Archer crosses the line

As a prominent figure in the Arts in Australia, Robyn Archer, speaking recently in Canberra for the Manning Clarke lecture, said

So, if there is no economic or environmental certainty and no formal faith either for many, can I make a case for Art as a pathway for spiritual survival?

I’d like to support her case because I love the arts; but it’s too an all-too-easy ‘out’ for those who’ve given up on religion.

Art has always had a spiritual dimension, and a power to inspire the human heart to an awareness of being beyond the here-and-now.

Take Roy Ground’s famous Melbourne icon, the Arts Centre spire for example. It reaches upwards, to some place loftier than our present reality. In the words of the Centre’s own promotion,

As with a church steeple or spire, the purpose of the Arts Centre spire is symbolic, providing a visual feature and signpost for the entire complex.”

It has a church-like quality in drawing people together and pointing them to an aspirational ‘beyond’. However, the symbolism of the spire is artfully left un-stated. Any passing viewer can decide for themselves if this is something spiritual or not.

Not so in Robyn Archer’s lecture, where (in her fuller speech particularly) she describes the failure of present-day faith institutions to provide transcendent hope, and clearly suggests that Art should step in and take its place.

And on this, I think she crosses the line. Art is not a path of spiritual survival.

I love the deep and complex spirituality of art, but I don’t believe it should ever seen as a substitute for spirituality, faith and belief itself.

What about you?