386 Religion, Literature and the Arts Pro]ect

(RE)DEEMING THE MODERN:

THE ENIGMA OF HENRY MOORE AND
ST. STEPHEN WALBROOK
Geoffrey Sykes

First, claims, disclaims and acknowledgments. The case I am about to

narrate and study is gleaned from a book titled Postmodern
Jurisprudence by Coustas Douzinas and Ronnie Warrington (London:
Routledge, 1991). As their title might suggest the case is treated in an
exegetical manner somewhat differing from orthodoxies of legal
research. In particular, it is represented as a metafiction that facilitates
critical reflection on the relationship between several disciplines,
especially religion and the arts.
The narrative of the development of the matter of Henry Moore
and St. Stephen Walbrook, or more particular a ten ton travertine
sculpture by Henry Moore, through two level of ecclesiastical court in
London in the 1960's, becomes a poststructural form of philosophical
reasoning, about issues that would previously or elsewhere be treated
in theology, and social and art theory. As such it belongs in a genre of
conceptualised fictions, such as Wallace Steven's poetry or Deleuze's
fantastic historical interpretations.
The reflexive articulations of judges and expert witnesses in the
development of this case provides successive understandings of how art
can mediate formations of religious behaviour and meaning. This
enables the story to frame and parallel an intellectual history, of
longstanding tensions between art and religion, as well as the shift in
the boundary between the two involved in the practice of modern (and
post-modern) artforms.
The use of this case, in the first instance at least, does not amount
to an extended form of legal research. My own initial partitioning and
commentary on that story will follow but also significantly differ from
the conceptual framing undertaken by Douzinas and Warrington. Their
own work for example exploits the polyvalent potential of the actual
case history in order to develop themes about contemporary legal
reasoning. The present focus on religious themes continues however
 1994 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 387

abstract dimension of re-narration of those authors. By deploying the

case as a frame for conceptual understanding, it is intended that this
philosophical fiction might begin to become vehicle for additional
strategic and discursive functions, that beyond its historical specificity it
could become a pretext, motivation, or behavioural trigger for
contemporary social discourse and possibilities for action along that
boundary between art and religion. It is hoped conceptual retellings
such as this could begin to provide events of imagination and, in the
Nietzschean sense, intervening fiction, creating practical 'political'
possibilities for transformation and reconstruction of religious life and
meaning. In its present form however, the story remain abstract, even
allegorical in its meaning. Reading out of actual associations and
references, for example from and onto the object of the sculpture,
remains to be done.

First, the story.

The church of St. Stephen Walbrook, we are told, was Wren built in
London along classical lines 1670's after the great fire. This venue is
now doubly historical, because it was already dedicated as a sacred site
before the Reformation (a fact relevant to content of ongoing debate)
as well as locating one of Wren's greatest works.
The building suffered much damage during the second world war,
and extensive repairs were still ongoing in the 1960's. Peter Palumbo
was church warden then when he commissioned Moore to design a
new central altar. In his own words he asked Moore to design a
circular structure, 'something going back to the dawn of history,
something primitive '.
The result was a 10 ton travertine marble, which, before it was
installed, required permission or a 'faculty' from London Consistory
(church) Court. Chancellor Newman at this court declined permission
on two grounds which appear to be contradictory.
First, he judged against the work by a semantic exclusion of artistic
discourse, as irrelevant for legal consideration. Relying on etymology
of church history, he deemed that the planned altar did not comprise 'a
convenient and decent table of wood, stone or other suitable material
shall be provided for the celebration of Holy Communion' as set down
by canon law.
"It is essential to grasp what was meant by 'table'," he said,
"because it links up with the theology of the Eucharist." Especially in
view of history of this sacred site, he noted the Protestant derivation
that "the Holy Communion was not a renewed sacrifice of our Lord,
388 Religion, Literature and the Arts Project

but a feast to be celebrated at the Lord's table and as the latter view
prevailed the result was that 'altars' were removed from churches and
'tables' substituted."
Through its presentation in the adversarial form of a court hearing,
the opinion dramatises possible epistemological differences between
theological and aesthetic thinking. By excluding aesthetic discourse on a
simple etymological and historical clarification of the word 'table', the
Chancellor closed off any rejoinder on history or art that might be
forthcoming from current art theory.
In doing so one can argue he was implicitly expressing a very
traditional separation of art and formal religious discourse that can be
traced back to Platonic thinking, whereby art is the province of
informal individualised expressiOn against the universalising
significations of rational judgment.
No sooner is this neat opinion offered, than it is appended and
amended by another one which involves a legal aesthetics and seems
to vary as well as extend the original. Not content with disregarding
aesthetic complexities, the Chancellor proceeds to define their nature
in a way that is of benefit for the needs of this particular judgment.
Wren, he says, produced a single unified vision a work of 'great
geometric precision' and 'congruence' of its parts. Placing the altar
were planned would 'render Wren's interaction between the cross-plan
and the domed-plan pointless by resolving drama in favour of the
circular motif - so that the tension is released and the whole
architectural drama rendered otiose'.
This explicit aesthetic reveals a covert religious reasoning, mixing so
close the voice and authority of judge, theologian and art critic. This
congruence of theological and aesthetic judgment assumes a reflexivity
and totalising function in religious belief as it is equated with
symmetries of classical design. The admissibility and countenance of
one form of art judgement is made more explicit in debate at the
ensuing appeal of the judgment. The experts are those whose 'learning
and experience improve their ability to detect what in their own liking
or disliking, or in that of others, may be attributable to fashion or
personal preference than to the application of more enduring criteria of
judgment.'
Neuman says the church is 'of the age of Dryden and Purcell; it is
not a building of the age of T.S. Eliot and Moore.' By drawing an
historical and conceptual boundary between the traditional building
and the modernist sculpture, the universalising, signifying process of
religious discourse is elaborated, symbolised and embodied through the
 1994 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 389

