Archive for May, 2009
I just finished reading the latest issue of Mormon Artist magazine.
The issue is packed with interviews with Mormon artists, each of which features questions like “How do you see the gospel influencing your work?” and “How do you see your work helping build the kingdom?”
The interviews are all pretty enlightening, but here is my favorite response, which comes from author Janette Rallison:
Young adult novels have become really sexual in the last few years, and many authors don’t skimp on the details, either. Every time I see an author out promoting one of these books, I want to say, “Hello, you’re writing this book for kids who aren’t responsible enough to turn in their library books on time. Should you really be encouraging them to have sex?”
My main characters don’t even date until they’re sixteen. They also don’t smoke or drink coffee or tea. There are no swear words in my books. This is another rarity in teen books lately. I’ve actually had several readers e-mail me and ask me if I was LDS. My editors don’t want me to have any of my characters be LDS, so I get a kick out of it when people pick up on these clues anyway.
On another level, and perhaps a more important one, my characters have hope. They triumph over trials. They find meaning in them.
I think it’s kind of sad that the editors ask for non-LDS characters. I’m sure they would just cite statistics about what “the market” wants, but that does not make me feel any better to know that the larger public, rather than just a handful of editors, cannot fall in love with LDS characters.
Piri Halasz, who writes the fantastic site From the Mayor’s Doorstep, writes about my work in her June 2009 column. Piri is the author most recently of A Memoir of Creativity: Abstract Painting, Politics & the Media, 1956-2008, and in addition to writing on the arts for Time, she has published more than 200 articles and reviews in 11 different publications, which range Smithsonian magazine to NYArts (in which I have also published a handful of reviews) and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her full bio is available here.
Here is the relevant passage about the show I was in:
In the Stanton Street Synagogue, one block south of Houston, I attended the opening of an exhibit of the Jewish Art Salon entitled “Tzelem: Likeness and Presence in Jewish Art.” The Jewish Art Salon is a group of artists who meet once a month to discuss their work, life, the Jewish themes inherent in their work, and the variety of sources that they draw upon to create it. In the book of Genesis, God creates man using the word “Tzelem,” meaning “likeness,” but (explained the curators for this show) “the Hebrew word does not imply a visual correspondence. Rather it denotes intelligence and is bound up with concepts of morality, language, and a unique spiritual paradigm.” Even so, nearly all the work in this exhibition of 29 artists was representational, not abstract. A few of the 29 were professional artists, among them Archie Rand, Jill Nathanson, Deborah Rosenthal and Tobi Kahn, but on the whole, the emphasis of this exhibition was iconographic, as opposed to stylistic – few if indeed any esthetic radicals here. I was invited to the opening by Menachem Wecker, who is better known as a critic and writer than he is as an artist (this was also true of several other participants in the show). Without wishing to appear overly influenced by his hospitality, I have to say that I thought his three drawings were almost, maybe even the best pieces in the show–nothing spectacular about them, just plain honest workmanship (their subject: three personifications of that enigmatic figure, the Wandering Jew, as rendered in three different artistic styles).
To read the rest of Piri’s June article, click here.
According to her website, Nadia Janjua’s art draws from her faith. “One day after prayer, while I was making supplication, I became distracted by my hands, and how multi-colored they were,” she writes, “these were the hands that Allah had given me: dark under the nails, brown on the outside, white on the inside, and a blended line of distinction down the profile of my hand.” I first came across Nadia on Twitter (follow her @njARTitectr), and here is the result of our conversation…
MW: You talk in your bio about artists’ capacity to use their hands to create with Allah’s will. Does this mean you identify as a Muslim artist? What does that term mean to you?
NJ: I identify as an Artist, who happens to be a Muslim, an American, a Pakistani, a Kashmiri. My faith and religion are an indistinct part of everything I do, and I don’t feel I need to categorize myself as a particular type of Artist because of that.
I have a broad interpretation of the term “Muslim Artist,” or “Islamic Artist,” which relates more to my ideas of what exactly “Islamic Art” is. As an initial clarification, “Islamic” cannot be used in the same way as “Christian” in Christian Art, or “Buddhist” in Buddhist Art, for historically it’s always transgressed ethnic and geographical bounds. It was more so about culture, then religion. For me, the term “Muslim Artist” really implies a certain relationship between human and his/her surroundings.
In my statement about artists’ capacity to use their hands to create, “with Allah’s will,” I meant to emphasize the latter part of that statement: “with Allah’s will.” While we are the vessels through which the physical creation of art occurs, I wanted to make the distinction that in my belief, only God can ultimately create, and give us the ability to create inanimate work (inanimate in a biological sense, not spiritual).
MW: There are quotes (I believe from Hadith) about the Prophet condemning artists to the fire. How do you respond to these verses, particularly as an artist who works in a naturalistic mode some of the time?
NJ: Well, there are a few clarifications I’d like to make first. Muslims believe the Prophet Mohamad (peace be upon him) to be a messenger sent to humankind by God, needless to say, similar to Prophet Jesus, Moses, and Joseph (peace by upon them all), for example. The Prophets did not condemn anyone to hellfire; they communicated prohibitions or theological pronouncements to humankind through God’s revelations.
Traditionally, Islamic Art attempts to display Divine beauty by detaching that beauty from this world, basically, from things that figurative art attempts to represent. There is an abstract nature to it and it represent ideas, rather than objects. The Prophet’s prohibition of making images had to do with forbidding the practice in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times of worshiping these images, forms, and idols. In Islam, there is no space for worship of anyone as a partner to God.
Nothing about art has ever been literal or straightforward; it is its inherent nature. At best, I will say Islamic art, or the view of art in Islam, for Muslims, is that it’s neither tangible nor spiritual, it is something in between. It attempts to represent a vision of God’s presence in the world, simultaneous with His incomparability to anything in this world. In essence beauty is always to be connected with the Ultimate One who Created it.
