Tadeusz Boruta  - In Pointing God - It Is Not God We Paint

The maximalists may claim that all art is religious, since the very act of artistic creation is similar to the Act of Creation. The creator, leading a life in communion with art, is admitted to the experience of the transcendent, while the artistic idea of "the absolute in art" tends to be easily identified with God. By its very nature art is parareligious in character. The trouble is that there is no dearth of recipi?ents or artists for whom religious reality is either non?existant or dead. For them even a cult picture will be only an artistic object. It is easy to envisage an artist who might use Christian iconography, perhaps, as a part of a cultural heritage, but not with the purpose of creating a religious work of art.

The minimalists will limit the phenomenon of religious art to "cult art", perhaps adding iconographic works connected with a particular religion. A boundary delineated in this way will leave outside the field of religious art the works by, for instance, artists who are religious and whose art grows out of an authentic, and sometimes dramatic, search for God, "arguing" as it were with Him and with themselves without turning to ready-made models. On the other h7nd works that use Christian iconography merely as dements in a game of meaning, provocation or camou?flage, will, on this scheme, be classified as religious.

It cannot be said that all masterpieces are religious. There are many sacrosanct paintings that are artistically medio?cre, but that carry out their cultural function very well.

Any attempt to classify the religious works of art is going to come up against obstacles. Perhaps, then, we should assume that it is up to the artist to say whether or not his work is religious. An arbitrary declaration by the artist would pre-determine the whole issue, regardless of the work's content. It would be a definition analogous to the frequent claim that any artefact or part of reality is a work of art if an artist intends it to be such. But we cannot just disregard the recipient who is going to associate his religious feelings or even experiences with a work of art never intended by its creator to be seen in that way. We are totally helpless, moreover, with respect to the state?ment that God may choose any painting at all for His manifestation. If we consider the claim that there exists a religious relation only when a subjective link is involved between a definite person and a definite, personal God, we limit religious art only to art that mirrors this relation. The chance for this kind of art would be the pin-pointing of what is essentially religious and what, with reference to the Church, cannot be reduced to the externally patent and obvious, but it is precisely what is "obvious" in this formula?tion that may pose the biggest problems. Is a routinely painted portrait of a saint a work of religious art? Is every church decoration religious? Rather that art might be considered religious, in which the whole personality of the artist as a believer, with all its existential complications, were involved. That art would be religious in which God were being sought in every manifestation of reality, in which the harmony of the world were discovered, the creator contemplated in the work of creation. This formu?lation of the problem accentuates only 'he artist's per?sonal experiences and their externalisation in the work of art. The recipient many only accept it or participate in the artist's experience. But art understood in this way eludes the church-door.

Religious reality is immensely complex. Beside its transcen?dental and spiritual dimension, there is the social, political, philosophical cultural reality... The multiplicity of religions and religious denominations, which all the more frequently are undergoing an additional process of mutual conden?sation and proliferation within the same cultural territory, does not make the distinction of what is religious from what isn't any easier, either. The problem is complicated still further by the fact that religions tend to operate in the context of politically and socially secular states and inter?national structures, while the religious state is rare.

If we want to make any progress at all in this sphere we are forced to accept the following assumption. The expres?sion of any kind of opinion on judgement on the question of a work of art's religious character by persons from the outside, for whom that particular religion is inert, is not legitimate. For a person adhering to another religion, or an agnostic or atheist, what we acknowledge as religious may appear to be totally secular. Even if we assumed that such a person were to accept the artist's assurance that his picture was a declaration of faith, a non-believer's statement on a work of art's religious character would be thoroughly incommensurate with a similar claim by a co?religionist. It is the essential nature of religious reality that lies at the basis of the incoherence of the two experi?ences. Attempts to reach an understanding are obliged to remain at the cultural level, and religiousness as such is dissipated.

The distinction between the sacred and the profane takes for granted the dichotomy of the world, and hence of culture too. It is a result of along process of the secular emancipation of the social, political and ultimately cul?tural structures. For non-believers the reality of the sacred as a sacred reality is non-existent. They tend to view religion through the focus of the Church and its hieratic structure as just one more social institution. On the other hand for the believer the whole universe bears a religious stamp, and his acts, thoughts, private and public life are all religious. The sacred is by no means kept within the sanctuary of the church. Even sin or the existence of evil in the form of the Devil are a result of this religious relation. From the believer's point of view there is no such thing as the profane being the opposite of the sacred. He may only identify the Sanctissimus as the repository of God's special presence. A consequence of the claim that for the believer the entire reality of his life has a religious dimension is the acknowledgement that each and every work of art by a believing artist is religious, irrespective of what it actually presents.

The need to divide art up into religious and non-religious art is a typically civilization need - to segregate, classify, and atomise reality. But while the stratification and name ?tagging of art according to historical and stylistic period may have some sense, the criterion of religion for sub?division is in fact an attempt to separate something that is intrinsically integral in terms of experience. This may be clearly observed on the example of the Russian Orthodox Church, where the icon and the church building are said to be sacramental in nature. God is immanent in any given icon, while at the same time transcendental with respect to it. The whole universe and all beings, especially man the likeness (icon) of God, is permeated by the divine. In Western churches the artist finds himself in a much more difficult situation. The theologies have never given a clear exposition on the need to represent in visual art. To this is added the concept of the person, totally alien to the Eastern cultures, with its burden of guilt, responsibil?ity, and freedom. The idea of the person implies the religious relation as a relation of an act. The artist's aware?ness is kept all the time on the fringe of schizophrenia, where his being a believer is counterpoised against his being an artist. Art wants to be a place for self-discovery, but the artist may again and again hear these words .

What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies?

For the workman trusts in his own creation when he makes dumb idols!...

But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him (Habakkuk 2: 18, 20)

I think that there are many artists who would be inclined to agree with the principles of the iconostases, seeing no need for the creation of religious images. In painting God - it is not Got that we paint. The new religious art grows not out of the artist's experience of greatness as one of God's "chosen few", but rather out of his feeling of negligibility, his insecurity, anxiety and sense of guilt. It grows out of a need to enter a dialogue with God in a language that he has been equipped with. Aware that each new picture has an ethical dimension, in the act of creation we are balancing between the necessary and the sense of sin. And though some may claim that only kitsch is sinful, I am nevertheless disturbed by the thought that even painting a masterpiece is a sin.

Tadeusz Boruta

Monte San Savino

17th May, 1993