Foreward

We associate the word Maecenas or patron with the glories of Renaissance days. We needn't. There are in the present, people whose noble aim it is to promote art and to share it with others. One of them is Dr. Ulrich Scheufelen, president of the prestigious and family-owned Scheufelen Paper Company in Oberlenningen, Germany, which produces some of the finest art paper in the world. Although chair of the European Art Paper Association, Dr. Scheufelen's relation to art is not limited to the paper on which art books are printed. He is the founder of the Lenningen Paper Art Museum, one of the few museums in the world to collect and exhibit artworks made from paper. He is also a collector of graphic art, and owns a premier collection of religious and Christian print art of the 20th-Century.

The Scheufelen Collection which holds etchings, woodcuts and lithographs by artists from Dürer to Baselitz, has a unique purpose. It was not created to satisfy the aesthetic craving of one man, but is intended to be seen, admired and enjoyed by the many. Thus, The Scheufelen Collection became a traveling exhibit, and for years went to museums, schools, churches, and monasteries all over Europe. Some of these places were famous, others hidden and modest. Dr. Scheufelen is not seeking the limelight of famous art circuits. He wants great art to serve everybody, little people included. His ultimate objective is the promotion of the spiritual through art. Presenting the German catalog of his collection, he said: "It is a joy for my wife and myself to present you with this modest exhibit. Our goal is to make Christianity better known, and to promote a better understanding of the religious print art of German Expressionism, not to forget Chagall's illustrations of the Bible."

But how did this collection of rare print art find its way to the University of Dayton? The Marian Library / International Marian Research Institute credits Burnell and Karen Roberts as the impetus behind this exhibit. The Roberts have known Dr. Scheufelen since 1977, when young Ulrich spent some time at the Mead Corporation preparing for a career with his family-owned business. Over the years, contacts and friendship were maintained, and a few years ago a catalog of The Scheufelen Collection sent to Karen Roberts triggered the present event. What followed is the story of much enthusiasm and even greater generosity: the generosity of Dr. Ulrich Scheufelen and the Roberts family, and the selfless enthusiasm of all those involved in the preparation of this exhibit.

From Barlach to Baselitz presents seventy-five artworks, some of them grouped in special themes and exhibited in various locations. Highlighted in this exhibit are the manifold variations on the figure of Jesus Christ and his life by early 20th-Century German Expressionists; Chagall's masterly illustrations of the Old Testament; Rouault's visual renderings of Suares' Passion; Otto Dix's artistic interpretations of Matthew's Gospel; Max Pechstein's woodcuts on the Lord's Prayer and HAP Grieshaber's fourteen prints depicting the Stations of the Cross. Expressionist art is not pretty art as defined by Jugendstil and St. Sulpice. It is expressive of the real human condition, and deals with the age-old questions regarding human life, meaning, and immortality. This exhibit offers a variety of answers, none easy or superficial, but all of them psychologically and spiritually powerful. If nothing else, this exhibit is a timely reminder that even in the 20th-Century the Judeo-Christian message and its founder have been a rich and lasting source of inspiration and hope for the arts as well as for life.

Proud to offer this exhibit to the University of Dayton and the Dayton community, The Marian Library / International Marian Research Institute is well aware of the fact that this event transcends the scope of its specific endeavors. The message of this art needs to be seen and heard by many, and thus requires the collaboration and solidarity of all friends, old and new, of religious art. Last but not least,From Barlach to Baselitz would like to be another little stone in the mosaic of the University of Dayton's sesquicentennial celebrations: a reason for joy and the beginning of new challenges under the aegis of Him who is Way, Truth and Life.

Johann G. Roten, SM
Director
The Marian Library /International Marian Research Institute

The 20th-Century has been described as a century where the "gods are silent" (Esteban), an age that "seems so remote from the content and attitude" (Schapiro) suggested by the Bible. This notwithstanding, and in spite of the repeated announcements of the "death of God," this age has had its painters of the Promised Land. It was not only Chagall and Rouault who made their art an act of piety. There were countless others expressing their happiness, anger or faith, drawing inspiration from the Book of Books. They did it in a changed philosophical and cultural context which needs to be pinpointed.

I.
    We find in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church statements about sacred art - of which Bible illustrations are normally an integral part - which direct the artist to evocate and give praise to the transcendent mystery of God. We are offered two examples on how to bring into focus the mystery of God: through Christ, in whom appeared the invisible beauty of truth and love, and through Mary, the angels and the saints who are reflections of spiritual beauty (CCC 2502).