Continue reading ‘10 questions for Nadia Janjua: artist, arch. designer’
My review appears in The Jewish Press. Featured artists: Archie Rand, Deborah Rosenthal, John Bradford, and Ita Aber.
A couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to see “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” at the New Museum in Manhattan. Carrying the tag line “50 artists from 25 countries all under 33,” the show, which the museum is hailing as “the only exhibition of its kind in the United States,” seemed very unfocused to me.
The show — like many others I have seen that are essentially parking lots for contemporary art, sculpture, assemblage, and installation — demands a tremendous amount of time and effort on the viewer’s part in reading large amounts of wall texts to understand the works.
A Rembrandt’s worth of a thousand words is nice precisely because it is visual rather than textual, and as such can be quickly deciphered, but I’ve found many contemporary pieces, even after I’ve clocked in the appropriate background research, remain ambiguous despite my having suffered through the catalog and the posted materials.
I believe many viewers jump to conclusions too quickly and denounce all modern art as useless without putting any effort into trying to listen to the works, but I also wonder where so many artists get off arrogantly thinking they can require their audiences to invest so much to understand them. This kind of self-centered approach is so Gen. Y.
The Gen. Y artists in “Younger” talked a lot about themselves, and not at all about Jesus. I was simultaneously thrilled that Jesus was being placed front and center in the show, and disappointed that the exhibit did absolutely nothing in the way of educating about Jesus or faith. The title struck me as false advertising.
In fact, the exhibit website doesn’t reveal a thing about Jesus (or how, if at all, he impacted the artists), beyond invoking him several times in the exhibit name. The viewer is meant to assume Jesus was 33 when he was crucified (as this Wiki page argues), though this could be fleshed out more (e.g. here).
The show left me wondering if the museum was being offensive in focusing on Jesus’ age, as if he was inexperienced, and his worldview was irrevocably shaped by his youth (though Karen Sue Smith, in her great review of the show, argues the title does not mock).
I also asked myself what Jesus, who was the master of metaphors, would think about all the theories that surfaced in the show. For the most part, I decided, Jesus’ parables are concise, purposeful, and blunt. He could have taught the artists of “Younger” a thing or two about communication (and perhaps even carpentry).
I am not going to say anything about the individual works (see this arforum piece for a good synopsis). They didn’t strike me as anything wonderful to write home about, but I encourage everyone who has the opportunity to see the show to do so, because it is an exciting enterprise, and I like how the museum is trying to bring younger perspectives to its audiences.
What initially excited me most about the show’s title was its promise to balance Gen. Y (and its narcissism, ego, and complicated identities) and Jesus (the exact opposite). If there had been an effort to navigate that balance I think the show would have been far more exciting.
Image: AIDS-3D OMG Obelisk, 2007 MDF, electroluminescent wire, steel, hot glue, acrylic paint and fire. Source: New Museum.
BYU’s museum displays a hanger-sculpture without worrying it’s not Mormon, an associate pastor claims Kentridge for spirituality (noting, as I have, Kentridge is Jewish), and beliefnet covers Star Wars’ 10 commandments (HT: RNS).
Oprah helps bring diversity to an angel museum, Woody has to prove he commands $10m/ad (to fight an unauthorized rabbinic impersonation), and more controversy surrounds the Pope’s past run-ins with the Hitler Youth (and here), which is ironic given his recent denouncement of hijacking religion for political pretexts, amidst questions what the heck anti-Semitism is anyway.
Part I; Part II. Rev. Gerald R. Johns Jr. is pastor of Providence Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Per his website, he received a B.A. from Southwestern College and an M.Div. from Texas Christian University. You can follow him on Twitter, where I first “met” him, @JerryJohns.
MW: There have been some recent controversies in which Christ has been depicted in chocolate [my interview with the artist Cosimo Cavallaro] and earlier with animal and human excrement. To what extent do you think artists — whether Christian or not — should be required to treat Jesus respectfully in their art?
GRJ: I can’t imagine why anyone would be required to produce art within parameters. Artists should by nature freely express. While many may not find the art to be in good taste I don’t think art should be limited. Whether or not someone chooses to purchase it or display it is up to them. In a sense artists paint, sculpt, draw, and create in order to be appreciated by an audience. If what they produce does not inspire an audience then so be it.
I suppose another area of controversy generated around this type of art has been whether the National Endowment for the Arts ought to be funding such projects. That is going to depend on who is on the granting board for the NEA. It is their best judgment whether the art evokes something, will garner a following or makes an important statement or breaks a boundary that is revolutionary. (I think there is more to be said on this, and would be glad to follow up more.)
MW: You recently joined Twitter, where you join quite a large number of ministers, priests, and pastors using social media. Why do you think Christian leaders are embracing new media at a much quicker rate than other religious leaders?
GRJ: The evangelical churches that brought the church into the 21st century in relation to media are probably leading the way. They saw some years ago that introducing media into worship would draw people. There are lots and lots of folks in the pews who eschew technology in their homes and certainly in their worship. I would also say that ministers are relational and community-oriented. We don’t have lots of opportunities to gather and talk about our parishes and leadership and stewardship and frustrations. Add to that the people we knew in school are mostly scattered around the country and Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn become for us a tool for interaction with one another. Most of the Pastors I know are looking for ways to build community, to reach young people and they are not afraid of technology. Social Media does raise concern among Pastors because it offers opportunities for predators to locate and take advantage of people who have low esteem.
The Globe may be in trouble (as is Jay Severin per the story that appears in the image from the previous link), but at least the Pats now have divine intervention… Story here.
