Abstract
Theology can be expressed as powerfully in images as in words, as many religious works of art through the centuries testify; and a fascinating contemporary piece of theology was on display during the 2018 Edinburgh Festival, at St Cuthbert’s Church on Lothian Road.
On a large TV screen three blurry, monochrome figures can be made out, moving towards the viewer in slow motion. After a few minutes the middle one steps forward and breaks through a curtain of water into bright-lit clarity. She looks around, then turns and draws the other two figures—two younger women—through the water to join her. After a few more minutes she turns and walks back into the blurry world behind the water, where the other two women subsequently re-join her. The three figures are seen, blurred as at the beginning, retreating into nothingness.
This piece, titled ‘Three Women’, is by the American video artist Bill Viola, who has been described as ‘a theologian whose medium is light, movement and sound, rather than words’. 1 It is by no means the first time that works by Viola have been shown in ecclesiastical environments in the UK: in 1996 his work ‘The Messenger’ was commissioned for Durham Cathedral, and two of his installations are now on permanent display at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
What is it about Viola’s work that makes it appropriate to describe it as theological? On the one hand, his work eschews any Christian specificity and deals with themes—birth, death, suffering—which have deep, universal relevance for us all. Thus ‘Three Women’ can speak of such themes regardless of any particular religious framing brought to them by the viewer, and the stoic endurance of the ‘Martyrs’ in one of the St Paul’s installations—tormented by the four elements, earth, air, fire and water—is similarly presented to the viewer without any specific references to Christian figures. On the other hand, it is striking how easy it is to find Christian resonances in his work. The idea of a ‘passage’ through water recurs frequently (in addition to ‘Three Women’, the human figures in ‘The Messenger’ and in Viola’s monumental ‘Five Angels for the Millennium’ are all seen rising from, or plunging into, water). This passage through water is immediately reminiscent of the Christian rite of baptism, with all that is encapsulated in it—cleansing, death, and rising again. More specific resonances with Christian stories are also not difficult to spot: for example, the upside-down, cruciform position of the ‘water’ martyr recalls the death of St Peter.
It is clear that Bill Viola’s art can speak to people, and move them to meditation and to worship, as profoundly as can the work of the great artists of the past whose work may be found adorning our Churches and Cathedrals. Indeed, perhaps such art might draw believers and non-believers alike towards fresh visions of spiritual realities in a more direct way than is possible for any theology which is constrained by the limitations of language.