Joost 0:00
Hello, and welcome to Bible and Art Reframed. I'm Joost Joustra, and I'm an Art Historian.
Michelle 0:06
And I'm Michelle Fletcher, and I'm a Biblical Scholar. Together we lead the Visual Commentary on Scripture. Featuring over a thousand artworks and commentaries from experts around the world, it's the Internet's premier place for Bible and art. Thank you for tuning in to Bible and Art Reframed, where we choose some of our favourite works from across the site and bring them together to explore unexpected themes that pop up in the Bible. And don't forget to click on the link in the episode description, so that you can check out the images that we're chatting about today. So, what are we looking at today, Joost?
Joost 0:39
Today we're looking at abstract works of art. So, a little bit different than the mostly figurative things we've been looking at so far. Abstraction, in general, means existing in thought or as an idea, but not having a physical or concrete existence. And related to visual art in particular, it means art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effects using shapes, colours, and textures. It has become synonymous with 20th century modernism, and one immediately has to think of artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian. But those are actually not the ones we're talking about today. Today, abstraction in the visual arts, as much as in philosophical thought, can be a way of trying to get to the essence of reality, to identify pure forms and deep structures beneath the surface of various things. And that can include both artworks and biblical texts, which is why I think it's such an appropriate subject for today.
Michelle 1:43
That's true. And obviously, you're going to have to do quite a lot of hard work in this episode, because the artworks aren't necessarily the most easy to get into for our listeners. But at the same time, it is a really interesting way to approach the Bible, because there are so many concepts that the Bible tries to wrestle with, which are difficult to pin down. The Bible is about entextualisation, but so many of the concepts that we're looking at are difficult to entextualise, whereas looking through this lens of abstract art can help us think about things in new ways. And the first work that we're looking at, I think, is an excellent introduction into that. We're exploring the early part of the Bible in Genesis and the idea of the creation of light. But the idea of objects that actually create light or bring forth light, like the sun and the moon, actually aren't created until later in the narrative. The creation of light happens early on. God sets separates light from darkness, names it day and night. And this first work looks at that idea of what does it mean for light to be created. So tell us more about the work, Joost.
Joost 2:53
Well, we're looking at a print by Paul Nash, a wood engraving. And it's called The Division of the Light from the Darkness.And it's actually part of a series of the creation narrative that Paul Nash created. This particular print is from 1924. What Paul Nash is basically asking himself is what might light without a source look like? And that scientific impossibility is the subject of his woodcut. It's a very strange thing to do in visual art, because especially art historians are always obsessed, when they look at paintings, with identifying the light source. Where does light come from? And in Paul Nash's print, there's no obvious source.
Michelle 3:38
And the thing that's wonderful with this is the medium itself, the idea of the woodcut, as our commentator Naomi Billingsley on the website talks about, the idea of the absence of ink on the printing press creating that idea of a brighter area - whereas the presence of ink creates that darker area. And so the medium itself allows for this sort of absence and presence that light and dark have at their centre. You can see the different way that the lines move. Joost has talked about that idea of the way that we have light coming from a certain source. And if you look at the print, you'll see the lines come from lots of different directions. Some are vertical, some are diagonal, some are on the horizontal plane. And this idea that light comes into being when it's created, but doesn't have any particular location from which it's emanating, and it's sort of separating around, is a really profound way of thinking about this creation of this central element for life.
Joost 4:38
Yeah, and I think it touches on an important subject for today. Although art we call abstract, we think, oh, it's not about anything in specific: it usually is about something, but you just have to dig a little bit deeper to find out what this was. I also want to talk a little bit about Paul Nash, the artist, because he was a war artist. And then you can ask yourself, what does that mean? We're not really used to the concept of war artists anymore. But in the First World War, Paul Nash was in the trenches, actually documenting the war while also fighting the war. Can you imagine that? And he continued that role into the Second World War as well, when he was part of the war artists' advisory committee and actually producing paintings of aerial warfare. But I think when he was creating this particular woodcut in 1924, so six years after the First World War had ended, he might have been thinking about this subject, light. Is it possible, again, to have some light on the horizon? And I think it's a beautifully symbolic print.
