Mending the Breach Between Art and Faith

By Celia Clay

THE CHURCH THROUGH the ages has always been a generous patron of the arts, and, until very recently, most art was religious in nature. Now, however, many people find modern art unapproachable, and many modern artists find religion irrelevant.

Michael Schrauzer, a gifted artist and devout Catholic, was born in Munich, Germany, in 1960. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont University and teaches at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. A true renaissance man, Schrauzer is also well-read in philosophy, theology and literature, and is currently writing a novel set in 17th-century Germany. His paintings have been exhibited in Germany and throughout California, most recently at the Sacred Arts Festival in Pasadena.

Our Sunday Visitor spoke with Schrauzer about the divorce of art and religion — and whether there is hope for reconciliation.

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR: Where is the ideal setting for your art, and sacred art in general, to be viewed? And, how do you think it has affected the average person that art is found no longer primarily in churches but in museums?

MICHAEL SCHRAUZER: I think there is a difference between sacred or liturgical art and contemporary religious art, which is fine art with a religious or spiritual inspiration. Each type has its own optimal habitat.

I believe that liturgical art — for example, crucifixes or stations of the cross — functions best in a Church. Moreover, it must appeal to a broad spectrum of people in such a way that the art does not get in the way of their prayer and spiritual experience. In this case, artists need to be aware of how much their own particular and personal vision or style is in the work, and whether it might be distracting. Making art for the Church should be undertaken with an attitude of humility and a reverence for living tradition — not as an opportunity to assert one’s own personality or to make a statement. Still less should it be to deliberately disturb or upset.

When liturgical art is removed from sacred spaces and placed in museums, the effect for the viewer can be that the religious content of the art is neutered. The work itself is seen as a mere artifact of a culture, to be admired only for its aesthetic qualities and examined along purely formal lines, rather than as a means for awakening and directing the spiritual sense. Museums, it might be said, are modern secular shrines to the religion of art.

I believe it is unfortunate that so much religious art has been torn from its original context, in part because the quality of the art that replaces it in the churches is often very poor. Admittedly, the museums have preserved a great deal of art from destruction and damage, and there is no doubt visitors to art museums maybe touched by the spiritual and aesthetic content of the art they see. Some visitors may even be led to investigate the meaning of the work they have seen and may ultimately discover the faith. But it is not the museums’ purpose to convert souls.

On the other hand, I love the idea that my work could be subversively evangelical, in the sense that someone might first approach it simply as an example of contemporary fine art, but be intrigued by it, come to like it, and only then discover its religious dimension, after they have opened themselves to it. Many secular people will immediately dismiss obviously religious art, particularly if it is Christian, as unworthy of their attention.

I do not consider my own art to be liturgical art. It comes from my own intuition and subjective religious experiences, which, of course, are formed by my living within the Catholic faith and tradition. Ultimately, I want to create art that communicates a sense of the sublime beauty of God.

VISITOR: An article in Christianity Today made the following statement about your work: “Schrauzer’s approach represents a radical attempt to invest traditional Christian iconography with a new vocabulary while remaining true to the content of Christian faith.” Many people, however, do not understand iconography, or react negatively to it. Do you want to reclaim the lost iconography, or invent new images without previous connotations?

SCHRAUZER: If my work were destined for liturgical use, I think I would be much more overt in my use of traditional iconography. As it is, I typically like to disguise my use of traditional iconography, or to employ it in ways that are unfamiliar, so that viewers might encounter them afresh and without prejudice.

I deeply love and respect Catholic tradition and traditional symbolism. I am not interested in creating new symbols — first, because I don’t think we need any new ones, but also because I wish to place my art in the living stream of the tradition.

It’s true that the modern world has largely forgotten the old symbols. This is not surprising, since the modern world has largely embraced scientific materialism, which denies that the world has meaning. Modernism rejected traditional symbols as irrelevant and did not pass them down to the next generation.

Even Christians have lost this symbolic sensibility — that’s why so many new Catholic churches look like very functional auditoriums instead of sacred spaces that mean something.

The believer is often in the same position of ignorance vis à vis religious art as the secular person. Every thing can be a symbol, but, as products of the modern world, we are trained to ask what a thing is, rather than what it means. But in order to understand art, we need to ask such questions as “What does fire mean?” or “What does a flower mean?”

