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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Prayer and art
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
I've been thinking of starting this thread for a couple of days, but unsure how to - basically because I don't use art in prayer.
Away from my day job, I'm an artist. I paint. (Today, to be accurate, I'm scowling at a painting and occasionally swearing at it, which is usually a sign that it's not far off being finished.) I find that while I can be profoundly moved by a painting or a sculpture, when I'm looking at them my critical and inquisitive faculties also kick in. This, I think is not really conducive to prayer.
But I know other people do use art when they pray. So - do you? If you do, then how do you use it? What do you feel would be missing if you didn't use it?
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
I think it might be useful to imagine an anti-art space, and to think about how it might feel to pray.
I've just been volunteering in about the most anti-art space I think I frequent - a recent conversion to a large community space of a previous industrial building, complete with plastic windows, office furniture, strip lighting, vinyl flooring, acres of smooth magnolia paint. In this I try to run a music session (community guitar tuition), and I find it really, really hard. I can't imagine starting to try to pray in there.
This seems odd as I am from a non-conformist background. But our 'minimalist' churches are minimalist in a certain sense, in the same manner (but not the same style) as the scandi-cool interiors you see in lifestyle magazines. I can't imagine seeing this community center in such a magazine - it is un-baroque in quite the wrong kind of way.
Therefore I suspect I use 'art' for prayer in subtle ways - in the plain walls, gothic windows, simple pews of an old Methodist or URC, for instance, as much as in the marble explosion of an older RC church or recently in the rich 1960s interior and concrete-brutalist exterior of Paddy's Wigwam, which when experienced for the first time moved me deeply.
That's enough for now, though I also have ideas about music!
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Paddy's Wigwam
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
But I know other people do use art when they pray. So - do you? If you do, then how do you use it? What do you feel would be missing if you didn't use it?
I didn't keep the link, but there is a Dominican friar who is very into photography, who uses his Flickr account to good effect by taking excellent photos, often of stained glass windows, and other such things. He explained in an article I read somewhere else on the internet and now can't find, that this was his way of glorifying God, to display him through the medium of the best of religious art and through photography.
It sounded like a good philosophy, and certainly there is something about what is truly beautiful that is uplifting, and can have a touch of the numinous about it.
For myself I have used art as symbols for contemplation or meditation. You can't help but do that with the Stations of the Cross, in any case.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Music. Liking auditory imagery and finding better affinity, there are music phrases and ideas (which I can name), that profoundly put me into an understanding beyond words.
Admittedly, some of these have been context specific such that when heard again I understand that it was merely sweetness and light with no real nourishment. Which compares to why I mostly distrust and disbelieve ecstatic religious experiences (tongues, falling down etc). The thing needs to hold up over time, and not produce the feeling of trying to get back somewhere or something, whether Woodstock or Eden.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
We do this sometimes in church, that we walk along art in a meditative way. It doesn't always do something for me, it depends a bit on my mood.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I've come across painting as prayer - and MHSB and I started chatting about this on the alternative prayer thread - use of clay, painting and photography as art forms. Someone I know who is a potter did a lot of her assignments for the CCS course in pottery and artworks
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
Talking about stained glass, to me one of the best places in the world for silent prayer is the Cathedral of Brasília. As you probably know, Brasília is the capital of Brazil which was constructed in three years in 1956–1959, with some very modern architecture for the time period.
The Cathedral is an example of that. It looks very peculiar from the outside, different from more traditional cathedrals. You enter through a tunnel. And suddenly there you are in this space of light, with the sun coming in filtered through stained glass in abstract motives. They remind me of waves or other ephimeral things.
Whenever I'm in Brasília (I'll be there next week), I always try to sit there for a while in silent reflection.
Here is an image of the Cathedral from the outside and here the stained glass from the inside.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
when I'm looking at them my critical and inquisitive faculties also kick in. This, I think is not really conducive to prayer.
I don't have much to say about art and prayer right now (maybe later), but I wanted to engage this.
I don't think critical and inquisitive faculties are at all in inimical to prayer. There are certainly forms of prayer in which we engage in ascesis from these, and that's good and healthy. I remember once hearing a comment that of all the Abrahamic faiths, Christianity is the only one that has ever doubted that study can be prayer. Torah study and Quran study are definitely viewed as an important part of Jewish and Muslim prayer life.
Now, if all of our prayer were study, that would probably be a problem. But, that doesn't mean prayer can't be done in this modality.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Music. Liking auditory imagery and finding better affinity, there are music phrases and ideas (which I can name), that profoundly put me into an understanding beyond words.
I find Metamorphosis 1 to 5 by Philip Glass is a very prayerful piece of music, and I am aware Glass is a Buddhist.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Pondering on this as I read other threads I wonder if art works for some people as a way of removing the busy -ness? When I paint or take photographs I am totally go that moment ~ concentrating on an image and it works as a form of meditation for me.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Works for me, although thinking further I don't know whether your point means that _art_ is good for mindfulness, being-in-the-moment, prayer - or whether _something-attention-focussing_ is good, but it doesn't have to be art.
This perhaps matters because of the privilege we give (OK, at least I like to give) art, and artists. What they do is Important, and deserves respect and thoughtful appraisal.
