A Guide for Visual Literacy

Catherine Kapikian

Visual literacy is the ability to access and understand meaning conveyed through images. As the church struggles to reassert its relevancy following pandemic-induced changes, might artful imagery be embraced as unselfconsciously and enthusiastically as hymnody? The basis for answering this question with a hopeful “yes” rests in a powerful assertion. We are sensory beings. Being human necessitates having deep sensory experiences. Since all of our senses belong to our humanity, it is essential for the church to foster experiences that support this assertion. 

Works of visual art offer opportunities to engage in theological discourse in visual form when experienced in the context of the church. Engaging with art in the context of museums and galleries is commonplace, but in the context of worship, art is understood in a unique way as part of a larger, transcendent whole. In Sunday worship, when all of our senses are inundated (sometimes simultaneously), art becomes a catalyst for the shimmering breakthrough of the Holy. Such an experience of God’s presence overwhelms us and causes us to bow our heads. Perhaps this is one of the paradoxes of attending to the visual in worship—sometimes it is not about the visual experience of the work, but about how visual art impacts the body’s engagement with worship. 

Visual art—like music—is comprised of a unique, nonverbal vocabulary that communicates in a language solely its own. Endorsing and understanding visual theological proclamation requires a rudimentary grasp of this unique language; its undertaking is a worthwhile effort. This guide introduces nonverbal vocabulary in general terms and its language in accessible terms to stimulate visual liturgical engagement in worshiping communities. I will introduce ideas in art theory, elements and principles of art, and spatial vocabulary to support church staff, worship committees, and congregants in visual engagement. Aesthetic encounters within the context of liturgy function in tandem with other sensibilities already in play, enriching the experience of worship beyond measure.

Parameters of an Aesthetic Experience 

Four parameters of an aesthetic experience are the artist, the artwork, the viewer, and the context. A practical acknowledgment of these parameters provides a way to analyze and engage works of art and a gateway to understanding why the church should reestablish itself as a context for visual art. The elements of artist, artwork, viewer, and context have existed in relationship, with variations in their hierarchical arrangement in each time and place, throughout Western art history. Their positions in the hierarchy shift depending on the artistic perspective, era, and location, signaling diverse, culturally conditioned viewpoints. 

In ancient Egyptian tomb art, context was at the top of the hierarchy. Context dictated the formulaic prescription of stylistic and symbolic constructs chiseled and painted by an unknown artist whose creations existed for the afterlife of the entombed. Today’s commodification of art places the artist at the top of the hierarchy. Today’s artist is concerned with self-expression at the core and sells through a gallery not knowing the final context in which his or her artwork will reside, all the while hoping that a future viewer will purchase it. First the artist, then the artwork, then viewer and context vying at the bottom forms today’s construct. Whether talking about the Dutch Golden Age of painting (Rembrandt), the High Renaissance (Michelangelo), or French Impressionism (Monet), these four parameters of an aesthetic experience interact to influence artistic choices that either honor, consider, or relegate context. 

Because the visual arts have suffered neglect in many quarters of the church, especially in theological education, it is critical for church leadership to realize the relevance of context and reestablish its significance. In liturgical art, acknowledgment of context is vital, since the work is part of the larger whole of liturgy and is interpreted relative to a specific cultural space. In consideration of the transcendent nature of art and its capacity to communicate theologically, to relegate the church context to the bottom of the hierarchy cuts the church off from its potent ally. A change in attitude that positions context as a viable place for the contemporary artist does not lead to visual propaganda, vapid imagery, or both. What it does lead to is the necessity for visual literacy, the consequent interest of artists, and quality imagery.

Nonverbal Language

All languages, including music and art, have a syntax, that is, ways and rules for putting the vocabulary together with semantics unique to each. This syntax provides a method for making meaning of the joined-together vocabulary. The languages of music and visual art, by virtue of their unique vocabularies, syntax, and semantics, communicate a sense of the mysterium tremendum in a way that propositional language cannot. Art and music deliver that timeless moment of heightened awareness above time and space. In fact, they bear within themselves their own confirmation; we don’t know we need them until we experience them. Spiritual enlightenment comes embodied in a rich variety of ways. The elements of art provide some basic vocabulary that can help to recognize how visual art creates these revelatory moments. They are line, shape, value, color, and texture.

