93 - The Visual Arts and Christianity in America: From the Colonial Period to the Present

The Visual Arts and Christianity in America:
From the Colonial Period to the Present
By John Dillenberger
Crossroad, 1988. 290 pp. $39.50.

One could give a life's work to the subject presented in this book. Fortunately, John Dillenberger addresses it here in his retirement and traces a terrain that younger scholars need to be introduced to and should delve into as a life's work. Dillenberger has already published well in this area and knows that this terrain needs investigation, especially for the purposes of theological education and religion and arts studies. He covers the subjects in broad gestures and tantalizes, seduces, and engages us in the evidence. He has not, as he reports, written a history of art, neither has he produced a comprehensive survey of religiously significant art or a theological essay. On the basis of his extensive findings, Dillenberger has published his collected thoughts. Therefore, one can gain from this book what one would gain in a good conversation with this theologian-historian-scholar who cares deeply about theology's neglected frontier, the visual arts. The product consists of gathered sources, staunch assertions, bewildering asides, and numerous theories that are genuine to this scholar's life. In the end, one finds that there is a thesis driven by his personal passion, but along the way the reader has to ask "Where are we going with this?"

Dillenberger sets out with Protestant versus Roman Catholic distinctions in the arts in early American history. In Chapters One and Two, devoted to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, differences between the visual art forms and Christianity imported to the New World from English Puritanism and Spanish Catholicism are explored. Dillenberger is especially helpful in directing attention to the Lollards and their influence on early American attitudes toward the arts.

The nineteenth century gets more detailed treatment in Chapter Three. The author is interested in views concerning the arts from clergy,

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religious publications, and the artists. Fascinating data are included in these sections. Clergy positions, for instance, are excellent sources if one is to pursue the role of the arts in the American Church in the 90s. Chapter Four treats the difficult, yet significant, world of religious journals in the nineteenth century. For example, publications like The Christian Examiner, Catholic Word, Ecclesiastical Record, and The Crayon have been perused for relevant data. Dillenberger provides distinct and necessary service by making this kind of material available.

Chapter Five, on the religious views of the artists, is based on the work Dillenberger has published on Benjamin West as well as new research. He includes important data while warning us that "English Christianity was characterized by considerable distrust of the senses." Edward Hicks, Samuel F. B. Morse, John Trumbull, Washington Allston, Robert Weir, Hiram Powers and Horatio Greenough are brought to our attention, more or less as data entries. Curiously, he concludes that, in the nineteenth century, works of religious art do not depend on the particular perception, however, "due to their creation outside the liturgical life of the church," the works expressed the personal vision of the artists. The evidence given in this chapter is compelling, yet without any thesis or conclusion as to its significance. One of his interesting asides, "Their art does not challenge the culture" is thrown in but not supported.

Chapter Six, on architecture, has some of the most interesting material in the book and, to my mind, contributes to our understanding of the seedbed of the church's architectural styles in nineteenth-century America. He sets up the sources for a thoroughgoing attack on the issue of "style" as an aspect of religious authority but does not develop it. He concludes this chapter with his own exasperation with "neo-Gothic mania" based on his experience at Hartford. A more objective mood would have acknowledged the persistence of the neo-colonial mode (white spire and columns) rather than the neo-Gothic as rampant among Protestants in the twentieth century. What the Methodists, alone, have done with wooden or brick rectangular structures crowned with white spires and faced with false columns scattered across the American landscape is compelling, if not embarrassing, evidence.

Chapter Seven, "Nature and Nature's God," summarizes a wide range of observations with a focused theological interest in Thomas Cole, whose work receives more space in the plates than any in the book. Unfortunately, the poor quality of the prints makes it difficult to see the points Dillenberger emphasizes. One also wonders why Cole's "The Cross and the World: Two Youths Enter Upon a Pilgrimage, One to the Cross and the Other to the World," a painting discussed in detail, is represented only in a detail rather than the whole work. This important chapter includes some confusing asides and the issues of transcendence and imminence that he has raised are not developed.

His chapter on "Civil Religion in the Visual Arts" is the least successful in the book because it reads as a stream of observations

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without theme or focus. His good treatment of Horatio Greenough's sculpture of George Washington, however, is informative.

At this point in the book, the emphasis shifts from chronology to iconography. The next chapter looks at Old Testament subject matter in art, followed by a chapter on "The Christ Figure and New Commissions." In each, Dillenberger indicates interest in the role of the artist's imagination. In reference to Robert W. Weir, he observes, "He was sure that an unbridled imagination, as contrasted with the moral purpose art must serve, was responsible for excesses that must be curbed." This, the account of Allston's destruction of his own painting (Agony of Judas, 1814), and the earlier notes concerning English fear of the sensual, lead a reader to assume that a thesis is emerging.

Chapter Eleven, "Views of the Visual Arts" gives helpful reviews of exhibitions, catalogues, journals, organizations, and selected individuals. In the process, a judgment is given suggesting that another theme or priority is urging the author on. When he concludes that in the nineteenth century "the cultural and religious role of art was circumscribed. The visual arts conveyed what one already knew," he seems to set us up to look for art that conveys what we did not know.

In the following chapter, his priority emerges. He is primarily interested in "accepting forms of abstraction as appropriate to Christian comprehension." Abstract Expressionism holds exclusive truths in abstract form. Dillenberger has a deep appreciation and good understanding of the movement, especially the work of Barnet Newman. Here he lets go with an informed passion about an art that is a new mode, has depth, and allows the absolute other to be accessible. One is reminded of Paul Tillich at this point, the theologian who found Expressionism to be the ultimately significant style in art for religious purposes. Tillich finally used the art superficially to illustrate his theology. In contrast, however, Dillenberger leads us to the art itself. For him, Abstract Expressionism, a profound mode by which one may be deeply engaged, embodies exclusive truths for those who will see the art as itself rather than simply the illustration of something else.

The final chapter, "Observations on Contemporary Issues," holds the accountability of the artist, the issue of abstraction, and the "problem for liturgy" in tension. For Dillenberger, art and architecture are not backdrops, passive entities, or irrelevant aspects for the life of Christian liturgical practice. They are, even as abstract as they may appear, "more" in the context of worship. He does not directly answer Leonard Sweet's reservations concerning appropriateness raised in the final paragraphs, but creatively bypasses the issue in order to stress the integrity of the "other modality," that is, the visual arts.

Someone is finally responsible in this publication for the inadequacy of the illustrations. It is good of Dillenberger to insist on publishing the plates at the front of the book. Many art historical studies, especially those from Norton Press, do the same. However, when the readership addressed by this volume is supposed to be encouraged to look and to be

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informed by the visual material, this publication falls far too short. The Cole plates are blurred, many architectural shots are out of focus, many reproductions are too small, plate 158 (Jasper Johns) is missing, and the De Kooning triptych is printed backward. Insofar as this book is intended to make its point visually, it fails. Insofar as it lets us in on John Dillenberger's considered priorities, it succeeds.

John W. Cook
Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Worship and the Arts
New Haven, Connecticut