visual aesthetics of a physical space.

philosophy of art ---------- symbolic space (classical, rational

1 symmetrical, unified)
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theological discourse - structured worship
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formal theology

This sense of the global as universal or transcendental meaning can

also be held as relevant to forms of spatial thinking significant for the
geo-politics and symbolism of formal church buildings and sacred
spaces.
The evolution of church buildings as symbolic spaces for mediation
of public discourse can be seen to require an theological aesthetic, of
the type that can be read in and onto the present judgment. Art design,
as the authors note, becomes the servant or tool, of rational certitude,
not only in the ability of theology to judge artistic matters. Diverse
areas of social action, decision making and public discourse, involved in
the behaviour of the church community, are mediated by the mythic
and expressive supplement afforded to rational expression by one form
of religious aesthetics.
It is possible to include, in the second definition or formal 'deeming'
of aesthetics, the current widespread interest in aesthetics and culture
in social critical theory and sociology, in seeing art as one form of
production of social meaning. As in the classical rationalist model, art
events and objects are held as secondary and determined by more
fundamental epistemological factors. In the case of religious social
behaviour, art is a product of life of the believing community, a
position currently popular with many advocates on art expression with
churches.
390 Religion, Literature and the Arts Project

The boundary between art and religion can thus be expressed m at

least three divisions:

1. Essentialist belief opposed to aesthetics

2. Classical rationalist aesthetics complements formal
theology.
3. Epistemology of art determined by its social production
and life of the believing community.

One might add that failure to maintain a necessary tension or possible

boundary between art and religion can lead to simplification of various
cross disciplinary relationships such as outlined above.
To return to our story. In adopting and legitimating one dominant
approach of art, the eccleiastical judge once again closed off further
evidence from contemporary art debates. This time however the
precedent of art testimony exists: in proffering an opinion involving art
criticism, the judge has exposed his neck to the complex sword of
contemporary art theory; in admitting aesthetic evidence the court,
representing the church body, has open a door on a Trojan horse that
will, in appeal process, subvert the original judgment and transform
principles of ecclesiastical law, and by implication, religious behaviour.
The appeal to the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved (CECR)
was on doctrinal, ritual and ceremonial grounds, and resulted in both
grounds of the previous judgment being reversed, and consideration of
implications of reversal of judgment being made.
Both existing reasons were dismissed, through a revisionist or
postmodernist approach to historicism. One witness says it 'seems to
me to give the church what it has always needed - a central Altar,
something out of the question when it was built, but fully consonant
with modem liturgical developments.' The sculpture, he concluded,
gave 'what was always needed'.
Historical revisionism was complemented by aesthetics of
postmodem appropriation, including explicit ideas of audience and
relative meaning.
The possibility or even the inevitability of a particular group of
components being readable in more than one way of differing sense. St
Stephen's has long since lost the box pews which occupied the
beholder's foreground and which Wren had in mind when he designed
the high pedestals to his columns. Etymology and taste cannot find
their rationale in tradition. 'The distinction between an altar and a
table is not as essential as deeply founded as was thought 130 years
 1994 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 391

