Fujimura’s “Theology of Making” for a Broken World

By Kerr Houston

Perhaps it has seemed to you that we are all in some way cracked or shattered: small vessels tossed by trauma, permeable organisms poisoned by a corrupted environment, social beings stricken by a pandemic. Perhaps you’re familiar with Lao Tzu’s observation that the unbending tree is easily broken, or Augustine’s account of the process by which he was “torn piecemeal” by his desires and behaviors as a young man. The phrasings vary, of course, but the central idea is a compelling one: we are fragile, fractured creatures in need of care, counsel, and restitution.

But how, exactly, to mend ourselves? In Art + Faith, Makoto Fujimura contends that the answer lies in the act of making. To Fujimura, patient creative work offers a means of refuting the hard logic of capitalism and the sharp spears of the political arena—and, more meaningfully still, a share in a larger divine plan. For this is an explicitly Christian text, as much prayer as polemic, and it regularly relies on close scriptural exegesis in proposing what Fujimura calls a “theology of making.” Strikingly, though, he alludes in the process to several traditional Japanese artistic forms, invoking them as models of meaningful creation. One of the more novel aspects of this book, then, lies in its attempt to reconcile two distinct cultural traditions. Ultimately, however, while such an approach sounds novel, Art + Faith is at its heart a rephrasing of the familiar idea of craft as redemptive: a pouring of old wine into new wineskins. And while Fujimura’s book may speak eloquently to some Christian makers, his tendency towards generality and abstraction limits both its force and broader applicability.

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Haven’t heard of Fujimura? He’s out to change that. A successful painter who was raised in Sweden, Japan, and the United States (and is now based near Princeton), he is also a contemplative Christian public intellectual. His paintings, which are often expansive and abstract, frequently unite Christological themes and meticulous Japanese craftsmanship—reflecting a period of training in Tokyo and his gradual turn, as an adult, towards Biblical study. But Fujimura has also established himself as a prolific author and an ambitious cultural worker. He has co-founded a self-proclaimed movement (the International Arts Movement), headed an institute and a center dedicated to exploring the intersection of art and theology, and developed a range of websites and podcasts. Art + Faith, then, is just the latest entry in a far-reaching portfolio.

All of his work, though, is illuminated by the essential conviction that art can offer a valuable remedy to a cultural landscape that he sees as profit-driven and relentlessly utilitarian. In his 2017 book Culture Care, Fujimura argued for what he called a life-giving, generative art: for work characterized by a spirit of generosity and stewardship, and resistant to mere commodification. Art + Faith, in turn, is a more theologically explicit extension of that earlier project. Here, he argues that merely fixing a fallen world is not enough. Rather, to Fujimura, the goal is to participate in the formation of something entirely new. Certainly, he means that in a Christian sense: by making, he claims, we participate in an entirely new creation, sharing in God’s own generative power. But he also invokes, as an analogy, the venerable Japanese art of kintsugi, which involves the repair of broken ceramic vessels using a lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Or, better, exceeds their repair, for the goal of kintsugi is not merely to restore, but rather to acknowledge fractures and then to beautify. It’s an apt symbol of Fujimura’s world view.

That world view, it’s worth noting, was informed by tragedy: Fujimura and his family lived near Ground Zero and were profoundly shaken by the attacks on 9/11. But it’s also colored by a deep sense that we have somehow all lost our way: that the world is, as Fujimura puts it, “dying and cynical.” It’s not fully clear what he means by that, for he tends to prefer oblique invocation to concrete analysis; vague references to culture wars and transactionalism are about as specific as things get. But there’s no doubt that he sees the arts as a remedy, and making as a valuable response. Here, too, his argument can be frustratingly abstract, and Fujimura regularly falls back on nebulous terms such as love and beauty in trying to articulate the value of art. Still, there’s no doubt about his focal claim, which is that the artistic process offers a way of coming to know a creative God—and of thus forging, in one’s own small way, a transfigured and transformed reality.

Fujimura develops his argument in a patient and polyphonic manner: this is a quiet, layered book, in which examples gradually bloom and motifs slowly acquire a richer depth. Most of those examples are biblical, and involve moments of inventiveness and alleged generosity. Fujimura dwells, for example, on Adam’s naming of the animals, described in the Book of Genesis, and suggests that it opened the way to a further understanding of the world at large. “By naming,” he writes, “the animals, birds, plants, insects, and zillions of microbes under the earth, we find ourselves in them, and that deeper poetic knowledge allows us to love fully.” Well, perhaps—although such a reading rather willfully ignores Emmanuel Levinas’ well-known assertion that naming is a form of violence, as it constitutes a form of possession of the other, rather than a truly ethical relationship.