This aesthetic program would have been easy to implement in pre-modern times when beauty was still synonymous with being. The concept of beauty changed with the Enlightenment. The world was no longer considered the many-splendored form of God's creative genius but human artifact, that is, the sum total of human experimentation and productivity. The eschatological tribunal of this world, meaning the judgment of good and evil, was turned over to the forces of history and their thrust for progress and self-redemption in time. By the same token, the situation of art was changed. Its new role was to take the place of religion and offer temporary respite from the hardship of managing the earth; it was to become a moment or state of grace in a world without eschatology. The aesthetic program of modernity initiated by Baumgarten and perfected by Hegel attempted to domesticate ontology and eschatology by reducing it to art. Beauty is no longer splendor of form, a witness for goodness and truth of reality, but the sensible shining of the idea (Hegel) limited to art since impossible to detect in the impurity of natural forms. Art is expelled from the realm of beauty and is relocated in that of truth - truth understood as personal truth, a way to come to terms with one's historical significance. Henceforth art's noblest role will be the exaltation of subjective consciousness and noble human destiny. The clash between the aesthetics of modernity and post-modernity in the present did not change this basic thrust. In both modernism and post-modernism the primary focus is on the subject. Where aestheticism of modernity attempts to reach the essence of self in ever more reductive forms of art, that of post-modernism leads the subject on to amalgamate with the world and absorb it in ogre-like fashion.

II.
    The contrast between sacred art as described above and the art theories of modernity is harsh. A painting by James Ensor typifies this clash. It shows the painter portraying Mary, the center figure of the painting being James Ensor himself and not Mary (De vertoostende Magd, 1892). The painting could serve as a logo for the whole of Expressionism. Whatever its content or motif, Expressionism all through this century has taught us to look at art with the eyes of the artist and to communicate with the state of his soul or the concept of his art, sometimes to the point where the shadow of the artist obscures his own work. This is what Merton meant when he said of Picasso, that he was "undoubtedly a great genius...but perhaps that is the trouble" (The Hidden Ground of Love, 1985, 129).
    Nevertheless, it was the great merit of 20th-Century art to explore the deepest recesses of human subjectivity and to make it art-worthy. How important was its contribution to what we call sacred art? Redemption must assume the whole of reality and transform the very core of human selfhood. I see here one of the most important contributions of 20th-Century art to religion and churches. It shows how deep the human need for redemption is, and how many different facets of personal and collective human history still need to be healed through salvation from God. From Nolde's Entombment to Picasso's Guernica and Baldung's Last Supper, there is hardly an aspect of 20th-Century history that has not been pinpointed as wound, tragedy or open question. The great art of this century is permeated with the heaviness of human existence, and it is not without deeper significance that the Pietà appears as one of the most frequently represented religious motifs for much of our century.
    The shortcoming of Expressionism, if there is one, lies in the fact that it states the need for redemption but does not seem to be able to promise salvation. But this and the relentless quest for the spiritual seem to presage well for a more active exchange between religion and the art world. Today, churches like Audincourt, Vence, Ronchamp, and Plateau d'Assy seem like an afterglow of past glories and look like dinosaurs of a distant past when institutionalized religion and the world of art were joined together for a short time. We need in our time a new opening for mutual respect, dialogue and artistic production. Religion has been in this past century, as it was before, a powerful source of artistic inspiration, and has responded in more than one way to the artistic nostalgia for the spiritual in life so typical for our time since Kandinsky.

