Imaging the Spiritual Quest Spiritual the Imaging

WRITINGS FROM THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS 06 Imagingthe Spiritual Quest Imaging the Spiritual Quest Explorations in Art, Religion and Spirituality FRANK BRÜMMEL & GRANT WHITE, EDS. Imaging the Spiritual Quest Explorations in Art, Religion and Spirituality WRITINGS FROM THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS 06 Imaging the Spiritual Quest Explorations in Art, Religion and Spirituality FRANK BRÜMMEL & GRANT WHITE, EDS. Table of Contents Editors and Contributors 7 Acknowledgements 12 Imaging the Spiritual Quest Introduction 13 Explorations in Art, Religion and Spirituality. GRANT WHITE Writings from the Academy of Fine Arts (6). Breathing, Connecting: Art as a Practice of Life 19 Published by RIIKKA STEWEN The Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki The Full House and the Empty: On Two Sacral Spaces 33 Editors JYRKI SIUKONEN Frank Brümmel, Grant White In a Space between Spirituality and Religion: Graphic Design Art and Artists in These Times 41 Marjo Malin GRANT WHITE Printed by Mutual Reflections of Art and Religion 53 Grano Oy, Vaasa, 2018 JUHA-HEIKKI TIHINEN Use of Images in Eastern and Western Church Art 63 ISBN 978-952-7131-47-3 JOHAN BASTUBACKA ISBN 978-952-7131-48-0 pdf ISSN 2242-0142 Funerary Memorials and Cultures of Death in Finland 99 © The Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki and the authors LIISA LINDGREN Editors and Contributors Stowaway 119 PÄIVIKKI KALLIO On Prayer and Work: Thoughts from a Visit Editors to the Valamo Monastery in Ladoga 131 ELINA MERENMIES Frank Brümmel is an artist and university lecturer. In his artistic practice Brümmel explores how words, texts and im- “Things the Mind Already Knows” ages carved onto stone semiotically develop meanings and and the Sound Observer 143 narratives. He has exhibited internationally since 2008. Frank J. O. MALLANDER Brümmel is a lecturer at the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. Bibliography 164 Grant White has taught in universities and schools of theolo- Illustration Credits 174 gy in the United States, Finland, and the United Kingdom since 1993. He received an A.B. degree in comparative religion from Harvard University in 1985, and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, Indiana) in 1993. From 1987 to 1988 he studied Syriac language and literature and historical theology at Oxford University as a Fulbright Schol- ar. He currently teaches courses on the relationships between art and spirituality, ritual, esotericism, and contemplation at the University of the Arts Helsinki, and is Assistant Professor of Liturgical Theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (Crestwood, New York). 8 EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS 9 Contributors professional appointments include: curatorship of exhibi- Adjunct Professor (Docent) Johan Bastubacka works as tions 1992–93 and head curatorship of collections 1996–97 senior university lecturer in the Faculty of Theology at the at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki. She University of Helsinki. Bastubacka began his scholarly work was appointed Academy Research Fellow of the Academy with the study of neo-Byzantine icons and has subsequently of Finland, a position she held from 1997 to 2000. In 2000– conducted research on ecclesiastical art, religious communica- 2001 Lindgren worked as Acting Director of the Central Art tion, rituals, and issues of law and religion, currently as a mem- Archives of the National Gallery, as Senior Researcher in the ber of the HERA ProNoLa project. His main research interests Central Art Archives 2001–2004 and as Acting Director of comprise religion as performed, visualized, materialized, and the Sinebrychoff Art Museum in 2004. Lindgren has pub- regulated. lished several studies on Finnish sculpture and art criticism as well as a broad selection of popular articles on sculpture. Päivikki Kallio is an artist whose works have been exhibited Her 1996 doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki internationally since 1980. From 2010–2015 she was Profes- dealt with tradition and modernity in Finnish sculpture of the sor of Printmaking at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Hel- 1940s and 1950s. Her book Monumentum (2000) analyzes sinki). Her works can be found in several Finnish collections: public monuments in the 19th and 20th centuries in Finland. among others, in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Her book Memoria (2009) deals with funerary sculpture in the National Art Collection, and those of the cities of Turku the 19th and 20th centuries. and Tampere. In her own work, Kallio deals with the concept of printmaking using materials different from traditional mate- J. O. (Jan-Olof) Mallander is an artist and art critic. From rials. With materials such as salt, beeswax, stone