1. Line is a graphic device that functions symbolically; for instance, the outline of a mountain or in a letter of the alphabet. 
2. Shape is a defined area of color, value, texture, or lines that may define recognizable subject matter or may instead exist outside the given boundaries of an image’s recognizable subject matter, as in abstract art. (I define abstraction later when I discuss categories of presentation.) 
3. Value refers to the relationship of one part to another in terms of lightness and darkness and is relative to a particular work or context. Imagine a chart of ten separately painted squares with white at one end and black at the other end and the in-between squares advancing from light to dark. 
4. Color has three attributes, the first being its hue—red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and so forth. Second, color has its own inherent value (lightness or darkness). Imagine placing a square of color, or hue, next to its closest value in a scale. For example, yellow is light, purple is dark, and red is in the middle. Third, color can be intense (bright) or muted (dull) or one of an infinite number of possibilities in between. An artist pays attention to all three of these attributes when thinking about color. 
5. Texture may be simulated to mimic the surface quality of things seen in nature (rough, smooth, grainy, etc.) or applied (think collage—ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, wire, nails, etc.). The artistic possibilities utilizing these elements are infinite, limited only by the artist’s imagination and skill. 

Following is a description of the effects (syntax and semantics) created by an artist’s imaginative and thoughtful use of the elements described starting with the simplest.

1. Figure/ground is the relationship of the markings (lines, shapes, colors, combinations, etc.) applied to a background. Both are of equal importance. In abstract images, the two are fused and often become indistinct from one another.
2. Balance refers to the felt equilibrium between all parts (single or combined elements) of an image. Balance can be symmetrical, approximate, asymmetrical, and/or radial.
3. Movement in an image is implied rather than actual to force the viewer to look at the entire image.
4. Repetition of an element like a particular color throughout the whole image achieves implied movement.
5. Pattern is the contiguous repetition of an element like a wiggly line that creates a distinct area.
6. Rhythm is a complex recurrence of adjusted intervals wherein the spaces in between the areas of repetition or singular units of design resonate with the areas or units themselves.
7. Dominance occurs when the artist stresses one visual item over all the rest to momentarily arrest and focus the viewer’s attention, as for instance by introducing one spot of a different color or its more intense version.
8. Subordination reduces viewer attention on aspects of an image by varying intensities of colors, values, line thickness, and so forth.
9. Harmony in an image is a quality that lies between the extremes of monotony and discord or contrast and is achieved by successful transitional means such as uniform brush stroking or uniformity in textural surfaces between figure and ground or other means.
10. Proportion is the relationship of all parts to one another as they work together to achieve a felt rightness of parts.
11. Space, that is, its illusion on a two-dimensional surface, is implied the moment a mark is made on the surface. The artist creates the illusion of deep or infinite space by using the edges of the two-dimensional surface to act as a window frame through which the viewer sees a created endless recession of forms in space. In shallow or limited space, the artist can create the illusion of restrictive space as if looking into a box or onto a stage. Or an artist may not attempt to create illusional space, as in much modern art. Rather, the work has height and width but no depth. All parts of the image sit on the two-dimensional surface and appear as flat as it is. Art in the twentieth century introduced combinations, distortions, and new expressions of spatial imaging.

Art as Product and Process

Product relative to this discussion is the artful image or object. By analogy, it can be compared to an iceberg that we see above the surface of the ocean. In fact, we see about 10 percent of the iceberg. Process is the remaining unseen 90 percent of all the complex processes engaged in making an artwork. Generally speaking, music is valued as a product and a process (singing is participatory), but with visual art, the church, in its exclusive interest in the product, rarely engages the process. When understanding art in its totality as a unique language, product, and process, it is important to endorse all three of these capacities in the key areas of church life (worship, education, fellowship, and outreach/mission). It is important to engage in activities that focus on process in each one of these areas.

For an example, when members of a congregation make their own paraments (images that hang from the pulpit, lectern, and table/altar), the experience of the process is life-giving. Deep correspondences exist between the undertaking of a creative process and spiritual formation. In fact, stages in the creative process such as the incubation of ideas, frustrations, breakthroughs, illumination, and elaboration are akin to common experiences in a spiritual life, such as thoughts of gratitude and positivity, afflictions with possible loss of faith (dark night of the soul), breakthrough, transformation, and enlightenment. Both processes are undergirded by trust and grapple with what is at hand. In a creative process, intense absorption brings forth something new. In a spiritual challenge, enlightenment is achieved. In both processes, participants are open to insight and encounter and seek or achieve wholeness of being. 

Creativity is the resource with which we bring new meaning into our world, and the ability to respond creatively reflects our genetic reflection of the divine image. The idea of the imago Dei from Genesis 1:27 is foundational to this discourse. Its straightforward implication of meaning derives its complexity of meaning from its diverse interpretations and relationship to other Scripture texts.

Categories of Presentation

When considering a change in liturgical imagery or the addition of art in the church, it is helpful to consider the differences between representational, abstract, and nonobjective imagery.

