Art for art's sake
The world of art needs the Church as much as the Church needs the world of art, says Webster Young

19 February 2010

Pope John Paul II hinted, in his Letter to Artists, that today's world of the arts needs the Church.

The reason is that the Church is a natural haven for beauty in art. Secular art, by implication, has lost this beauty. In the letter, the Pontiff asked: "The Church needs art ... Can it also be said that art needs the Church? "

It is clear that secular art needs the Church, because she is a haven for beauty through the values she promotes. In the secular world Modernism in art has promoted other values: the rebellious, or the grotesque, the obscene, the obsessive, the static, the purely decorative, and the meaningless. This is proving a dead end. For secular art, no new aesthetic is emerging - only "post-postmodernism". The name itself is a tacit admission that nothing really new has happened or is possible.

The door is open for the Church to become, by default, the leader in newly created, serious music and art. One has only to imagine what it would mean if the Church becomes the primary place to find the serene, or beautiful, meaningful, dynamic, harmonious, or truly human in art and music. This would represent a huge opportunity for evangelisation.

It follows that the Church should want to welcome with open arms, or invite in, those highly skilled professional artists who want to explore what beauty means for their art, especially when they are fleeing a secular world that won't allow beauty.

In so doing, the Church as patron should not succumb to the illusion of artistic Modernism that says art can only express either the artist himself or his society (artists can, for example, portray truths that are timeless and beyond themselves.). On the flip side of this - artists do not need to think that, in order to create sacred art, one must be a hidden saint.

It is true that one genre of sacred art does require prayerfulness and penance (traditional icon painting) in preparation for the work on the art. But artists coming to the Church don't have to labour under the idea that the Church's fine art requires the artist to possess the level of sanctity that is portrayed in an artwork.

That would be the modern paradigm at work again. You don't have to actually be a St Francis to paint his picture. Nonetheless, the audience for art expects that there might be, at least, spiritual insight coming from his portrayal.

Contrary to Modernist ideas, several schools of depth psychology, especially the Freudian and Jungian, have shown that much of the greatest art is compensatory (and not just a reflection of the artist or society). Most really great artists are working on their art out of a wound in their inner selves. This is a cross they bear that is different from the cross of the saint.

It is what drives them to become artists and is in truth a sign of their vocation to be an artist.

The old Latin adage, "The worst makes the best", is often borne out when examining artists' lives. In regard to society, artists often balance out life and sometimes contradict it - they do not simply express it. Thus an artist might bring universal truths to bear on a society's excesses and actually oppose his society with truth that does not originate from himself alone.

This has led to discussion among psychologists about the categorical differences between three familiar human types: the saint, the artist, and the insane person - different types, each having a different make up.

At rare times the borderlines between these types can become blurred. Many artists are neurotics; there were only a few great artists who were seriously mentally ill. (Robert Schumann, for example, whose music is still much admired).

Very few artists were eventually recognised as being saintly; Fra Angelico is a rare example. Many saints were at first suspected, by friends or family, of madness. They did things that contrary to societal norms that, if motivated by anything other than sanctity, would really have been acts of insanity. Most of the time, however, these types remain separate. The great artist is not often a great saint.

It is important for patrons of art not to let these distinctions lessen the expectation of significant spiritual insight coming from artists. Just because the vocation of an artist is rarely that of a saint, it doesn't mean the artist is not capable of depicting deep spiritual things.

He may be more capable of insight than the average person. The perceptions of artists, coupled with the power of their art forms, and enhanced by inspiration, can lead to the most profound sense of truth.

For example, Michelangelo was a deeply complex person. He doubtless had a profound experience of Christian truth in his walk of faith. Were we to psychoanalyse him, we would find he was a man working out powerful psychological conflicts. But that is not the point when a viewer appreciates the pieta in the Vatican. What one experiences is the power of everything Michelangelo intended to express at the time.

Knowing about him as a man, or knowing about his other works of sculpture, might help us appreciate this particular Pieta in a scholarly way, but that may only contribute a little to the power of the work itself.

What the artist creates does not merely express what he is -- it may compensate what he is.

An artist might create a wonderful vision of heaven, for example, precisely because his personal life is no heaven at all. In creating this vision, the artist is somehow healed. Likewise, we, the audience for his art, do not enjoy his vision of heaven because we are all saints in heaven. In truth, his compensatory art heals us as well, precisely because we also are not in heaven and need healing.

If people really must examine, in Modernist mode, the personal lives of artists, audiences and critics ought to be freed from the "biographical" requirement that any artist must personally embody what he portrays, or must at least be a wonderful person if he is to create something that gives us wonder.

Likewise, we should not discount an existing great work of art just because scholars may have found out that the artist had some ugly and secret fault. This often happens, and sometimes disillusions an artist's following. But perhaps it was precisely some form of desire for deliverance from this fault that made him an artist in the first place.

It is true, however, that this principle could be carried a little too far. One might understand those people who, for personal reasons, do not want to listen to Wagner because he was an anti-Semite and his music was loved by Hitler. This kind of consideration is only an exception for some people. We can still find something spiritually inspiring in Dylan Thomas, even though he was an alcoholic.

Last year, Pope Benedict made a remarkable statement about Beethoven, which is all the more interesting because the Pope is an amateur Classical pianist. He said that it was Beethoven's suffering that gave him extraordinary insight into life, enabling the composer to create such works as the Ninth Symphony and its Ode to Joy (known to many Catholics as the hymn, "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee"). Here is a Supreme Pontiff acknowledging that a secular work, by a genius who was a famously flawed person, can hold much in spiritual insight for a religious person.

There is one other aspect of the question of the artist and sanctity that should be mentioned here: the possibility that an artist may be further converted through the work on a piece of sacred art itself. This can and does happen. The most famous case is seen in Handel's composition of The Messiah. By the time the Hallelujah Chorus is reached, the listener feels that Handel was shouting Hallelujah not only in illustration of the scripture from Revelation but also for himself as a man, in his own conversion. In experiencing this masterpiece of music, many have had the feeling that Handel himself must have gained new spiritual insight as he worked.

But beyond the issue of the character of the artist, there is the truth that the artwork and music of the Church is not only about the artist and his sense of individual expression. He is also working under direction, following guidelines that are given him by the persons commissioning the art. Wise direction also has a role in the work that is produced.

We might say that the Sistine Chapel ceiling is not only the work of Michelangelo, but also of those who commissioned it - especially Pope Julius. And yet Michelangelo was able, while under direction, to make unique and valuable statements in his art. The workings of the Holy Spirit are mysterious, and this applies to art as well.

Artists should not feel that they need to be wary of the Church. They do not need to be saints to depict a saint - they only need to portray sacred things using their special gifts (which may include extraordinary insight), coupled with the faith they possess and giving their best. Perhaps the Holy Spirit will be working through them.

This is how much of the really great sacred art was created by artists of genius. Let us invite the best artists in all disciplines to come to the Church because She offers them ground to create art that is beautiful, full of meaning, noble, and healing.

Webster Young is a published neo-classical composer for opera, orchestra and piano (www.websteryounglinks.com)