tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9437006.post8851809072773076092..comments2024-02-15T03:29:30.431-06:00Comments on Rome of the West: Catholic ArtMark S. Abelnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06692448528819277158noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9437006.post-36292265186165164412011-08-01T20:15:14.499-05:002011-08-01T20:15:14.499-05:00Dear Mark,
I think the crux of any differences in...Dear Mark,<br /><br />I think the crux of any differences in our thinking overall (as opposed to our personal tastes) are clarified by your most recent posting on Beauty and the Sublime. I actually follow a very traditional, conventional aesthetic, and cannot much improve on Keats's "beauty is truth, truth beauty" formulation. <br /><br />That the truth may, if told or understood in certain ways, have dark corners and jagged edges obviously leads us to express ourselves in art that does not follow the classical unities. I do not believe such works tell all about our existence, or our relationship to God and each other; I do not expect all art to achieve this. However, I think we have much to learn from Picasso's "Guernica" and from Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet; I even think that they are, in the exalted definition of the word, sublime.<br /><br />Alas, the public has seldom supported artists of fine or high art in any meaningful way, have they, except in commercialized expressions? Poor Michelangelo was stuck supporting the egos of wealthy hypocrites attempting to earn earthly immortality through fancy tombs in order to make a buck, after all. BUT I understand you are saying that art needs to be accessible and meaningful to people in order for them to support it, and in this I agree totally. I loathe the tendency towards inaccessible, specialized art created to be merely controversial and "current" in order to attract the attention of a small slice of moneyed, bored people who have money to waste.<br /><br />I hope my comments are not bothersome. I check your site several times a week because I enjoy each addition you make. I'm not so much complimentary as sincerely critical. I'm a researcher and evaluator (yes, there is such an occupation!) and your combination of commitment, high standards and follow-through - with remarkable coverage of so many regional Catholic sites - truly stands out among the hundreds of somewhat comparable sites I have assessed. THANK YOU.Keith Murrayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10595993880319626243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9437006.post-36378620092329609132011-07-27T07:10:39.921-05:002011-07-27T07:10:39.921-05:00Keith,
Thank you for taking the time to respond t...Keith,<br /><br />Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post as well as for your compliments. <br /><br />I will have to carefully consider what you wrote here and God willing, hope to write more about it.<br /><br />I want to like new art, I visit art galleries quite often, and there is some which I do like a lot. Many do not realize how important the arts are to our culture - but we have an intellectual divorce between aesthetics and utility. However, in my opinion, I think that the contemporary arts milieu is actually doing a disservice to working artists, and this harms their service to the general public - and this means that the public is less willing to support artists.Mark S. Abelnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06692448528819277158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9437006.post-34388800840293340632011-07-23T19:51:58.206-05:002011-07-23T19:51:58.206-05:00Thank you for these thoughtful reflections on many...Thank you for these thoughtful reflections on many of the issues posed by a Christian considering art in light of his or her faith. I think some of your conclusions are based on an unnecessary reductionism or forced misreading of modern or contemporary art and its presumed theoretical bases as inevitably opposed to Catholicism and Christian tenets. <br /><br />A work of art, after all, exists as itself apart from the intentions of its maker or the readings of its interpreters. Apparent disharmony or chaotic expression or fragmentation or distortion or rejection or denial can all tell us something important about our human condition and times. Or just about how interesting lines, shapes, sounds, and words can come together and fall apart, if we read "art" in its broadest sense. <br /><br />A work of art need not be expected to tell a happy tale or share the joy of the good word in insipid or obvious terms. Surely God's munificence allows for art telling the fullness of the human experience, and at times it is up to the observer to bring the light to it, not to stand and be dazzled always. <br /><br />It's good to recall that scholastic remnants still at play in discussions of Catholic art are, of course, largely dependent on classical theories of aesthetics produced by pre-Christians. The divine harmonies and devotion to natural law are hardly Christian inventions. <br /><br />Artists, too, do not often create with a political philosophy or marketing script in mind, at least when we ware talking about the great works. Works designed to produce a particular effect are low forms of art. The results of such agendas are at best kitsch (religious works) and at worst pornography. A walk through St. Louis University's museum is enough to indicate the challenges of succeeding artistically when motives are too intrusive in the creative process.<br /><br />I suppose much depends on what we see as the role of art. A moral or ethical aesthetic, which I suppose you lean towards, would tend to judge art a certain way. But to gather the diverse and unwieldy trove, the immense treasure of the art of the last century and more, under a tut-tut of "modernist" is, as I mentioned, perhaps a self-limiting approach. Just as I lose if I push an agenda too hard when creating art, I lose if my agenda interferes with my encounters with art. <br /><br />Thank you again for your matchless web site. There are few like it on the entire web.Keith Murrayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10595993880319626243noreply@blogger.com