Design & symbolism

All monotheistic religions are organized around a book, a dogma, and a visual corpus, or they develop and codify it into a real brand image manual, like the Christian religion, and all particularly the Catholic religion, or on the contrary they do not authorize the representation of God and devote the sacred environment to abstraction (architecture, decorative motifs), like the Muslim religion, or to the use of everyday objects used symbolically, such as the Jewish religion through ritual shawls, for example, defining what we could call a “textile Kashrut”.

The symbolism applied to textiles is also very present in Hinduism – the spinning wheel appears on the national flag of India – and Buddhism, with dyes using saffron pigments. This visual corpus constitutes the mark of recognition and develops the feeling of belonging.

💡 We can say that design and symbolism have always gone hand in hand in the history of humanity.

Eminently pictographic and easy to draw in sand or on stone, the fish, a sign of recognition for the first Christians, is the graphic transcription of the Greek word Ichthus . Each letter of the word ( Iesos Christos Theou Uious Sauter ) forms the phrase: “Jesus Christ son of God, Savior”. This graphic sign of recognition is therefore superimposed on a verbal meaning, a “slogan” as we would say today. Later, the fish of times of repression will be replaced by the representation of Christ on the cross, with the even more symbolic variant of the cross alone, a graphic sign so anchored in collective memory that we cannot associate it with anything else. signified that death, which is why it is often attached to the name of a deceased person. The cross of Saint Andrew, whose symmetrical shape is less original, does not function with the same effectiveness. For all these reasons, we can say that design and symbolism have always gone hand in hand in the history of humanity.

LICINIA AMIAS SEPULCHRAL STELE - MARBLE, NEAR THE VATICAN NECROPOLIS, ROME

“The way most religions have chosen to represent themselves for thousands of years demonstrates a clear awareness of corporate identity research techniques long before they were consciously formulated. Every religion, every cult that has persisted has created an easily recognizable symbol, an architectural style, a uniform for its priests, and the means necessary for this “brand image” to be applied in all its sectors of activity. We can therefore say that the cross is one of the most powerful logos of all time ”.

The architecture and interior decoration of buildings dedicated to worship, the clothing and objects specific to its celebration, very developed in the Catholic religion, as well as works of art, stained glass windows, manuscript illuminations, and sculptures, were for centuries the only accessible artistic expressions, and the only opportunity for the people to be presented with creative, non-utilitarian works. Artisans and goldsmiths expressed both their know-how and their spirituality, giving thanks through the objects they produced, such as Benvenuto Cellini who initiated a true code of liturgical goldsmithing. We can recall on this subject the forced disappearance of paintings and sculptures from Protestant churches from the 15th century in Europe after the Reformation: this is how in England, while the ruling classes continue to have access to the works of art, notably through portraiture and landscape, the people are deprived of the only pictorial models to which they had access, now absent from austere churches.

It would be interesting to study the impact that these separate developments had on the evolution of societies: on the one hand, the apogee of the Baroque in Catholic Southern Europe, on the other hand the development of Protestant societies from Northern Europe, where the image is banned, but where collective singing plays a major role in social and spiritual cohesion. To the point of being at the origin of the creation of a musical genre from which jazz was inspired, Gospel, also called Negro spiritual , of black slaves from North America. But that is another subject...

The separation since 1905, in France, of the religious sphere and the civil sphere, by introducing the notion of secularism, has for a long time excluded artists, but also designers, from the religious domain, and given churches a traditional, even retrograde, on the question of visual representation.

The Second World War precipitated the necessary change in religious architecture in Europe. The reconstruction of public buildings and infrastructure destroyed by the war led to an awareness of modernity and affirmed a desire for formal rupture. Architects like Auguste Perret or Le Corbusier were called in 1948 by the ministers of reconstruction, Raoul Dautry then Eugène Claudius-Petit, a great friend of Le Corbusier. Later, the massive urbanization of the "thirty glorious years", the creation of new towns and large urban and peri-urban concentrations, allowed architects to build new places of worship and to give the Catholic church an image of modernity. We can recall the extreme example of Hans-Walter Müller building in Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, in the sixties, an inflatable church with two hundred seats, weighing thirty-nine kilos. And in 2003, that of Michael Gill who offered an inflatable church with sixty seats for 33,500 e.

THE SYMBOLISM OF OBJECTS

💡 Function is essential to any object, even the most seemingly futile. But we must understand that, sometimes, objects do not have the function we believe. For example, knowing how to read that automobiles transport symbols but not people. My lemon squeezer is not made for squeezing lemons, but for starting a conversation.

Objects created by man are never reducible to their sole function, even if it is obvious and primordial. They acquire, including those resulting from industrial production, a singularity which attaches them to their creator, to their owner, to their user. Thus, my mobile phone will not age like my neighbor's, even if they are of the same brand and model: the personal relationship I have with it, the way I use it, the nature of my perspiration, the mode of transport that I inflict on it (in the pocket, at the bottom of the bag), the memories that it evokes for me (fear of having lost it, good or bad news that I associate with it), in make a different, unique object: my phone. The same goes for the automobile, and, to varying degrees, for all the objects around us.

💡 The weight of the symbolism it carries makes it a difficult project to manage for an artist or a designer, faced with a very particular type of "client", the clergy, and an unusual type of "order", the object liturgical.

Marcel Proust already raised the issue with the famous madeleine dipped in tea. All this is a story as old as that of the first tools created by man. And we can clearly see that industrial production has not changed this order of things, whatever the fears, or the hopes, raised since the 19th century on this subject. Notably the extreme positions on decoration taken by Adolf Loos: “The man of our time who feels the need to smear the walls is a criminal or a degenerate. » ( Ornament and Crime , 1908). The religious object, however, has a separate status in the symbolism of objects, in that it is a symbol before being an object; its function fades behind its representation. It has no “commercial” value, except when it takes on heritage or museum value over time, and then becomes part of History. The weight of the symbolism it carries makes it a difficult project to manage for an artist or designer, faced with a very particular type of "client", the clergy, and an unusual type of "order", the object. liturgical.

CARMEL CHAPEL OF LISIEUX (14), PIERRE BURAGLIO, 2002

How in fact can we reconcile a “user” request, since, after all (or above all) the liturgical object is a functional object, an object of use, with a search for meaning with a strong symbolic charge? And what can we say about the destiny of these works, which their users appropriate, often to the detriment of their original integrity? Wear, misuse, even degradation which, for a designer , constitute the predictable avatars of an object during its lifespan, can be considered by an artist as an attack on the integrity of his work. A few years ago, Jean Dubuffet sued Renault for destroying a work created for the firm. Conversely, every designer , even the most media-oriented, expects to one day see the objects they create end up in the landfill. “The destiny of the work of art,” says Ottavio Paz, “is the frigid eternity of the museum; the destiny of the industrial object is the landfill. » It is true that the recent “starization” of designers , by giving them the status of artist, opens the door of museums to their products.

Give meaning, stick to the company's strategy, its history, its historical and social context. Put the object first. In its sustainability as well as in its obsolescence. Even if their interest in religious objects is relatively recent, the designers who launched into the adventure over the last ten years very quickly understood the unique challenges. It took fifty years for design , entirely oriented towards progress, science, technology and, it goes without saying, towards materialism, to open up to a sensitive approach, and to a more spiritual dimension. It seems that he still has a lot to discover and to contribute in the field of sacred art.