Courtesy Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Yves Klein, "L'accord bleu" (1960). Pigment and collage on triplex, 78 x 64 x 5 in.

March 2009 Reviews

Hans Hoffmann

R. H. Quaytman

Peter Rostovsky

Josephine Taylor

Alex Bag

Kirsten Stoltman

Bia Davou

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Renée Green

Superflex

Anna Barriball

Damien Hirst Mark Rothko Francis Bacon Gilbert and George Yves Klein Wassily Kandinsky Jeff Koons Jackson Pollock

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Bringing together such diverse artists as Kasimir Malevich, Jeff Koons, Piet Mondrian, Jan Toorop, Marlene Dumas, and Mike Kelley, almost 80 works from the collection of the currently homeless Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (scheduled to reopen after a renovation at the end of the year) have been assembled in De Nieuwe Kerk for "Holy Inspiration: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Art." As if the 15th-century church’s Gothic arches and and exhibition’s title leave any room for doubt about the show’s subject, the works are installed in a specially designed temporary structure in the form of a white — Suprematist? — cross. The exhibition concept taps into current sentiments and reflects the increasing prominence of religion, or perhaps more accurately, discussion about religion, in our post 9/11 society. Presenting its collection in this light seems an interesting choice for a museum whose existence and acquisition history is based on the profoundly secular premise of art’s autonomy. (A side-effect of the exhibition is that it shows the gaps in the collection. For instance, only two women artists are represented: Dumas and Marina Abramović.)

It is fitting that the first work is Gilbert & George’s Shitty 1994 (1994), where a cross made of excrement suggests how the artists feel about the influence of religion. It is flanked on the left by Francis Bacon’s From Muybridge (1965), with bodies struggling to be free of the crucifixion pose imposed on them, and on the right by Damien Hirst’s Memento (2007), a collection of preliminary studies for his work For the Love of God (2007), which is more commonly known as the diamond skull. This first — very British — room immediately shows one difficulty with the chosen theme, namely that while religious painters need not paint Madonnas, religious iconography has been freely used in the last century by artists as a provocative protest against religion and in defense of secular culture. It is not always easy to identify who is on what side, and this is made even more difficult by the fact that the show spans works made during an increasingly secularized century in which certain messages embedded in religious tradition have acquired very different meanings.

What becomes increasingly clear as one progresses through the exhibition is that religious art in the pure sense — made by artists inspired by religion rather than commenting on or protesting against it — forms a minor part of the collection. This may highlight the secularization of society as a whole, but I would venture that it also reflects the museum’s past acquisition policies, particularly since the few religiously inspired works on show are neither the exhibition’s most interesting nor most recent ones. One exception is the Argentinean artist Sesostris Vitullo’s stunning gilded oak sculpture Dead Christ (1949), but then his Cubist-inspired contorted Christ is as much an ode to sculpture as to Christianity’s central figure.

At least the (predominantly Judeo-Christian) iconography is fairly easy to identify, even if its significance varies. The waters become much murkier when "spirituality" enters the mix. Religious art is spiritual, but spiritual art is a much broader and less-defined concept. It is almost a century since Wassily Kandinsky wrote his manifesto Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1914), hailing abstract art as the means by which a spiritual revolution in the viewer occurs. With four works, he is well-represented in the exhibition. But Kandinsky very clearly and openly related the spiritual in art to religious experience, an experience of inner life, something that would have been abundantly clear to his readers and viewers of the time. The world moved on, and "spirituality" is no longer necessarily related to religion; particularly when we see artists attributing their personal meanings to that word. One of the most impressive rooms is the one with works by Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Mark Rothko, Yves Klein, and Barnett Newman. What to think in this context? Are these artists really all offering alternative icons to the viewer for reflection and contemplation (and surely that argument can be and has been made, including by some of the artists), or are some of them in fact more concerned with the inherent qualities of painting? Yet some of these works can offer a more profound experience than many other kinds of painting, though it’s difficult to locate the source of this pleasure.