Chiesa del Volto Santo, Turin.
(Source: Fides et Forma)
Sandro Magister's latest column (Only Beauty Will Save Us) summarizes the critical views of Enrico Maria Radaelli (perhaps the foremost disciple of Romano Amerio) on the hierarchy's abdication of "their magisterial role as beacons of the faith, and therefore of Christian art". The summary is followed by the following passages from a speech by Jean Clair (described by Magister as "a world-famous art historian, member of the French Academy and conservator general of the French artistic heritage) at the "Courtyard of the Gentiles" held in Paris on March 25 of this year:
THE CULT OF THE AVANT-GARDE AND THE CULTURE OF DEATHby Jean ClairParis, Courtyard of the Gentiles, March 25, 2011[...] There are in the history of the Church singular episodes like, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the astonishing popularity of the Goliards, itinerant clerics who wrote erotic poetry and rather obscene tavern songs, and dedicated themselves to making burlesque parodies of the Mass and sacraments of the Church. But the Goliards did this to criticize a Church whose errors they were denouncing. There is nothing of this, today, in the artists of the avant-garde, who have no relationship with the Church, not even the desire to mock it. The movement of the Goliards was connected with an era of great religiosity and mysticism, not with a manifestation of indifference.They could be only the singular deviations of a few jokers, if the proliferation of these aesthetic incursions into the churches of France, and the similarity of their nature, exhibitionist and often coprolalic, did not lead us to ask ourselves about what relationship Catholicism has today with the notion of Beauty.I will limit myself to a few examples:- In a little church of Vandea in 2001, next to the casket of a sainted healer who brings pilgrims from far away, another casket full of antibiotics was installed.- More recently, in the baptistry of a big church in Paris, a huge machine has been installed that pastes a resinous material, "the sperm of God," on enormous baptismal certificates, sold on the spot at 1500 euro apiece.- In Gap, the bishop has presented a work by an avant-garde artist, Peter Fryer, depicting Christ naked with his arms stretched out, strapped to an electric chair, like a Deposition from the Cross.- In 2009, at a little church in Finistère, a stripper, Corinne Duval, in the course of a contemporary dance performance subsidized by the Ministry of Culture, ended up dancing naked on the altar. [...]What I see being reborn and developing in these libertine cults so similar to those practiced by certain Gnostic sects of the second century effectively seems to me a new gnosis, according to which the creature is innocent, the world is wicked and the cosmos imperfect.I am not a theologian, but as an historian of forms I am struck, in these cultural works called "avant-garde" that today presume to bring into the churches the joy of suffering and evil – whereas traditional worship once used to combat these with its liturgy – of the obsessive presence of bodily humors, privileging sperm, blood, sweat, or putrefaction, the pus in the frequent evocations of AIDS. Naturally, also urine, which, in regard to the 'Piss Christ' by the artist Andres Serrano, "indispensable star of the world of art and of the market" according to Mr. Brownstone, was proclaimed a "bearer of light" in a homily by the priest, Robert Pousseur, who had been charged with initiating the French clergy into the mysteries of contemporary art. [...]The Church has allowed itself to become fascinated by the avant-garde to the point of presuming that the unclean and the abominable presented to the view by its artists are the best doors of access to the truth of the Gospel. In the meantime, various stages have been marked which I do not dare to call a trend.During the 1970's, the Church did not want anything from contemporary art other than abstraction. After the windows by Bazaine in Saint Séverin there were the windows by Jean Pierre Reynaud at the Abbey of Noirlac, then those commissioned from Morellet and Viallat for Nevers, and from Soulages for the abbey of Conques, the face no longer existed, the body no longer existed, the crucifix itself was replaced with two pieces of wood or welded iron. The bloody battles of iconoclasm seemed never to have happened. Iconoclasm had become a normal state of affairs. [...]How many of the works in the state museums concern Catholic iconography? 60 percent? 70 percent? From the crucifixions to the depositions in the tomb, from the circumcisions to the martyrs, from the nativities to the Saint Francis of Assisis . . . Unlike the Orthodox who kneel and pray before icons, even when they are still found in museums, it is rare, in the grand gallery of the Louvre, to see a believer stop and pray in front of a Christ on the cross or in front of a Madonna. Should we regret this? Sometimes I think so. Should the Church ask for the restitution of its assets? I tend to think this also. But the Church no longer has any power, unlike the Vanuatu or the Haida Indians of British Colombia, who have obtained the restitution of the instruments of their faith, masks and totems . . . Should the Church be ashamed of having been at the origin of the most prodigious visual treasures that have ever existed? Being unable to have them back, could it not at least become aware of the duty not to leave them without explanation in front of millions of museum visitors? [...]The Catholic religion has long seemed to me the most respectful of the senses, the most attentive to the forms and smells of the world. It is in it that one also encounters the most profound and the most compelling and surprising tenderness. Catholicism seems to me above all a religion not of detachment, nor of conquest, nor of a jealous God, but a religion of tenderness.I know of no other that, for example, has exalted maternity to such a degree. [...] What religion has depicted so many times, from Giotto to Maurice Denis, the child in all the stages of childhood, gestures, expressions, childhood emotions, with his appetites and curiosities, when he is standing on the knees of his mother? How could the present-day Church have turned its back on such riches? [...]In the work of art born from Christianity, there is also something else, with respect to visual harmony and piety. There is also an heuristic approach to the world. [...] The artist is at the service of God, not of men, and if he depicts the creation, he knows the wonders of creation, he preserves in his spirit the fact that these creatures are not God, but the testimony of the goodness of God, and that they are praise and a song of joy. I wonder where this joy can still be felt, the joy that is heard in Bach or in Handel, in these cultural manifestations so poor and so offensive to the ear and to the eye, to which the churches now open their worship.Without a doubt, this has been and remains today the greatness of the Church: it was born from the contemplation and adoration of a child who is born, and fortifies itself with the vision of a man who rises again. Between these two moments, the Nativity and Easter, it has not ceased to fight against the "culture of death," as it so rightly calls it.This courage, this persistence make even more incomprehensible its temptation to defend works that, in my eyes, to the "doors of my flesh," smack only of death and despair.God without Beauty is more incomprehensible than Beauty without God.