1. Representational imagery contains descriptive representations of things visualized in our natural environment; Albrecht Dürer’s etching of a rabbit is a prime example.
2. Abstract imagery serves the needs of design. The artist is concerned with the skillful arrangement and interactions of line, shape, value, color, and texture more than with creating realistic representation. The resulting image(s) can be slightly abstract, as in Henri Matisse’s portrait titled Green Stripe or very abstract, as in his The Piano Lesson or anything in between, as in his The Conversation. However, in all instances, some sense of subject matter is communicated.
3. Nonobjective imagery offers motifs, areas of colors, texture, shapes, and so forth, sometimes repeated, that are imaginative in their entirety and do not appear as recognizable in nature, such as Matisse’s The Snail.

All three categories are valid ways to deliver theological proclamation. The nonobjective way, the least-used and the most challenging one for most congregations, has compelling possibilities in a variety of ways throughout ecclesiastical space. A congregation’s involvement with this design method is a way to engage a fresh means of visual theological proclamation, and an educational accompaniment would benefit the process.

Liturgical Paraments 

Liturgy is a prescribed ritual/order of worship, and in the latter part of the twentieth century, liturgical practice underwent significant renewal in Protestant churches. One of the features of this renewal was the attention given to the unique attributes of each liturgical season. Consequentially, it became possible to communicate the uniqueness of each liturgical season in an indirect, nuanced, and suggestive manner, an abstract way of transmitting awe and wonder. These visual reminders of the eternal in the present (the ultimate purpose of a parament) offered more than the season’s traditional color with a precise hard-edge symbol. 

Paraments can transmit mystery and revelation when imaged with necessary design ambiguity. As liturgical renewal filtered through leadership into the church context, banners and other visual accoutrements also proliferated in the chancel space, on the walls of the sanctuary, in the narthex and fellowship hall. Instead of turning to a catalogue of prescribed images, some congregations turned to an artist to design and fabricate, or fabricate by community, artful paraments that challenged established tradition with innovation. 

Whether their design is traditional or not, paraments function to visually frame sacred space with the church’s unique way of marking time by remembering God’s redeeming acts. The church through the centuries has amassed an elaborate collection of symbols (such as lamb, wheat, grapes, shell, fish, dice, nails, star, crown, dove, net, palms). The list is long, but do they inspire when seeing them visualized? A symbol has the ability to convey a complex surplus of meaning, inviting deliberation and triggering awe. They are effective when they are imprecise. Over time, though, symbols can become so familiar that they communicate like a sign, with straightforward meaning that conveys a one-to-one relationship between the sign and its meaning, like a red light directing street traffic. 

Artfully designed symbols communicate obliquely through the power of suggestion and nuance. Consider infusing trite, unimaginative and/or redundant symbols with new energy by utilizing the visual category of abstraction. It provides a touchstone of entry with recognizable subject matter (symbol) while simultaneously introducing ambiquity, an ingredient that invites contemplation. Symbolic representation has a long history in the church, is essential to Christian theological proclamation, and requires innovation with a variety of materials that feature craftsmanship. The latter reflects the goodness of handwork and honors the materiality of our world. 

Commit once in each liturgical season to the practice of lifting up children’s images. Have early elementary-grade school children respond visually to the texts of each liturgical season. Select the most endearing and enchanting parts of their contributions (without changing a single twist or turn of their expression) by tracing them onto acetate and then projecting them with an overhead projector onto a paper or fabric background. When children’s images are writ large, the result is captivating. Whether paraments include the images of children, images designed by an artist, or, especially, if they come from a catalogue, they should relate to the distinguishing design features of the chancel furniture on which they are placed. If they do not, they will create subtle but unnecessary visual noise. While it may not be consciously recognized, this condition is as distracting as hearing airplanes flying overhead during a sermon. Instead of enhancing what is, such paraments compete with what is. Artful, nuanced, and suggestive imagery that collaborates with the design features of chancel furniture aids in invoking a transcendent experience. Thoughtfully appointed imagery, like thoughtfully selected music, spoken word, and poetic prayers, can inspire profoundly.

Liturigical Space

Liturgical space includes the chancel, the sanctuary, the narthex, and the fellowship hall in many churches, but any space for worship becomes liturgical space. All are significant in their need of quality artful images. All of the visual elements and effects discussed are in play in the larger volumetric context of the chancel and sanctuary, where the architecture rather than the edge of a two-dimensional image determines their use. Consider gathering a small group of people in your congregation to read your space together for the purpose of seeing your space critically, closely, and carefully. Study it from every angle—chancel, sanctuary aisles, entry from narthex, balcony—and look at it from the perspective of the effects created. 

