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Conceptual Art and Theology
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Conceptual Art and Theology

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Theologies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2022) | Viewed by 22248

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Taylor Worley

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Visiting Associate Professor of Art History, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187, USA
Interests: systematic and philosophical theology; theological aesthetics; theology and the arts; modern and contemporary art

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Religions will pursue the question of theology’s relationship to contemporary art specifically focusing on the topic of conceptualism in the visual arts. This issue will thus focus on theological engagement with works of art that can be seen as essentially conceptual in nature. What is meant here by “conceptual” is loosely derived from the artist Sol LeWitt’s famous essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” in which he states that, “In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.” While short-lived as an exclusive, neo-avant-garde movement, conceptualism exerts a broad and ongoing influence today, especially in the proliferation of new media, emerging forms of cinema, and especially among the expansive experimentations from land art, installation art, performance art, social practice art, and video art. Rather than a discreet, single trajectory of similar or recent artworks, theology should concentrate here on examples of what the art historian Thomas Crow has identified in his recent text No Idols: The Missing Theology of Art, where canonical figures like Mark Rothko, Robert Smithson, or James Turrell demonstrate markedly anti-idolatrous impulses in their defining works. In this light, the Christian tradition’s perennial concerns with idolatry as well as its long-standing celebration of contemplation and the cultivation of a theological imagination emerge as key criteria for engagement with conceptualism. Both might prove surprisingly generative for re-engaging art that resists, in the words of Crow, “both idolatrous figuration and its seeming opposite in the disenchanted materialism” of high modernism’s legacy in contemporary art.

The kind of theological engagement envisioned for this Special Issue represents an attempt at addressing a significant gap in the larger literature of theology and the visual arts. Where there exists a depth of theological reflection on visual art, it rarely if ever touches on more recent trends, especially a development as challenging as conceptual art. Where treatments of the relationship between religion and contemporary art feature conceptualism, there is little depth of reflection on its theological value, especially as it relates to the broader Christian tradition’s theological resources for recognizing and appreciating such developments. The purpose of this issue, then, is to identify the unique intellectual contributions of conceptual art and celebrate the imaginative affinities between theology and conceptualism. Examples of such will help to move theology’s consideration of the arts further beyond crass forms of illustration and instrumentalism and onto a more rigorous assessment of the generative methods of contemporary production like conceptualism. Additionally, this effort will be undertaken in hopes of creating or expanding the categories for further scholarly engagements with current practice in the arts.

Potential authors should identify individual artists or artworks that bear particular significance for their theological questions or concerns. Such engagements might take the form of theological descriptions of conceptualism’s function, theological commentary on a work’s significance or meaning, and/or applications of conceptualism for theological reflection. Authors should also feel free to consider conceptualism from a range of theological methods or assumptions; for instance, theological aesthetics, spiritual or mystical theology, theologies of contemplation, lived theology, and/or practical theology. Co-authored submissions, especially between theologians and artists, are most welcome.

Dr. Taylor Worley
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • theological aesthetics
  • theology and the arts
  • contemporary art
  • conceptualism
  • conceptual art, theology of contemplation

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Published Papers (8 papers)

