The "Why" of Modern Religious Art
Painting Spiritual Faith and Doubt in the Global Village
Ancient and medieval Christian art sought to preserve history, or served a devotional purpose while meeting the needs of patrons (such as the adornment of places of formal worship). Modern religious art meets different needs. What has been the motivation for artists to explore religious themes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?
In her 1998 book Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria), Rosemary Crumlin notes the “pervasiveness of broadly religious and spiritual themes in twentieth-century western art”. Many religious-themed works featured in an exhibition at the Melbourne gallery were inspired by spiritual traditions outside Christianity, explored religious subjects in the context of earthly society, or raised questions about faith.
A More Global Approach to Spirituality
The work of many twentieth and twenty-first century artists reflects their study of eastern or goddess-based religions. In the art of the 17 women featured in the Melbourne exhibition, Crumlin noted four prevailing themes: body, earth, the goddess, and alchemy.
One of the paintings was Frieda Kahlo’s 1947 work Sol y vida/Sun and Life. The painting is centred on a sun with a third eye shedding a single tear, set in over-lush, sinuous vegetation. Vibrant colour seems to celebrate life and nature, but the painting is said also to mourn Kahlo’s inability to conceive a child with Diego Rivera.
In Stuart Shepherd’s analysis of New Zealand self-taught and visionary art (sometimes known as outsider art), similar themes emerge. Shepherd identifies a category for works related to symbolism and spirituality, often produced by female artists and featuring “organic forms, nature, growth and bursting shapes and flowers.”
Religion and Earthly Issues
Among the Mexican artists to be included in the Melbourne exhibition was Julio Castellanos. His painting Los Robachicos/The Angel Kidnappers (1943) portrays a gentle-looking angel of death taking an impoverished Indian child. Herbert Falken’s Pregnant Man with Two Others (1981) also explores social, as well as theological, issues. In a possible comment on the abortion debate, Falken paints Christ and the two “others” as pregnant with what appear to be skulls rather than embryos.
Crumlin comments that modern religious artists have varied spiritual purposes but “a deeply felt engagement with some of the central issues of existence and the meaning of life”.
Faith and Doubt
The early work of Colin McCahon, arguably Aotearoa/New Zealand’s best known visual artist, employs religious symbols and landscapes to raise questions about the nature of faith in the modern world. For example, McCahon often portrays Christ as a lamp and uses archetypal Aotearoa hills and rural landscapes.
In a 2008 lecture series in Wellington, Lloyd Geering, senior theologian of the St. Andrew’s Trust for the Study of Religion and Society, described McCahon as a “Prophet in the Wilderness”. McCahon often appears in his own paintings, watching and listening from the edge.
After 1953, McCahon abandoned Biblical imagery and began developing paintings dependent almost completely on words. (The later McCahon and other text-based religious art are to be considered in a separate article on Suite 101).
In commenting on McCahon’s work in Crumlin’s book, Rod Pattenden describes it as “a dynamic form of negative theology….One is left to hold faith and doubt together as part of the conversation that defines the human, this dialogue about the experience and the definition of God.”
