In "Writing the Silence: A
Taxonomy of Memory", Louise Adler writes:
To say we live in a secular age is an oft-repeated
cliché. Since the beginning of the twentieth-century, with legitimate reason,
faith has taken a battering. A century on, organised religion now represents a
repressive, disempowering, coercive structuring of community. Think of the
tragedy of Waco, or the Catholic Church rocked by revelations of sexual abuse,
and it is difficult these days not to sense the dangers of organised religion.1
Phrases from scripture are
commonplace in western language; constant references are made to biblical
events and symbols, yet society is today dominated by secular values,
marginalising and devaluing issues of personal faith and organised religion.
Indeed there is a new cultural divide: not between Christian and Muslim, Hindu
and Jew, but between those who have faith and those who do not. By extension,
issues that pertain to religion are being addressed from many perspectives. For
example, the Museum of Biblical Art in New York has at present an exhibition, Biblical
Art in a Secular Century:
Selections, 1896-1999,
that examines the role of Biblical imagery in twentieth century art.2 Religious subject matter dominated art
for most of human history. Art sought to pay homage to divine beings, as is
evident in Australian Aboriginal rock painting that is 40,000 or more years
old. Jewish and Christian traditions inspired the finest examples of art in the
West. Religious institutions, in turn, provided patronage for artists. From the
late Renaissance through the Age of Enlightenment humanist thought and
classical philosophy exerted a great influence on art and a shift took place
from purely religious to secular subjects. Prior to, and during the
Renaissance, many artists devoted their professional lives to conveying
Biblical narrative. The Renaissance saw the introduction of humanist texts
where man became centre of the universe. In the twentieth century, and more
specifically since the Second World War, artists were increasingly reluctant to
infuse their art with personal faith. "Although the post-modern paradigm
permits visual quotation of details and styles borrowed from antique frescoes
or Medieval and Renaissance imagery, this 'face-value' appropriation seldom
mines the conceptual complexity of the original Biblical source – nor
does it engage in discriminating exegesis of the profound content revealed in
Scripture. So what is it about Christian doctrine that makes the contemporary
art world shy away from the moral and ethical dimensions inculcated in
Scripture, especially when so many artists see no problem in appropriating
isolated examples of its iconography?"3
An extreme secularism is
growing alongside increased interest in religion. In Britain this has been made
articulate by Richard Dawkins, the British scientist and chair for the public
understanding of science at Oxford University and author of The God Delusion, which sold 180,000 copies in hardback. His is a
militant atheism using abusive and crude stereotypes, just as the Conservative
Party sacked a Shadow Minister for "clumsy race remarks", Dawkins is
unrepentant.4 There has as one might
expect, been a backlash. A further author, Christopher Hitchens, also takes a
hostile approach to faith in our turgid times. His new book, God is
Not Great: The Case Against Religion, is to be published by Atlantic Books in May. John
Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics publishes
his book, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,
later this year.5 These are heady times. On
one hand, many seek solace in religion, others revile it for its negative and
destructive associations and consequences.
In Australia, Christianity has
recently, been largely blamed for the destruction of Aboriginal culture through
the systematic attempt at social and biological engineering by the forcible
removal of Indigenous children in Australia since early colonisation.6 Australians have felt compelled to
re-think the inheritance of the colonial vision that cast the Aboriginal
population as inferior to European white settlers. A western chauvinism has
been replaced by secularism on one hand, but also a respectful attitude to the
spirituality of Aboriginal culture. Against the consciousness-raising that has
been required to confront the truth about white Australia's destruction of
Aboriginal culture, church going is often associated with middle-class
suburbia, or country town parishes, with meaningless convention. The Australian
academic and art worlds have not been sympathetic to the infusion of religious
views into art, although the Professor of Fine Art for many years was the nun,
Margaret Manion, whose field of expertise was Medieval Illuminated manuscripts.
Individuals have nevertheless, made contributions, albeit from a marginal
position. Irene Barberis is very much an exception to the rule, using her
Christian faith to inform her art practice. An inventive practitioner, Barberis
is "dedicated to unravelling postmodernism's pattern of historic negation. Her
passionate engagement with her subject matter is supported by a strong
conviction that static image -making remains a profound form of social
communication, even in a world already saturated by accelerated visual
stimulus. Drawing inspiration from many diverse historic and contemporary
sources, her rich imagery is steeped in self-assurance that the moral codes and
spiritual insights of the Bible hold a powerful literal and metaphoric
relevance to present-day human life."7
The Jewish Museum of Australia
recently staged Intersections: Reading the Space, (2005) which brought together
the work of three women artists representing three countries and three faiths.