I mention this as an underemployed house-husband / ex-employed headf*ck, whose ego would benefit from being able to say 'creating art this morning, I found myself moved to a state of transcendent peace'. Whereas actually, as a non-artist, I moved from inner fury to something much more peaceful during 4 hours bodge-woodwork / rubbing down the knackered window frames which take the worst of the weather at the back of my house. No art, almost no craft, but prayer, and some peace.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
At last I'm managing to spend some time with this thread, and thank you all for your contributions. I particularly liked the comments about study as prayer. Making (visual) art certainly involves learning a discipline of looking which I guess could be analogous to the close and critical reading of a text. Is that attentiveness to the world a kind of prayer? Perhaps.
One of my favourite artists by far is Mark Rothko. I can really lose myself in some of his paintings. The only (pretentious and foofy) way I can describe it is there seems to be a world of emotion in the best of his work that empties itself into me when I look at them. And it was Rothko that said quote:
The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.
(I've spent hours and hours with his Seagram murals. I'd love to see the Houston Chapel, which contains his "black" paintings. Even pictures of them, I find almost unbearably moving.)
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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Graven Image
Shipmate
# 8755
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Posted
Curiosity Cat posted quote:
Pondering on this as I read other threads I wonder if art works for some people as a way of removing the busy -ness? When I paint or take photographs I am totally go that moment ~ concentrating on an image and it works as a form of meditation for me.
I think I do just that where I start with a Bible verse and then make art inspired by what I have read. I have no plan just relax and let happen what will happen. The finished project often expresses for me the verse in ways I was not aware of when I first read it.
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
One of my favourite artists by far is Mark Rothko
I guess you saw the recent BBC prog? I get something of the emotion, even as something of an art-numpty - but the black pictures, wow. I find it hard to Hope, especially in church where I have such a need and an expectation, at the best of times.
It almost amuses me to think of seeing Love, framed in black as a field of murky maroon, as a kind of mountain-top experience. Compared to which and more usually, as in the chapel, Hope might be something which might (or might not) _just_ be off-black, framed in black. It feels too real. The pressing threat that no, that central panel really is, just black. F*ck.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
We have regular - quarterly - discussions of art and Christianity and the most recent was on Mark Rothko. I meant to go but was double booked, but would have loved to have been part of that discussion. The subtitle was A Modern Spirituality
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
C'mon Adeodatus - you know about art, and I've expressed a felt-but-probably-uninformed opinion about Rothko. Am I way off?
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
C'mon Adeodatus - you know about art, and I've expressed a felt-but-probably-uninformed opinion about Rothko. Am I way off?
Well I'm no expert but I'll give it a go.
The big problem with Rothko's paintings is that you have to see the originals to even begin to appreciate them. I don't think you can get anywhere near the experience if all you have is a reproduction. I've never seen the Chapel paintings, but I would expect to find them as full of depth, expression, and subtlety as anything else by him that I have seen.
There's no doubt that Rothko was a technical genius. Get up close to one of his later paintings, and you begin to see how he's worked it up in probably dozens of layers of paint, often thinned to make each successive layer translucent. This gives the colours a luminosity that's phenomenally difficult to achieve. You can see, also, the detail of the brushstrokes, worked over and over until the light falls on the surface in precisely the way he wanted.
All of that's by way of preamble, just to highlight how rich and complex the late paintings are.
I think your reaction to the black paintings is spot on, not only because it's as valid a reaction as any, but because I think you're getting what Rothko wanted you to get. He wanted, I think, to turn painting into a kind of unmediated art form. What I mean by that is what Schopenhauer means when he writes about music - there is a direct communication of "emotional content" between the artist and the person experiencing the work, without any intervening form such as a definite artistic "subject". Rothko painted in order that you should feel what he felt, and experience what he experienced. He wanted to communicate all that he could communicate of the experience of being a human being. In particular, he came back time and time again to the tragic experience of being a human being, in the classical sense of the term.
Your talking about Love and Hope (or their absence) is therefore, I'm sure, at least a part of what he wanted. As I said, I haven't seen the Chapel paintings, but I do know the Seagram Murals in Tate Modern quite well. What I get from them isn't only the communication of a mood or emotion, but an unfolding journey into a humanity beyond my own. The Murals, for me, always begin with a sense of enclosure, isolation, and almost of being trapped. But then, always, as I look at them, they begin to open out into a sort of Paradise, where human hurt is painfully transfigured into something I've never yet been able to name.
More than one critic has said that the Chapel paintings give a glimpse of the Divine. I think the Murals almost do.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Well, thank you. I don't usually get enough clarity of thought concerning visual art (or music, for that matter) to be able to put anything into words, so thanks for having a go, and for lending me confidence regarding the only idea I did have. I don't understand anything about the technical aspects of painting - whereas with some other crafts, I can appreciate the craft/technique itself. Except some people say that isn't the point with art. Well thanks for trying to expand on some of that, anyway.
To keep the thread going - here's a piece of music which works for me as a prayer. Again, like the black paintings, it's _really_ simple in concept, which makes me feel like even I 'get it'. I'd be interested in anyone else's take on it, before I spoil things with the one remaining piece of art-critique I have to offer.
Arvo Part - Pari Intervallo
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Great comments on Rothko. My experience of him has changed, as I used to go to the Tate and find a sense of the numinous, in the Rothko room. But this changed. I recall that he said that art was a material experience, and I started to feel that. It's very concrete, and satisfying. I don't want to interpret them, and this is an odd sensation.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
In my church we had contemplative walking along paintings occasionally; usually this was in the presence of the painter. At some point I had the feeling that the artist got in the way a bit of getting closer to God for me.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
Art is in the eye of the beholder.
I agree with Terry Gillian, who is on record as saying that it it great that people think his latest film, The Zero Theorem is about something other than he intended.
What is are is often more about what the artist sees tan what the artist intended,
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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