Greening the White Cube
Reflections from Josh Tiessen’s book Vanitas + Viriditas (2024)
By Josh Tiessen
Greening the White Cube, Oil on Baltic Birch, 23 x 40 x 2 inches, 2023
When I was in my mid-teens, an older acquaintance of my parents sent me a book called Modern Art and the Death of a Culture by Hans Rookmaaker, a close friend of Francis Schaeffer. His apt critique of the nihilism and ugliness in much of Modern Art was timely for helping me make sense of the world I was entering. While I may not agree with everything in the book, as I subsequently learned of modern artists engaging faith and spirituality (see Dyrness and Anderson’s rejoinder, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture), this was the first time I came across an art historian thinking about art from a Christian worldview, and championing truth, beauty, and goodness.
Several years later, I discovered cultural critic Tom Wolfe, whose book The Painted Word skewered elitist New York galleries and museums, calling them “temples of Modernism.” His concerns echoed some of Rookmaaker’s––albeit, from a satirical slant. This is something I sought to channel in my painting Greening the White Cube, one of the works in my series Vanitas + Viriditas, which reflects on how we might flourish in a modern society filled with knowledge but mired in confusion. The phrase “white cube” represents the modern art gallery, an industrial space with concrete floors and sterile white walls, which implicitly keeps nature out, and often, the wisdom of creation.
Wolfe spent years traversing the museums and galleries that populate the New York art scene. Standing in front of thousands of Jackson Pollocks, de Koonings, Newmans, Rothkos, and Klines, he was promised a visual reward by the cultural elite. But it never came. He eventually realized it’s not “seeing is believing” but “believing is seeing,” since Modern Art had become completely literary, wherein paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text. According to philosopher Nancy Pearcey, realistic art was eschewed in favour of abstract art, reflecting philosophies seeking to deconstruct material reality—be that through Cubism, which broke down objects into geometric forms to illustrate rationalism and mathematical inquiry, or Expressionism representing human emotion and inner feelings, seen as the true essence of reality. Leading art theorist Clement Greenberg noted that, in the past, painters from Giotto to Courbet enjoyed the task of creating the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface. In contrast, Modernism rendered the stage shallower and shallower, ultimately bringing about “the abrogation of those spatial rights.”
In addition to rejecting representational art founded on philosophical realism, Modern artists spurned beauty. Willem de Kooning admitted, “Beauty becomes petulant to me. I like the grotesque. It’s more joyous.” This is evidenced in his painting Woman I. Throughout art history, the beautiful was often associated with feminine and natural forms, both of which are conspicuously absent from the canons of Modern Art history. The works of art in my painting Greening the White Cube are among the most famous of the 20th century—all completed by white men. According to designer Ingrid Fetell Lee, High Modernism had a “near-allergic reaction to organic forms,” aspiring to a “rationalist mode of design free of sentimental flourishes.” Female artists of that period like Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe and Eva Zeisel are much more celebrated today, and beauty is finally making a comeback.
Sophia peers into an abandoned art gallery, lamenting the masculine-industrial complex of Modern Art. Arguably, Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde shark entitled, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, and Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog should be categorized under Post-Modernism. Yet, the same Modernist anthropocentric tendency—to dominate and control nature—looms large. Their representations of animals serve merely as objects of fetishization, pandering to the prestige of trophy-hunting art collectors. In the book of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom is contrasted with Lady Folly. Contemporary artist Christopher Wool’s painting Untitled (Fool) poignantly illustrates how “the emperor has no clothes” as it sold at Christie’s in 2014 for $14 million! Lady Folly is alive and well in the art world. She may have been deconstructed and fragmented like Picasso’s prostitutes (Les Demoiselles d’Avignon), but the seductive allure of material wealth and status is all too present. Conversely, Lady Wisdom knows that “she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed” (Proverbs 3:14-18).
Greening the White Cube is my artistic manifesto. Lady Wisdom has been calling out in the public square of the white cube, but the art world has largely refused to heed her call (Proverbs 1:20-27). Since her advice has been disregarded, chaos and disaster prevail. Sadly, much of Modern and Contemporary Art has alienated the general public from visual art, which has been replaced by more popular and democratically critiqued art forms like music, theatre, and film. Furthermore, scandals from tax-evading fraudulent galleries and an unregulated art market have not helped to improve public perception.
My painting envisions a future of natural reclamation—a time when the hallowed halls of the art elite will no longer reject beauty. To be clear, there is some contemporary art that I appreciate, and I believe there is a place for challenging work, as I myself have paintings depicting death and suffering. I am critiquing the art world as someone within this sphere, hoping and praying for its redemption. As an artist of faith, I believe we can be part of a new movement animated by a wisdom-filled viriditas (“holy greening power”).
My series Vanitas + Viriditas first debuted in 2023 as a solo exhibition in New York City at Rehs Contemporary Gallery, located around the corner from the Museum of Modern Art. I was heartened that the gallery owners relayed the biblical inspiration behind this series in their press release and displayed the stories that go with my paintings. The Rehs owners are secular Jews, but seem to respect the Bible. I was grateful for this opportunity for the public to engage these themes with me. I also had the privilege of giving a private tour of my show to the editor of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine and was encouraged when he told me that the art world is ready for art like mine that seeks to plumb the depths of the human condition and ponder our relationship to the natural world. I invite fellow Christian artists to be on the vanguard of this new renaissance of substantive art!
This piece was adapted from Josh Tiessen’s book Vanitas + Viriditas (2024), available at www.joshtiessen.com and Amazon.
Josh Tiessen is an international award-winning fine artist, speaker, and writer based near Toronto, Canada. His latest art monograph book Vanitas + Viriditas (2024) explores the theme of ecological wisdom in Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.