Michelle 5:43
That’s a really profound way of thinking about the print and that idea of some light on the horizon and that contrast of what we can have and what appears in the absence of something, in the absence of peace, in the absence of human solace. Our next work touches on some pretty dark themes too, I think. We're moving on to look at a work from from 2009. So we're jumping forward into the 21st century. But again, it's a work that plays with the vertical and horizontal plane. It deals with concepts of absence and presence, of exclusion, of ways of thinking about what ideologies flow through our stories and our texts that are underneath the surface. We might not necessarily see when we just observe the narrative, but when we look at those layers and those lines that run through the biblical text, what might we actually see at the base? And so this work from 2009, I'll explain a little bit more once Joost has helped us understand the work, will help us think about texts which involve movement and exclusion. So Joost, tell us about the work.
Joost 6:53
Well, we're looking at a work by Mona Hatoum. So she's a living artist. And this work is a cube that seems to be suspended from the ceiling, made up out of multiple metal rods. At least that's what you think, from a distance. It's about a cubic meter in size. And we have also done an episode on doorways and thresholds, didn't we, Michelle?
Michelle 7:18
We did indeed. And this could definitely have featured there, couldn't it?
Joost 7:21
Yeah, but although I feel like it's quite the opposite, because when you approach the work, you reveal a menacing aspect to it. The cube is composed of hundreds of barbed wire rods. It evokes architectural forms such as fences and prison camps. And it's basically designed to confine and repel instead of inviting people into the work.
Michelle 7:45
This idea of barbed wire is something that I really wanted to look at more for this episode. I live in the countryside, and so I'm surrounded by barbed wire all the time. And barbed wire initially was made to confine animals. So it's something that comes about in America as a way of controlling cattle movement. So it's always had a sense of controlling movement. And then it moves into controlling humans. We've already talked about the First World War. It was used by all parties in the First World War to control movement. And in this work, barbed wire is echoing, as you've said, with prisons, where barbed wire has become something to confine humans. This work on the site is used to deal with the movement of people in relation to the Book of Ruth. The Book of Ruth is a story of migration. It's a story of Hebrew people who go into the land of Moab and then come back again when a famine has passed. And it's the figure of Ruth the Moabitess who comes into the land of Israel and will become one of the ancestors of King David. But she never loses the label of the Moabitess in the book. All the way through this idea of a foreigner, someone who isn't part of the people, is retained in the text. And there's this sense that we can see with this work, which involves borders, boundaries, and ways that we can't quite touch, but say you can't pass here. That the Book of Ruth has running through it about how much can you ever become part of another society, even so she does become part of the history of Israel.
Joost 9:24
And I think that idea of emigration, of exile, not always voluntary, speaks to Mona Hatoum personally. And I have a quote by her, if you don't mind, Michelle.
Michelle 9:36
Please, I love to hear from artists.
Joost 9:38
She speaks eloquently about it. And she says, although I was born in Lebanon, my family is Palestinian. And like the majority of Palestinians who became exiles in Lebanon after 1948, they were never able to obtain Lebanese identity cards. It was one way of discouraging them from integrating into a Lebanese situation. And when I went to London in 1975, for what meant to be a brief visit, I got stranded there because the war broke out in Lebanon. And that created a kind of dislocation. So dislocation is the theme.
Michelle 10:10
And our next work looks at a very different type of dislocation, which is a dislocation of emotion. It's bought on the site in relation to the concept of lamentation. And lamentation is a sort of well, lament, outpouring, and it's a sense that an emotion which is built up has a way of being brought to the fore, a sense that it is now when it's said in a new place, in a new time. So the book of lamentations continues to be read within the Jewish liturgical calendar, and I'll talk more about that. But this work is a different type of lamentation. It's a lamentation of a very profound death. And the work is from 1969 by Sam Gilliam. So, Joost, what are we looking at?
Joost 11:02
Yeah, and I really encourage our listeners to look at this image. It's not easy to describe. Even if you look at the image in reproduction, it looks quite flat. But let me tell you a little bit about Sam Gilliam's process. To create cascades of colors in his work, Gilliam pours paint onto the canvas, and then folds the canvas repeatedly, applying more paint as he proceeds. And then he goes on and he drapes and hangs his work from the ceiling. So you can imagine paint moving in all kinds of directions. In some ways, Gilliam's paintings blur the boundaries between painting, performance, and sculpture. So this is a very complex work.
