Traces du sacré: beliefs and religions in 20th century art
The Sistine Chapel, sculptures by Michelangelo or Bernini, paintings by Raphael, Rubens, Caravaggio... The examples which come instantly to mind concerning religious art are plenty. But as we step a bit further from ancient art, and try to consider these themes among the works of 20th century artists, these seem to vanish, or rather to drown themselves in the search for new shapes and colours of the abstract painters, or in the surrealists' humour... If religion and sacredness become indeed less visible among avant-garde artists, those are nevertheless far from absent of this new conception of art, as is shown in the ambitious exhibition which is now on display in Paris at the Centre Pompidou, Traces du Sacré.
A new look on the principal avant-garde movements
Based on three hundreds of works chosen to represent the totality of the principal artistic movements which arose from the beginning of the 19th century until now, from the spirituality-tinted romanticism of Friedrich, to the almost blasphemous works by Damien Hirst or Michel Journiac, not forgetting the abstraction of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko or Wassily Kandinsky, the exhibition succeeds in emphasizing the constant, not to say the omnipresent influence of religion and spirituality in modern and contemporary art. We are then invited in an in-depth look at the important religious and mystical movements created in the 19th or 20th centuries, the Rosicrucians, with the symbolist painter Jean Delville, spiritualism, with Victor Hugo, oriental philosophies, with writers of the Beat generation, or even Satanism, with Alisteir Crowley, all different ways for artists to consider their relationship with the beyond, but also to conceive the Christian cultural heritage, as is shown with Le Corbusier's model for Ronchamp chapel, or Jean Lurçat's tapestries.
The exhibition also evokes the different forms taken by the critic of religious practices, such as Dali's humorous provocation, or parodical ceremonies including depictions of cannibalism, as with Michel Journiac, or animal sacrifices, with Hermann Nitsch.
An inexhaustible source of inspiration
The works chosen, which can seem contradictory because of the diversity of manners employed to evoke spirituality and sacredness, help us to realise the importance of those themes in the artist's status, whose gifts are considered to be inherited from the divine as early as he gets recognition during the Renaissance. The exhibition then allows us to better understand this evolution of the artist during the 19th and 20th centuries, stepping from his role of illustrator of the great religious themes to the one of commentator, putting in doubt the traditional ways to represent the invisible, as well as he rethinks his role of artist in the whole society.
Janvier 2009
