UPDATED Introduction to Imaging Pilgrimage: Art As Embodied Experience (PB version 2023) (original) (raw)

2023, Imaging Pilgrimage: Art As Embodied Experience

Abstract

While place-based pilgrimage is an embodied practice, can it be experienced in its fullness through built environments, assemblages of souvenirs, and music? Imaging Pilgrimage explores contemporary art that is created after a pilgrimage and intended to act as a catalyst for the embodied experience of others. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary artwork that links one landscape to another-from the Spanish Camino to a backyard in the Pacific Northwest, from Lourdes to South Africa, from Jerusalem to England, and from Ecuador to California. The close attention to context and experience allows for popular practices like the making of third-class or "contact" relics to augment conversations about the authenticity or perceived power of a replica or copy; it also challenges the tendency to think of the “original” in hierarchical terms. The book brings various fields into conversation by offering a number of lenses and theoretical approaches (materialist, kinesthetic, haptic, synesthetic) that engage objects as radical sites of encounter, activated through religious and ritual praxis, and negotiated with not just the eyes, but a multiplicity of senses. The first full-length study to engage contemporary art that has emerged out of the embodied experience of pilgrimage, Imaging Pilgrimage is an important and timely addition to the field of material and visual culture of religion. It is essential reading for anyone interested in pilgrimage studies, material culture, and the place of religion within contemporary art.

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References (24)

