Photo: Church Times
'It could be said that a great deal of our theology is a grasping after meaning.'

Giles Fraser compares art to theology

Last week, we hung a superb Antony Gormley sculpture, Flare II, in the south-west tower stair of the cathedral.

In this vertiginous space, with its famous hanging staircase winding its way into the heavens, the figure within the sculpture looks like Alice tumbling backward down the rabbit hole, or a falling angel.

If you watch the visitors to this amazing space, many of them are searching for some sort of explanation for this sculpture, seeking to set the figure in some broader narrative that they assume is being referred to — like my sense that it has Alice in Wonderland associations.

Of course, describing a work in this sort of way is a typical move in modern art, and not always a helpful one; for often, when we are confronted by something we do not quite understand, we grasp after meaning, often imposing meaning against the grain of an artwork as a way of reducing our anxiety at not understanding.

Threat

It is interesting to me how many of us want to close off our not knowing, experiencing not knowing as some sort of threat.

Yet it seems to me that it is only when one gives up the attempt to pigeonhole a piece of art through some dodgy process of allegorisation that we free ourselves to wonder at its beauty and resonance.

There is a parallel here with theology. It could be said that a great deal of our theology is a grasping after meaning, motivated by the fact that we find it uncomfortable to accept that there is much about God and the world that will for ever elude our understanding.

In the face of this anxiety, some people are ready to impose any meaning or intellectual order, however spurious and unconvincing. This is how theology gets a bad name.

Immediately after the piece was hung, Antony Gormley and I sat down on the stair to admire his work. Mr Gormley described it as being a bit like “a note or a smell” — by which I took him to be trying to creep up on some sort of meaning for his work while resisting the instinct for reification.

Meaning cannot be too definite or concrete — yet it is there, like music.

Fit

I guess the reason why music is often seen as presenting a better fit with Judaeo-Christian theology is that it resists presenting itself as a thing; that is, it resists presenting itself as a potential object of idolatry.

Significantly, with music, that hoary old question that is often posed of contemporary art, “What does it mean?”, isn’t seen to be needed. We let music speak to us in its own terms.

This, I imagine, is why Mr Gormley wants his work to be seen more “as a note”. It’s not a bad way to approach God, either.

• The Revd Dr Giles Fraser is Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Director of the St Paul's Institute.

• This column was first published in, and appears courtesy of, The Church Times

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