Irene Barberis, an Australian Christian, Jane Logemann an American Jew and
Parastou Forouhar, an Iranian Muslim. The exhibition travelled to the Jewish Museum
in San Francisco (2006). Barberis,
who co-curated the show says there was one central idea she wanted to express.
"What we wanted was not so much the visual. We wanted to show that all these
works, have been sourced, or responded to from a faith. Whether one believes or
not is a personal thing, but the work is real. It is not just a body of work
that has been done in the last six months or a year. We are talking about a
development over 30 years which has negotiated issues of faith".8 Forouhar was presented with particular
issues: "It was interesting to come into the context of the Jewish Museum. As
an Iranian, in my passport it reads that with this passport the holder, is not
allowed to travel to, occupied Palestine. That is the political context that I
have to deal with. So, it was an
interesting and curious thing for me to come here and have an exhibition in a
Jewish museum. Seeing the work here and looking at how people have reacted has
been interesting. I know it is not easy for people to come into a Jewish museum
and see script which is very similar to the Arabic form. They are images which
have got a political and religious background".9 Jane Logemann's reaction was quite different: "I welcomed the interplay of
possibilities of three faiths being represented. I have worked with other
languages and I don't see myself as an essentially Judaist artist".10
Irene
Barberis uses scripture from the Bible in an independent manner. In her recent
work, which was shown in Intersections, she uses the materials of a
post-modern, post-industrial society: plastics, silicon, fluorescent colours in
grid-like structures, the flotsam, and jetsam of the mass media. For most
Christians her imagery appears anachronistic.
Where Anselm Kiefer's recent
work which uses the theme of Palm Sunday, departs from traditional methods of
painting by using a plethora of symbolic materials ash, clay, rust, plants and
lead – his work in iconographic terms maintains strong links with the
European tradition. Kiefer was brought up as a Catholic and although he
addresses the political legacy of the German nation, he side-steps personal
faith as a specific issue. Kiefer's own faith is not the starting-point for his
work – the universal issues of transcendence and the political ramifications
are his primary issues – and he addresses them with a powerful intellect
and passion.
Anselm
Kiefer was born in Germany only months before the end of the war in 1945. As a
devout Catholic, he was interested in the problematic relationship between
church and state. Concerned with religious and philosophical issues from his
student days, Kiefer brought to art an intellectual rigour that underpins all
of his work. When he had studied art at the university in Freiburg, Kiefer had
a number of meetings with Joseph Beuys, whose influence instilled in Kiefer a
freedom from artistic convention. Furthermore, Beuys was the first German
artist to address the Holocaust in a significant body of work. Beuys stated,
"Everyone went to church, and everyone went to the Hitler Youth".11 Central to Kiefer's work has been the
use of primal forces and the elements. Fire, with its symbolic associations of
destruction, cremation, and war is a pivotal entity in Kiefer's work. Light is
used to symbolise God's grace and personal enlightenment. Visions of heaven and
hell, hope and destruction are employed by Kiefer in a long and inspiring
process to define spirituality, always mindful however, of the state's capacity to use religion as
a propaganda tool. Kiefer's landscape paintings are profoundly solemn, eluding
to past cataclysm and the inevitability that history will repeat itself. In her
essay on Barberis, Anna Clabburn points out that Western culture will never be
allowed to forget the atrocity of the Jewish Holocaust, that scepticism towards
social certainty in spiritual philosophy will remain. "It follows that in
contemporary art postmodernism's 'anything goes' philosophy set out to reduce
all artistic styles and periods to a level playing field. This constituted an
open semiotic lexicon in which contemporary artists could 'dip their toes'
without needing to immerse themselves in the full dimensions of the symbols and
narratives being quoted".12
Andy Warhol's Crosses (1981-82) in polymer and paint,
and silk- screen on canvas perhaps provide a more appropriate link for Barberis
to the modern movement. Warhol was himself a Pop Art icon, and a Roman Catholic
who attended mass several times a week.