More compelling, arguably, is Fujimura’s extended discussion of Mary of Bethany’s decision to anoint Jesus with a bottle of expensive nard (an aromatic essential oil). Described in all four gospels, this was evidently a controversial event; as Judas supposedly observed, the ointment could instead have been sold, and the money given to the poor. It’s also a story with a personal resonance for Fujimura, whose paintings are often executed with pigments made from exceptionally expensive ground materials. Are we speaking, then, of profligacy and waste, or of something else? To Fujimura (perhaps rather predictably) it’s something else—and specifically, it’s an expansive form of generosity. Mary’s lavish use of nard should be seen, he proposes, as a radical gift: an unrestrained performance executed for an audience of one.

You might be tempted to think, here, of rough parallels in the field of performance art: of Marina’s Abramović’s The Artist is Present, or Lee Mingwei’s deeply affecting exercises in generosity. Notably, though, Fujimura never invokes those examples—or, really, engages with contemporary art at all. Evidently, it’s a conscious omission, perhaps born of a reciprocal sense that the art world wants little to do with Fujimura. “In the art world,” as he puts it, “claiming to be a follower of Christ often seems as transgressive as anything that one could do in a world full of transgressions.” Here, he’s not wrong. As James Elkins once observed, “The art world can accept a wide range of ‘religious’ art by people who hate religion, by people who are deeply uncertain about it, by the disgruntled and the disaffected and the skeptical, but there is no place for artists who express straightforward, ordinarily religious faith.” In many art galleries, speaking earnestly of one’s practice in relation to Mary’s jar of nard would more likely prompt embarrassment than inspiration.

A more comfortable parallel, though, emerges in the world of craft, which has often similarly conceived of the process of making as potentially salvific. At times, the discourse attending craft has been overtly religious: think of the Shakers or the Arts and Crafts movement, both of which claimed that beauty could carry radical potential in an industrialized, commercial society, and craft could cure larger social ills. But even more secular defenders of the value of craft have often used spiritual language. In her 1974 book Native Funk & Flash, the fiber artist Alexandra Jacopetti argued that making is not a merely economic or aesthetic activity, but effectively spiritual work. I’m reminded, as well, of George Nakashima, the revered woodworker who saw craft as a remedy for a materialistic and bellicose society and who wrote, in 1953, that design “is a question of the spirit and the aspirations and inspirations that are the avenue to spiritual expression.” That’s a statement with which Fujimura would likely agree.

And yet, comparing Fujimura’s text to these earlier socially conscious philosophies yields a disappointing result. His book, by contrast, can feel frustratingly naïve. At one point, for instance, he offers this defense of the value of making beautiful things: “I propose that bringing beauty into a scarcity mindset environment is a far more effective way to create long-term change than the ‘zero-sum games’ of fighting to control limited territories as in the culture wars mindset.” Again: maybe. But the potential force of that claim is then largely undone by a second assertion: “In these days of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, it’s important to remember that the goal of such movements is not to fix an inequity, but to seek a new way for us to see beauty—as in ‘fair-ness’ in all peoples.” That’s harder to accept. Such a claim feels willfully apolitical, and its bland conclusion uncomfortably echoes the dismissive and implicitly racist insistence that “All lives matter.” (And who, by the way, is us?). Ultimately, then, Fujimura stands at some distance from the firm pacifism of Nakashima or the acute social diagnoses of William Morris. By contrast, his book feels remote and abstract: a chapel on a cloud, built of gossamer abstractions.

Admittedly, that’s partially by design. Fujimura has his doubts about the rewards of merely logical analysis, and he’s aiming at something more like a statement of philosophy than a blueprint for revolution. And there are, in fact, real rewards to be found here. His conception of artists as what he calls border stalkers (a term he first developed in Culture Care) is worth considering, for its association of creativity with a transgressive, transdisciplinary roaming. So, too, is his observation that the basic components of the Eucharist—bread and wine—are the products of skilled human labor: patient handicraft, at the center of the Christian liturgy. That idea, in turn, opens onto the even larger but no less interesting suggestion that theology ought to be seen as an organic layer of growth. Revelation, here, accrues slowly.

If such an idea appeals to you, then you might well enjoy this book, which is structured in a comparatively patient and meditative manner. Similarly, if you’ve felt that we live in a fallen world and need some form of repair or salvation, Fujimura’s theology of making has something to offer. If, though, you’re in search of a concrete discussion of contemporary art or a rigorous analysis of the possibilities facing a faith-based creative practice, his book can feel limited. Mary’s bottle of nard offers a lovely metaphor for creativity, but is hardly a broadly adaptable model (which is precisely why, perhaps, Fujimura chooses to sell inexpensive open edition prints of his paintings, in addition to the originals). And there’s a certain myopia, ultimately, in Fujimura’s central assertion that “artists can lead in the rediscovery of the central purpose of our being to make.” Certainly they can. After all, many have been doing exactly that, in terms even more precise than Fujimura, for centuries.

Kerr Houston is a professor of art history at MICA, where he has taught since 2002. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on Renaissance visual culture and contemporary art and art criticism, and is a regular contributor to BmoreArt. He lives in Baltimore.