I've been sort of bad at checking my gmail, yesterday I came across an email that Sr. Helena sent me earlier this month which was forwarded from another sister in her congregation, Sr. Lorraine. Sr. Lorraine has been following and responding to the whole Theology of the Body related debate concerning how far through Christ are we able to overcome concupiscience. An illustration of this controversy would be all the criticism Christopher West has gotten this past year relating to this point. His response to some of the criticism he has recieved can be read here for those unfamiliar with what I'm referencing. Basically my take on this issue is that while some criticisms of West's work have been constructive and have helped him refine his approach to interpreting and presenting TOB, some critics misinterpret and misrepresent his work or aspects of his work. There are some relatively minor points of Christopher West's work where I'm not sure where I stand yet, I need to conduct more research, but I feel that he is pretty much on the mark in regards to the issue of Christ's power to overcome lust.
Christ gives us real power to redeem the way we perceive the human body, and real power to overcome lust. This isn't to say that the temptation to lust will not always be there, just that through Christ there is real power to achieve a real change in our hearts from lust towards love, in our vision of the human body from distortion towards reintegration. This issue really involves me as an artist who represents the human body (often unclothed!) in my work. There are those who believe that it is never appropriate to make or view art which has as its subject the unclothed figure, thinking that the naked human body will always be an occasion for lust. I believe that presenting the human body in a respectful way that seeks after the whole truth of man who is made in the image of God (and who's body speaks of this in its inscribed call to self-gift and communion with the other) is healing in that it aids reintegrating our vision of the human body which has become distorted through pornography (which instead of seeking after truth pursues and presents lies about the human person and sexuality). Now this doesn't mean that an artist representing the human body, even with the best of intentions, doesn't need to be discerning in the way they present their subject and the means through which they display their work for the human body is a loaded and sensitive subject, this is process is on-going for me and I feel I have a lot more to learn. More on this later.
Back to the email, Sr. Lorraine, trying to clear her head of this TOB debate, went to read the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. But there's no getting away from TOB, in her reading, much to her surprise she came across this passage, concerning the the saint's trip to Rome:
I prayed Our Lady of Victories to keep far from me everything that could tarnish my purity; I was fully aware that on a voyage such as this into Italy I could easily meet with things capable of troubling me. I was still unacquainted with evil and so was apprehensive about makings its discovery. I had not yet experienced that to the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15), that the simple and upright soul sees evil in nothing since it resides only in impure hearts, not in inanimate objects.” (Story of a Soul, chapter 6, pg. 123).
This blew Sr. Lorraine away in the way it summed up what this whole debate on purity of heart is about. St. Therese was concerned about all the art with naked people, and then came to realize how one who is pure of heart can perceive the human body in purity rather than have it be an occasion for lust. St. Therese is famous for her child-like faith, perhaps there is connection with child-like purity in seeing the human body?
I'm grateful for Sr. Helena forwarding this to me, perhaps St. Therese should be special patron of mine now?
So it's been a while since I've put any of my art up on this blog, seeing as how this summer wasn't exactly the most productive one as far as making art is concerned. But now that I'm back at art school there should be more regular postings of what I've been working on. I've been sitting in on one of my professor's figure drawing classes. Last time he was having his students sketch and draw with india ink, so I figured I'd give it a go to try out something new, for I don't recall ever making drawings from life with straight up ink and brush. I found myself liking it. I liked how fast an image could come together with the bold black of the ink. I really also think it's a helpful medium for me to use to help me loosen up and paint more spontaneously as drawing with ink requires a certain boldness (no erasing!). The first was a three minute sketch and the other three were 15 minute drawings. To achieve lighter values I drybrushed. Would be a little different effect if I were to use washes, sort of like watercolor. Perhaps sometime I'll experiment with ink washes, would be a good preparation for watercolor painting. Watercolor painting is something I never really got into but I think I'd like to experiment with it a little, if only I use it mostly for sketches.
