Illusionism Cut

This chapter discusses the work of Victoria Reynolds, whose entire oeuvre situates itself in the context of the tradition of depicting flesh, which usually symbolises the sacrifice of Christ in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century painting. She frames her illusionist paintings of raw flesh in overpainted ornamental frames. For the Carnal in Dante’s Hell has a strong visceral presence and is an expression of incarnational imagination (Eleanor Heartney). A set of presentational devises and aspects of the image as the frame, illusionism, and set of textual frames, are deployed but deprived of their usual function to depict or to present as way of reflecting on the infrastructure of representation and to pose questions of truth and artifice.

Images That Do Not Rest

This chapter discusses three installations by Lawrence Malstaf, which rework religious motifs, or literally set them in motion to reinterpret the idea of the incarnation and the oppositions between body and soul, flesh and spirit, which are still implicitly present in contemporary notions of mediality. Madonnapresents an iconographic inversion of the motif of Annunciation, and situates itself in the broad network of cultural meanings associated with air and breath. The work has broader resonances with iconic images belonging to different periods. It can be seen as a survival from the past which, in the sense of Aby Warburg, displaces and inverts the meaning of the borrowed motif to transform it into a critical commentary. Next to that the co-presence of the technical and the iconic, the imprint and the iconic resonances in the installation Shrink, and the transformation of the motif of Jesus writing in the sand in Sandbible.

The Video Veronicas of Bill Viola

This chapter focuses on several video installations by Bill Viola. Starting in the late 1990s, Viola created a series of video installations that refer to or even closely restage well-known religious paintings. His work makes an interesting case as it seeks to define the conditions of spiritual experiences in the space of the contemporary museum or gallery. Memoria, 2000, or Unspoken: Silver and Gold,2001, are video portraits of emotional states of anguish and suffering projected on a veil or gold surface. Both installations cite the motif of Veronica’s Veil and engage with the complex history of interpretation of the acheiropoieticimage by combining it with a theatrical replay of states of extreme emotional tension. Viola borrows religious formats and iconic masterpieces of religious art in which the religious figures are substituted with anonymous contemporaries. The images function as an embedded frame, thus more as a device than as an image. Next to being a means of reflecting on the human condition, Viola’s engagement with religious art can be read as an attempt to comment on the history of the relatively young medium of video. Viola’s interest in spiritual motifs can be understood as a concern with the intrinsic capacity of the medium of video that can create overwhelming experiences and spiritual effects.

Veronicas and Artists

Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.

Introduction

The Introduction provides an overview of the central questions and the theoretical framework of the book. Since the early 1990s in Europe and the United States many artists critically re-appropriated religious, motifs, themes and images to produce works that cannot qualify as ‘religious,’ but remains in a dialogue with the visual legacy of mostly the Western, and more specifically the Catholic, version of Christianity. Present-day art does not embed religious images to celebrate them, but in order to pose critical questions concerning central aspects of the rules that regulate the status of images, their public significance, the conditions of their production and authorship, and their connection to an origin or tradition, a context or an author that guarantees their value. The motif of the true image or acheiropoietos (not made by a human hand) is related to central set of features that allow distinguishing between regimes or eras of the image. Its transformations provide a conceptual matrix for understanding of the reconfiguring relationships between art and religion. The introduction provides an overview of the theoretical context, the selection of artworks, bibliography on the subject and the chapters of the book.

Images between Religion and Art

This chapter discusses the different ways contemporary artists re-use religious motifs and the effects of such citations. In the majority of cases their artworks function as a context to turn that religion into a topic, and an object of discussion. The critical potential of contemporary artworks that deal with religious themes lies somewhere apart from art’s rejection or mocking of religion, as blasphemy retains its proximity to the specifically religious power of images. When contemporary artists reuse religious motifs they become counter-motifs. The interest in religion, in its various traditions and guises, indicates a desire for self-understanding by re-staging the past. The multifaceted relationship between contemporary art and religion is examined through a detailed discussion of twelve exhibitions organised between 1999 and 2010, which approach religion and religious art from a variety of perspectives. Many of the curators claim that they are emphatically not religious, nor trying to send a religious message. Including religion in the infrastructure of display associated with contemporary art creates a different visibility in the public space and asks questions concerning such visual practices as iconoclasm; the relationship between commercialism, mass media and religion, and the afterlife of religious art, among many others.

Breaking the Religious Image

The chapter provides an overview of two tendencies in the transformation of the status of religious motifs in art starting with the painting of Caspar David Friedrich and ending with Expressionism. This period was characterised by a major shift in the mutual positioning of art and religion both institutionally and aesthetically. Church art became an increasingly problematic category at the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, partly because the clergy objected to decorating churches with the unusual interpretation of religious iconography associated with modernist aesthetics. Considered from this perspective abstract art appeared as an acceptable alternative precisely as opposed to other images with unusual modernist interpretations. The absence of figurative images removes all controversies as to how religious subjects should be interpreted. Religious iconography had a continued presence within the work of numerous artists in the different movements of the historical avant-gardes. While the figurative references to religious motifs in most of the cases were quite critical in their tone (whether this was intended by the artist or not) and used as tools of criticism of the institutions of art and religion, abstract art became the medium for expression of a positive form of spirituality.

Between Critical Displacements and Spiritual Affirmations

This chapter provides an overview of the transformation of the status of religious motifs in the visual art from Surrealism to the late 1990s. When detached from their initial contexts religious motifs cease to signify religious ideas or content, and acquire new meaning. The critical mode of reference to religion, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, articulates a self-reflexive moment that problematises the status of images and the mechanisms of their circulation and display. In the second half of the century, religious motifs embedded in artworks lost their more direct iconoclastic resonances, and were used increasingly as a critical tool directed towards the institution of art itself. An object as the ready-made situated between being an artwork and an object, brought to visibility the “religious” nature of the conditions of the display of art-objects. The medium of video enabled a re-mediation of older art – both film and culturally loaded iconic religious images. This aspect of the medium was by artists to invoke or create a quasi-mystical experience, or to re-frame existing images and film footage in order to make a critical comment on the tradition.

Conclusion

Alexandrova concludes that religion is still extremely present in Western societies. Religion is present as a mind-set, a political factor, as an object of reflection and study, and is prevalent in art. Religious images can be iconic/and or political. Art and religion interact in many different ways. This study provides a reflection on a few aspects, but many more are possible.

The Body Recast

The chapter discusses a group of works by Berlinde De Bruyckere. Recurring themes in her work are the fragility and mortality of the human body. Jelle Luipaardand Hanne include references to religious iconography, but the motifs are strongly modified. These interrupted resemblances to religious art address not only the history of Christian art, but also a set of deeper questions concerning the functioning of the image and its presentation in different contexts. The figurative power of morbid, vulnerable figures coexists with an interest in making visible the very operations of producing the sculptures. Jelle Luipaard critically addresses the violence in religious iconography because it displaces a central religious image (the crucifixion) we are used to seeing and repeats its violence in order to confront its viewer with its logic. In this way the work acquires a critical agency without being a scandalous image from a religious viewpoint. On the other hand, it addresses our desire to make images safe by deeming them as art. The sculpture does not represent death as a reminder of our mortality, but addresses the very issue of its figuration in an art context.