and lighting 1968 to 1980 Mallander wrote for Hufvudstadsbladet, the she constructs spatial artworks in which the content, a mix- Swedish-language newspaper in Finland. From 1971 to 1972 ture of history and family subjects, is entwined with her ex- he worked as art critic for the Swedish newspaper Dagens perimental practice. Nyheter. Additionally he wrote for several art magazines and worked as a freelance journalist for the Finnish Yleisradio. Mal- Liisa Lindgren is an expert on Finnish sculpture of the 19th lander was founding manager (1971–77) of the Cheap Thrills and 20th centuries and docent at the University of Helsinki Gallery, which was dedicated to introducing Fluxus to Finland. and the University of Turku. Since 2005 Lindgren has worked Later, he curated for the Amos Anderson Art Museum and as Senior Curator in the Parliament of Finland. Her previous had a retrospective of his work at the Sara Hildén Art Museum. 10 EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS 11 Elina Merenmies is an artist living and working in Helsinki. She temporary art history as well as directed doctoral studies in studied painting at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Helsinki), practice-based artistic research. She is interested in questions the Institut de Saint-Luc (Brussels) and at the Academy of Fine of critical pedagogy, psychoanalysis, theories of subjectivity, Arts (Prague). Her work includes ink washes and drawings, as and the relationship between art and philosophy. well as acrylic, tempera and oil paintings. She has taught at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Helsinki) and at the Royal Sakari Tervo received the MFA degree from the Academy of Danish Academy of Fine Arts (Copenhagen). Her works have Fine Arts (Helsinki) in 2011. He mainly works in collaboration been shown internationally and are included in several public with other artists, or in the collectives Anna Breu and Sorbus. and private collections, such as the ARKEN Museum for Mod- Currently, he is co-manager of the Sorbus art space in Helsin- ern Art, Ishøy; the Uppsala Art Museum; La Maison Rouge, ki, and is a part time teacher at the Maa Art School (Helsinki). Paris; the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection, Espoo; The Helsinki City Art Museum and The Museum of Contem- Juha-Heikki Tihinen is a Helsinki-based art historian (PhD porary Art Kiasma. 2008, Adjunct Professor 2016, University of Helsinki). He currently works as curator at the Pro Artibus Foundation and as Jyrki Siukonen is an artist and scholar. He has exhibited in- a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in the University of ternationally since 1983. Siukonen worked as Gregory Fellow the Arts Helsinki. Tihinen has written extensively on symbolist, in Sculpture at the University of Leeds from 1994 to 1996 and modern and contemporary art for a number of publications, in as Professor of Sculpture at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts addition to which he has also curated exhibitions since 2009. (Helsinki), from 2004 to 2008. He has published several books, In 2008 he was awarded the E. J. Vehmas Prize for his contri- including Uplifted Spirits, Earthbound Machines. Studies on butions to art criticism. Artists and the Dream of Flight, 1900–1935 (2001) and Ham- mer and Silence. A Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Tools (2015). Riikka Stewen is an art historian and theoretician. In her research, she addresses topics such as theories of memory and subjectivity and genealogies of contemporary art. She has supervised several doctoral dissertations in modern and con- Acknowledgements Introduction GRANT WHITE The origins of this volume lie in the lectures and talks given in There has perhaps never been a more important time for art- Frank Brümmel’s spring 2014 course on Art and Religion at the ists to engage the worlds of religion and (which, for all its crit- University of the Arts Helsinki, as well in a May 2014 excursion ics, still remains a useful term) spirituality. As many observers to the Valamo Monastery in the Russian Federation. In addition have noted, predictions of the decline and death of religion to the authors of the essays collected here, the editors wish in the face of secularism have not come true. Instead, today to acknowledge the following individuals who contributed to our world is crazed with the fault lines of the confrontation be- the making of this book: Michaela Bränn, Research Coordina- tween modernity and those worlds given voice and form by tor at the University of the Arts Helsinki, without whose kind religion and spirituality. The sociopolitical events of the past assistance throughout the entire process this volume would twenty years have made it clear that religion continues to mo- not have been possible; Turku-based graphic designer Mar- tivate, and to be employed as

Load more