Public Announcement

Barbara Kruger, “Belief + Doubt” Installation at Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C

If you walked into Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C anytime between August 20, 2012 and the beginning of 2014 then you were greeted with a public announcement. Right as museum visitors walked in the door they were bombarded with Futura Heavy Oblique text enveloping them with questions and directions. Scattered between the white text with alternating black and red backgrounds are black and white images. Most of these images have been taken from vintage commercial photography and other sources that have been appropriated by the creator of this exhibit. But make no mistake about it: the subject of these works is not the image but rather you. You are in the center of this designed art space and indeed central to the aim of the text. The text is all written in the second person point of view... it questions and directs you. This communicative art is the work of Barbara Kruger. The text/image balance in this exhibit is a departure from her traditional works that she is known for. In those iconic pieces the black and white photograph took up the clear lion share of the composition and the white text was placed on a linear red background in a significantly smaller portion of the artwork. These images would then be printed out on a massive scale and posted on a billboard. What her contemporary works and her historic images share is their large sizes. These grandiose pictures are designed to be enormous because of their intended function. They are created to be public announcements of private convictions and queries. Why does Barbara Kruger work this way? Much of it is due to her background. She came from the world of publishing, working as a designer and image editor with Condé Nast Publications. Kruger illustrated the pages and thoughts from writers of such diverse publications as Mademoiselle, House and Garden, Aperture, Ms., Esquire, Newsweek, The New Republic and other Conde Nast publications from over the decades. Barbara Kruger's art is sort of like advertising… but then it’s something different, isn't it? Barbara Kruger wasn't just selling products, images or even ideas. She was selling her convictions. To some her Feminist and political messages all seemed a bit "preachy" at times. By that I mean that she was thoroughly convinced of her convictions and was determined to convince you of these convictions as well. "Preachy" is often used as a pejorative description, yet I don't find the act of preaching to be negative at all. So, what is preaching? Well whether you've realized it or not, preaching is an undercurrent to this very blog (that is about art and religion). Most of the scriptures that I use are from the weekly Sunday liturgical lectionary, used by several Christian groups to aid in preaching through the Bible. Even for those groups that don't use a predetermined weekly readings, all (good) preaching shares similarities. These are similarities that parallel the work of Barbara Kruger. Preaching comes from the text of Scripture. It is an illustration, exposition and explanation of the thoughts of God that have been published into text over the millennia. The Art of Preaching sort of like advertising… but then it’s something different, isn't it? The grandiose proclamation and imagery of preachers are designed to be enormous because of their intended function. They are created to be public announcements of private convictions and queries. These are private convictions inspired by a personal God with a concern for the whole populace. Today we will look into three passages (from today's lectionary reading from the Old Testament, Gospels and Epistles) about diverse practitioners of preaching from the Old and New Testament.    

Message to the Nation






Barbara Kruger's flag at MOCA

Jonah 3:1-10 

"Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying,
Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?
Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it."

Barbara Kruger worked in the medium of her posted signs from th\e late 1970’s throughout the 1980’s. Then she embarked on composing an outdoor wall piece for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles that would embroil her in controversy. Wikipedia describes it as

“In 1990, Kruger scandalized the Japanese American community of Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, with her proposal to paint the Pledge of Allegiance, bordered by provocative questions, on the side of a warehouse in the heart of the historic downtown neighborhood. Kruger had been commissioned by MOCA to paint a mural for "A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation," an 1989 exhibition that also included works by Barbara Bloom, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince. But before the mural went up, Kruger herself and curator Ann Goldstein presented it at various community meetings over the course 18 months. Only after protests the artist offered to eliminate the pledge from her mural proposal, while still retaining a series of questions painted in the colors and format of the American flag: "Who is bought and sold? Who is beyond the law? Who is free to choose? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?". A full year after the exhibition closed, Kruger's reconfigured mural finally went up for a two-year run.”

