David Buschart » Art & Incarnation (4): Engaging the Art & Theology of Edward Knippers

The spirit and work of the artist can be a rich means of grace, especially to those of us who lack either the  temperament or the ability to “create” as they do. My sister was given all the artistic ability allotted to my family of origin, and so God blessed me with a wife gifted with both the spirit and the abilities of an artist. And, my Christian faith has been refined and enriched through her.

Some artists suggest that they can meaningfully communicate only through their art. Others, like Edward Knippers, can do so through both their art and their written words. (And, there are, of course, also art forms for which the primary medium is words.) I am glad for the opportunity to consider the work of Knippers, and, in light of my above-mentioned limitations, will take my prompts from the latter.

Commendations: Physicality and Hope

Allow me to begin by highlighting and commending three of Knippers’ observations. (And, these commendations are not a polite set-up for negative critique. I happen to fundamentally agree with Knippers’ comments.)

First, “disembodiment is not an option for the Christian.” Disembodiment is not an option because our Creator-God has not made it an option. Disembodiment may occur for the Christian during the interlude between earthly death and eternal redemption, but as theologians point out, this is a temporary aberration. It is unnatural and not the way God planned it. God made and makes and redeems human beings only as enfleshed creatures.

Second, physicality is “messy” and uncomfortable. To be sure, it can be pleasurable and a means of grace. But, because the world and all that is in it is, with a nod to Cornelius Plantinga, not the way it’s supposed to be, physicality is messy and uncomfortable. This is undoubtedly a significant factor in some Christians’ inclination toward a Gnosticized faith (to which Knippers, too, refers). As with many aspects of Christian faith and life, a healthy embrace of physicality is not always easy or pleasant but it is the right thing to do (consider “John comforted in Prison”, above).

Third, physicality is an essential element of the Christian message of hope. As Knippers’ nicely puts it, “we are able to make our bodies a living sacrifice to God because of Christ’s real and complete sacrifice for us.” As we often need to be reminded, the only way to Easter is through Good Friday.

Ben Myers » Art & Incarnation (3): Engaging the Art & Theology of Edward Knippers

Edward Knippers and the resurrection of the body

Edward Knippers has always foregrounded the human body, and his work has long been preoccupied with the relation between God and bodies. Knippers has thus rightly been described as a painter of “incarnation.”

But in this new series of paintings – with its remarkable integration of baroque bodies and cubist forms – it becomes clear that the theological centre of Knippers’ work is not the incarnation of flesh as such, but the resurrection of the flesh. These paintings reflect an artist’s search for a language with which to articulate the theological truth that God’s identity – and likewise the identity of human selves – is inextricably connected to the reality of resurrection. God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead: this is not an incidental aspect of God’s character, but it is a description of God’s very “essence.” The resurrection of Jesus is what makes God God.

And similarly: the relation between God and humanity depends on the event of Jesus’ resurrection. Our own identities are mysteriously caught up in this event. If we want to discover who we really are, what it really means to be human, we have to look to the place where God and humanity overlap, the place where God intersects humanity. And the resurrection of Jesus is this place.

The overlap in Knippers’ paintings between human bodies and a profusion of refracted forms of light and colour is an attempt to locate this place, this startling moment in which the world of God intersects and interpenetrates our own material world.

Consider The Raising of Lazarus (right) . Here, a cubist concept – that an abstractly reassembled object can be viewed simultaneously from multiple perspectives – is employed as a language for articulating the intersection of the world of God and the world of human flesh. The forms and colours intersect and interpenetrate one another: bones, bandages and bodies are shot through with ribbons of light. As Gerard Manley Hopkins has put it, God’s grandeur “will flame out, like shining from shook foil.” Amidst the death of the tomb we witness a sudden explosion of life, an astonishing surge of colour and form. Above Lazarus stands the figure of Christ, with hands spread out in a gesture of creation, of forming. It is Christ who dissolves the formlessness of death, and brings forth the new form of sheer uncontainable life. The creative presence of Christ fractures and disrupts the world’s material order, bursting it open and reassembling it, wholly interpenetrating it with the flash and flame of God’s own life.

Fred Sanders » Art & Incarnation (2): Engaging the Art & Theology of Edward Knippers

Edward Knippers is a hard-working painter, and what he’s been at work on since the ‘70s is exploring a visual vocabulary capable of expressing the remarkable things Christians believe.

In the old days, you could just paint a halo, but not anymore.  Christian art once had a symbolic vocabulary at its disposal that included all kinds of ciphers for spiritual things, and pointers to the transcendent.  Those halos meant holiness; a beam of light from a golden hemisphere in the sky meant spiritual illumination; an almond-shaped mandorla around a body signified that the person in it was simultaneously occupying our world and a world beyond; an angel meant an angel.

