The Fusion of Art and Religion
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2015 Modern Era Centaur: the Fusion of Art and Religion Isabel Sobral Campos Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1133 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Campos i Modern Era Centaur: the Fusion of Art and Religion by Isabel Sobral Campos A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 Campos ii 2015 Isabel Sobral Campos All Rights Reserved Campos iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the Dissertation requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Dr. John Brenkman ________________ ____________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Dr. Giancarlo Lombardi ________________ ____________________________________ Date Executive Officer Dr. John Brenkman Dr. Joshua Wilner Dr. Evelyn Ender Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Campos iv Abstract Modern Era Centaur: the Fusion of Art and Religion by Isabel Sobral Campos Adviser: Professor John Brenkman My dissertation, “Modern Era Centaur: the Fusion of Art and Religion,” focuses on art’s ability to assume other social functions outside its domain. It deals with a variety of artistic practices that take on overt religious roles or are otherwise implicitly grounded in a religiously inflected stance. I argue that the religious impulse of the modern era greatly motivates the poetic and visual aesthetic innovations in the European and American avant- garde. Framed through the thinking of Blaise Pascal, Emmanuel Levinas, and Niklas Luhmann, I show how proto-modernist poetics such as that of Charles Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson articulate similar religious commitments, as does the abstract art of such artists as Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. The modernity of Dickinson and Baudelaire, I contend, stems from their articulation of a religious position independent from a particular religious system while nonetheless plundering that same system in an expropriation and transformation of its symbols, narratives, and personalities. Kandinsky and Malevich accomplished a similar feat in their disavowal of mimetic art, and their construction of a pictorial language—in the case of Malevich inspired by Orthodox Christian iconography— aimed at fulfilling a religious function outside of a religious system. Abstract art prefigures the visual language of science fiction films of the late twentieth century. Representations of outer space in this genre have however transformed the positive openness to infinity implicit in Renaissance perspectival painting into an angst-filled view of infinity. In particular, apocalyptic science fiction films envisioning end of the world scenarios are pictorial inheritors of abstract art, although they refuse the ontological positivity of Malevich and Kandinsky. To paraphrase Hannah Arendt, in these films one sees how the conquest of space has altered humanity’s perception of itself in the universe. Scholarship on modern and Campos v modernist literature and visual art often assumes the background of secularization. My dissertation, however, argues both for the importance of religion and for the unprecedented transformation of the meaning of a religiously informed outlook. The theoretical framework of the study combines the pioneering thinking of Blaise Pascal with Emmanuel Levinas and Niklas Luhmann’s work to formulate the mutations of religion in the modern era and to show how these mutations have migrated to the sphere of art. Both Pascal and Levinas conceptualize atheism as a condition for the belief in God—a relationship to infinity must be conceptualized prior to a relationship to the deity. This allows them to articulate a religious viewpoint outside of religious systems invested in particular dogmas or narratives. Pascal and Levinas are then instrumental in the transformations occurring in the modern era in relationship to belief. Luhmann contributes to this study as he sees the process of secularization occurring in modernity to signify a restructuring of the religious system in relation to all other social systems, and not the disappearance of religion. This structuring permits the proliferation of different forms of belief since now it is up to the individual to choose and pick from various religious cultural options. Campos vi Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Kristofer Petersen-Overton, Rita Sobral Campos and my family, and my committee for all the help and support in writing this dissertation. Campos vii Table of Contents Introduction - 1 Part I - Pascal’s Wager: Between Void and Infinity 1. Chapter One: Our Infinite World – 7 2. Chapter Two: Something between Matter and Nothing – 20 Part II – The Spectral Invention of the Modern 3. Chapter Three: “Sullied” Transformation: How to Believe in Modernity – 50 4. Chapter Four: The Haunted House of Nature – Immanence’s Infinity – 80 5. Chapter Five: Baudelaire: Spectral Balladeer – 111 Part III – Framing the Cosmos 6. Chapter Six: Luhmann’s Systems Theory of Religion and Abstract Art – 145 7. Chapter Seven: Futureless Invention: Frampton’s Infinite-Finite Film – 168 8. Chapter Eight: Cosmological Loneliness: When God Stopped Looking – 197 Works Cited – 221 Campos 1 Introduction “As a result of this bifurcation of the cultural religious option and personal religious decisions, there is currently widespread incoherence in individual opinions that qualify as religious” (Niklas Luhmann, A Systems Theory of Religion 212). Niklas Luhmann’s lifelong project aimed at conceptualizing a general theory of society. His work on the religious system thus partakes of such an aim. Conceiving of two main moments in the formation of the modern world – premodern and modern – religion plays a fundamental role in the passage between them. In premodern times, religion regulates the ultimate meaning of all other social systems so that society’s organization is stratified. The modern era entails the undoing of this order. Now all social systems function autonomously of each other and the religious system is only one system among others, all of which function synchronously. The loss of the position of religion also brings about another phenomenon. The system of art, since Romanticism, at times takes on the functions of religion, articulating the ambition that art can fulfill spiritual motivations. The above citation from Luhmann is concerned with the modern era for, since the loss of the position of religion and the full- fledged independence of all systems, it is up to the individual to decide whether or not he wants to be included in the religious system. The birth of the concept of culture in the eighteenth century also increases the burden placed on the individual who can now compare many different cultures, choosing what to endorse from various traditions, so that one’s beliefs are as custom-made as an individually tailored suit. Campos 2 This dissertation examines the “widespread incoherence” of religion that Luhmann identifies as proper to the modern era and which is a sign of the creativity and adaptability of religion. It studies artistic practices that either aim at taking on religious functions such as Emily Dickinson’s poetry and Wassily Kandinsky and Vlademir Malevich’s painting, or whose subject matter is at root religious, thus determining the parameters and form of the artwork. Charles Baudelaire, Hollis Frampton, Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier fall under the latter category. Insofar as this study is concerned, all of the examined artistic practices across a long temporal arc and a variety of media – writing, painting and film – are invested in thinking “religiously.” Yet the religious nature of these practices is undoubtedly open to contestation. These are the stakes of this study, and what Luhmann’s quote also emphasizes is this: that the widespread incoherence of religious manifestations puts at risk the label of religion as we know it, tampering with it, and more than testing its limits, relentlessly revealing them to be elsewhere than thought. There is a conflation between art and religion. Dickinson, Kandinsky and Malevich articulate religious aims at the core of their art-making, such as Dickinson’s view that poetry must have a spiritual function; Kandinsky’s attempts at painting the spiritual nature of the world; and Malevich’s understanding of Suprematism as a religion. Baudelaire, Frampton, Kubrick, Tarkosvky and Trier do not present their work as taking on a religious function, yet the relationship of finite life to the infinite universe informs their practice. Baudelaire’s infinite poem determines his approach to oeuvre and to the poem; Frampton’s concept of the infinite film undergirds each filmic embodiment; Kubrick’s meditation on the medium of film folds into an encounter with transcendence; Tarkovsky’s concern with humanity leads him to consider cosmological loneliness; and finally von Trier’s reassertion of this same loneliness embraces the apocalyptic termination of life as perhaps