Michelle 11:43
It's a beautiful work to look at. It's got this really deep purple, and it's shot through with red. And these colors resonate with the subject. And Gilliam is renowned for doing these non-figurative works. But this one has a more specific title, which is 4th of April. And it's alluding to the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Gilliam waited a year and then painted it a year after the death of King as his own idea of lament or mourning. The sense that a time had passed where he was able to look back at what had happened and create this canvas, which is huge, right? It's like it's two and a half metres by nearly four metres. And so it has a way of taking up your entire field of vision. You are brought into the process of considering what you're looking at in relation to this profound death. And it's connected on the site, as I said, to the Book of Lamentations, which is a book that looks at the destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. And this book is still read by Jews today during the time of Tisha B'Av, which happens as the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, thinking about the destruction of the Temple and other terrible events which have affected the Jewish people in history. And so this idea of coming together, reflecting what's happened on the past and performing lament in a new location to help us relocate ourselves, to consider where we are and to reimagine the future, is part of the idea of lament, part of the Book of Lamentations, part of the lived experience of what it is to suffer.
Joost 13:24
The unbelievable thing is that Gilliam was sometimes criticized for making abstract art that did not necessarily reflect what people call the Black experience. But can you imagine when we just looked at this through the lens of lamentation, but also the assassination of Martin Luther King that this work is named after? And it's a completely profound work of art. And looking at this initially perceived as abstract painting, one starts to notice these circles of red that almost suggest gunshots. So there are definitely layers of figuration active in this abstract painting.
Michelle 14:02
Our next work also uses this idea of the color of red to shoot through the painting. It's another enormous work. We're seeing this with these abstract works. They're works which do really take over the senses when you encounter them. This one is from the 1940s and it's by artist Clifford Still. And in the center of it is this enormous red line that goes up into a peak and comes back down again. So, Joost, tell us a bit more about this one.
Joost 14:31
So, this red line runs up and comes down on the canvas and there's traces of yellow, green, and white, and they're all on an intensely saturated black background. In this discussion we use the word abstract, but the painting is based on Clifford Still's farm boy experiences from his childhood. His father would lower him, suspended by rope, into wells, usually to survey them, but sometimes also as punishment, which seems like an incredibly traumatic experience. Personally he referred to these paintings as lifelines, which I think is deeply symbolic.
Michelle 15:09
The idea of the red particularly in this painting does have this peak and trough effect and the vertical plane that Still often works on. This has been connected on the site in relation to something that's really difficult to put into words, which is the concept of the resurrection in the Gospel of Mark, where there is no resurrection. I've talked about absence and presence, and in this there's an absence of resurrection, the women go to the tomb and they're told that Jesus is no longer there, and it says that they fled in terror and told no one. In the Gospel of Mark, we know that's not true because we've got this Gospel, so somebody's told somebody something. And this painting has been used on the site to discuss that idea that we might want to re-approach the Gospel of Mark, look at other mentions that Jesus has, that there's going to be a resurrection event. In Mark. 8, 9, and 10, there's this sense that the Gospel is shot through with these lifelines, these bits of bright paint in the darkness, which allow us to see a future. And so, although something might seem unimaginable, and all-darkness, in actual fact, that idea that life does carry on, and that there is colour and something to hold on to, is very much part of the story of the Gospel of Mark and this short ending.
Joost 16:28
That's a beautifully hopeful reading of Clifford Still's painting. May I tell you a little bit about Clifford Still before we move on? He's not a household name to many people, but he was one of the pioneering abstract expressionists, and in the years immediately following World War II, he was really leading. Still has been credited with laying the groundwork for the movement. And his shift from representational to abstract painting occurred as early as 1938, and between 1938 and 1942. A lot of people might know Jackson Pollock and another artist, Mark Rothko, who we're about to look at as examples of abstract expressionists. Clifford Still was actually doing these things before them.
Michelle 17:16
Yes, so we're looking at something more than just a work by Mark Rothko, but actually the idea of an entire environment that has been created to experience the works of Mark Rothko. Fourteen canvases in all in what's known as the Rothko Chapel. So, Jost, talk us through this a bit more.
Joost 17:36
It was conceived by two very wealthy Texans, Dominique and John de Menil in Houston, and they conceived of a non-denominational sacred space. The chapel itself was devised by architect Philip Johnson and some of his associates, and indeed it included 14 abstract paintings by Mark Rothko. And these paintings are dark, almost monochrome. But what happens here, and again, talking about the power of abstraction, is that meaning is created in their context. It is not about what these paintings show, but it's more about where these paintings are. The octagonal plan of the building, for instance, speaks to early baptistries, so it has that Christian association. But also the triptych hang of these paintings immediately brings to mind the altarpiece form. So, even though these works don't show anything, they are not devoid of meaning.
