (or utter, complete disbelief), that would be helpful.

The point is that you can’t doubt belief A except from a position of faith in belief B. You are asking me to justify my faith in Christ — which I am happy to do, but you have a responsibility to justify your own as well. Open it up to the same level of scrutiny.

Sorry for going w-a-a-a-a-ay off thread here, dudes.

Geoffrey– Fair enough. I won’t comment on Keller anymore since I haven’t read the book. There is another book on my studio table right now that might speak to all this: Real Presences by George Steiner. The book is an effort to make the case that all artistic creation is underwritten by an assumption of divine presence. I am predisposed not to accept such a thesis, in fact I’m pretty sure I can say from experience that it’s just not true, but I might get around to reading it anyway, and with an open mind. I thought I’d mention it in case anyone else wants to look at it for links between religion and art.

Maybe it would be interesting for me to mention that one of the major inspirations for my painting in the last couple of years has been the cycle of St. John the Baptist paintings by Giovanni Di Paolo which are at the Art Institute of Chicago. I’ve always been very interested in Sienese painting (which is steeped in religious mysticism–hmmmm). The image from that cycle which shows John turning his back on the world and heading off into the wilderness prompted me to make abstract paintings where canvases or parts of canvases turn their back on the viewer and face the wall. The link for Di Paolo:

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/16156

I didn’t see the Freud show. I was there last week and saw the Color Chart exhibition, which I liked.

And what he’s arguing is something smarter and in a weird way more post-modern than what you are suggesting. It is rather that skepticism about God is generally grounded in alternative belief systems that are often 1)as “religious” as the belief in God itself (that is, adherents of those arguments sincerely believe them to be true), and 2) they are rarely the subject of rigorous interrogation.

He asks people to look at the alternate beliefs that underpin skepticism and doubt, and subject those beliefs to some questions: What reason do you have for holding them? How do you know (or why do you think) they are true? Tim would suggest that if you sincerely seek as much proof for the truth of your skeptical beliefs as you would expect Christians to have for theirs, you will likely discover them to be less solid than you originally have thought.

totally agree with you on your comments on abstract art. and I should say that guys like Rothko and Reinhardt helped me find my way “into” it, but after that, I was hooked on a whole range of abstract and abstract-ish artists.

Not abstract in the truest sense, but totally weird and compelling was the recent Lucian Freud etching exhibit at MOMA. Did you get a chance to see it?

How long have you been a painter?

I’ll say a couple of things, though. It seems– and you can tell me if I’m wrong– that one point that Keller likes to make is that doubt also constitutes a kind of belief, and that by shining a light on that he will encourage us to doubt our doubt. That type of argument is a non-starter.

Here’s a parallel example. It’s not meant to be insulting to believers in supernatural gods like the Christian god (I don’t mean to be disrespectful or insult anyone, but it’s a pretty close parallel): It’s not that I “doubt” the existence of Santa Claus. Sad as it may seem sometimes that the north pole doesn’t house the Santa of popular mythology, for me the cat is out of the bag on that for many years now. I have no reason to either believe it or doubt it. It’s interesting as a story and a myth and is real as a part of culture, and can be emotionally really compelling (especially for children).

I want to resist being drawn into a kind of confrontation where I am trying to enlighten people about their beliefs, or vice-versa. Part of the interest of posting here for me is that I think maybe I’m communicating with people who maintian some assumptions about the world that I don’t. I’m not going to suggest that you read Richard Dawkins (who tends to be heavy-handed and blunt in his arguments, even though much of what he says is true. He seems a little un-imaginative to me.)

On another note, and in an effort to identify some common ground, Rothko was one of the first artists I really had a deep interest in. I have very much appreciated the contemplative aspect of his work as well as Reinhardt’s. Contemplation, meditation and introspection have all been fostered for me by art experiences and that has been very important in my life. Whatever disagreements may emerge about beliefs, I imagine that we can agree that those things, as well as empathy and compassion are crucial and a part of both artistic and religious experience.

I’m going to drop in here a part of a statement about my own “abstract” paintings, just to open up a little and give you some idea where I’m coming from as an artist:

Since optical color effects and illusions (especially when not at the service of representational imagery) can seem to escape physical norms and expectations and evoke the uncanny or magical, they might seem to refer to spiritual or supernatural dimensions. They are in fact real effects that can’t be severed from causes subject to rational grounding in theories of perception, optics and psychology. Used in these paintings, such structures should raise the uncanny and hallucinatory, but keep enchantment in tense (painful?) suspension with the tangible, constructed physicality of the support system, and in suspension with the fact that the hallucinatory image itself arises from a causal systematic structure. Pain or tension proceeds from the way the knowledge of the neutrality of means threatens to deflate aroused hopes of a magical, supernatural dimension (which would offer hope of escape from the problems and pain of the physical world.) A contrary reading might say that the emphatic grounding of “trippy” color experience in a purely physical and systematic origin might reassuringly demonstrate how the pleasures of non-physical movement and frictionless disoriented color effects can still exist within a world without recourse to naïve beliefs and practices.

