Deeply moved, and outraged

A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch Betty Spackman. Piquant Editions Ltd., 2005.

I found myself completely engaged with Betty Spackman’s book, A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch, unlike any other book I’ve read for years. It’s thought-provokingly critical, yet written with a gentle and vulnerable voice.

The author is a professional artist who has taught at various universities as an instructor in studio art and art history. Much of her work as a multimedia installation artist focuses on the exchange of cultural objects and the stories connected to them. After setting out to critique images of popular and religious kitsch, Spackman finds herself both deeply moved and outraged by their sentimental appeal.

Everyone knows that a key chain dangling with a miniature Eiffel tower can’t adequately express the experience of being in Paris. But there’s something in us that wants to bring a piece of the intangible memory back with us. So how do we represent the deepest or daily experiences of the faith journey? How do we visualize biblical truths? How do we creatively express the longings of the spirit? On flannelgraphs? Bible plaques? Power point?

The book reads like an informal conversation, with hundreds of photographs of images, art, souvenirs, religious night lights, tattoos, shrines, nativity scenes, and Scripture plaques on every page to prompt critical thought and exploration. Spackman probes, asks questions, ponders, and invites Christians to wonder with her about the role of art and imagery in the life of faith and unfaith. She looks at the way visual imagery in the church is embraced, feared, and excluded. No stone is left unturned. “In a way, kitsch represents a closet desire for spirituality,” she writes, “and the creative longing to manifest mystery.”

Anyone interested in the arts and faith – artists, teachers, preachers, worship leaders, youth counsellors, writers, thinkers – will find, as I have, that this a book to savour.

Sharon Huget is a mother, teacher, and artist who lives in Abbotsford, B.C. She has visited with Betty Spackman over muffins and tea at her Grey Barn Studio in Langley, B.C.

Excerpt:

Faith, according to the Scripture, is ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1 NKJV). Images of faith, then, are a kind of oxymoron that has been a conundrum to the church for centuries. What happens when the substance of things seen attempts to express the ‘substance of things hoped for’? Why is it that so much of the imagery used to express Christian faith can be considered what has been termed ‘kitsch’? Why is such profound meaning visualized in such feeble ways?