  1. Th e phrase comes from T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding" in Four Quartets , c. 1940-2 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1943).
  2. E. Turner in V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), XIII. Th is book also engages playfully the title of the Turner's much-cited contribution to pilgrimage studies, shift ing the focus to "imaging" with its connotations of making, creating, and visually recording pilgrimage.
  3. See, for example, D. K. Connolly, "Imagined Pilgrimages in Gothic Art: Maps, Manuscripts, and Labyrinths" (University of Chicago, PhD thesis, 1998), 1; and K. M. Rudy, "A Guide to Mental Pilgrimage: Paris, Biblioth è que de L'Arsenal Ms. 212, " Zeitschrift f ü r Kunstgeschichte , 63/4 (2000), 494-515.
  4. K. Beebe, "Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: Th e Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri's 'Die Sionpilger' , " Essays in Medieval Studies , 25 (2008), 39-70.
  5. M. Foster-Campbell, "Pilgrims' Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Manuscripts, " in S. Blick and L. D. Gelfand (eds.), Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2011), Vol. I, 229.
  6. D. Dyas "To Be a Pilgrim: Tactile Piety, Virtual Pilgrimage and the Experience of Place in Christian Pilgrimage, " in J. Robinson, L. de Beer, and A. Harnden (eds.), Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period (London: British Museum, 2014), 1. Several other essays in the volume, published in conjunction with the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe , cited passim , explore the topic from various angles. For the catalogue, see M. Bagnoli, H. A. Klein, C. G. Mann, and J. Robinson (eds.), Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Baltimore, MD: Th e Walters Art Museum, 2010). See also C. Hahn, Th e Reliquary Eff ect: Enshrining the Sacred Object (London: Reaktion, 2017). I am grateful to Hahn for moderating our c. 2019 College Art Association panel which, in part, considered the aft erlife of relics in contemporary art including the work of Chiara Ambrosio (conclusion) and Gisela Insuaste (Chapter 4).
  7. See, for example, P. Edwards, Pilgrimage and Literary Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and S. Coleman and J. Elsner (eds.), Pilgrim Voices: Narrative and Authorship in Christian Pilgrimage (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002). For a medieval approach to Chaucerian narrative through images, see V. A. Kolve's Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: Th e First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984).
  8. See, for example, the eff orts of Yale University's Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion, http://mavcor.yale.edu , C. McDannell's pioneering Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), D. Morgan and S. Promey's extensive work in the area including Th e Visual Culture of American Religions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), G. Harvey and J. Hughes (eds.), Sensual Religion (Sheffi eld: Equinox, 2018), the peer-reviewed journal Material Religion (Taylor & Francis, 2005 to the present), and Th e Baron Th yssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion (Open University, https://www.openmaterialreligion.org ).
  9. S. Coleman and J. Eade (eds.), Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (London: Routledge, 2004). In scholarship (including the Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage , 2010: https:// referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopedia-of-medieval-pilgrimage ) and also Catholic popular piety, a fi rst-class relic is the bodily remains of a saint (or relics of the Passion of Christ), a second-class relic is something worn by or owned by the saint, and third-class relic is something like a prayer card or ribbon which has come into contact with a fi rst-or second-class relic. In her comprehensive essay on the origin of these terms and understandings of their use, J. M. H. Smith has noted that the classifi cation is "a mid-twentieth-century variant on the categories prescribed in post-Tridentine canon law" and highlights a key point, which is the "tension between spontaneous and offi cialized veneration" ("Relics: An Evolving Tradition in Latin Christianity, " in C. Hahn and H. Klein (eds.), Saints and Sacred Matter: Th e Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015), 42). See further discussion within various artistic contexts (index, "relics") and also S. Coleman and M. Bowman, "Religion in Cathedrals: Pilgrimage, Heritage, Adjacency, and the Politics of Replication in Northern Europe, " Religion , 49/1 (2019).
  10. A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Th eory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 32. R. Osborne and J. Tanner's Art's Agency and Art History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) presents a number of approaches to the anthropology of art to disciplines including sociology, linguistics, and art history. Critical approaches to Art and Agency include H. Morphy, "Art as a Mode of Action: Some Problems with Gell's Art and Agency , " Journal of Material Culture , 14/1 (2009) and R. Layton, " Art and Agency : A Reassessment, " Th e Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , 9/3 (2003), 447-64. See pp. 63-4, 140.
  11. C. Ocker and S. Elm (eds.), Material Christianity: Western Religion and the Agency of Th ings (Cham: Springer, 2020), 9 referring to the questions posed by McDannell, Material Christianity , 2. Now also "OTA"-"Open to All"; the BPT promotes the idea that everyone can make a pilgrimage among Britain's spiritual landscape. See p. 107. For a discussion of Victor and Edith Turner's concept of the symbol-vehicle, see Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, pp. 160-161 and passim. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage , 13 and 250-4. Ibid., 254.
  12. F. A. Salamone and M. M. Snipes (eds.) Th e Intellectual Legacy of Victor and Edith Turner (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2018).
  13. J. Eade and M. Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: Th e Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press, 1991) and Sallnow, "Communitas Reconsidered: Th e Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage, " Man , 16/2 (1981), 173. For a perspective on some of the limits of the contestation model, see S. Coleman and J. Elsner, "Contesting Pilgrimage: Current Views and Future Directions, " Cambridge Journal of Anthropology , 15/3 (1991), 63-73.
  14. P. Volker, Caminoheads blog ( http://caminoheads.com/ ); this idea appears in the entries for May 8, 2016, July 3, 2017, March 13, 2018, September 9, 2019 and is developed in Chapter 1. Th is idea is discussed later, pp. 114-15, in relation to Rupert Sheldrake's theory of "resonance. " As expressed by my friend, colleague, and frequent conversation partner, Paul Janowiak, SJ. Anamnesis describes the moment in which "an event is recalled not only as a past occurrence but also, and more importantly, as a present and eff ective saving reality . . . [a]ll Christian worship is fundamentally amamnesis. " D. C. Smolarski, SJ, A Glossary of Liturgical Terms (Chicago: Liturgical Training Publications, 2017), 6. "Every religious festival, every liturgical time, represents the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, 'in the beginning' , " M. Eliade, Th e Sacred and the Profane: Th e Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt, 1959), 68-9. Coleman and Elsner, "Contesting Pilgrimage, " 69.
  15. S. Coleman and J. Elsner, Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 6.
  16. Ibid., 6.
  17. Volker, from a blog entry dated May 15, 2017 ( http://caminoheads.com/ ).
  18. See, for example ibid., April 30, 2017: "Th is is my bad weekend in the chemo cycle. Catherine calls it my Pyrenees weekend. "
  19. C. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) and V. Sobchack, Carnal Th oughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004) and "Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, the Material, and the Cinematic Sublime, " Material Religion , 4/2 (2008), 194-203. Chapter 2 considers the possibility of a photograph to become a third-class relic by virtue of touch, and perhaps there is a similar transfer, or translation, from site to site to fi lm.
  20. D. Brown and G. Hopps, Th e Extravagance of Music (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 7. See also Frank Burch Brown's extensive work in this area including "Aesthetics and the Arts in Relation to Natural Th eology" in R. Re Manning (ed.) Th e Oxford Handbook of Natural Th eology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Karst has posited a theory of translation that creates accessibility for a sacred site "beyond the borders" of the original, "A New Creation: Translating Lourdes in America, " Liturgy , 32/3 (2017), 31 and discussion at pp. 21, 77, 98 n. 52, 144. See also Rupert Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices: Transformative Experiences and Th eir Eff ects on Our Bodies, Brains, and Health (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2018).
  21. M. Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press), 94.
  22. See S. Salaz, "10 Catholic Pilgrimages that Don't Require a Passport, " US Catholic (June 9, 2020);
  23. Northwest Catholic , "Making a Pilgrimage at Home, " Northwest Catholic , 8/6 (2020);
  24. K. Barush, "As Coronavirus Curtails Travel, Backyard Pilgrimages Become the Way to a Spiritual Journey, " Th e Conversation (August 10, 2020). Annie O'Neil, director/ producer of Phil's Camino , founded a social-media group called Pilgrimage in Place (PIP) focused on conjunctions between interior journey and physical pilgrimage. Th e British Pilgrimage Trust off ers photo essays in conjunction with GPX fi les for smartphones. Another is the Virtual Camino de Santiago via Facebook, sponsored by a travel company, in which food writers, art and cultural historians, past pilgrims, musicologists, musicians, artists and others introduce the sights and sounds along the way. Folks can even pick up a .jpg "badge" to take the place of the traditional scallop shell that pilgrims have fastened onto their hats or packs since the Middle Ages. Th is includes, at the top of the list, the thirty million pilgrims who travel to Ayyappan Saranam, India and twenty million who travel to the shrine of Our Lady