The controversy of Kruger’s politically charged work didn’t just reside within its placement in the neighborhood of Little Tokyo. This flag mural was in Los Angeles, which markets itself as “The Entertainment Capital of the World.” The positioning of the artwork in this media center was critical as a message to the whole nation. Barbara Kruger was being preachy and her sermon was one of collective change. It was a call for America to be the America that it marketed itself to be in its founding documents. It was a visual message for the 1990’s that rhymed with a vocal message from the 1960’s. On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial in the capital of the United States and made a similar plea. As weaved noted on this blog’s weeklong celebration of the sermons of Dr. King, he was indeed a preacher. This speech was indeed a sermon. In arguing for racial, social and economic justice, Rev. King not only referenced the nation’s founding documents and laws as his witness but he also cited the law of God cited in the biblical document. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech didn’t just apply to the city of Washington D.C. This sermon was delivered in the United States’ central district of federal government. The positioning of the artwork in this power center was critical as a message to the whole nation. It’s coverage by the leading media (television, radio, newspaper) outlets in the leading Western country promised that it would also be a message to current and future generations to the world. Listening to Dr. King’s dream of a possible future reminds us of the visions preached by the prophets of old in Scripture. One of these prophets, a man named Jonah, found himself in a similar situation as Martin Luther King, Jr. We often miss the overall message of the book of Jonah because often times our focus is on the story of the fish who swallowed him. That point is important (Jesus even thought so), but it is just one example of the overall theme that the book presents. Jonah was called to preach to the city of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire. He was sent by God to tell them that their city would be destroyed. The tension in the plot of the book is that Jonah was an Israelite, a people that was oppressed by the Assyrian Empire. It would appear that an Israelite would relish in the opportunity to proclaim the coming doom upon the cruel Assyrian regime. Yet, both Jonah and the people of Nineveh both understood the terms of this message. They understood that the message of doom was conditional. For underneath this message of impending calamity was the offer of repentance. The message of Jonah, the message of Dr. King and the message of Barbara Kruger was the same. If we collectively repent of our wrongs then we can be saved. That is what good preaching does.

Image Appropriation





Barbara Kruger, “Untitled (Not Cruel Enough)

Mark 1:14-20
 

"Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

And as He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” They immediately left their nets and followed Him.

When He had gone a little farther from there, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the boat mending their nets. And immediately He called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went after Him."



Now I don’t want to give you the impression that Barbara Kruger changed her working methods once the 1990’s came. Quite the contrary, with public recognition now blowing wind into her sails she floated onward with the same tools that she had come to master in the 1970’s. The greatest of these tools was the appropriation of the imagery of others. And not just any others, Kruger chose others that represented an iconic era or were iconic and icon makers themselves. I believe that the best example of this was her picture of Pop artist Andy Warhol , “Untitled (Not Cruel Enough). This image drips with irony like a leaky faucet. Andy Warhol was both famous and infamous for not actually doing his own artwork. Now a good many artists have employed the use of assistants from the old masters like Peter Paul Rubens  to the contemporary mega-artists like Damien Hirst. Yet Warhol may have outdone them all because his career-long quest was how to get others to do his work or completely remove the hand of the artist from the process (by the way, I happen to like Warhol). Andy also used popular cultural images, like Campbell’s Soup cans and Coca Cola bottles to create his universal imagery (hence the