Crucifix Process 5

This batch of photos was taken on Oct 11-13. Between this post and the last, I had taken an awl and incised the outline of all the areas that would be gilded. This way I would be able to paint over the pencil lines and still have a clear guide as to where the metal leaf will go. All the areas that will have the metal leaf have to be painted with a red earth tone. Otherwise the metal will look cold and greenish when it is applied. I'm just using acrylic burnt sienna here.

Here I'm applying the acrylic base color for the visible portions of the cross. I pre-mixed a generous amount of this bluish color in a baby food jar, in case I need more of it. It's very difficult to match the same color again if you run out. I applied at least three coats of the blue, being very careful this time not to go over the incised lines.

If I hadn't inscribed the letters at this point, I would have no guide. But you can still clearly see the letters, even though they've been painted over with several coats of acrylic.

Since this is a model, I'm using the composition leaf I have on hand instead of real gold. In order to apply the leaf, I had to carefully apply the size (glue) to only the areas that would be gilded. This particular size has to dry for about an hour before the leaf can be applied. The tricky part was that it took almost an hour just to apply the size to the letters. So I couldn't apply the leaf all at once.

I cut the 5 x 5" sheets of leaf into smaller pieces with a knife on a leather pad. Using a fan brush, I picked up one piece at a time and laid it over the size. After all of the leaf has been applied, the excess needs to be brushed away. I started with a the fan brush, but it eventually required a brush with a bit more stiffness to it.

Afterwards, I repeated the same process for gilding the halo. Cleanup is surprisingly easy. You can just sweep up the loose bits of leaf with a soft brush, and the static causes them to stick to the bristles.

I had planned at this point to continue on and gild the frame and molding, but I feared it would take at least a week to finish, once I had started. I decided to skip gilding the frame until after the art show—finishing the painting is more important right now.

Crucifix Process 4

Please forgive another quick photo dump! These photos were taken on Oct 9th and 10th. I redrew the sketch to be more anatomically descriptive, so I needed to make another full-scale cartoon in order to transfer it. Using my ink jet printer, I printed a tiled version of the sketch from Adobe Acrobat, then trimmed and assembled the pages with tape. This is much faster and more accurate than using a grid or a projector, and it costs only pennies.

You can see from the sketch that instead of shading it smoothly, I've outlined geometric shapes that approximate the light and dark areas. The curved contours have also been converted to more angular shapes. This will make it easier to transfer, and will help with the shading in oil paints.

After the drawing is assembled, I laid sheets of tissue paper over it and traced the drawing onto the tissue paper. (You can find large rolls of tracing paper, which works better, but I don't live near any art supply stores, so tissue paper works almost just as well.) Regular paper is too thick to allow pen strokes to transfer through to the graphite paper, so you need to use tracing paper or something very thin.

The cartoon is trimmed for accurate positioning.

I printed the inscription directly onto tracing paper, to
save a step. You can see the graphite paper underneath.

The drawing is completed after I outline the edges of the
gold leaf, which extends into the cross an extra .75 in.

Crucifix Process 3

I've been so busy lately I have not taken the time to post any process photos from the crucifix. These will not bring you totally up to its current state—they were taken between Sept. 18 and Oct. 9. Please forgive me for just dumping these without too much explanation—I've got to get back to work. I have less than two weeks to finish it!

I noticed the plywood had warped after application of the
gesso, so I screwed two 1x2s to the back to straighten it.

The molding is shaped to the contours of the body, to
help give the impression the corpus is overlapping it.

Where the molding isn't perfectly flush with the ply-
wood, I built up wood filler to make a seamless plane,
and sculpted the corners if they weren't perfect.

All of the molding is in place.

After a lot of sanding and about 6 coats of gesso, I'm
ready to apply the drawing to the cross!

How We've Murdered Liturgical Art: Part I

This series of posts discusses a book written by a professor at Carthage College, published by Concordia Publishing House, and used as a required text at Concordia University NE in the 1970s. It is entitled "The Christian Encounters the World of Painting," by Wendell Mathews. The book purports to be a guide for Christians to approaching and critiquing modern painting. While claiming to be a proponent of Christian art, Mathews is clearly part of the problem—he is one of the many Christian voices that contributed to the murder of the liturgical arts in the past century. I intend to show exactly how.

