Gott und die Welt
A conversation between Thomas Bayrle and Friedhelm Mennekes about the difficult but fruitful relationship of religion and art.
Friedhelm Mennekes:
For many artists the relationship between art and religion is somewhat antagonistic. When it comes to you, Thomas Bayrle, you are – in relation to this antagonism – rather someone moved by peace. You are very calm, very confident, and in your work, very inspiring. Above all, you deal with the medial structures of society and with the mechanical as a production concept.
But how does it happen, that you attack with religious themes, for instance with your Frankfurter Kreuz?
Thomas Bayrle:
In order to establish a connection from the Middle Ages until today.
The Christusbild from 1988 was, for me, about introducing Christ himself into a motorway segment between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. I chose this segment because it was the first stretch in Germany. This motorway section is within each finger of Christ, within each element of the arm. For me, art and religion are inseparable as - based on the reality in European monasteries since a thousand years – they are interrelated.
FM:
As with Joseph Beuys, your work is also less universally religious, but much more specifically Christian. For you, it seems to me, it is not so much about a communication structure between art and church, but about the Christian. What interests you about the Christian theme?
TB:
These are the constructed archetypes. Above all, the program interests me. Painting was coded. Just like prayer itself, the forms and proportions of icons were coded. It was clear that the head of a human fit twelve times within the length of his body, while it fit only eight times in the body of an icon. The expression was precisely defined, the posture, the proportioning of the Christ child’s body to Madonna’s, as well as the colors were all precisely coded. And this architectural plan fascinated me. It is always the same form, which will always be filled differently.
Like a teapot with new tea each day, or a musical composition, which must always be reinterpreted. So was the same scheme newly painted each time. An individual mass production – also from the users’ side, was the painting freshly kissed and worshiped each day.
FM:
The nature of this art is that it is not about predefined technical structures, but about the structure of its communication. Here, above all, it is about the education of a specific objective, which finds itself in an image. Here a world view will be impressed, through images, in one’s mind. Cultural education as a kind of precursor to mass communication, or collective communication?
TB:
It became clear for me through Wilhelm Worringer, who described the Gothic as an art form, which is composed from excessive emotion and from technical realization as a surrogate for a deficiency, which the Northern Europeans perceived, as opposed to the Egyptians and Greeks.
In northern France, in Coutances, the cathedral was built in only twelve years, a very short time, in comparison to the church masons’ guild technique with which cathedrals were previously constructed. One could manage this pace only because they produced the pillars in the south, the windows in the west, and the rosettes in the north. Various components from different locations were brought together and assembled in one place.
Suddenly, something abstract supervened. I personally see this as the beginning of mass production. And this was 800 years ago! I see this directly connected to the conveyor belt of today.
Excerpt from a conversation between Thomas Bayrle and Friedhelm Mennekes for Artcaleidoscope Magazine.
The full text will be published in Artcaleidoscope Magazine by December 15, 2010.