name Pop Art). At every level, Warhol was appropriating the imagery of others. So Barbara Kruger one-up'd him in death and appropriated his own image and myth. Touché’ Barbara, touché’! She created an image about image making and image makers. And since the Art Industry is very much so the Art Community then it became an image about image making and image makers for the image makers. In short it was a message to the messengers. One of my preacher buddies has made me aware of a similar phenomenon occurring in the world of religious messengers (preachers). Preaching itself has its own subculture that popular culture and even parishioners may be unaware of. I pride myself in attempting to learn about all Christian traditions, however, the preacher subculture that I am most familiar with is the one that Martin Luther King, Jr. was born into. This is the world of Black Baptist preachers. Not only was Dr. King a Black Baptist preacher but so was his father, grandfather, great grandfather, brother and one of his sons. I am most familiar with this group because I am also the son of a Black Baptist preacher. And even though the ministerial lineage continues into history past (like Dr. King), the denominational affiliation does not (my father’s father was a Methodist preacher, while my mother’s father was a Presbyterian minister who converted to a Quaker clerk of meeting… Touché’ Dr. King, touché’). So getting back to my story, my buddy (who is a Black Baptist preacher) informed me about a Black Baptist preacher named H.B. Charles. Along with being a pastor, quality expositional preacher, Southern Baptist and seemingly Reformed/Calvinist in his theological leanings (yet I can’t confirm this), H.B. Charles is a very active blogger and podcaster (The On Preaching Podcast). In addition to these endeavors, H.B. Charles' greatest contributions to contemporary preaching are the interviews that he does with preachers. You can pull up any of these videos on YouTube and get a peek into preacher subculture as he chats with the old greats of pulpiteering as well as promising young pastors. The interviews are quite candid, intimate and diverse in subject matter since they cover the wide array of experiences of preachers. One subject that has come up in the interviews and on the podcast is the single act that defines what preachers do the most: preaching. In watching these preachers discuss their craft you gain a greater appreciation for a preacher's second greatest tool. A preacher's first great tool is the word of God but his second greatest tool is the same as that of Barbara Kruger and Andy Warhol: cultural appropriation. Sure they may use different homiletical terms like illustrations and pop-cultural references, but in the end they are still taking imagery from the world at large and using it to paint the picture of the text of Scripture. So as H.B. Charles interacts with these professional homileticians you see a story develop. It is a story about preachers interacting with preachers about preaching. It is a narrative about messengers and their message. It is the contemporary reenactment of the scene that we see play out in the Gospel of Mark 1:14-20. We find ourselves in the midst of a story about John the Baptist, Jesus and the Apostles (Andrew and Simon Peter). The beginning chapter of this Gospel is yet another story about preachers. Specifically it is the end of the story of a preacher (John the Baptist), who prepared the way for another preacher (Jesus Christ), who was the culmination of all of the preaching that had been preached before (by the Prophets) and commissioned a new generation of preachers (the Apostles) to preach of the new age that had its foundation in his redemptive death. In initiating the call of Simon Peter Jesus appropriates an image from Peter's ordinary, daily life and paints a prophetic picture of his future destiny. Peter was a fisherman but in a clever use of wordplay Jesus promises to make him a fisher of men. He would be the one to cast the net of the Gospel abroad and gather a harvest of souls for the kingdom. But Jesus isn't the only one borrowing images in this story. The author of the gospel appropriates the repetitive imagery of the community of preachers that is all throughout the Old Testament (from Moses and Aaron to Elijah and Elisha all the way down to Jeremiah and Baruch). So what is the actual content that this imagery is being used to communicate? What is the message of the messengers? What is it that preaching actually tells us?