In his book, Dr. Mathews wields four weapons against the art of the Church. Not surprisingly, they are the standard poison of Modernism, but have been carefully disguised with theological language in order to be more readily swallowed by Christians. They are: 1) undermining tradition, 2) promoting elitism, 3) attacking semantics, and 4) fostering an improper view of vocation.

1. Undermining the Christian Tradition

A hallmark of Modernism was the sudden break from tradition. Spectacular mental acrobatics were required by Modernist art critics—championed by Clement Greenberg—in order to attach abstract expressionism (and other -isms) to some kind of linear, historical significance. Greenberg felt it necessary to historically justify that which had nothing at all to do with thousands of years of artistic precedent. Other Modernists, however, felt the need to neither deny nor justify the obvious break from tradition. The Futurists, for example, would have burned the museums to the ground, if Marinetti's manifesto had been carried out in reality.¹

Dr. Mathews is not one of those overtly iconoclastic Modernists, however. He has good intentions. But he appears to be under two related delusions: that Modernist painting is a continuation of the artistic tradition, but that the painting of past eras has no significance to people living in the present:

After a long period of indifference to the major stylistic trends of recent decades, the church is questioning whether it can relate adequately to the present age by means of outmoded art styles. Some in the church have known for some time that the use of past styles has alienated artists interested in stylistic innovations that emerge from creative activity.¹

I quoted a portion of this statement in the Introduction post, but Mathews apparently believes it so strongly that he says it twice. But take special notice of the things he glosses over as though they were self-evident: that traditional styles are "outmoded," and that the use of past styles "alienates" creative artists. Mathews does not spend much time trying to explain exactly why something that was painted for Christians in 1600 cannot relate to Christians of today. Mathews does explain, however, that symbols used in past centuries may fall out of use. He writes,

Visual symbols are born and die. They die when they can no longer produce the special response that the viewer associates with the object. For this reason, many old visual symbols once alive to church members have now lost their power to communicate. But out of the contemporary involvement should arise new and meaningful symbols.²

Okay. So by this are we to believe that when people no longer know what a shepherd is, we should substitute "Jesus is my homeboy?" Well, he has an answer for that.

Some have suggested that all the old visual symbols... should be discarded because they communicate only when they are explained. It is true that some symbols have lost their power to communicate, but this should not apply to a large number of symbols that come to us directly from the Bible. We should not discard symbols of the lamb and the Good Shepherd because we are now more urban-oriented than people of Bible times. ... If such symbols lose their meaning, it reflects weakness on the part of the members of the Christian church.³

I suspect that it's rare for someone to so thoroughly shoot himself in the foot as Mathews has done here. So far, this has been his only concrete reason for doing away with "past styles" of art, and it really has nothing at all to do with the styles, but with the substance. But after saying that symbols that no longer communicate should be replaced with new symbols, he then rebukes this viewpoint as a weakness of faith. And even though he argues that only biblical symbols should enjoy a special protection from disuse, it still requires educating the believers as to their meaning and value. What possible excuse could one have, then, for ignorance toward other well-established but non-biblical symbols (for instance, the Chi-Rho)? None whatsoever.

This leads us to conclude that this cannot be his real and only reason for marginalizing Christian art of the past. Dr. Matthews' motives are only hinted at when he defines what "authentic" art is: "A Christian painting should be authentically artistic. In the world of painting, a work is authentic within a particular cultural and artistic continuum."⁴ He goes on to say that "individual style, however, should show also the style of his own historical and artistic epoch."⁵ This is his ace in the sleeve. Whatever a person might say about timelessness, symbolism, or the power to communicate, he can simply counter by saying, "But that art does not participate in the current artistic idiom; therefore it isn't authentic."

