Elkins delivered his lecture, entitled Contemporary Art and Religion: Do they Mix?, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
“Whenever art and religion meet, one wrecks the other,” said the author of On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, who is also a professor of art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He said that secular institutions have a phobia against religion and that’s the reason for the absence of religion in art studios and central texts within postmodern art. Studio artists are taught not to talk about the religious context of their work and students can’t get critiques of religious meanings within their art due to what Elkins calls critic’s fear.
“Secular institutions have to lose some of their phobia against religion,” he said.
He mentioned that religion is always absent from art criticism except when art is critical of religion.
“That’s the passport to the art world,” Elkins said as an image of a statue of Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite appeared on the screen. The statue is titled La Nona Ora by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
Meanwhile, native styles of art, such as tribal and indigenous religions, are widely accepted because unlike symbols and idols for Western religions, they are new and unfamiliar.
Elkins describes art that depicts popular Western religions as too straightforward, sweet and sentimental, which is why religious art is only exhibited in places of worship and has been abandoned by the contemporary art scene.
“Art won’t challenge the religious institutions that house them,” he said.
He advocates for religious scholarship to be taken into consideration and says that open discussions will greatly benefit contemporary art.
John Franklin, the executive director of Imago — an institute that advocates for the arts, addresses social issues and promotes science and religious dialogue that sponsored the lecture — agrees with Elkins. He said that the downward projection of art and religion can only change through discourse.
“We are in the threshold of a new time, it’s time for change,” said Franklin.