Responses to Wilson Yates: Deborah Sokolove
by Deborah Sokolove
Deborah Sokolove is the Director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion and teaches courses in art and worship. She has a background in art education and computer graphics. Most of her courses and her writing focus on the intersection of the arts with theology, liturgy, and culture. In addition to her teaching and writing, she also maintains an active studio practice as a painter. Her paintings have been shown locally and nationally, and are represented in numerous collections including two works in Oxnam Chapel: a set of Stations of the Cross, and Sanctus, which was created as part of the chapel renovation. Sokolove is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the North American Academy of Liturgy, Christians in the Visual Arts, and is on the Board of Directors of the Society for Religious and Theological Studies. She is a Steward of Seekers Church, an intentional Christian congregation in the tradition of Church of the Saviour, where she serves on the worship planning group and frequently preaches and leads worship.
Thank you, Wilson, for this incisive look at the past seventy years of theological reflection on the arts and for your kinds words about my own work in this field. Since my own recent book is subtitled Inviting Conversation Between Artists, Theologians, and the Church, there can be no doubt that I whole-heartedly agree with your central premise regarding the need for a dialogical approach to any theological writing or speaking about the arts. Your charge that theologians have, on the whole, simply ignored or even been overtly dismissive of the intentions of artists while using their works to make predetermined theological points rings quite true to my experience. Indeed, not only theologians, but scholars and preachers and others both inside and outside the church go a step further in using the arts to make a point or simply give their audiences something to look at, when they try to "dress up" their lectures with reproductions of art that may or may not have some relationship with what they are saying, without engaging the artwork at any meaningful level.
In your paper, you note that theologians who write about the arts need to engage in interdisciplinary work, paying attention to what is going on in art theory, art criticism, and non-theological aesthetics. In this regard, your critiques of Tillich and Garcia-Rivera are particularly telling. It takes a certain kind of arrogance for a theologian to presume to tell artists what they should be doing without knowing or, apparently, caring, what the artist intends or how their work fits into the larger project of art making, art theory, art criticism, or art history. Whether it is Tillich telling us that the only authentic way to make art in the modern age is to show the darker side of human nature; or other theologians insisting that beauty is the only proper goal for art; it helps neither artists nor the church—nor, I would suggest, the theological project—to ignore the disciplines which explore both the reasons why human beings engage in artistic processes, and the effect such engagement has on both maker and audience.
While I don't want to tell theologians their business any more than I want them telling me what kind of art I should make in order to be authentic to the modern age, I would like to ask them to help me, as an artist, think through how the arts fit into the larger theological picture. In order to understand what it means to be a faithful Christian in my art making, I need a theology of the arts that takes the arts—all of the arts—seriously. That means not a selective look at this or that style, period, medium, or practice, but rather a theology that takes into account the incarnational physicality of artists and their tools, including the human body. Such a theology would also note that the effect of art on those who make it differs from what happens to those who experience it, without privileging one or the other. Too often, even well-meaning, would-be champions of the arts conflate the good that comes to practitioners of the arts with the benefits of, for instance, sitting with a painting in a museum, going to the opera, or reading a poem aloud.
Such a theology of the arts would also take into account the entire range of artistic activity, rather than assuming that only masterworks matter. A robust theology of the arts would embrace recreational, therapeutic, and educational artistic practice—think of social dancing, congregational drama groups, collages made in the course of a spiritual retreat, or student art shows or concerts—as well as professional artwork that is neither great nor terrible. Such a theology of the arts would also show an awareness of the theological and experiential differences between, say, performing Handel's Messiah, participating in an improvisatory jam session or a drum circle, or sitting alone in a studio composing a concerto or a folk song or painting a picture or writing a play that may or may not ever find an audience.
A theology of art, or of the arts, is not the same thing as theological aesthetics. In the secular world, the field of aesthetics considers matters of not only of beauty, but also of sensory experience. Art theory attends specifically to questions such as "what is a work of art?" and "what is art for?". When theologians simply assume, a priori, that the purpose of art is to be beautiful, or to speak to the darkness of the human condition, or to reveal the holy, or whatever, they do a disservice to the serious conversations that artists themselves have been having through their work about the nature and purpose of art. And when they assume that only great art (however that might be defined) is worthy of consideration, they do a disservice to the multitudes of artists who labor in obscurity, their work at most celebrated by their friends and families and congregations.
And this is where I think that you have not gone far enough in your invitation to a dialogical approach to art. You speak of "theologizing with art," of attending to the meanings already present in color and form and line and symbol, of "allowing the form of the work to engage us, play with us, anger us, and transform our way of seeing." All of this is good and important, but it is not enough. I would like to suggest that we begin to take art seriously not as a conversation partner with theology, but rather as another way of doing theology. In the same way that many liturgical scholars speak of the liturgy itself as primary theology, and discursive liturgical theology as secondary—a kind of commentary on what happens when we worship—perhaps it is time that we acknowledge that words are only one way to express what we believe about God, about humans, about creation, and about the relationships among them.
When I was in art school, I was taught that art IS visual philosophy, a way of expressing what we believe about the nature of reality. More and more, I am coming to believe that artists—and by this I mean painters and poets, actors and musicians, novelists and composers, all manner of performing and studio practitioners—are doing theology by other means. It may not be systematic, and it certainly is not discursive, but it is theology nonetheless. Perhaps, Wilson, this is what you mean when you invite us into a dialogical approach to art: not simply that we take this or that artwork seriously, on its own terms, but also that people who understand themselves as theologians will see artists as equal conversation partners in the essential work of speaking about God to the church and to the world.