One of the things I found most compelling about these works even then was the contemplative dimension of paintings by (say) Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Pollock, etc.

On Ken’s other comment re: the “abstractions” of the gospel, you are only partly right. Since you have been kind enough to educate us all here and recommend some truly helpful reading, I’m going to recommend some to you. Check out Tim Keller’s new book, The Reasons for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (http://www.amazon.com/Reason-God-Belief-Age-Skepticism/dp/0525950494/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207482389&sr=8-1)
It is guaranteed to provide you with some provocative ideas and things to think about.

There is a book I’d like to suggest that for me was helpful in understanding why religion and art for all intents and purposes became disconnected from one another in modern times. It’s called “On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art” by James Elkins. Maybe it’s a little advanced for people who are just coming to a place of paying attention seriously to trying to understand modern art, but it’s probably ok for a general reader–not full of jargon or anything like that. I think Elkins is pretty good at nailing down issues that are raised by the question being asked in this forum. His answers might not be welcome, as I fear my point of view on this might not, but I’m pretty sure he’s right about some things.

Back to Drew’s comment (more directly): The historical witnesses you are referring to aren’t around for cross-examination, and we don’t have corroborating documents for many if any of the really unlikely-sounding parts, so I’m not too sure we can talk about biblical texts as historical in the way you mean. A historian can make use of them for sure, but not by taking the at face value unquestioned. That’s not history. Anyway, if we are comparing such unverifiable claims by those authors with the experiential reality of the sensations produced by an art object in the present (which isn’t claiming to do magic or break physical laws), I have to maintain that abstract art is the less “abstract” term in this equation.

Drew Dixon’s last blog post..Sufjan and the Old Covenant

Drew Dixon’s last blog post..Sufjan and the Old Covenant

I am not sure where I am at on this but I think I am a little closer to abstract art now.

Thanks.

Dane,
I appreciate that whenever I’m too busy to reply to posts, I can rely on you to express some of my concerns (not that I always agree with you, that wouldn’t be any fun.)

1) “Protestants are hesitant to embrace abstract art.”

Actually, that could easily be altered from Protestants to “people,” because the average person is every bit as hesitant to embrace abstract art as worthwhile as the average Protestant. Really, the number of groups that abstract art is embraced pretty minimal.

Experimentalists tend to embrace the form, if only to justify their own use of it. The pretentious love it because loving something that they can both pass off high culture and use to elevate their perceived tastes as “elite” (praising the value of that which holds incomprehensible value is a chief signature of the elite). But really, what other group embraces the form.

Sure, individuals may admit to liking one work or another, but that’s akin to arguing that you’ve got nothing against gays/blacks/nerdcore rockers and hey some of you’re best friends are gay/black/nerdcore rockers. I mean personally I’ve enjoyed a few abstracts in my day (either for the feeling conveyed or simply for the fact that I think the piece worked as Good Decoration).

2) Representational vs. Abstract.
I actually didn’t really appreciate the distinction presented*#8212;or at least the way it was presented. There was a lot of overlap. I mean, come on. Abstract works on emotions while representational works on the intellect. That’s just blowing smoke up my tail. I believe both the heart and mind can be properly engaged in the appreciation of both abstract and representational art.

Further, is representational really the best term to describe non-abstract work? Because honestly, every work of abstraction I’ve seen was a representation of something. The difference is that the one represents reality abstractly through signs and symbols that have yet to be assigned while the other represents reality more concretely through established signs and symbols, those with apparent cultural or historical value. Further, the implementation of the abstract usually even borrows from established symbology as it presents itself. While a non-abstract figuring the idea of liberty might show the lady herself, brazen, bare-breasted, and toiling amongst soldiers we imagine to be fighting for the nobility of the egalitarian society, an abstract might just show patches of three overlapping colors—blue, white, and red—calling to mind, in a vague sort of way, the French flag.

3) The quoting: Luther, Calvin, and Other Guy
None of these quotes had anything to do with abstraction. Luther was speaking of holy art vs. profane art. He wanted Jehovah’s Witness-like scenes of Noah and all the cute animals climbing onto the Ark of the Covenant. Stuff like that. Apparently, he was also a big booster for the muralists.

Calvin was speaking against imaging God and in support of the Third Commandment. He said nothing about the depiction of fear, of tenderness, of anger, of charity, of warmth. His concern was singular.

The thing is, we cannot guess how these men would have reacted to an abstract splatter-paint scene quietly entitled, The Wrath of God. Why? Because the abstract movement had yet to rear its head.