ago. The court is free to decide without regard to the doctrinal disputes
of past centuries.'
As a result there was a new attention to the sculpture, whose
qualities had been previously ignored or excluded. As the subject of
appeal, merit is found in its intrinsic and contemporary nature. In any
extended gloss of this case, I would want to maintain an intrinsic, quasi
essentialist quality to modernist aesthetic domains and experience, in
distinction to the more relativised thinking of Douzinas and
Warrington.
A number of esteemed art witnesses were called upon to clarify
issues admitted by the aesthetic opinions of the lower ecclesiastical
courts. Suddenly current ideas about art values were admitted in
evidence, and through the complexity of professional art opinion the
sculpture assumed renewed significance. A Professor Downes saw that
'many factors contribute to beauty of interior, including its simple lines,
the proportion of its parts, the emphasis on right angles in plans and
elevations and distribution of lighting, the bilateral symmetry about the
west-east axis, the shape of the dome, the detailing of the capitals,
mouldings and the unusually rich plaster work of the dome.' Simplicity
and lucidity are created through a 'complexity of the means', he
concluded in favour of abstractionist defence of asymmetrical
geometry, for the appropriateness of the altar in the building.
More theoretically, with an almost post structural flair, we hear
'about the need in this church for a 'sense of the centre' which
nevertheless did not require the centre to be empty' or the comment
by Downes that 'the original reading is thus now a matter of
imagination and any interpretation we make of what we see must be
different from the original.'
The warden repeats the mission of his commission, as debate about
the sculpture becomes fully reflexive, and indirect acknowledgment of
anecdotal verbalism of the artist, about primitivism and morphology, is
made. 'I begged Henry Moore to forget any altars and to think of
something going back to the dawn of history, something primitive and
inseparable from man's search for a meeting place with his God. I
implored him to think of the stone altar on which Abraham was
prepared to sacrifice Isaac.'
The testimony, debate and judgment of this appeal turns full
aesthetic circle, admitting modernist and postmodernist preoccupations
that transcend the tradition of art and social discourse evidenced in the
first judgment. The possibility of ahistorical as well as prehistorical
dimension of art productions are stated. 'The sacred edifice has a
392 Religion, Literature and the Arts Project

future as well as a past. It belongs not to any one generation'.

In all of these preceedings we can hear, as the authors recommend,
overtones as of Derrida's aporia, in appraisals of this abstract form as
'anterior to all the disassociations, oppositions and delimitations of
critical discourse, 'older' even than the time of the transcendental
aesthetic.'
This altar 'says things' to worshippers and visitors, things 'not
expressible in words, but to limit the understanding to the easily
expressible is to limit understanding indeed'. The semiotic verbal
significance of the sculpture is clearly addressed. While there have
been many example of similar visual works being easily appropriated,
for example in new architecture for a traditional church group, within
the full development, documentation and deeming of this sculpture as
evidence in a formalised and legal church debate, fundamental notions
of public discourse and rationality are claimed to be involved or
transformed by both sides. Suddenly divergent cultural utterances are
given new status, even validation, within the church community, and
these are held to fundamentally affect issues of religious life and
meaning.
Judge Gibson: 'I have difficulty in understanding in what sense the
opinion of Mr Ashley Barker could have been shown to be 'wrong' or
why the difference of opinion between him and Professor Downes was
seen as 'technical"
The plethora of opinions deferring support to the sculpture can be
widely differing, but the polyvalence and combined weight of opinion
motivated by the sculpture seems to offer a phenomenal grounds, if
not cogent reason, for its legitimation.
Aesthetic terminology proliferate and replicate, without apparent
unifying discourse except that offered by a poststructural attention to
artistic expression, in its local modalities and variegations, as the pre-
signifying domain of all utterance and meaning.
Loose claims of 'intrinsic beauty', 'beautiful material', 'simply
better' and 'masterpiece' abound, while Judge Gibson concurs that this
is 'a great work of art' that somehow 'complements the space'.
He concludes that 'the contest between the opinion of Professor
Downes and that of Mr Ashley Barker was conducted and explored in
terms of aesthetic judgment and not at any point on the basis that
either was or could be shown to be right or wrong on any matter of
technical analysis or understanding', yet pluralism is no argument
against the abstract marble piece. Suddenly the discursive possibilities
of the court and its judgement, and the social arrangements of the
 1994 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 393

church, appear to have been transformed. The traditional discursive

arrangements, as between minister and congregation, once maintained
by the symmetrical symbolic qualities of the traditional sacred space,
have been reappraised directly as a result of the possible presence of
the art object and its intervention in the traditional practices of the
sacred space. Innovating semiotic and textual possibilities of the
abstracted visual structure, for ongoing responses and mediation of
social meaning, are intimated.
David Bishop sees the altar positively opening up the church as a
location of symbolic interactions and social meaning in the wider
community. When the church 'is empty of worshippers,' he says,
'others will continue to come in, and will be fed by the visual and
tactile impressions that they receive from this building and its contents.
The new altar will say many things to them, not all of them by any
means expressible in words.'

narratives of art symbolic space (aesthetic,

I abstract, pre-signifying,
asymmetrical)
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cultural religious discourse - - - everyday

Conclusion

Through hearings and judgments in two ecclesiastical jurisdictions, an

altar by Henry Moore was twice deemed. The first time its aesthetic
nature was excluded, through judgments that redrew the boundary
between art and religion. On this boundary that notions of religious
belief can be located, and a relationship between art and religion
mediated via symbolic space. As the sculpture is named a second and
third time, legally, it is progressively (re)deemed and validated.
Its validation involves a third, diffuse shift in the boundary of art
and religion, which can be seen to transform theology and religious
belief as discourses independent to aesthetic forms. Public discourse is
394 Religion, Literature and the Arts Project

acculturalised and mediated by the pre-signifying abstract visual form.

Rather than sub-serving the global signification of transcendental
reason, meta visual domains such as the sculpture subsume and
aestheticise realms of universal signification.

University of Wollongong