III.
    Contemporary art of the Bible cannot be that of ages past. Religion of all wisdom traditions should teach us that image is not likeness. And didn't Chesterton say that "art is the signature of man?" Art is representation but not reproduction. It is based on a double experience of the artist, who places a second thing right next to the first and calls it representation. This second thing, the image or representation, is the result of a twofold relationship. It represents the object or first thing, and simultaneously designates it as the product of the artist's experience and creativeness.
    Similarly, the Bible has been strongly affected by 20th-Century art. Contrary to 19th-Century Bible illustrations a la Dore, which had sought a certain catechetical and pastoral objectivity, beginning with the poetic and primitive symbolism of Gauguin (Vision after the Sermon, 1888) 20th-Century art exploits the Book of Books as artistic quarry and source of inspiration. Events of the Bible are now translated into a second form (representation), attaining thereby a renewed presence and effectiveness. Jacob wrestling with the angel is no longer an event of the past, but the symbol of God challenged in his prerogatives by a new consciousness of human freedom and power. All at once, the biblical message opens itself to new interpretations and a variety of meanings. A symbiosis between artist and text develops which will give new life to the text and, to the artist, a home for his fears, phantasms and expectations. And since no artist is an island, he/she will bring to the text the beliefs and opinions of his time and culture. The Bible becomes alive with a second life, and breathes with two lungs: the lung of heavenly inspiration and the lung of human interpretation.
    Are harmony and complementarity between these two warranted or even necessary? There is a need for complementarity, at least. The original meaning of a Scripture text should not be ignored by the artist, if for nothing else, at least for the sake of representation. Artistic representation always somehow includes a third party. What is meant is the addressee, the spectator or onlooker who willy-nilly compares and evaluates the relationship between Bible text and artwork.
Representation is no longer representation, if it does not, again somehow at least, invite complementarity of text and artistic creation. A purely formalist use of Scripture in art, as was the case for some artists of early Expressionism, demeans both Scripture and art. On the other hand, reaching harmony is an altogether different issue. It has not been the ambition of 20th-Century artists to recreate harmony between God and the world, with one exception perhaps, that of Chagall. Harmony in religious art exists when there is harmony between the holy and the beautiful. Only few artists of the past seem to have reached this goal: the Italian Quattrocento, above all Fra Angelico, and some of the representatives of the Flemish Renaissance, for example, Memling and van Eyck. This is not to say that holiness and beauty are absent from 20th-Century sacred or religious art. Beauty is sought in veracity, and truth and holiness appear as the prize of suffering, something the many Jewish religious artists of last century have expressed with rare and poignant accuracy. Harmony may be desirable but is not possible under the circumstances. It will have to wait...for Godot, for Apocalypse Now, or simply for the next reincarnation. Waiting is one of the most striking characteristics of 20th-Century Bible art. It is made up of moments of doubt and moments of hope.

IV.
       It has taken Christians a long time to discover the women of the Bible. Few are those who attracted the attention of biblical artists of the 20th-Century. The ones retained and pictured were mainly sinners and prostitutes. With one notable exception: Mary of Galilee, the mother of Jesus.
The figure of Mary has a role to play in the encounter with the Bible. Better than other religious motifs, the figure of Mary offers an aesthetic bridge to link religion and art. This is particularly true for the image of Mother and Child. It makes an eloquent statement about the culture of life as opposed to the culture of death which has disfigured so many events and values of our time.
There is common ground in Mary for sacred and secular art. Her figure represents a strong incarnational and multicultural thrust. Her icon celebrates life in all colors and shapes. However, it would no longer be the image of Mary if it were not an eschatological icon, too. To be more than incarnational, the artist needs to reconnect with the treasures of iconographic representation.
To make the image of Mary truly incarnational he or she has to sample the many facets of human experience. There is no other way to give a complete vision of the culture of life, which needs to be incarnational as well as eschatological.

The Scheufelen Collection contains a great number of Christ representations, some setting his figure in a narrative context, others showing only his face. The reference made to the Son of Man translates Jesus' self-understanding before the resurrection. He is - in his own words - the Son of Man who is to be glorified (cf John 12:23; 13:21).

For now, he is still the weak and helpless man whom the Old Testament designates with the term son of mankind. Many of the Christ figures shown in this exhibit witness the tension between now and then. Now I am weak and helpless, such is Jesus' message, but there is going to be a time, when I will be risen from the dead and glorified.

The Christ image of 20th-Century art shares intensely in the theology underlying this biblical expression. It shows the Christ figure as marked by the human condition, and some of its most horrible historical consequences. Jesus is weak and helpless - like us - he is frequently used as a symbol of solidarity with human suffering. But this solidarity is a solidarity of helplessness and impotence, and frequently conveys critical undertones of mockery and accusation: "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself" (Luke 23:38). However, there is always the voice of a hopeful doubter in Luke's Gospel as well as in art - which says: "Save yourself and us as well." There is also the unconditional believer in Christ's coming glory: "Remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:39-43).

The Christ of Expressionism is pictured mainly in dark tones - as the Son of Man. But his face is frequently illuminated with the light of future glory. Indeed, the symbol of light plays an important role. Think of the mystical glow in portraits of Christ by Nolde, Rouault or Jawlensky, the transformation of darkness into light in Manessier's work, and Rottluff's smashed and contorted Christ face releasing bundles of light beams. Where light is lacking, the conditio humana appears in starkest forms: Christ's Passion becomes the mirror image of human Passion, and vice versa. Artists like Corinth, Falken, Knaupp and Arnulf Rainer have made it their mission to confront people with the unavoidable realities of suffering and death. Some of their Christ images are of utter loneliness and despair, because they not only depict the brutal reality of human condition, but also its radical hopelessness. Repeatedly, 20th-Century art has been used to stigmatize the evils of power, injustice and poverty. George Grosz (Christ with the Gas-mask), Otto Dix, Alfred Hrdlicka and Harald Duwe (Last Supper) are some of the more prominent representatives of this current.