Some of the questions to consider are the following: What are the architecture’s dominant sight lines? What elements in the space amplify the architecture and what compete with it? Do you see visual patterns or repetitions? Does a particular color move and echo through the space? Should it, and if the answer is yes, then why and how? When a color appears in its most intense manifestation, do values (relative relationships of light and dark) contribute or compete in arresting attention? Consider the scale of elements in the space and ask whether there is a sense of balance or visual hierarchy. Does the visual scale and weight of elements reflect visually the theological hierarchy or meaning you want the space to communicate? Additive accoutrements like banners can, surprisingly, create misplaced emphasis. Consider the placement of chancel furniture, the balance of each piece one to another relative to the categories of balance introduced. 

The architecture of a space dictates the choice and style of visual additions, even if the choice is to use a contrasting style. Sometimes this can create visual harmony with the site by thoughtful consideration of balance and proportion. More often than not, visual noise exists. Clutter—too much of too many unrelated things—is one of its root causes. Other causes include inappropriate scale of additions, discordant design relationships, as in a parament’s relationship to its chancel furniture, the decorative proliferation of too many crosses, an American or state flag in the chancel (an inappropriate place for their display because that which they symbolize is extraneous to chancel function). One of the glaring causes of visual noise is the large, fabric-covered “windows” that sometimes exist in prominent frontal walls to hide organ pipes but allow sound to come through. Consider changing the fabric to match the color of the walls as well as matching the frames of the windows, making these “garage doors” in the space visually disappear. The collaborative venture of looking to see the space (an artist pays as much attention to the spaces in between things as the things themselves) also open reflection on important spatial issues and solicit remarks such as, “Well, I never did understand that!”

Conclusion 

Art making is evolutionary with revolutionary eruptions in its evolution. Imagery has been a part of human history since humans became conscious of themselves, and humans keep on recreating them. Think of the influence of television advertising with its rapid-fire delivery of manipulated images. Imagine the church, as countercultural ambassador of aesthetic encounters, as offering an opportunity to stop, look, see, and be. “Seeing” in this understanding ties the act to the discernment of mystery. It allows the numinous to break in because the context enables, in the religious sense, a “crossing over” into an experience of the Holy. “Crossing over” (derived from the Latin root word transcendere meaning “to step over, surpass”) is the bridge connecting art and spirituality, the latter understood as the lived experience of the Holy. Art experienced in the context of the church hinges on the direct experiences of the senses where they mediate a flash of insight as a legitimate source of theological insight.

Reciprocity is essential in the act of seeing. It is a give-and-take encounter. When viewing abstract or nonobjective images, someone lacking a rudimentary knowledge of nonverbal visual language might say, “I don’t like it. What is it?” The better question is, “What are you saying?” Advocate for visual literacy. Quality aesthetic objects will improve the health of the church by inspiring the faithful. Contemplation is implicit in the act of seeing with discernment. A jolt of insight is more likely with more time for looking. 

In summation, look upon the arts community as a new mission field, not for evangelization but for hospitality, and the church as a space where aesthetic encounters might trigger a transcendent experience. Consider sponsoring an artist-in-residence with a studio on the premise in an otherwise unused Sunday school classroom. Artwork woos the imagination, nourishes those who “see in a mirror dimly,” who “know in part,” and who seek spiritual understanding.

Notes

1. Wendell Berry, “Like the Water,” Famous Poets and Poems website, accessed April 29, 2022, https://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wendell_berry/poems/134.html.
2. James Donovan, Catechism of the Council of Trent (Dublin: Duffy, 1829), 100.
3. “Baptism and Reaffirmation,” in Book of Common Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 403.
4. John Ylvisaker, “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry,” Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 488.
5. Berry, “Like the Water,” https://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wendell_berry/poems/134.html/.
6. Julia Esquivel, “I Am Not Afraid of Death,” in Threatened with Resurrection: Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan (Elgin, IL: Brethren Press, 1994), 67.
7. “The Baptismal Covenant I,” Book of Worship, accessed April 29, 2022, www.umcdiscipleship.org/book-of-worship/the-baptismal-covenant-i/.
8. Book of Common Worship, 409.
9. “Wade in the Water,” Spotify, track 3 on The Blind Boys of Alabama, Higher Ground, Omnivore Recordings, 2002.
10. “The Afterlife,” Spotify, track 2 on Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What, Legacy Recordings, 2011.
11. “PBS Newshour Classroom,” PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, March 30, 2022), last modified March 30, 2022, accessed April 13, 2022, www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/.
12. Mike Ferguson, “A New Suit and an Act of Contrition,” Presbyterian Mission Agency, last modified February 25, 2019, accessed April 22, 2022, https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/a-new-suit-and-an-act-of-contrition/.