I've been pretty lax about blogging lately as lots has been going on. Just so you all know I still have a pulse I'll post a section of something I was reading the other day that I found very interesting. JPII's words on the Sistine Chapel as they relate to TOB is surely a topic I could write about later but for now I'd like to share this excerpt, taken from this article:
Back in the 1990’s the beautiful Sistine Chapel (next to the Basilica of St. Peter’s in the Vatican) was restored. During the restoration Pope John Paul ordered the removal of several loincloths that previous popes had ordered to be placed over Michelangelo’s original work. During the homily rededicating the restored frescoes, Pope John Paul proclaimed the Sistine Chapel “the sanctuary of the theology of the human body.” In speaking about the difference between pornography and a proper portrayal of the human body, the pope spoke about how the pornographer seeks only to arouse lust while the true artist helps us see the whole personal mystery of man.
Some people responded to this idea by saying the naked body will always arouse lust in the heart of man. The pope responded with this beautiful declaration of redemption, “Of which man are we speaking? Of man dominated by lust or man redeemed by Christ? This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ’s redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom from the domination of lust”. The pope says elsewhere, “Deep in the heart we learn to distinguish between what, on the one hand, composes the great riches of sexuality and sexual attraction, and what on the other hand, bears only the sign of lust.”
I cannot describe how much I am liking "Fill These Hearts", which is a tour put on by TOB evangelist Christopher West and others in which TOB is made accessible through art (visual art, music ect...). In reading the content of the website and watching this trailer there is a sense of "coming home" for me. Art and TOB baby!
Watching this trailer and visiting this website stirred up my stuggle this summer to understand the distinctions and relationship between sacred and secular visual art and trying to figure out how my art fits in. This has been particularly challenging for me as the terms "sacred art" and "secular" can mean different things when used by different people and in different contexts.
For example in one article I read the writer listed religous art, sacred art, and liturgical art as being distinct terms. He didn't clearly define what constitued each of these categories but I inferred that he meant sacred art as being less encompassing than religous art and liturgical art being the most exclusive, narrowly defined category.
More commonly in material I have read, artists' webpages I have looked at, and in conversations I have had, two categories of art; sacred and secular, are expressed. Here "sacred art" is defned as being art with explicitly religious imagery, usually directly and unambiously illustrating a biblical narrative, church doctrine, story of a saint, portayal of Jesus, Mary or another saint, and gets us in touch with the divine through the subject represented. Also I have read in a few places the idea that sacred art as defined this way involves some stylistic limitations, e.g. not being overly naturalistic; idealizing figures to some degree. (This point perhaps I will explore more in depth and write a blog post about another time). Some people who define sacred art in this way are more "rigid" than others in their definition and others somewhat less so. Just to note I've read that Eastern Orthdox Christians define sacred art very narrowly as including only icons, but in this post I'm dealing with the Western tradition.
Still I have seen another, looser, defintion of sacred art as any art that is communcative of the sacred. This would define even, say, a more ordinary portrait of a person that is meant to draw out and communicate God's image and His glory in and through the person represented. Another example could be the painting of a landscape that is meant to communcate the grandure of God through His reflection of Himself in nature. So "sacred art" as such could have subject matter ranging from expicitly "religious" themes to more subtly communicating God.
I appreciate aspects of both the more "rigid" classifactions of sacred art and the"looser" attemps at defining it. I feel that both are onto something. I belive that I am seeking a more nuanced veiw to adopt myself.
On the one hand, I believe that distinctions and categories serve a purpose and can be helpful. For instance I belive that, generally, artwork that has more explictlly and unambiously religious themes is more appropriate for a lituragial setting.
On the other hand what I can appreciate about the "looser" or "less technically correct" defintion of sacred art is the attampt to bring together the sacred and everyday life by helping us to see the sacred in an through common human experience and drawing attention to the sacramentality of all things (how all things that God has created discloses something about Himself, sort of like how the work of an artist can be self-expressive).
Perhaps what I'd like to see is an exhange between sacred art (as defined as art with more explicitly religious themes) and secular art (secular here being defined as art which ideally would glorify God but may not meet the criteria for being classfied as sacred art per se). This would preserve appropriate distinctions without which an abusive "anything goes" attitute could develop which could threaten the integrity and rootedness of sacred art while at the same time avoiding the error of being overly rigid which would prevent cultural exchange; the mutually enriching interpenetration of the sacred and the secular.