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20 pages, 335 KiB  
Article
The Difference of Indifference: Marcel Duchamp and the Possibilities of Dialogical Personalism
by Stephen M. Garrett
Religions 2024, 15(4), 438; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040438 - 31 Mar 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1677
Abstract
Joseph Kosuth, one of Concept Art’s influential practitioners, credited Marcel Duchamp in an important 1969 essay, “Art After Philosophy”, with instigating the shift from the visual to the conceptual by means of indifference and dematerialization. Duchamp’s approach to art was not limited, however, [...] Read more.
Joseph Kosuth, one of Concept Art’s influential practitioners, credited Marcel Duchamp in an important 1969 essay, “Art After Philosophy”, with instigating the shift from the visual to the conceptual by means of indifference and dematerialization. Duchamp’s approach to art was not limited, however, to the realm of artistic intention but also included the (re)contextualization provoked by his readymades. This (re)contextualization elucidated the embodied, dialogical encounters of the artist-artwork-audience, what I identify as an “aesthetics of difference”. This designation sets forth a framework of meaning that draws upon a burgeoning subset of early-twentieth-century personalist philosophy called dialogical personalism in order to offer a more suitable plausibility structure than the usual explanations of Duchamp and his approach to art, which typically revolve around nihilism, absurdity, and a solipsistic understanding of freedom. In doing so, Duchamp’s artistic approach retains not only a more viable ontology for continuing to question the nature of art, but also has important epistemological and ethical implications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)
9 pages, 218 KiB  
Article
The Rothko Chapel: Profane or Sacred Space?
by Mark Allen
Religions 2023, 14(7), 853; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14070853 - 29 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2725
Abstract
Despite the atheism of renowned abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, the artist was commissioned by Christians to create a sacred space that was originally intended to be used by religious believers: the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. The project started out as a [...] Read more.
Despite the atheism of renowned abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, the artist was commissioned by Christians to create a sacred space that was originally intended to be used by religious believers: the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. The project started out as a collaboration between Rothko and another atheist: famed architect Phillip Johnson, who designed several prominent religious spaces throughout his distinguished career. While Johnson removed himself from the Chapel project early on, Rothko would have carried his conceptual vision all the way to the end if it were not for his tragic suicide just prior to the Chapel’s completion. Using as a guide the criteria for sacred space set forth in the classic work The Sacred and The Profane by famed historian Mircea Eliade, I will consider the question of how a religious space designed by non-believers can be rightly considered sacred, as well as ways in which it falls short. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)
18 pages, 853 KiB  
Article
The Neglected Place of “Totems” in Contemporary Art
by Aixin Zhang
Religions 2023, 14(6), 810; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060810 - 19 Jun 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2961
Abstract
The religious nature of Joseph Beuys’ works was ignored or intentionally avoided by mainstream criticism since his artistic practice was ridiculed for its potential spirituality. It is argued that Beuys’ works are work meditations on the issues of potential ego in totemic art, [...] Read more.
The religious nature of Joseph Beuys’ works was ignored or intentionally avoided by mainstream criticism since his artistic practice was ridiculed for its potential spirituality. It is argued that Beuys’ works are work meditations on the issues of potential ego in totemic art, which are frequent topics of theological concern. For example, what is the nature of our consciousness after death, and how does it relate to the consciousness of others? Beuys’ conceptual artworks reveal his engagement with the “witchcraft etiquette” of totemic art and his exploration of theological questions such as the relation between human consciousness and divinity, the role of sacrifice and resurrection, and the meaning of self-awareness. In other words, we can draw inspiration from the theological theories of Alfred North Whitehead and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to examine Beuys’ choice of conceptual art through the lens of his deep self-consciousness of totem worship. In general, Beuys’ works pose an important question: how can we awaken our chaotic consciousness to new or forgotten sprouts which may rejuvenate our existence in the world? Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)
15 pages, 8449 KiB  
Article
Art Together, Prayer Together: Relational and Revelatory Practices of Joseph Beuys, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Leslie Iwai
by Meaghan Burke
Religions 2023, 14(1), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010024 - 22 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2007
Abstract
This paper investigates a theology of prayer embedded within social and artistic practice. It considers how conceptual art broadened social possibilities for art, and how for Joseph Beuys and later Leslie Iwai, these possibilities probe spiritual realities. Beuys’ democratic methodologies, considering everyone as [...] Read more.
This paper investigates a theology of prayer embedded within social and artistic practice. It considers how conceptual art broadened social possibilities for art, and how for Joseph Beuys and later Leslie Iwai, these possibilities probe spiritual realities. Beuys’ democratic methodologies, considering everyone as performing the world-shaping work of the artist, were central to his practice and described by Beuys as representations of Christ. In Life Together, the artist’s contemporary, Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers his own approach to Christ’s presence within sociality. The book reflects on his time directing a seminary where communal life was not only shaped by spiritual exercises like prayer, but also enriched by the arts. Consequently, one may read Life Together as grounding for socially and spiritually attuned artistic endeavours. This has been the case in Leslie Iwai’s conceptually and communally motivated artistic practice, which has developed alongside prayer practices and her own readings of Life Together. Social-spiritual features of Beuys’ conceptual art—seeing Christ and one another concurrently—are extended in Bonhoeffer’s articulation of prayer—not only revealing God and each other but also a means of presenting one another to God. Affinities between conceptual art and prayer emerge: both may be disclosive, holding together seen and unseen realities. Iwai can be seen to work from a conceptual mode of social-spiritual disclosure, and from consonant revelatory and intercessory practices of prayer echoing those of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)
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14 pages, 271 KiB  
Article
Conceptual Art, Theology, and Re-Presentation
by Jonathan A. Anderson
Religions 2022, 13(10), 984; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100984 - 18 Oct 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3005
Abstract
Within the vast and varied scholarship of contemporary art, the relations between conceptual art and religion generally have not received careful investigation. There are, however, potentially quite subtle and complicated interrelations in play here that warrant closer study. This article develops and expands [...] Read more.
Within the vast and varied scholarship of contemporary art, the relations between conceptual art and religion generally have not received careful investigation. There are, however, potentially quite subtle and complicated interrelations in play here that warrant closer study. This article develops and expands such study, first, by clarifying how procedural and re-presentational ways of thinking function in conceptual art, and, second, by showing how these help us to identify six general “logics” within which the interrelations of conceptual art and religion might be reexamined in the histories of contemporary art, both critically and constructively. These six categories are helpful heuristic guides, but each must be substantiated through fine-grained investigations of particular artists and artworks, and each involves “religion” in ways that open into and require particular theological modes of questioning. Therefore, third, this article then turns to a case study of contemporary Belgian artist Kris Martin, focusing especially on For Whom (2012), a work featuring a readymade two-ton church bell that swings on the hour but without a clapper (and thus without sound). Martin’s work consistently re-presents Christian forms and artifacts in compromised states—vacant altarpieces, broken statuary, etc.—invoking histories of European secularization while also retrieving and reactivating theological questions and grammars within those histories. By clarifying these various points of reference, particularly in dialogue with John Donne (from whom Martin borrows his title), this study attends to one instance of a significant interfacing of conceptual art, religion, and theology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)
18 pages, 327 KiB  
Article
The Edge of Perception: Gordon Matta-Clark’s Hermeneutic of Place and the Possibilities of Absence for the Theological Imagination
by C. M. Howell
Religions 2022, 13(10), 920; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100920 - 30 Sep 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2204
Abstract
This article places the conceptual artist Gordon Matta-Clark in conversation with hermeneutical debates within the field of theological aesthetics. By exploring the transformative effect Matta-Clark’s Splitting evokes on spatially related categories, I argue that place is a locus of meaning, and that absence [...] Read more.
This article places the conceptual artist Gordon Matta-Clark in conversation with hermeneutical debates within the field of theological aesthetics. By exploring the transformative effect Matta-Clark’s Splitting evokes on spatially related categories, I argue that place is a locus of meaning, and that absence is a constitutive feature of that meaning. The hermeneutics at play in Matta-Clark have a set of formal features which is in accord with certain positions within theological aesthetics, namely: the particularities of place over the generalities of space, the constitutive role of both absence and presence for perception, and the formative power of these on human identity. A final section argues that while meaning is embedded in place, the imagination retains a vital place in the hermeneutical process through its “imaging” function in events of perception. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)
9 pages, 228 KiB  
Article
Going to the Morgue with Andres Serrano: Provocation as Revelation
by Alex Sosler
Religions 2022, 13(6), 562; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13060562 - 17 Jun 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3501
Abstract
Originally displayed in Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City’s SoHo district, Andres Serrano’s The Morgue series continued the artist’s controversial and transgressive work. Set against a black backdrop in a mortuary, he photographed dead bodies in different stages of decomposition. In this [...] Read more.
Originally displayed in Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City’s SoHo district, Andres Serrano’s The Morgue series continued the artist’s controversial and transgressive work. Set against a black backdrop in a mortuary, he photographed dead bodies in different stages of decomposition. In this article, I borrow from Charles Taylor’s cultural analysis of the secular and Flannery O’Connor’s literary theory of the revelatory power of the grotesque to discuss Serrano’s artistic choices. In essence, I argue that his work is not a desecration of humanity but a stark reminder of the sacralization of humanity. As such, Serrano’s work is not provocative for provocation’s sake, but a provocation to poke holes in a disenchanted age. Underneath Serrano’s images is the question: if this is a heap of flesh, why are you provoked? In a culture that avoids death at all costs, Serrano reminds the contemporary world of their mortality with an updated form of memento mori art. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)

