A different vision

Any visit to a major art gallery is an important educational experience: it raises our awareness of artists’ work, and the context in which their ideas were formed.

For big exhibitions at institutions such as Tate Modern or the National Gallery, a well-oiled machine swings into action, with audio guides and introductory leaflets, followed up by an enticingly beautiful illustrated catalogue with scholarly articles. Before the opening, a press viewing will have ensured that the work has been discussed by critics from national newspapers and magazines. But, conversely, those who are not included among art’s chosen elite are also airbrushed out of the discussion and publications.

In the current climate, Christian artists, like others in many walks of life, are often marginalised, but they still have a responsibility to work out their calling and to take their gifting seriously — as in Jesus’s parable, using and extending those talents.

Breakthrough initiative

Piquant Editions has embarked on a very practical and highly professional initiative to break through this lack of recognition. The company was started in 2002 by Pieter Kwant, who was born in the Netherlands, and his wife Elria, both of whom have a special interest in the integration of theology and the arts. Pieter and Elria met and married in South Africa, where Pieter spent 14 years working in theological publishing. Following a year with the L’Abri Fellowship in Holland, the family moved to England in 1987, where Pieter then worked with IVP, going on to become Managing Director of Paternoster Publishing.

Rookmaaker

The first major project for Piquant was the publication, 25 years after his death, of the complete works of the Dutch art historian Professor Hans Rookmaaker, whose thinking has had a profound influence on so many younger Christian artists. A fundamental tenet of his teaching was that good Christian art is not limited to ‘religious’ subject matter, but should be free to engage with all aspects of human life and experience.

When Pieter and Elria embarked on the Visibilia series, one of their concerns was to focus on Christian artists who have built up a significant body of work, showing maturity, development and creative dialogue with today’s world. The project grew out of a conviction that Christians see differently from those who are artists but do not have spiritual insight — and that their work should be both promoted and preserved.

Educational vision

Visibilia also has a two-fold educational vision: firstly, to encourage young believers setting out in the arts with a life calling, and, secondly, to make Christian artists’ work accessible to ordinary church members who might never have considered buying an art book. Thus, while the focus is primarily on the visual work, each volume also includes a helpful introductory text.

So far, the series numbers four books, which show how artists who share a common faith have produced a very rich diversity of work. In each case, the artist is fully involved with the layout and presentation, so that the whole publication becomes a unique ‘visual autobiography’ and part of the creative process. High quality reproduction of images is a priority, so that they are seen in a publication which is equivalent to, for example, the artists’ monographs produced in paperback by Tate Publishing. As the series builds up, it is really encouraging to see how much has been achieved by Christians working quietly and faithfully in their particular fields.

Contrasts

The first volume, entitled The Way I See It, featured the wood engravings and etchings of Peter Smith, Head of the School of Art and Design at Kingston College, who has exhibited internationally since the 1970s. Wood engraving is an ancient, small-scale and very detailed — almost contemplative — craft, which, as Calvin Seerveld points out in his introduction, has been largely neglected in British colleges of art for the last two generations. For Peter, printmaking runs alongside and ‘in conversation with’ the development of his painting. He has been a member of the Society of Wood Engravers since 1986, and is also a highly respected lecturer at Christian arts conferences, including the annual Christian Artists Seminars held in Doorn, Holland.

In complete contrast, the second book, Body Broken, Body Redeemed introduces the bold, dramatic figurative painting of Maria Gabankova, who is also an experienced portraitist, and since 1990 has been Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.. As a child, Maria was taken to Canada from Czechoslovakia by her artist parents, following the Soviet-led invasion of 1968. As in the case of Peter Smith, it was the writings of Hans Rookmaaker which first encouraged her to see that her calling both as a Christian and a contemporary artist need not be in conflict.

Two additions

2009 has seen two very different additions to the series. In Visibilia three, An Art Historian’s Sideways Glance, the English art historian and author, John Walford, describes how he has made the transition into his own creative work through the medium of digital photography. Since 1981, John has lived in the USA, and lectured at Wheaton College, outside Chicago. Drawing on the many visual resources that have been at the heart of his teaching over the years, John has developed a very personal, richly informed way of juxtaposing images. John’s photographs also give a new slant on what our concept of what an ‘artist’ might be, especially as he has become an active participant on the Flickr photo-sharing website — engaging with contemporary internet discourse to bring, as he says, ‘a few grains of salt and light where they are sorely needed’.

At first glance, volume four, Forms of Transcendence, appears to be a return to something much more traditional. The highly detailed painting and poetry of Roger Wagner has been much admired, and is often seen as part of a very English pastoral tradition which goes back to artists such as William Blake and Samuel Palmer. Unlike the other three artists, he often chooses themes from the Old Testament or the Gospels. But look again and you will see a very different dialogue between biblical narrative and the modern world — for example, Abraham quietly picnicking with the angels in a familiar Suffolk landscape overshadowed by the Sizewell A nuclear power station — or more threateningly, figures bewail the crucifixion against a background of smoking industrial chimneys which suggest the Nazi Jewish crematoria.

Unexpected bonuses

As the Visibilia project evolves, it has already produced some unexpected bonuses, both to the individual and the church as a whole. For the artist, the intense reflection that goes into the planning of each book can lead to a renewal of their ideas and practice — something that has proved to be very rewarding. For a wider level, the series also helps to introduce artists and other interested folk to each other. Although there is no substitute for appreciating art at first hand, the circulation of a book has the potential to make an artist’s work more widely known than a local exhibition could ever do.

Making art can often feel like an isolated occupation. Speaking back in 1984, Peter Smith quoted the critic Peter Fuller, who wrote that ‘Good art can only be achieved when an individual encounters a living tradition with deep tendrils in communal life’. 25 years on, with the official art world dominated by postmodernism, it is even more important for Christians to identify their own living tradition. A work of art can stand as evidence of a Christian worldview to future generations. Visibilia is an attempt to make such work accessible and to open up a potential dialogue.

Embracing God’s gifts

No one expects that any work with a religious commitment will ever win the Turner Prize — but, nevertheless, as Peter Smith has written, ‘...we need to cultivate our communal Christian experience of the visual arts… To abandon this area altogether is to deny the goodness and wisdom of God in making for us that which is pleasing to the eye. To embrace these gifts of God, in the setting of the fall and redemption of mankind, is to enter into that spiritual battle with its present mingling of joy and tears’ (Peter Smith, Making Paintings in Art in Question, Eds. Tim Dean and David Porter, Marshall Pickering, 1987).

For more information about the Piquant Visiibillia project, visit their website at http://www.piquanteditions.com

Anne Roberts looks at the Piquant Visibilia project