That said, I don’t believe Catholic symbolism is irretrievably lost. It may take a deliberate effort, but the symbolic vocabulary can still be recovered, reclaimed, and relearned. That is part of the joy and adventure of belonging to a 2,000-year-old tradition. Art and religion both remind us that everything is full of meaning.

VISITOR: Many people feel like they need an essay to interpret modern art. What is the relationship between your titles and paintings? For example, with “Annunciation,” one would not immediately connect the rose and “T” with Mary and the Incarnation without the title.

SCHRAUZER: A great deal of modern art is really art about art made for other artists. In a way, the art of the last hundred years or so is like a vast in-house discussion, loaded with the jargon of specialists, about the formal possibilities of visual expression. This discussion may be fascinating to an artist, but it is of little interest to everybody else. That is why modern and postmodern art is so difficult and confusing to most people. It’s like reading a textbook on linguistics when what you really want is a good story.

On the other hand, art is not — and never should be — easy. There is always mystery and ambiguity in the best and deepest art. The least interesting art is that art that you “get” right away because it is one-dimensional — like art used for advertising or propaganda — it only has one thing to say and wants to leave nothing open to interpretation.

Some people are uncomfortable with metaphor, allusion and multiple meanings, but these are the essence and excitement of the experience of art. Unambiguous certainties are found in the sciences, philosophy and theology; ambiguous certainties are the coin of art and poetry.

When people go to museums, often the first thing they look at is the title of the piece on the wall, instead of the piece itself. They feel a need to know right away what they’re looking at, even before they look at it. Once they know the title, they confirm their understanding by glancing at the piece for a few seconds before moving on to the next one.

By going about it in this way, they never get a chance to actually experience or know the piece itself, but instead find comfort in their pre-existing concept of the meaning‘ (“Oh, that’s the Annunciation. I know what that is.”).

But a work of art is sacramental and incarnational. It is the invisible made visible, image made flesh.

The titles of my pieces are clues to the mystery. My hope is that viewers will discover several paths into the art. Some may find it appealing to look at. Others maybe curious about the meaning or like the technical details of the construction. The title may send them off on another exploration: What does the Latin mean? What is the literary or biblical reference?

But, ultimately, my hope is that my pieces are more than ideas or puzzles to be solved: I strongly believe that art should engage the senses, the emotions, the intellect and the spirit — the whole person.

SIDEBAR: But where are Gabriel and Mary?

WHEN MARY ACCEPTED God’s invitation to be the mother of Christ, Jesus was enfleshed in her womb. At that moment, heaven and earth, divine and human were united.

Although it’s not obvious at first, Michael Schrauzer’s “The Annunciation” (left) utilizes many elements of traditional Catholic symbolism. Our Sunday Visitor’s staff attempted to crack the code. We hope our brainstorming will help you appreciate it:

The T shape at the top is three-sided (the Trinity). It is also the Greek letter tau, the first letter of the name for God (theos), and is a symbol of righteousness (see Ez 9:4). St. Francis of Assisi adopted this shape for his cross. The T is gold (the riches of heaven).

The T overshadows a white rose (Mary, purity, beauty). The rose is within a U-shape (receptivity, openness). The U is made of wood (the cross).

Where the T and U (heaven and earth) intersect, the sun (Son) is rising, bringing light to the world. » OSV staff

SIDEBAR: Is the fire ascending or descending?

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR: Could you explain the symbolism of “Grace and Causality”?

SCHRAUZER: Without wishing to be coy, you might understand that I’m hesitant to explain the symbolism of this piece because I don't want to give the impression that there is only one answer. But it may help simply to put into words the elements of the piece and to describe my thoughts about them.

The yellow square is made of pure sulfur, which is an alchemical symbol of the sun, which is a symbol of God the Father. This is situated in a painting of a sky at sunrise or sunset, and above a painting of fire, which is a symbol of transformation (refining fire, consuming fire, illuminating fire, the fire of Pentecost). Is the fire descending or ascending? Below that is an actual egg, which has been charred or marked with fire. The egg has many meanings: from the human body and soul to the Resurrection. It contains a sulfurous yellow component hidden inside. The title may lead to thoughts on grace and free will, prevenient grace and the order of cause and effect in nature and in our souls. » C.C.