Comments for Our Heritage of Beauty at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sat, 18 May 2013 23:50:09 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/our-heritage-of-beauty.html#comment-9119 Brava Ann. For an example of devotion to the classical training for the artist, and essays on the struggles of these artists who have banded together to reclaim the enduring goals and methods of classically trained artists, see the web site called "ArtRenewal dot org." - Chris in Maryland Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:50:45 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/our-heritage-of-beauty.html#comment-9102 I think an important element that needs to be pointed out is the state of art education today. Before modernism, artists were trained in an atilier where they learned how to draw before attempting to paint, while developing their eye through working from life. They were able to achieve beauty in their work because they had complete mastery over their tools. Part of the reason why many artists do not care for beauty is simply because they are unable to achieve it with their underdeveloped skills. The atilier system is vastly different from the art training a student would receive in a university program today. Also, our society's concept of beauty has been so cheapened through advertising, cosmetic surgery, and other ways, that it is completely detached from any meaning to the common person. Unfortunately, I believe Catholic Universities are largely at fault for the absence of real beauty and quality Catholic artists. Unlike our society, the Church holds a defined understanding of beauty which actually touches a person's soul. But rather than aim to move someone's soul, art students today are encouraged to move the audience via through shock value. There are very few Catholic universities that care enough to offer a MFA in fine arts (Notre Dame is the only one that I've come across), and even the schools that proclaim themselves to be invested in revitalizing a "Catholic culture" (John Paul the Great U, Franciscan U, etc.) do not have any form of a respectable art department. I have been impressed by the writings from within the Church discussing the importance of beauty, goodness, and truth in art, but there is very little effort to actually cultivate such artist. Until this changes, I doubt we will see anything more than a handful of quality Catholic artists. - ann Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:34:01 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/our-heritage-of-beauty.html#comment-9101 There is a lot to criticize in the new cathedral in Los Angeles, but I think the large tapestries by John Nava are a marvelous exception and worthy of contemplation. Contemporary in style, they continue a noble artistic tradition of the Church. They provide a powerful representations of heroic individual saints, and when viewed in situ, also of the communion of saints and the ongoing journey of church. I also agree with Mr. Kirby's comments. At some level, the Tridentine Mass and certain kinds of abstract art are aimed at the same end: bridging a gap between sinful humanity and the "otherness" of the divine. - DS Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:30:56 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/our-heritage-of-beauty.html#comment-9098 Dear Mr. Kirby: Thanks for your comment. I began the column by noting my appreciation of 20th-century art, and focused here on Mr. Porter, because he is a faithful Catholic — not because his work is representational. If you visit TCT often you see the work of many "modern" artists, including Marc Chagall. As to music, I urge you to visit our sister site, CompleteCatholicism.org, where you'll hear/see a video of John Tavener's "Mother of God," a contemporary work that's (IMHO) is as glorious as some of Palestrina or Beethoven. - Brad Minerl Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:39:16 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/our-heritage-of-beauty.html#comment-9097 Brad Miner, you're raising important issues here: I think many have been driven away from the Catholic Church by the banality and vulgarity of its contemporary liturgies and of the new or reformed spaces that host them. (The retranslation of the Mass seems a step backward in the right direction.) All your links are to representational art. Is this the only kind that works for sacred spaces - is there an Incarnational curse on abstraction, or irony? Representational art is a meager tributary from the movement of art in the last century. Time was when religious art was the work of artistic pioneers. I know Matisse and Chagall did religious art, and to get Rothko, one has to yield to contemplation. Must non-Representational, religious art be products of genius to be at all worthwhile? I've seen a terrifying Crucifixion by Francis Bacon - quasi-representational - but does it belong in a church? Would such a thing so unsettle worshippers that they couldn't pray? Maybe such unsettling would cut an opening for grace: Grunewald's Crucifixion at Isenheim is as shocking. These are real questions for me. Likewise with twentieth century religious music - I'm talking Stravinsky or Poulenc, not Haugen: they seem very alive to me, but few congregations use them, and with the marginalization of the Tridentine Mass, they have mostly lost their places as vehicles for living ritual. Yet for me at any rate, listening to, say, the Sanctus from Stravinsky's Mass is a religious experience that singing "Gather Us In" is not. - Mark Kirby Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:19:57 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/our-heritage-of-beauty.html#comment-9096 Popular modern art forms are so debased and trivialized that they are no longer popular. A person randomly chosen from the educated classes probably would not be able to name a working poet, a working sculptor, a working "artist" (painter or image maker) a serious working novelist, a serious working dramatist, a serious working composer. Who is the contemporary Picasso, someone arranging dead chickens and video loops of meat packing workers in an "installation"? Secular art cuts itself off from its own tap root of meaning. When it isn't scolding and intentionally shocking, it can be clever and pleasingly designed, but so is table lamp. Other than its basic utility, why should anyone care? And they don't. - Other Joe Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:28:56 +0100