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12 pages, 228 KiB  
Essay
The Readymade as Social Exchange: Everyday Tactics of Resistance in Conceptual Art
by Arthur Aghajanian
Religions 2022, 13(11), 1078; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111078 - 9 Nov 2022
Viewed by 2483
Abstract
Ever since Marcel Duchamp introduced the readymade, the mass-produced object has played a key role in modern and contemporary art. As commodity culture became increasingly dominant in the decades following the second world war, artists turned to the readymade in the context of [...] Read more.
Ever since Marcel Duchamp introduced the readymade, the mass-produced object has played a key role in modern and contemporary art. As commodity culture became increasingly dominant in the decades following the second world war, artists turned to the readymade in the context of two movements that continue to be influential for the art of today: Pop art and Conceptual art. In the work of many contemporary artists, we have witnessed the tendency—inspired by Pop art’s engagement with consumer culture, to heighten the fetishistic nature of the commodity image. Conversely, many artists, influenced by Conceptualism’s methods of relocating and redefining aesthetics, have employed the readymade as a device to explore how objects mediate relationships within specific cultural contexts. This essay examines the implications of both paradigms using the theology of Michel de Certeau as a point of reference. The framework of mystical Christianity found in de Certeau’s writing, particularly with regard to his theory of “everyday practices”, provides a rich interpretation of the work of John Knight and Gabriel Orozco. The conceptual practices of both artists, particularly in the examples studied here, suggest deeper spiritual themes, and demonstrate the applicability of Christian ethics to readings of contemporary art. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Conceptual Art and Theology)
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