What Christopher West said about finding that "sweet spot between the sacred and the secular" and not succumbing to "a kind of religiousity where there's often a very rigid line between the sacred and the secular" really resonates with all this. West said that "what we are really looking for is the universally human", which really resonates with me and what I strive for as an artist.
It has been made clearer to me, ever since studying Theology of the Body, that God's heart as revealed through His Catholic Church desires to bring back together what has been seperated. The faith is ALL about re-integration. This all hinges around reintegration of the human person, body and soul and the human person in his or her entirety partaking of the very inner life of the Holy Trinity, which is a communion of persons- an exchange of love. St. Ananasius' said it well in saying that "the Word was made man so that we might be made God". Of course this marriage of the human and divine is made explicitly clear in the person of Jesus Christ, and our partaking of Him- His full humanity and divinity through reception of Him in the Eucharist.
I believe that this same impulse toward reintegration is the driving force between authentic art, to bring back together what has been seperated or disintegrated. In the garden there was no distinction between "sacred" and "secular", neither will there be such a distinction in the eschaton. Today's gospel at Mass was where Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer. The line of the prayer "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" is particularly relevent here, in this quest to reintegrate the sacred with culture at large. Although this reintegration, when the distinctions between sacred and secular will pass away, won't reach completion until that day, God havs given us real power to start living redemption NOW, bringing heaven to earth NOW.
Really what it's about is striving to be in touch with what is most real, a.k.a. God and ordering things accordingly. As Fr. Tom says mystics are the only ones really in touch with reality. A lot of the time people think the mystics are the ones that are out of touch with reality when just the opposite is true, they are in touch with what is for real. One line of reasoning I have heard for not embracing the faith, particularly along the lines of sexual morality, is that some people believe that it is out of touch with real life, actual human experience and is more or less a set of arbitrary rules disconnected from a person's experience. What has to happen, and what artists have a particular role in bringing about, is bridging this unnatural and irrational disconnect between so called "real life" and God.
So I guess to sum up this post I'll say that although I appreciate and affirm a degree of categorization and differention of sacred art as helpful and affirming that it serves a purpose to "historical man" (i.e. where we are at now- man fallen yet in the progress of being redeemed in Christ), I propose that this categorization shouldn't lend itself to a "cutting off" of or an overly severe and rigid divide from the secular (the culture at large) lest "sacred art" become irrelevent and inaccessible and the general culture becomes cut off from that which is "religious", that which is meant to call us higher. Because ultimately these distinctions will pass away in the Marriage of the Lamb when creation is wed intimately with it's Creator as it was meant to be. This is my take on these matters at least, they are open to tweaking so if you have any thoughts on the the subject your input is appreciated as always.
By the way if you haven't noticed I'm putting so many words in quotes because of the multiple connotations they have.
This blog post is pretty loaded so I'm sure I'll revisit some of the concepts I have explored here and further elaborate on and refine them as I (hopefully) gain some more insight. I'd say that in most of my art I'm drawn to reach that "sweet spot" between the sacred and the secular that West mentioned. More on how my art relates to all this later though lest I get carried away write too much for one post. I'm trying to make sense of all this myself, this is at least a start! Comments would be helpful, I could use some people to help me as I struggle through this question of the relationship between the sacred and secular in art (and life in general).
Listen to his lecture on evangelizing through beauty here.
Fr. Barron provides some very good insights in this talk. What struck me was how he said that it is showing people the beauty of the faith which is going to really draw people in. I appreciate how he integrates art into his evangelization style for this reason. I was watching some trailers for Fr. Barron's "Catholicism Project" series he is developing. The trailers along with this lecture are reassuring in that they are indicators of a movement I have noticed toward an increased interest in the role of art in the Church today.