Changing the World



Barbara Kruger, L'empathie peut changer le monde (Empathy can change the world)



1 Corinthians 7:29-31
 

"But this I say, brethren, the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none, those who weep as though they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use this world as not misusing it. For the form of this world is passing away."

Barbara Kruger's preachiness was not exclusive to this side of the Atlantic. In 1994 she brought her message overseas to the subways of Paris. Under the foundations of the City of Light, Kruger publicly announced  the illuminating foundation of hope. She posted her work entitled L'empathie peut changer le monde, which translates to "Empathy can change the world." Once again she was making a call for change to a corporate body but this time it was for more than one nation. Barbara Kruger was no longer in Los Angeles proclaiming that America must repent, she was now in Paris (arguably the cultural capital of the entire world) and she was inviting the world to change. It was indeed a message to the message makers. It also came with two underlying and unstated presuppositions. First was that everything must change. Secondly was that everything could change. And the agent of that change would be Empathy. The motivating factor for universal change would be compassion for others. Kruger isn’t the only controversial preacher of systematic change travelling throughout our cities. About a year ago I started to become familiar with another such figure. This was through a discussion with another preaching buddy of mine (but this one is a Catholic deacon). He asked what  As common custom in the preacher subculture we occasionally discuss whose sermons we have been listening to or books we have been reading. He mentioned a familiar name that had been influencing his thinking lately. The preacher that he referenced was not a Catholic at all but was an Evangelical like myself… but not without distinct and contentious differences.  It was a the Post-Modern, Emergent church, pastor/writer Rob Bell. I had definitely been familiar with Bell since about 2008 and had definitely been avoiding him ever since. I had seen some of his NOOMA videos in an adult Sunday School class and read his first book Velvet Elvis. He and his fellow Hipster Christians were asking a few new questions of the Church and publicly announcing that everything must change. They based their argument on the fact that we had officially crossed over into the Post-Modern era of thinking some time ago and that Modern and Pre-Modern approaches to Christianity would not reach the world. In short they were saying that everything about the Church must change because everything about the world around us had already changed. Now being the good, judgmental, non-thinking Evangelical that I am I initially headed the warnings of many fellow theologically conservative protestants and stayed suspicious of these guys. After all, it is always safe to be suspicious of everything before you have given yourself time to read it over and reason through it. And to be honest, Rob Bell does have a few nontraditional views on things like Hell and is at best vague and noncommittal on a few other key theological issues. Yet in spite of this I did start reading him more and listening to a few more sermons. Then I encountered a training series for preachers that he held (and captured on five videos) entitled “Poets, Prophets and Preachers.” These videos were a game changer for me. The change that it asked the church (specifically preachers) to embrace was rather more of a resurrection. This resurrection was a reclamation of the art of the sermon. The sermon was something to rethink, re-embrace and reinvigorate because we had formerly failed to appreciate what the art form truly was. Preaching is a means of God communicating his Word in spoken form. His Word (the Bible) is the textual representation of His Word (Jesus/God the Son). Jesus, the Word, was God communicating His Grace toward Mankind. So when a preacher can fully appreciate and communicate the intricacies of God’s communication to us, then he can aid in the transmission of God’s compassionate grace to the lives of individuals. A preacher helps place the foundational building blocks of the Kingdom of God in the hearts of men. For that foundation to be laid, and the Holy Spirit to work in a believer’s life all of the old must be torn away. Everything must change.  Alas long before Barbara Kruger and Rob Bell there was another controversial preacher who argued that everything must change (in us) because everything has changed (around us). This preacher’s name was St. Paul. In the epistle of 1 Corinthians 7:29-31he says that “the form of this world is passing away.” This is Paul’s way of saying that everything is changing and it is God who is doing it. Strangely enough Paul comes to this conclusion after answering a reader submitted question about abstinence and celibacy earlier in the letter. In true Pauline fashion, he finds a way to tie in every other issue facing the Church in his answer to the issue at hand. Paul appears to personally be an advocate of celibacy but he says that those who are married should stay married and submit to one another. Then he marches through several other examples and shows how in every possible station that one finds himself in life (married, single, slave. free, etc.), the response should be to live for others, live with compassion and live with empathy. All of our traditional ways of behavior and roles must be revolutionized in consideration of the life of Jesus. Everything must change for the sake of Christ: this includes our interactions with and considerations of one another. Everything has changed because of Christ: our interaction with God’s mercy and our disconnection to the guilt of our past sins. So what is it about Jesus that  changed everything? His empathy. It was Jesus’ empathy for our estate: his ability to understand and share our feelings that saved us. For it was because of his empathy that he not only shared our temptations and suffering but he also took upon the punishment of our sin. Christ’s empathy and compassion is what lead him to die for us on the cross. So what change must we make in gratitude? We must have empathy for others. We must submit to others in love because Christ submitted to the death of the cross for our love. We must relate to the trial and struggles of others of others because Jesus took upon our suffering and shame. We must seek to joy and benefit of others because Jesus gave up his riches in Heaven so that we might enjoy the eternal riches of God’s love. Jesus had empathy and it changed the world. This is the content of preaching.

Group Show

The above posted video is of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C days and hours before August 20, 201. It is before any museum visitor walked in the door to be bombarded with Futura Heavy Oblique text enveloping them with questions and directions. The footage is of the scores of workers who laid out the vinyl posters that comprised Barbara Kruger’s public announcement. It may have taken one artist to conceive and design the artwork but it would take a team to implement the installation. That is the underlying truth beneath all of the Scripture readings for today: the preaching of the Gospel takes many participants. Through the Old and New Testament readings we have encountered many preachers of different positions. There were prophets, scribes, rabbis, apostles and evangelists all employed in the act of preaching. All of them worked together over time to fully reveal God’s public announcement. It was a public announcement of the offer of repentance: an invitation to change. It was a public announcement that you are called to a community of couriers: an appeal to be a messenger of mediation. It was a public announcement of the age of compassion: a proposition to live in and by Grace. Yet the public announcement is not complete if it does not have a viewer and listener to receive the message. And the receiver must decide if he will believe and act on the message. Most likely you are not a member of the preacher subculture that I have discussed in this blog post. Maybe you are not even a member of the Christian community at all. If so then you are the intended audience of God’s public announcement that he has sent through preachers throughout the years. He has created his greatest work of art just for you. Would you accept this free gift?