free hosting   image hosting   hosting reseller   online album   e-shop   famous people

    When most people think of Christian art nowadays, they immediately think of a specific subject matter: Crucifixion scenes, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or one of the numerous "Madonna with Child" paintings. What these works of art all have in common is subject matter. The concept of "Christian art" has become equivalent to art which explicitly relates to the viewer an unambiguous story pertaining either to the Bible, or to any number of religious traditions passed down over the centuries. Recently, however, this concept has been challenged by artists, theologians, philosophers, and the general public. What makes a work of art "Christian"? Must one find allegorical meaning in every painting in order for it to have spiritual relevance? The Christian historian Dr. Francis Schaeffer is one modern voice which has been on the forefront of this challenge. In 1973, he published his short but provocative book Art & the Bible. It is here where he proclaims that "Christian art is by no means always religious art, that is, art which deals with religious themes."¹ He later continues by saying that "When God created out of nothing by His spoken word, He did not just create ‘religious’ objects."²

    While Schaeffer and others object to this over-emphasis on "religious subject matter", at the same time, there is a call to recognize that "there is no such thing as a godly style or an ungodly style."³ Yet, rarely does one consider abstracted forms to be "Christian", and often times, Christians who paint in a more abstract manner and then present their art as "Christian art" are often shunned by ultra-convervatives. In short, form is rarely considered when discussing the "Christianness" of a piece of art. In order to gain a fuller perspective of what makes a piece of art "Christian", one should consider the paintings of the 19^th Century American artist, Washington Allston. The art of Washington Allston demonstrates how the Christian worldview can be presented both explicitly and implicitly in art, through form, content, and subject matter.

    From the outset, it is obvious that Allston’s brand of Biblical art is somewhat of an anomaly. A quick survey of his portfolio reveals that most of the Biblical scenes which he painted were drawn from the Old Testament. David Bjelajac proposes that Allston drew from the Old Testament "not because of [it’s] historical details" but because of its "sublime poetic symbolism, which associates it with the book of nature."⁴ If this were true, it would mean that there was a sharp departure from Allston’s Biblical paintings and traditional ones. Perhaps this explains why Allston often chose the lesser-known stories, such as Moses and the Serpent, or the story of Isaac’s son Jacob having a dream in which he sees angels ascending and descending upon a cosmic ladder (Jacob’s Dream), or The Dead Man Restored to Life by Touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha, which records a story from 2 Kings.⁵ This apparent departure from typical Old Testament stories (such as the happenings in the Garden of Eden, or the triumph of young David over Goliath) seems to imply that Allston was interested in more than making art which would be automatically labeled as "religious" or "Christian" art. By drawing from these stories, and many more, Allston’s paintings take on a very romanticized quality which one would assume boosted his popularity among the general public (though this wasn’t always the case, as David Bjelajac argues in regards to Allston’s painting Elijah in the Desert).⁶ In fact, some of the stories are so obscure, that, had he not painted a few images from the New Testament (such as Christ Healing the Sick), the subject matter of his paintings might lead one to wrongly believe that he was Jewish, or simply someone who couldn’t think of interesting stories on his own. Not only does he use relatively obscure stories, but he turns them into very didactic, sermon-like images. Consider two paintings by the same name, Belshazzar’s Feast, one by John Martin, and the other by Allston. Both relay to the viewer Daniel’s prophetic oracle (the writing on the wall). However, in Martin’s, you are a spectator away from the calamity. You are a safe onlooker, nothing more. In Allston’s version, you are on the same level as everyone else in the painting. The Prophet Daniel swings back his arm, and you stand before him as if he had just called upon you the same responsibility which he has imparted to Belshazzar. You are not merely an onlooker. You are part of the guilty congregation. As opposed to Martin’s version, Allston’s is personal and invites the viewer to see each character, the roles they play, and the reactions they give which all add to the didactic quality of the painting. In this way, Allston’s Old Testament paintings become the artistic equivalent of a preacher. In addition to Biblical subject matter, however, Allston often painted landscapes. These paintings, which lack the explicit Christian subject matter of his figural compositions, can be interpreted to be just as "Christian" as his narrative scenes, by examining the formal aspects of them.

    Makato Fujimura, a Japanese Christian artist, paints images which are entirely abstract and non-representational. Instead of therefore relying on the traditional aspects of "Christian" art (subject matter), he seeks to use form and content as vehicles to present some sort of "Christianness" in his art. To do this, he approaches art as a sort of visual manifestation of theological concepts. He says, "Christ’s uniqueness lies in not just the content (divinity) but also in the form (humanity). He was the form of all forms, the content of all contents. This uniqueness gives an artist fundamental motivation and reason to pursue the daunting task of bringing form and content together."⁷ Putting this into practice, Kevin J. Connor gives the example of the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant, and how it’s form and content testified to the nature of Jesus Christ: "The ark was made of acacia wood overlaid with gold within and without. Wood speaks of His incorruptible humanity, and gold His Divinity. Two materials, yet one ark; two natures yet one person, the God-Man."⁸ This concept of form and content being a vehicle to present Christianity was picked up by Washington Allston in three main ways: composition, color, and the sublimity of nature. In a lecture that Allston gave about compositional art theory, he writes that

    Schaeffer argues that prior to the theologian/philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274), the majority of "Christian" artists painted paintings of "heavenly" things, rather than nature. He presents a dichotomy between grace (God, Heaven, the unseen, the soul, etc) and nature (creation, earth, the visible, and the body), and shows how, over time, the emphasis has moved away from "grace" and onto "nature".¹⁷ Up until Aquinas,

    All artists, not only Christian artists, should be able to learn from this conscious intertwining of subject matter and formal aspects of art, for, when they are harmonious with each other, they support each other and magnify the completeness of the work. Having an exhibit of Washington Allston’s paintings, with a focus on the wide range of paintings he did, may aide in helping artists grasp this concept. Arranging a series of paintings in such a way that there is a gradual transition from the "most explicit" paintings to those which are "least explicit", it may become evident to the viewer that to portray a particular theme (in this case, Christianity), one does not need to rely solely on subject matter. Elijah in the Desert would be the focal point of the exhibit, since is it arguably Allston’s most popular work, and because it clearly demonstrates the fusion of both explicit and implicit means of portraying a theme. To the viewer’s left of Elijah would be paintings which are most explicit in nature, and to the right would be those which are more implicit, such as nature scenes.