Here are some trailers for the Catholicism Project. They are very high quality and you will see how Fr. Barron's interest in art is very apparent by watching them.
and
This series, which I believe is going to be available sometime in the fall on TV and DVD, brings to mind a quote from Fr. James Alberione, founder of one of the religious communities I'm considering. I don't remember the exact quote but it communicated the idea that the way the Gospel, the faith, is presented must be fitting in being of high quality. If you present the good news through means which are poor quality or cheesy they are not appropriate to the beauty and importance of the message. Fr. Barron really gets this. Here is my favorite thing that he said, in the first trailer I posted: "Catholicism is smart. Catholicism is beautiful. Catholicism is colorful. It's textured. It engages the mind and the heart and the body." YES! And he responds to this conviction with a commitment to providing highest quality means of communicating the faith. One reason why I am so offended by bad art, as I communicated in my post Emasculation of Jesus is that I wonder how many people have been turned away from the Catholic faith because of lame music, bad art, horrible architecture ect. I know I personally, if I didn't know that Heaven met Earth in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, wouldn't be drawn in by the beauty of the music (not saying that the person leading the music is necessarily a bad singer- though that could be the case). Same goes for the architecture in some modern Churches, some of these instead of drawing the mind and spirit to contemplate the beauty of God his Bride the Church instead are more evocative of a space station. (I have one particular church in mind when I say this). Something has gone wrong with the Church as is evident in the production of such poor art, there needs to be a spiritual-artistic renewal of Catholic Culture. Ok, yeah- so this is just a long way of me going about saying I like what I see in what Fr. Barron is doing! Later I'll write more about my feelings regarding the relationship between mediocrity of art and spiritual lukewarmness, I think I'm on to something there.
Below is an excerpt from an interview of Ann Slattery, of Stabat Mater Prayer Apostolate whose mission is to support artists primarily by praying for them. I came across this a while ago and since starting this blog have linked to this interview but I reread it recently and wanted to bring it to the forefront because of its importance.
(emphasis mine)
4. Part of your mission is to spread an understanding of the Theology of the Body through the arts. Why is the Theology of the Body important and relevant for artists? How can they incorporate and spread the principles and ideas outlined in TOB?
We live in a visual world. All of us are bombarded with hundreds, even thousands, of images on a daily basis. We process huge amounts of information through websites, email, television, and movies. The way we digest information has become so graphic. You want to know how to change out a flat tire? Look it up on YouTube. And, of course, we all know that many, many images rampant in our culture are trivial, demeaning to the true nature of human sexuality, and even blasphemous. That's why we think that Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body needs to be widely understood, especially by up-and-coming generations. And who better to communicate it to this image-saturated culture than artists?Artists who grasp this teaching are best equipped to spread it, because they can present it immediately and profoundly. It's a real challenge, and I am not sure how they will do it—I am not an artist—but I know that they can and will. It is not necessary to get a theology degree to realize the beauty of this teaching and the impact it is beginning to have on the world. In the Middle Ages, people learned the Faith primarily through the teachings presented in art (stained glass windows, statues, the cathedrals themselves). Today, we will see a turnabout in our culture, from one of death to one of life, when we begin to see (literally see) the revolutionary implication of the pope's teaching. He has so eloquently taught what it means to be human! Incidentally, we are offering this apostolate in thanksgiving for the life of John Paul II on earth and in anticipation of his eventual canonization.
Right there Ms. Slattery expresses exactly what has been compelling me ever since I first came across TOB, to communicate it through art. Another thing she touched upon which is also very much on my heart is for a generation of artists with a grasp of TOB to RISE UP and communicate the truth of the human person through their art. Artists have a critical role in bringing about a transformation in our culture, from a culture of death to a culture of life. A major reason I started this blog was so that others who have a call to communicate TOB through art can find me and we could mutually support each other-and I know there are others as I have come across some of them already. Who else does this resonate with? I want to hear from you, us TOB artists NEED each other. This is not to exclude those who are not artistically inclined, your contributions of exchange of ideas and prayer are indispensable. On this note Ann Slattery, who is not an artist herself, mentions that the invitation is extended to everyone to support and help bring about this artistic cultural renewal. If you want to learn more how to become a part of Stabat Mater Prayer Apostolate, go to the link. Ms. Slattery, in our one conversation thus far has been immensely helpful to me personally and I know she would be very encouraged to hear from others enthusiastic about what she's trying to get off the ground.