So let's recap. Remember how Mathews began by saying that certain styles cannot "relate adequately to the present age?" As it turns out, that was just the first part of a classic bait-and-switch. His argument really has nothing to do with whether or not past art can relate or communicate with Christians today, because he knows this argument has no legs. Instead, he tries to convince you that any art that isn't a product of the mainstream culture cannot ever be "authentic."

Why is this dangerous to Christianity—and how did it kill liturgical art?

It turns out that Dr. Mathews is not really saying anything new. He has fallen prey to the age-old infatuation with the present—that the best music, poetry, art, science, and everything, is happening now. It must be exhilarating to think of one's self riding on the crest of progress, even affecting that progress. The trouble is that this kind of ego- and sociocentricity has nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity teaches that since the Fall into sin, man is utterly corrupt and has nothing to offer God. Furthermore, society at large has been on the express train to hell—and it's picking up speed. Mathews doesn't deny this. He correctly describes the Christian's relationship to the world as one of "mediation." He then explains,

The Christian relationship centers in God's grace, mediated to man in and through the God-man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This gift was bought with His great sacrifice, revealing the fullness of divine love. Christ's love becomes the power for Christian action. The Christian's faith is to be active in love.⁶

The wording is theologically vague, but I think we could all agree with that statement. However, the problem is that what Mathews calls mediation is, to him, social activism. "This acceptance of responsibility means having a critical voice regarding cultural elements contrary to Christian truths."⁷ The most charitable view of Mathews' writing would be that he wants art to engage nonbelievers in a theological dialogue. But this is impossible. You can tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan to an atheist, and he will fancy himself to be the Good Samaritan. Images do not change a person's orientation to God. As highly as I regard ecclesiastical art, it does not have the power to evangelize nonbelievers—it is not a means of grace.

Vestment for Mass by Manessier

Besides the futility of this supposed evangelism effort, all it has accomplished is to scrape the beauty and meaning from art in order to present to an unbelieving culture something that Dr. Mathews hopes they can "relate" to. Where does that leave Christians? I did not find one single sentence in the book that distinguished art made for galleries from art made for worship. To Mathews, I suspect that they are the same thing. And this is why it is so fatally damaging to liturgical art. In 2000 years of art history, Christian art was made primarily for either devotional purposes or for worship. In both respects, it was made for Christians. No one deluded himself into believing that showing an image of Jesus would convert the heathens. (They suffered from other delusions, but probably not this one.) So it is exceedingly stupid to expect that the church of this age should lower its artistic standards to the tastes and aesthetic of a culture that is in every respect ruled by Satan.

But the biggest reason why this disconnect from tradition is damaging to liturgical art and to Christianity is that, while attempting to use the visual language of Modernism, it has jettisoned the narrative of Salvation in exchange for the subjective feelings of the artist. Modernist painting and sculpture, because it abandoned representational art, could only use abstraction to convey a visceral, barely definable, subjective experience. This art is incapable of expressing the reality of the Incarnation, because it refuses to acknowledge any reality at all.

History has now played out this costly artistic experiment. It has failed utterly. The attempt to make Christian art that "relates" to the iconoclastic culture of our times has resulted in: no significant theological dialogue, no new converts as a result, a Christian church disenchanted with art, talented artists who have either been estranged by the church or who have squandered their talent in an effort to gain mainstream acceptance, and a lifeless body of liturgical art.

To be continued...

_______________

¹ "Come on! Set fire to the library shelves! Turn aside the canals to flood the museums! ... Oh, the joy of seeing the glorious old canvases bobbing adrift on those waters, discoloured and shredded. ... Take up your pickaxes, your axes and hammers and wreck, wreck the venerable cities pitilessly!" Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism” (1909), quoted in: Michael Darling, Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949-78 (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2009), 130.
² Wendell Mathews, The Christian Encounters the World of Painting (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1968), 92.
³ Ibid, 93.
⁴ Ibid, 90.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid, 89.
⁷ Ibid.

Intro: How We've Murdered Liturgical Art

Anyone who has heard me talk about Modernism probably has heard me refer to it as the "twentieth century iconoclasm." At a presentation I gave last week, I explained that anyone interested in making artwork for the church, was, by the 1950s, being trained in the paradigm of "art for art's sake." Christians were readily abandoning the artistic tradition of the church and pounding Jackson Pollack over the heads of anyone who picked up a brush. And I only recently realized how true this really was.