The intensely female world, of
Irene Barberis – she opts for beaded stilettos and a sewing machine in
her studio – should be viewed against her working methods. Barberis
states: "I perceive myself to be an artist with strong female sensibilities. I
honour feminism's historical ability to give women a type of freedom, but I
believe that traditional feminism hasn't always allowed women to celebrate
their femaleness – to be feminine, or have an inner sense of equality. Sometimes feminism becomes
subsumed by the masculine paradigm".13 She is at present travelling between her home in Melbourne and a teaching
position in Hong Kong, the British Museum where she draws from illuminated
manuscripts, to the Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Dundee where
she held a drawing workshop with Tracy McKenna. From there, to Chicago for
three weeks to work on a project with Karen Forbes from Edinburgh College of
Art and a group of students from Melbourne and Edinburgh. Barberis became a
Christian in the 1970s while a student at the Victorian College of the Arts,
Melbourne. She has attended church in Melbourne for the past 25 years. Her
adoption of Biblical subject matter was gradual. The Director of the Jewish
Museum of Australia wrote:
For her work, she breathes in
the invisible, or one could say, the negative architectural spaces, and
breathes them out into highly coloured transparent plastic. She then takes
embroidered and drawn lines of Biblical texts into her own breath, which has
inflated and is encased in the ultra-coloured plastics which hang, lean or are
free-standing.
The works reflect contemporary
everyday life and aspects of cultural lineages, together with ideas and themes
found in Biblical visionary texts, especially the Book of Revelation in the New
Testament, or from the prophets Daniel and Ezekial in the Old Testament.14
Intersections was conceived by Barberis in 2001
as a potential forum to present visual ideas that would represent three faiths
that are integral to contemporary: Christian, Islamic and Jewish. Later the
same year the September 11 terrorist attack on New York left the world reeling.
The poignancy of having a unified female voice of moderation which sought to
overcome violent rhetoric in politics and the media, intensified. Intersections, was, in Barberis's words about
difference. "It is not ecumenical. It does, however, have a language of
similarity: texts written in space".15 Intersections addressed the relationship between faith and art, between religion and
contemporary art practice. The problems associated with cultural exchange were
inherent in the exhibition, yet it was also possible to celebrate the fact that
three women were prepared to make such a commitment to a better, more tolerant
future.
Medieval illuminated
manuscripts and Renaissance painting provide important clues to Barberis's
visual code. Quickly jotted
drawings were made while the artist studied manuscripts at the British Museum,
London and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. They capture the awesome drama of
the Book of Revelation. The word
'apocalypse' has become a synonym for doom and destruction. The history of apocalypses in art
history, "tends to be associated with periods of upheaval and change and a
sense of dissolution and decline, times when hope is transformed into a desire
for the end of the old order and the start of a new age".16 The transition from the temporal to
the eternal, is symbolically portrayed in the Book of Revelation. The old order is purged to make way for the new.
And God shall wipe away all
the tears from their eyes and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying,
nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.17
At the end of the Second World
War, Australian artist Arthur Boyd created a series of dramatic paintings using
Biblical imagery superimposed on to a background of the Australian bush. Although
small in scale these were monumental in terms of prophetic vision. They
established the apocalypse as a powerful and pertinent image of contemporary
life. Melbourne Burning (1946-47), The Mockers, (1945), The Golden
Calf, (1946) are
world landscapes of great significance, unprecedented in the history of
Australian painting. These works are pertinent examples of Boyd's growing
rejection of the materialistic values of a world bent on war and
self-destruction. The equation is made pointedly, between money (represented by
gold coins) and the unconscionable self-aggrandisement and chaos of war.
Inspired by Peter Breughel, they were produced in response to the moral crisis
of war and the bombing of Hiroshima.18
Throughout the centuries,
images of women play an important role visually in images of the apocalypse.
"In medieval iconography women are used to represent virtues and vices, the
forces of temptation in the form of Eve and the Whore of Babylon, and
facilitators in the form of the Virgin Mary, Ecclesia (the Church), and the
Woman Clothed with the Sun, (who effectively combines both)". In Cambridge
Barberis studied the Trinity Apocalyse (Trinity College, Cambridge c.1255-60) in which "the noble lady…kneels in
supplication".19 Illuminated manuscripts
were vestiges for prayer – the page was synonymous with worship. Image
and text were of equal value.
