But their attention was captured for nearly two hours, much longer than I would have imagined. They were full of awe for these works of art.
The children’s interest proved to me, not that they are burgeoning artists or critics as I might like to imagine, but that what the Pope writes in his recent pastoral letter to artists is true. We all have an interest in the beautiful; art touches something in each of us. For this reason, the letter, like most of the Pope’s pastoral letters, is of interest not just to those to whom it is addressed, but to everyone who has an appreciation for artistic works and a concern for maintaining a standard of beauty in our culture. Women have a special regard for aesthetic issues, as the magazines offering advice on personal beauty, home decorating, and the economic arts attest.
The Pope’s letter serves both as a call to artists to reclaim a tradition of sacred art and a reminder of the inherent connection between beauty and truth. The letter may find a limited audience in the community to which it is addressed, since this is an age when artists — be they writers, painters,
musicians, or actors — often are motivated to create works of secular subject matter, meant to shock, to propagandize, and to sell. Those artists who read it, however, cannot fail to be inspired with new purpose and to be encouraged in their vocation of articulating momentary epiphanies of beauty into word, music, sculpture or painting.
The letter appeals to everyone because, in one sense, we all are artists of a sort. Each of us has the desire to create and to order because we are created in the image of the greatest Artist. We are all entrusted with crafting our own lives into masterpieces, as the Pope says, by acting with moral responsibility and by developing our respective talents to the full. We are given the inventiveness and craftsmanship to shape objects and lives because we can mirror God’s creative action. Those people, however, who have a special call to participate in creative art are given “a communication and a share in God’s essential art,” as the Pope quotes Nicholas of Cusa (no.1).
Artists with the talent of “giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the mind” have an obligation to use their gifts (p. 2). The artist, with his gift of creating beauty, must make his talent bear fruit, as the Gospel parable indicates (Matthew. 25:14-30). Art has a connection, like every vocation, to the common good, so artists should not bow to the pressure to create for personal profit and fame or to the trend of making works that glorify what is base in humankind. Artistic works must be dedicated to ensuring the growth of the person, enriching our cultural heritage, and developing the community.
What is considered beautiful has cultural connotations, of course, but the Pope, himself an artist of merit, suggests that beauty is “the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty” (no. 3). Thus, the relationship between truth and beauty so memorably articulated by John Keats is reiterated by the Pope. The beautiful is that which expresses something of divine truth. We all have had moments of clarity, when our faith is confirmed by the light of grace; these moments resemble the artistic intuition or epiphany of beauty that the artist tries to capture in a conceptual or tangible form. Every artist knows the frustration of being unable to express with his hands or voice what he glimpses in his moment of vision. Genuine art testifies to the reality of things beyond the power of perception.
The freedom to represent the invisible and transcendent is rooted in the Incarnation. God revealed “a new dimension of beauty” when He became man in Christ (p. 4). The Old Testament law forbidding graven images was voided by the divine mystery of Incarnation. Artists were challenged to express the relationship between God and man through the representation of Scriptural episodes and through their own artistic intuition. These works
are sources of richness for reflection and prayer and a mode of catechesis. The Pope argues that every artist is bound to be stirred by the “Gospel fullness of truth” and its revelation of the “inner beauty of things” (no. 6).
The relation between Gospel revelation and artistic intuition leads the Pope to his call for a renewal of the tradition of sacred art. With this letter, the Pope conforms to the call to bishops in the Catechism to promote sacred art, that art which “draws man to adoration, to prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2502). His description of sacred art includes works inspired by scripture and those animated by a desire to express the divine mysteries.
At one time nearly all art attempted to lead to adoration, to inspire praise, and to lift the soul from the sensual to the eternal through images, words, or music. Artists used signs and symbols, somewhat as Christ used parables, to evoke a sense of the divine revelation. Icons demonstrate the power of symbols to point beyond themselves to the Gospel mystery.
As time went on, artists moved from representing things of God to representing things of man. This turn to humanism is not dangerous in itself, because God’s value of humanity is made clear in the mystery of the Incarnation. Often, these more secular works express an awareness of the
transcendent, the “universal desire for redemption” and the need of beauty to avoid despair (p. 7). As such, they remain a type of religious expression. In the documents of Vatican II, artists are encouraged to explore human nature and experience in order to portray, to know, and to perfect it. As long as this art is oriented to the true nature of God’s creation, it can bring joy and encourage adoration, and in some ways be a source of theology (no. 11).
In contrast to this description was much of what I observed in the twentieth century galleries at the art museum. A plaque on the wall invited visitors to confront their discomfort with modern non-representational works. It asked questions such as, “You like music, right? It may look like a three year-old splashed paint on the wall, but mightn’t it be that the artist is like a dancer in his ability to make a work look facile and simple, when in fact it is difficult and profound?” The plaque claimed that if you only understand the message, you’ll appreciate the work.
Regardless of the museum’s attempt to justify contemporary art, it is often the case that even when the work is understood it is still ugly. Such was the case with a photo exhibit by artist Larry Clark that chronicled the debilitating fall of a group of All-American teenagers into drug-addicted, sexually depraved, hollow adults. Their progressive decline was documented in black and white. One image that caught my eye as I glanced in the gallery before turning my son’s stroller around quickly was of a young woman lying in bed, shooting heroin, while her roundcheeked infant stared at the viewer. So much for the family bed.
This type of artwork is not meant to be beautiful; and despite evident talent the artist offered nothing in the exhibit to inspire or uplift the soul, or even to enlighten the viewer about the human condition, unless perhaps you could argue it portrayed the desperate need for redemption. Rather, the effect was to make you wonder how the photographer could witness the situation with no attempt to rectify it. There was no sense of compassion; it was simply documentation.
Certainly the Pope does not demand that all art be religious or conform to a certain style or technique. He welcomes exploration of the human condition, but suggests that works that depict suffering should be executed in a manner that does not exploit or belittle humanity. They should, rather, attempt to point to the tragedy of errant free will and to suggest the need and the joyful reality of redemption. They must not give in to the cultural trends of irreverence and depravity.
Those artists who are aware of their debt to the Source of their talents and their responsibility to use these gifts rightly provide the invaluable services. Through their manifestations of beauty, artists have the gift to stir others to wonder and to realize the sacredness of life and the created universe. Artists, in turn, need the Church as a source of inspiration and of understanding about the “authentic image and truth of the person” (p. 8). All genuine artistic works, whether Christian or not, are inspired, however minutely, by the Holy Spirit.
Whether or not we are artists in the technical sense, we all must heed the Pope’s call in some regards. We must praise and promote the works of artists such as Michael O’Brien and William Shickel, among many others, who attempt to live out his ideas. As women, we must use our own gifts in the appropriate manner to create beauty in our homes and in our communities. We must teach our children to discern the beautiful and truthful from the ugly and dishonest. Only by being dedicated to truth will we create works of beauty, and ultimately, it is beauty that stirs souls to seek God and to desire salvation.
(This article is reprinted with permission from Canticle Magazine, the Voice of Today's Catholic Woman.)