Michelle 18:36
So, this is where I now need to explain to our listeners how this is connected to the biblical text.
Joost 18:42
Good luck, Michelle.
Michelle 18:45
What we've got here, I've talked about this in a previous episode, is, again, this chapter 2, Corinthians 3, this idea of the Spirit and what it means for the Spirit to be present in believers. In this part of the chapter, Paul is talking about the idea of the letter, the Corinthians being a living letter, an epistolae, and the idea of the written word versus the Spirit, the grammar versus the pneuma. And it's this idea that it's written on their hearts rather than written on tablet stone, something which is part of lived experience and which is more than. So, what we have here by experiencing the Rothko Chapel is something you can enter into. The religious texts are actually available. There are texts that you can read when you enter into the chapel. But the written text is something that is reframed and represented in a new location, and you can have a new experience of the word through the lived experience, through that spirit, we might say, a way of connecting and something more than just approaching a written text. And this is at the heart of Paul's theology, this idea that we have law and we have this written word, but the Spirit of God also comes in as part of that to make the full experience for the believer. And so we can understand that idea more by looking at this experience of entering into the Rothko Chapel.
Joost 20:17
So you could say that abstract art speaks to the Spirit perhaps more than it speaks to the text.
Michelle 20:25
I think the idea that it takes us beyond the text and allows us to stop trying to focus on what does it mean, which is a question so many people often bring to an artwork, ironically, and allows us to think about that deeper meaning of what does the text do when we read it? What does it exist for, for the people of God, for God to speak through to them is something that thinking through abstract can help us understand. And I wanted to sum up by saying this is actually part of the Christian experience as well, this idea that the literal, metaphorical, moral, typological meanings, the three or fourfold of scripture, this is part of the teaching of the early church, this idea that you can see more than what you just see when you approach, it’s never just about the literal - and this is part of the Jewish understanding of scripture.
And today we've seen ways that we can do that we've looked at the concept of what it means to create light when there are no bodies emitting light. We've got the the understanding of the subtexts, we might call it in contemporary criticism ideology that runs through texts, ideas like borders and boundaries, that barbed wire helps us to think we can't actually touch, but we can look at and has an effect on the way that we perceive characters and our own way of being in the world in relation to others. What it means to lament, what it means to replay emotion in a new location, and how that might be done collectively, and how it's something more than a text can do. We've looked at the idea of what it might mean for a text to fall flat, like the Gospel of Mark in its short ending does. Where is the body of Christ? What happens with resurrection? And to ask questions in the darkness and to look for those lifelines. And then we finish with this idea of Rothko's chapel, which is a full body experience where you enter in and you move beyond just the idea of contextualisation and into the full lived experience of thinking about spirit and presence. And I wanted to finish with a quote from Sam Gilliam, where he says that the abstract, it messes with you. What you think isn’t all. And I love that idea that it allows us to get beyond what we know, and to realise the lack of our own knowledge. And I think the biblical text is always reminding us that and these artworks can help us remember that what we think we know isn't all there is to know.
Joost 22:50
That's a beautiful summary, Michelle. And I really especially like the Sam Gilliam quote. Now, you know what I'm going to ask you? Which of these five works would you take home?
Michelle 23:00
I'm going to have the Sam Gilliam.
Joost 23:02
I had a hunch.
Michelle 23:03
I mean, the purple in and of itself and the idea that you can continually look at such a traumatic event, but also look with shades of hope. He always says if anything is worth keeping or being permanent, then it has to offer some hope. And I think that his canvas, the idea of waiting for a year to see how we can move forward from something helps us to face life. What about you? I mean, we haven’t got any manuscripts this time.
Joost 23:31
No manuscripts. I would go to Texas and speak to the de Menil family and ask them if they could possibly relocate the Rothko Chapel to London.
Michelle 23:44
With a very large ship.
Joost 23:45
Yeah, I'm entirely in awe of that space and its infinite potential. So that will be my choice. That's a very good choice.
Michelle 23:55
Love it. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to Bible and Art Reframed. Don't forget to subscribe, to go to the website, click on the links in the episode description so that you can see more of these stunning works that we've been describing. And we look forward to speaking to you in our next episode.