A few months ago, my aunt was downsizing, and asked if I wanted any of her art books from college. She attended Concordia University Nebraska in the 1970s, where she studied art. I couldn't turn down the opportunity to add to my library, no matter how old or outdated the books were, so I took them all home with me. On the top of the box I saw a book entitled: "The Christian Encounters the World of Painting," by Wendell Mathews. The book was published by Concordia Publishing House in 1968. According to the biography on the back, Dr. Mathews was a professor and chair of the art department at Carthage College (ELCA) in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I am always interested in the convergence of art and theology, so I picked it up and began to read.

By the second paragraph of the preface, my hopes of reading an informative, insightful book were extinguished by some very familiar Modernist rhetoric:

Many Christians—both ministers and laymen—are encouraging a fresh consideration of the church's relation to the arts. After a long period of indifference to the major stylistic trends of recent decades, the church should question whether or not it can relate adequately to the present age by means of outmoded art styles.

After a brief moment of disgust, my curiosity was piqued and I began to read with more interest. This musty, yellowed book was a time capsule; it afforded me the opportunity to read what was actually being taught at a Lutheran college in the 1970s. This was the smoking gun I had been looking for. It became clear to me exactly how involved Lutherans have been in the cold-blooded murder of liturgical art.

The one indisputable fact concerning this murder is the state of the deceased. Anyone can observe the cold, naked state of our churches built in the past 60 years or so. As obvious as it is to me, however, it's the sort of thing one can get used to, and after a few generations, maybe only a handful of people can see a corpse for what it is. I suspect that it requires only a glance at the thousands of churches that were built and furnished in a time when the liturgical arts were very much alive to convince the apathetic layman that a murder has, in fact, occurred. But upon becoming aware of it, the problem does not therefore solve itself. ("Awareness" doesn't cure cancer, either.) The point of educating Christians about what has happened is not to elicit sympathy; neither is it to point fingers. It is to change their perceptions and behavior—to cause them to stop participating in this ongoing iconoclasm and work toward reversing it.

Once their minds have been changed, then the healing can begin. "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Mt 22:32). He who raised Christ from the dead can certainly resurrect the visual arts in his Church. I firmly believe that God will do this. The pendulum has been too long the other way; it is time to bring it back.

But until that happens, there's a lot of work to be done. We've got a corpse on a slab, and I mean to find out how exactly the Bride of Christ was so badly mistreated, and why. And I'm darn sure not going to let it happen again, so help me God.

To be continued...

Hope Logo and Explanation

Hope is a word that is so commonplace that we easily forget what it means in the Christian context. “I hope we get rain soon.” “I hope I can get off work on Friday.” “I hope the Bears make the playoffs this year.” In Peter’s first epistle, he writes, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:3,4).

This hope that we have is not the wishful thinking that we indulge in every day. It is a 100% certainty made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the center of the logo, you see the crown of thorns. A prize worth having is not a prize easily won. Jesus suffered the wrath that our sins deserved on the cross, and carried it to the grave. We also must bear our crosses and thorns while we live on earth—Jesus promised this. But in front of the thorns you see that the cross made of lilies, because for Jesus, and for us, death is not the end. His resurrection is also our resurrection.

The tips of the lilies touch an eight-sided ring made of gold. In the Christian church of centuries past, the octagon had special significance for the believer. In the Bible, seven is an important number of completion—there were seven days of creation, and seven days in each week. But Jesus rose from the dead the day after the Sabbath—the eighth day. For us, the eighth day represents a new birth. Therefore, baptistries and fonts were often made with eight sides, to remind believers that we are baptized into Christ’s resurrection. We are new creations, waiting only for new, glorified bodies and the New Jerusalem. God help us to live as his redeemed creations, until the day when we will rejoice forever with Jesus in heaven. This is our hope—and what a certain hope it is!

Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELS) Portage, IN