Knippers is not dismissive of all that traditional visual vocabulary; all of his work is carried out under the blessing of the fifth commandment’s charge to give your father and mother their due honor.  His paintings show a deep gratitude to the tradition. He knows his art history and understands the place he occupies in the stream of influences flowing through him.  What is rarer, he has pondered the theological implications of his place in the Western tradition.

But for all that, a Knippers painting doesn’t deploy the ancient visual language of pre-Renaissance painting.  There are no halos here -not in the form of golden circles painted on the background, nor yellow dinner plates attached to the backs of heads and improbably becoming ellipses in obedience to the laws of perspective, nor sunbursts conveniently occurring behind holy figures.  He doesn’t try to press those ancient symbols into service in his work.

Instead, Knippers paints human bodies.  He paints big, solid, fleshy forms engaged in vigorous, muscular movement.  There is a monumentality to a Knippers painting that you can sense even from a catalog photo or a tiny jpeg on a web page.  The images are well composed enough that seeing little copies of them is meaningful, but you should jump at any chance you ever have to get in the same room with one of his Truly Gigantic Panels (–one of those six or eight foot tall things, like The Anunciation of the Shepherds (below) (for more, visit Knippers’ website).

Up close, a Knippers painting is a revelation: in your space, in your face, confrontational and aggressive.  His pinkish giants don’t stay in a polite middle distance in his images, but crowd the foreground. A room with three or four of them in it feels more like a wrestling arena than an art gallery.

Art & Incarnation (1) » Artist Statement by Edward Knippers

Our exhibition opens today with an essay from Edward Knippers himself. Subsequent posts engaging Knippers’ art and theology will follow every day this week.Tomorrow will feature Fred Sanders (Biola University), probably the world’s greatest systematic theologian cartoonist.

The human body is at the centre of my artistic imagination because the body is an essential element of the Christian doctrines of Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection.

Disembodiment is not an option for the Christian. Christ places His Body and His Blood at the heart of our faith in Him. Our faith comes to naught if the Incarnation was not accomplished in actual time and space – if God did not send His Son to us in a real body with real blood.

Heresy results when we try to minimize the presence or pre-eminence of the body and the blood. Yet even believers have become comfortable with our age as it tries to disembody reality. Physicality is messy; it is demanding and always a challenge to control.

The naked human body is one way of starkly stating that we have nowhere to hide. Further, it allows me to have something of the spiritual timelessness of the Eastern Icon tradition by avoiding the cultural trappings of modern or ancient dress and, at the same time, enabling me to ground my subjects in the specifics of time and space (the glory of the Western tradition). This bridging of the two traditions is important to me because the spirituality of the Biblical events is as solid and real as the events themselves.

In finding the spiritual in the interactions and choices of real people, incarnation can be shown as the symbiotic reality that it is. In other words, the choices and actions that we make always have profound spiritual ramifications because we are human beings.

Next Week: Art & Incarnation – Engaging the Art & Theology of Edward Knippers

We are very excited to be hosting our first ‘blog exhibition’ showcasing the art and theology of Edward Knippers. Starting next Monday we will post an essay each day accompanied with several pieces of Knippers’ stunning, confrontative artwork. The theologians involved will be reflecting theologically on Knippers’ work related most specifically to the doctrine of Incarnation but will discuss other doctrinal and cultural implications that attend Knippers’ thoroughgoing commitment to ‘physicality’.

The exhibition will begin on Monday and proceed along the following schedule:

Monday, Nov. 3 – Artist statement from Edward Knippers

Tuesday, Nov. 4 – Fred Sanders (Biola University)

Wednesday, Nov. 5 - Ben Myers (Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton)

Thursday, Nov. 6 – David Buschart (Denver Seminary)

Friday, Nov. 7 – Edward Knippers will respond to the exhibition

Please stop in, reflect on Knippers’ art, and join the discussion that will follow the posts each day.

Reactions » Albrecht Dürer, Adoration of the Trinity (1511)

Albrecht Dürer, The Adoration of the Trinity (1511), Oil on Linenwood

Reactions? Any thoughts on Dürer’s doctrine of the Trinity – or Christology for that matter – based on what you see here?

(You can also view here a selection of Dürer’s amazing woodcuts)

Reactions » Michael Buesking, “Adventus”

Michael Buesking, “Adventus”, Oil on Linen (2005)

Reactions? Buesking’s own comments about this piece might get us started: “My intention is to suggest the presence of the Spirit and His gifts, and present them as something impossible to contain or hold. Implying a tenuous quality to God’s presence is not meant to be a bad reflection on God’s nature or to demean his promises and gifts. Instead, it has more to do with our interaction with Him and our own human tendency to claim ownership – presumptuously – of something given to us.”

How does this speak to our theology of the spiritual gifts? Our doctrine of the Spirit? Or, our understanding of God’s “haveability”, to use Bonhoeffer’s turn of phrase (Act and Being)?