In 1970 InterVarsity Press published Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, a book by the Dutch art historian Hans Rookmaaker that offered a retelling of the history of modern art by linking it to broader dynamics of religious (un)belief in Western cultures. Rookmaaker argued that beneath all its other orders of meaning, modern art was shaped by fundamentally theological assumptions and practices—and in his view there were some deeply problematic theologies that were in play. His book has become a classic in some circles: the majority of Christians interested or involved in the visual arts have read it at some point. At the same time, however, it is almost entirely ignored outside of those circles: within the academic art discourse, Rookmaaker’s theological method and the narrative of modernism that emerged from it are foreign and idiosyncratic. This incongruity is emblematic of larger disconnects between the worlds of modern art and Christianity, particularly in its evangelical forms.
Written four and a half decades later, this present book, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture, is in some ways a grandchild of Rookmaaker’s volume. We share Rookmaaker’s belief that the history of modern art does indeed carry an enormous amount of theological freight, even if it generally remains underinterpreted as such in the academic discourse. However, as might be surmised by comparing our title and his, this is also a kind of belated riposte to his book. Our sympathies with Rookmaaker are tempered by some deep reservations and disagreements about the ways he interpreted modern art history and its theological meanings. His work was surely ennobling to many Christians who were struggling to think more carefully about twentieth-century artistic practices—indeed, he opened up intellectual space that the present authors have certainly benefited from—but his critical method and his declinist account of modern art history have also produced significant impediments to understanding and constructively contributing to the primary art discourses. Readers of Rookmaaker who spend extended time in a graduate art program inevitably encounter these impediments in one way or another.
In what follows we intend to pay tribute to Rookmaaker’s pioneering study and to the generative thinking it fostered for many Christians, yet at the same time we will critique and supplant the central theses of that book. In contrast to Rookmaaker’s approach, we propose to attend to modern art in terms of “the life of a culture,” by which we mean to signal at least two themes that we will highlight throughout: (1) This book is an attempt to trace some of the ways that religious life—within Christian traditions in particular—continued to influence and constructively shape the development of the modernist avant-garde, despite general impressions to the contrary. And (2) we wish to investigate the ways that modernist artists were attempting to come to terms with (the meanings of) life in the age of modernity, which consistently pulled unresolved theological questions and concerns into the cultural foreground. In light of these themes, this book is a preliminary attempt to revisit the rise of modernist art in visual art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to contest the reigning narrative of that period (which Rookmaaker only reinforced)—namely, that it represents a growing secularization and antipathy toward religion. Rather, we will argue for a rereading of modern art history that recognizes the more complicated roles of religious tradition and theological questioning in the formation of that history.
In taking up these tasks, this book is also an attempt to press into what Sally Promey has called the “historical absence of interdisciplinary collaboration between those invested in the academic study of art and religion—and especially the disinclination of art historians to come to scholarly terms with religion.”1 The argument presented here is the product of collaboration between a theologian of culture, William Dyrness, and an artist and art critic, Jonathan Anderson. This collaboration is intended to bring modern art history and theology—two disciplines that have historically been in conflict or simply unintelligible to each other—into more direct, mutually enriching conversation. We hope that by including the different perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds of the two authors, this partnership will contribute to a more holistic view of this period.
Such collaboration inevitably produces multiplicity in the points of view, writing styles and positions taken; and the methods and angles of approach in the following pages will vary accordingly. Bill is drawn to a more historical and genealogical approach, tracing the lines of influence by which religious practices and theological thinking have, directly or indirectly, shaped the lives of modern artists and their communities. Jonathan’s framework is more critical and philosophical, oriented toward questioning the ways that religious contexts and theological concerns bear upon our encounters with and interpretations of particular artists and artworks. Our differences are also evident in the use of key vocabulary, which a careful reader may notice. For example, Bill will use theology in the sense of God’s actual presence (or absence) in the development of cultural products and in the way theological ideas and traditions have, often unnoticed, exercised continuing influence. Jonathan understands theology as a particular kind of questioning within a particular field of concerns—one that explores the meaning of some aspect of human experience (an art object, for instance) in relation to the presence (or absence) of God. Ultimately these approaches need one another and are meant to be complementary, though they tend to proceed by paying attention to different things in different ways (and thus tend to produce different insights). With whatever strengths and weaknesses the resulting book may have, we let it stand as an artifact of the kind of collaborative engagement that we hope will happen with greater depth and regularity in the years ahead.
This book unfolds in two parts. Part one includes two introductory chapters that situate our project in its relevant critical contexts and work through some of the difficulties that must be addressed. Chapter one provides an introduction to the strange and challenging place of religion in the contemporary discourse of modern art. Chapter two narrows the focus to one of the dominant strands of Christian commentary on modern art history and criticism, focusing specifically on Rookmaaker and the ways his work has carried through to the present with both helpful and hindering effects.
Part two then engages in more focused art historical studies that are organized by geographical region, each offering a series of investigations of varying lengths and scopes into particular artists, artworks, texts and histories associated with those regions. In chapter three, Bill considers the historical development of styles and attitudes in France, showing the influence of theological reflection not only on French but also (subsequently) on British modernism. In chapters four and five, Jonathan investigates modernist painting in northern Europe and Russia, focusing especially on the ways that the dismantling of pictorial space in these regions was bound up (often explicitly) in theological concerns inherited from the traditions of Protestantism and Russian Orthodoxy, respectively. In chapter six, Bill explores the early periods of painting and religion in North America during a time when such influences were easier to track down and describe. And in chapter seven Jonathan examines a handful of postwar American artists who grappled with difficult questions about visual meaning in an age of mass-media consumerism—and did so within specifically theological frames of reference.
It might be appropriate to include a word here about the limited parameters of this project. Our choice to limit ourselves to a narrow set of geographical and cultural centers of influence—France, England, Germany, Holland, Russia and the United States—follows from two considerations: (1) we are specifically revisiting the regions and the artists most commonly associated with modernism, including those who were the focus of Rookmaaker’s book, and (2) since our interest is in the influence of religion and religious traditions, we have focused our attention on tracking the influences of the major Christian traditions: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant.2 Obviously these limitations produce various lacunae that are evident in the chapters that follow. Numerous extremely important artists have been left out or given regrettably short shrift; the full scope of what Robert Rosenblum calls the “Northern Romantic tradition” will not be covered; southern and eastern Europe deserve much more attention than they receive here; the early history of art in the United States has been passed over; and the rich religious heritage of Britain before the influence of French traditions has been left to one side. And of course by limiting ourselves to North Atlantic modernism we have had to remain silent about the work of numerous important modernists working in Central and South America, Africa and Asia—many of whom would contribute enormous insights to this discussion. Nevertheless, we hope our selection provides significant points of entry into this period, and we hope that other scholars will follow up with further studies. We make no claim to provide anything like a full portrait of artistic modernism here; these are rather a series of snapshots that hopefully will help shift the center of focus in discussions about religion and modernism.
We have accumulated many debts in the preparation of this work. Bill wants to thank colleagues at the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts at Fuller Seminary, especially Robert Johnston and Todd Johnson. Jonathan thanks his colleagues in the art department at Biola University, all of whom have been generous friends and patient dialogue partners. We both thank Daniel Siedell for his encouragement and his contribution of an afterword, as well as Taylor Worley and the anonymous reviewers who offered very helpful feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript. We are grateful to Fuller PhD students Maria Fee and Christi Wells for their research assistance. And we thank our excellent editors, David McNutt and Daniel Reid, who carefully and patiently supported this project through its long gestation.
Los Angeles
August 2015