Irene Barberis also studies
stained glass in cathedrals, tapestries, woodblocks, engravings, murals,
mosaics and painting. She works on a range of different scale and in various
media, from intimate, fragile works on tissue paper that are presented in
handmade wooden boxes with satin lining, which echo the manuscripts to large
public commissions and long murals on gallery walls.
The cumulative baggage of the
current age forms a background or landscape composed of a stratification of
everyday objects, constructed over time, interwoven with forms redolent of the
many aspects of Revelation and its visual history. The landscape is reflected
and spatially challenged by fragments of broken mirror which both ape and
distort, abstracting the sense of space and time.20
There is a constant interplay
in Barberis's work between figurative and abstract, particularly allowing for a
minimal structure. Works are often pairs of images with historical imagery on
one side and abstract on the other. The abstract imagery refers to mass media
and digital imagery, and computer screens, which dominate daily life. All of
Barberis' work stems from an urgent "belief in the power of art to help to
decipher and anoint human existence".21
Barberis grew up in rural
Victoria. She studied ballet from the age of three and only gave it up at
nineteen due to an injury. She has a natural predilection for open spaces,
preferring to work in warehouses or the reclaimed factory she now lives and
works in North Melbourne. The work- room becomes a palette
with masses of materials and found objects which resemble a vast still-life
composition. Ballet and performance infuse a sense of action in the large installation.
A building process takes place with a strange array of materials – sheets
of plastic, skeins of fluorescent plastic tubing which emits light when it is
distressed, electrically lit cable, an indispensable glue gun and a Brother
sewing machine for embroidering Scripture onto silk or tissue. Barberis travels constantly and keeps
dialogue with women artists of faith all over the world, many of whom live in
oppressive regimes. She is increasingly outspoken in her work and in her
rhetoric. Describing her materials she says, "It IS pink. But it is an
aggressive light emitting poisonous substance, as well. The optics cause it to
emit light if it is distressed or marked. It has this capacity when it is cut
to become a strong line of orange light. The pink is poisonous to some and
lovely to others – anathema to some, relief to others."22 Barberis interprets the biblical Day of
Judgement and demise of mankind as a believer: "as a jubilant opportunity for
rediscovering faith and reclaiming the primary force of humanity's will for
life".23 In spite of the potential for global
calamity through environmental disaster, terrorism and war, Barberis presents
an utterly passionate and individual celebration of life itself.
Dr Janet McKenzie
1. Louise Adler, Intersections:
Reading the Space,
exhibition catalogue fot the Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourne, April-June
2005, p.16.
2. Cindi di Marzo, "Wrestling With the Angel in the Modern Age", Studio International, e.journal, London and New York, 14.02.07, www.studio-international.co.uk
3. Anna Clabburn, "Reclaiming Faith: The Art of Irene Barberis" in Irene Barberis, Revelation/Apocalypse, MacMillan Publishers Australia, Melbourne, 2001, pp. 17-18.
4. Patrick Mercer, Shadow Defence Minister was sacked by David Cameron on 8 March 2007, The Daily Telegraph, London, 10 March, p.10.
5. Stuart Jeffries, "FAITH",The Guardian, G2, London, 26.02.07, pp.6-11.
6. For detailed accounts see: Peter Read, A Rape of the Soul Most Profound, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1999. Henry Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty, Three Nations, One Australia? Reflections on Race, State and Nation, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996.
7. Clabburn, op.cit., p.18.
8. "Women of faith unite", The Age, Melbourne, 16 April, 2006.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Michael Auping, (ed.), Anselm
Kiefer: Heaven and Earth, Prestel., London, 2005, p.31.
12. Clabburn, op.cit., p.26.
13. Ibid, p.27.
14. Helen Light, "Introduction", Intersections, op.cit., p.9.
15. Barberis, ibid., p.13.
16. Michelle P. Brown, "Introduction", Revelation/Apocalypse, op.cit., p.9.
17. Book of Revelation, (20:4)
18. Janet McKenzie, Arthur Boyd: Art and Life, with a Foreword by Professor Martin Kemp, University of Oxford, Thames and Hudson, London, 2000.
19. Brown, op.cit., p.12.
20. Ibid, p.12.
21. Clabburn, op.cit., p.21
22. Interview, 10.03.07.
23. Clabburn, op.cit
