"Art Station" Church refuses to exhibit religious work. Mass is still celebrated there.
Theologian at Art Station: We wouldn't show religious works
Modernist religion entirely devoid of imagination. All objects of devotion gone. Divine realities beyond them impossible to grasp.
That said the type of art they could and would exhibit is so abstract that it conveys nothing and less than nothing of the Christian message. See Shrine to Judas.
An interview without reference to God, Father, Son or Holy Spirit
Cologne – He's actually a theologian and came to art education by chance: Guido Schlimbach works at the St. Peter Art Station in Cologne. In this interview, he explains why they deliberately don't exhibit sacred art there and how people react to the space.
Although he has nothing to do with art, theologian Guido Schlimbach has worked at the St. Peter Art Station in Cologne for 25 years and is now its artistic director. He also held a teaching position for Christian art at the St. Georgen Philosophical and Theological College (Cathcon: JESUITS!) and is a member of the circle of speakers at Kolumba, the art museum of the Archdiocese of Cologne. He inspires art lovers and artists with his very individual approach to art.
Question: Because you're not an art historian, you had a very different approach to art and also to art education. Did you receive feedback from visitors back then who said, "Wow, that was something completely unusual, something completely new for us"?
Schlimbach: That's indeed true. Individual artists have repeatedly told me that. And of course, I also learned a bit from Father Friedhelm Mennekes. Mennekes wasn't an art historian either; he perceived and taught art from his own perspective. He was a good teacher for me in that regard, with his insight into art and his low-threshold approach to communicating it to people.
It's no use providing people with art historical facts if they themselves have no great interest in them. They want to learn, they want to see. And this looking, this giving people help or providing their own inspiration, showing them, "Look at this painting like this" or "How do you experience the sculpture?", that is, asking questions and letting them speak for themselves, is something that artists have always really appreciated.
I remember a British artist, Ian McKeever, invited me to write a catalog text for him. It was very important to him that I do it from my perspective of St. Peter's. And when I finished this text, the gallery owner called and said: Yes, but you used such a strange theological-historical introduction, that has absolutely nothing to do with art, I would leave that part out. Whereupon I received a call from England: "Absolutely not, that absolutely has to stay, because that was exactly what was important to me, to see my painting from a different perspective."
Question: When I think of art in a church, the question of what art is allowed to be shown and exhibited in a church always resonates. Could any work of art be presented and exhibited in St. Peter's?
Schlimbach: That's an interesting question, because it has probably been asked of Father Mennekes or myself several times over the past few decades. I would say: no. For example, we wouldn't show religious works of art in St. Peter's. That's actually an exclusion criterion for us. Father Kessler, our current pastor, always says: We have religious art, we don't need it.
We don't want to exploit art for its own purposes; we don't want it to illustrate our faith, to embellish what we read in the Gospel, and then somehow explain it to us in that way. That's not our approach at all. You can show that in any other church. We're not interested in that at all.
We are actually interested in artists who come from completely different backgrounds, who may not have had any contact with the church before, but who react with fascination to this space and perceive it completely differently. The way they perceive it varies greatly. It ranges from completely naive to highly complex or even defensive—skeptical, but of course always very impressed by the architecture and the tangible otherness of this space, which is empty.
By not having pews, but rather allowing people to enter the space and explore on their own, they can find a position that suits them. And there they can experience the space, but also the art. This applies both to the artists who bring their art there, as well as to the audience who then responds to this art. And of course, we look at the positions we invite to see if they "fit us," that is, what interests us most, what questions these artists are addressing, and what kind of art they create.
The more illustrative this is, the more skeptical we are, because we already take the view that we should say: Dear audience, be skeptical of the images, let them touch you, fascinate and engage you, and engage with them. But, as Father Mennekes always said: "Don't fall for their tricks." Because every work of art, every picture, only inadequately reflects reality, but the gifting and the gratifying aspect of it is that it conveys a reality that goes far beyond it.
Question: Can you specifically describe one of the works of art you had in St. Peter's, which might be a good example?
Schlimbach: Two years ago, we showed a work by Martin Gerwers, a Düsseldorf sculptor (see picture below). I always perceived him as a painter; he makes sculptures, but if you saw his sculptures, which are very flat and very differently colored, I experienced these sculptures as paintings. We invited him and asked him how he would approach St. Peter's and what he had in mind. It was breathtaking.
You have to imagine, we have a ceiling height of, let's say, 18 to 20 meters, and he essentially created two pylons, very flat, very pointed pyramids halfway up the room. We took great effort to pull one of these pyramids up to the ceiling so that the top protruded into the room. And then we placed the second pyramid underneath it.
That was one of the most complex installations I've ever been involved with. But Martin brought a fantastic team with him. He brought an assistant and his bandmates – he also plays music – all helped. With twelve men, we moved and installed these things. And then you stood in front of this enormous, towering pyramid. At the top, the tops seemed to be touching. If you looked closely, you could see that they actually weren't touching. It's almost as if a spark was created there, because these two pyramid tops miss each other by millimeters, yet somehow they are still seen together.
Question: Who comes to you at St. Peter's? Are they people who want to look at the art, or do they come because they consciously want to go to a church?
Schlimbach: We have everything there. Father Kessler likes to talk about our three congregations. We have the worship congregation, of course, and then we have the music congregation. For example, we have a lunchtime concert on Saturdays at 1 p.m., featuring 40 minutes of new music free of charge. An audience gathers there week after week. Sometimes it's just 30, sometimes it's 60 or 70 people who sit in the room for this concert for almost an hour. We call it the music congregation, but of course it's more than just the music congregation, because these people are sitting in this room at that moment, experiencing this space and letting it affect them.
Then, of course, we have an art-loving audience who come specifically for the art. But we also have a bit of everything, like passersby. We have people who come by chance, and people who saw a Rubens painting in a guidebook somewhere and come for that reason, but of course we also have people who seek prayer.
I remember that Christian Boltanski, whom I mentored at the beginning of my time in 2001 and with whom I created the exhibition, found it so touching. But others too, like Motoi Yamamoto, who spent a whole week drawing a salt labyrinth on our floor, always talked about how it impressed him so much that while he was working there, the door opened, someone came in, stood behind the Madonna, and lit a candle. Or someone simply sat on one of the two or three benches in the room for a quarter of an hour, absorbed the silence—without asking anything, without saying anything—and then left again.
That also has an impact on our art audience, and as is probably the case in all Cologne churches, people naturally come to pray.
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