The face of Christ comes in many artistic variations, from symbol of the transcendent (Paul Klee) to metaphor of the absurd (Francis Bacon), pathway into the unknown (Joseph Beuys), and reminiscence of the totally other (Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman). The Christ of the 20th-Century is worlds and eons away from the youthful, Apollinian shepherd of the third and fourth centuries. But they all have one important thing in common. However often dissected and reconstituted, the face of Christ is still alive: as question-mark, object of derision, alter ego, and Pastor Bonus - or all of these at the same time. The challenge is on, but also the promise: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" (John14:6).

Otto Dix (1891-1969) has been compared to a tiger springing into the face of his victims
and tearing off their masks (Loffler). Dix's own self-appraisal was more modest but no less
determined. He called himself a Wirklichkeitsmensch, a realist who needs to see and experience
everything, for "there is no heaven without the experience of hell." Thus, Dix's work oscillates
between an exacerbated Verism and a no-less-intense Expressionism. Dix is known for his fascination
with ugliness and evil which he stigmatized with as much gusto as rage. His life was marked by
personal involvement in two world wars, giving him enough horrific visions to turn his life into a
nightmare and his art into a shrill outcry against treason and violence. But as for many artists,
painting became his way of exorcizing reality. It gave him the necessary psychological catharsis
and enabled him to document reality without being destroyed by it. His always figurative and
realistic art underwent several transformations, punctuated mainly by major events of his life.

A first period, lasting from around 1912 until after the war (1919), is strongly influenced by
the convulsive style of van Gogh, and reaped a great number of war drawings -his Trenches,
among others -but also, beginning with the 1912 Pietà, a considerable number of religious art
works. Religious art is an important part of Dix's life, with the exception of his second period
(1919-1933) during which time he had been fascinated with allegories of death and studies on
vanity. The year 1933 marks a new and drastic break in his life. He is one of the first painters to be
counted among the "degenerate artists," loses his teaching position in Dresden and retires to the
countryside. The time of his emigration in Löbtau and Hemmenhofen is one of intense watching
and recording, from an artistic point of view in particular. The Dix of this period appears like the
guardian of the Spirit - human and Christian - as can be intuited by the observer who looks
attentively at his prodigious series of St. Christopher renderings (1938-1944). Christophorus, (1944)
the bearer of Christ, is painted as a colossal figure from whom emanates raw but tamed physical
force. The Christchild, in contrast, is tiny and vulnerable, but as the series progresses his body is
bathed in a halo of increasingly brilliant light, and on his face appears a smile. Dix - the guardian
and savior of the symbol of humanism and Christian values? Whatever the answer to this question,
we cannot but be amazed at the stark contrast between this transfigured Christchild and the
repulsive ugliness of his earlier work, for example, his depiction of St. Sebastian (1914-1915).

The period after the second World War, which began in 1945, during the time of his captivity
near Colmar (Alsace), marks Dix's return to a more Expressionist and less Naturalist or Verist style
of painting. In Colmar, Dix had been witness to a scene of extreme sadism perpetrated against a
helpless prisoner of war. This event and the countless acts of savagery committed during the time
of German fascism inspired Dix between 1945 and 1950 to create over forty canvases and wood
panels dealing with the Passion of Jesus Christ. In retrospective, these paintings seem like
drafts or blueprints for his 1960 series of lithographs dealing with the Gospel of Matthew. The
whole cycle is comprised of thirty-three illustrations, twenty-three of which are full and ten only
half-pages. Dix's work is not a narrative and comprehensive illustration of Matthew's gospel like
that of Joseph Hegenbarth, but a series of snapshots portraying individual scenes. Nonetheless,
the series conveys an impression of cohesion and unity thanks not least to the highly personalized
rendering of the various Scripture passages. Dix's Gospel of Matthew begins with Genesis 22:9-10,
featuring the sacrifice of Isaac, and ends with the disciples' mission to the world.

The complete portfolio, consisting of 33/37 lithographs on Japan paper, was published in
1960, by Käthe Vogt Verlag in Berlin. This exhibit includes a sample of eight lithographs, some
of them among the most highly acclaimed ones of the whole cycle.