Deborah Sokolove is the Director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion and teaches courses in art and worship. She has a background in art education and computer graphics. Most of her courses and her writing focus on the intersection of the arts with theology, liturgy, and culture. In addition to her teaching and writing, she also maintains an active studio practice as a painter. Her paintings have been shown locally and nationally, and are represented in numerous collections including two works in Oxnam Chapel: a set of Stations of the Cross, and Sanctus, which was created as part of the chapel renovation. Sokolove is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the North American Academy of Liturgy, Christians in the Visual Arts, and is on the Board of Directors of the Society for Religious and Theological Studies. She is a Steward of Seekers Church, an intentional Christian congregation in the tradition of Church of the Saviour, where she serves on the worship planning group and frequently preaches and leads worship.
Thank you, Wilson, for this incisive look at the past seventy years of theological reflection on the arts and for your kinds words about my own work in this field. Since my own recent book is subtitled Inviting Conversation Between Artists, Theologians, and the Church, there can be no doubt that I whole-heartedly agree with your central premise regarding the need for a dialogical approach to any theological writing or speaking about the arts. Your charge that theologians have, on the whole, simply ignored or even been overtly dismissive of the intentions of artists while using their works to make predetermined theological points rings quite true to my experience. Indeed, not only theologians, but scholars and preachers and others both inside and outside the church go a step further in using the arts to make a point or simply give their audiences something to look at, when they try to "dress up" their lectures with reproductions of art that may or may not have some relationship with what they are saying, without engaging the artwork at any meaningful level.
In your paper, you note that theologians who write about the arts need to engage in interdisciplinary work, paying attention to what is going on in art theory, art criticism, and non-theological aesthetics. In this regard, your critiques of Tillich and Garcia-Rivera are particularly telling. It takes a certain kind of arrogance for a theologian to presume to tell artists what they should be doing without knowing or, apparently, caring, what the artist intends or how their work fits into the larger project of art making, art theory, art criticism, or art history. Whether it is Tillich telling us that the only authentic way to make art in the modern age is to show the darker side of human nature; or other theologians insisting that beauty is the only proper goal for art; it helps neither artists nor the church—nor, I would suggest, the theological project—to ignore the disciplines which explore both the reasons why human beings engage in artistic processes, and the effect such engagement has on both maker and audience.
While I don't want to tell theologians their business any more than I want them telling me what kind of art I should make in order to be authentic to the modern age, I would like to ask them to help me, as an artist, think through how the arts fit into the larger theological picture. In order to understand what it means to be a faithful Christian in my art making, I need a theology of the arts that takes the arts—all of the arts—seriously. That means not a selective look at this or that style, period, medium, or practice, but rather a theology that takes into account the incarnational physicality of artists and their tools, including the human body. Such a theology would also note that the effect of art on those who make it differs from what happens to those who experience it, without privileging one or the other. Too often, even well-meaning, would-be champions of the arts conflate the good that comes to practitioners of the arts with the benefits of, for instance, sitting with a painting in a museum, going to the opera, or reading a poem aloud.
Such a theology of the arts would also take into account the entire range of artistic activity, rather than assuming that only masterworks matter. A robust theology of the arts would embrace recreational, therapeutic, and educational artistic practice—think of social dancing, congregational drama groups, collages made in the course of a spiritual retreat, or student art shows or concerts—as well as professional artwork that is neither great nor terrible. Such a theology of the arts would also show an awareness of the theological and experiential differences between, say, performing Handel's Messiah, participating in an improvisatory jam session or a drum circle, or sitting alone in a studio composing a concerto or a folk song or painting a picture or writing a play that may or may not ever find an audience.
A theology of art, or of the arts, is not the same thing as theological aesthetics. In the secular world, the field of aesthetics considers matters of not only of beauty, but also of sensory experience. Art theory attends specifically to questions such as "what is a work of art?" and "what is art for?". When theologians simply assume, a priori, that the purpose of art is to be beautiful, or to speak to the darkness of the human condition, or to reveal the holy, or whatever, they do a disservice to the serious conversations that artists themselves have been having through their work about the nature and purpose of art. And when they assume that only great art (however that might be defined) is worthy of consideration, they do a disservice to the multitudes of artists who labor in obscurity, their work at most celebrated by their friends and families and congregations.
And this is where I think that you have not gone far enough in your invitation to a dialogical approach to art. You speak of "theologizing with art," of attending to the meanings already present in color and form and line and symbol, of "allowing the form of the work to engage us, play with us, anger us, and transform our way of seeing." All of this is good and important, but it is not enough. I would like to suggest that we begin to take art seriously not as a conversation partner with theology, but rather as another way of doing theology. In the same way that many liturgical scholars speak of the liturgy itself as primary theology, and discursive liturgical theology as secondary—a kind of commentary on what happens when we worship—perhaps it is time that we acknowledge that words are only one way to express what we believe about God, about humans, about creation, and about the relationships among them.
When I was in art school, I was taught that art IS visual philosophy, a way of expressing what we believe about the nature of reality. More and more, I am coming to believe that artists—and by this I mean painters and poets, actors and musicians, novelists and composers, all manner of performing and studio practitioners—are doing theology by other means. It may not be systematic, and it certainly is not discursive, but it is theology nonetheless. Perhaps, Wilson, this is what you mean when you invite us into a dialogical approach to art: not simply that we take this or that artwork seriously, on its own terms, but also that people who understand themselves as theologians will see artists as equal conversation partners in the essential work of speaking about God to the church and to the world.
