Church Art 2

Reflecting on my earlier post today, I was considering the state of Church art today.  Now if there is a minefield in the Church today, art is it.  Traditionalists fight with Modernists, contemporary conceptualists with figurative realists, Bauhaus with gothic, etc..etc..etc. 

I remember visiting a hospital in Dublin a few years ago - I went into the chapel to say hello to the Lord.  After finishing my prayers I was confronted with an amorphous mass,  a lump of misshapen wood which was described as the Virgin and Child.  Now if I was the sculptor I would pray for a long life, because I do not think the Holy Mother would have been impressed with the attempt to depict her.  It was dreadful, an ugly piece of work which, in my opinion, would have been better employed keeping a poor family warm on a cold winter's night!   But this is where art is now.

While many would disagree with me, I do think that many of the churches and commissioned pieces used to decorate them, are unworthy and inappropriate.  Do not get me wrong, I love modern art, but there is a line which, when crossed, turns art into rubbish - but then when you go to some museums some artists have turned piles of rubbish into art.  I'm not going near that argument today, but I am saying that there now needs to be a major revolution in the Church's approach to art in her places of worship. Since Vatican II there has been a real poverty of creativity and taste when it comes to our churches and images. 

I know that the Church is not always to blame.  They employ architects and artists who happen to be going through a particular phase, and so design churches and make images according to that phase - but they move on and our poor communities have to set up with the momentary fashion of an "evolving genius": quite!  Many go for a kind of naked minimalism.  Now minimalism is not bad - in music the late Henryk Gorecki was a minimalist, but he still knew how to craft his music so it would reach for the transcendent.  Alot of the minimalism in art and architecture today remains rooted in man, on earth - it seems to glorify the nihilistic: it is bare, empty, almost despairing and it appears to say: there is nothing, life is meaningless.  Space, instead of being lofty and pointing to the divine, hangs with a gloomy darkness, void in a vacuum.

We were told after Vatican II that this minimalism will help us concentrate on the Eucharist and the Divine Mysteries, but the evidence shows that the opposite has been the case.  Our modern churches are empty, our old, traditional churches are warm and full.  Some who employ these techniques see the liturgy as merely a community gathering, so all they need is a hall to meet - but churches are places of prayer, of catechesis, a place where the mind, heart and soul are to be lifted up to God, be inspired and catch a glimpse of heaven.  Beauty helps achieve this, not the bunker effect.

I have to say one of the most beautiful modern churches has to be Antoni Gaudi's Basilica of the Holy Family in Barcelona.  Now I know he was a genius like Michelangelo, but he can teach the artists and architects of our age how to design and build churches.  There are many great modern artists out there who understand what religious art is all about - many of them, interestingly are in Italy.   In Ireland, there are very few.  Many of those who study art in Ireland fall under the Bauhaus and relativist schools which scorn figurative and classical methods - they may even despise talent.  But there are a few.  One Irish sculptor worth noting is Dony MacManus.  He is truly a gifted artist.  Looking at his work, and the works of those like him, I see that there is hope for the future of religious art.  That revolution I hope for may indeed happen. 

Sculptor Dony MacManus