Countless articles and letters and speeches have been written about the sorry state of Catholic sacred art in the present day, and the pressing need for its revival. Everybody, it seems, agrees that the Catholic Church needs beautiful art, desperately. Why, then, does the sorry state continue?
Perhaps it is because nobody agrees on what sort of beautiful art the Church needs. Does this art look like a Byzantine icon or a painting by Caravaggio? Does it look like a Gothic cathedral or a Classical temple? But to argue for all of these – the whole variety of artistic forms used by Catholic artists over the centuries – is to ignore the principles that animate these artistic forms, and the significant differences between them.
To advocate one only, and to propose it as a supreme model to be imitated, is also to miss the point. The supreme model of sacred art cannot be an artefact of history, something that came from men; it is, rather, something that comes from God. Catholic sacred art does not have a geographic or chronological centre. Rather, it has two foci, like a planetary orbit. One is the foot of the Cross; the other is the Garden of Eden.
The first focus corresponds to the artist’s duty to hold fast to tradition. Catholic tradition is based on real memories of real events, on things that Jesus Christ said and did and revealed in the lifetimes of the Apostles. It is an all too common error for the faithful in the present day to confuse tradition itself with its legal enforcement by the Magisterium, as though tradition were nothing more than a stack of documents bearing the correct signatures. This is an epistemological absurdity; the bishops who have the task of writing these documents need to know what they know somehow.
No bishop today could possibly know more religious truth than St John the Apostle. The knowledge of the Apostles is perpetuated in the law of worship and evidenced by the agreement of the Church Fathers. These are the bridges between the age of the Apostles and our own.
A Catholic artist who looks to liturgical and Patristic sources to guide him in making sacred art will find superabundant wealth; an artist who looks to documents only will be disappointed.
The second focus corresponds to the artist’s duty to make his sacred art as beautiful as possible. The appreciation of beauty is a vestige of mankind’s prelapsarian self, the likeness of God that was not totally destroyed by the sin of Adam.
God is the cause of harmony and splendour in everything: in His presence, nothing is ugly or empty. Catholic sacred art, in its best forms, attempts to depict people and events from a heavenly perspective, as though seen by eyes like those of the unfallen Adam or the resurrected Christ.
My own religious art is mostly based on the art called Gothic, which began in France in the 12th century. I seek inspiration in Gothic art not because it is French or European or because it is 12th century or medieval. What matters to me is that the art is traditional and beautiful. Its principles are enduringly and universally true.
Gothic art represents a reconciliation of ideas: tradition and artistry are not in opposition, but committed to the same purpose. Gothic art combines the thought of Dionysius (author of Celestial Hierarchy and Divine Names) and the thought of St Augustine of Hippo – by so doing, it somehow removes the aniconism of the Platonic philosophy underlying both.
About the same time that Gothic art began, it became common for professional laymen to make Catholic sacred art. Beforehand, monastic workshops and scriptoria had produced Catholicism’s greatest works. In the following centuries, artistic guilds flourished. Ever since, Catholic sacred art has been a predominantly lay endeavour.
It may be tempting to blame the strangeness and impiety of modern religious art on the separation of artistic production from monastic discipline. But anyone thus assigning blame should remember that the presence of modern art within the Catholic Church was largely established by churchmen. In the early 20th century, certain French Dominicans argued most loudly for its introduction. In the middle of the century, certain American Benedictines did the same. Later, it received approval from the papacy.
I do not believe that improvement in Catholic sacred art will be accomplished by stricter clerical control. Such control would likely prove more of an impediment to good art than to bad. I certainly feel sorry for Catholic artists, such as architects and composers, who depend on institutional patronage. It seems that they expend most of their creative energy fighting parochial or diocesan bureaucracies for permission to make the best art possible.
My own media of choice are ink drawing and printmaking. Most of my works are commissioned for personal devotion. Although I would like to see more of my own works in churches, I am grateful that I do not need to fight these battles for my art to exist. I am grateful also to have the opportunity, as a layman, to work in a constructive way for the restoration of tradition and artistry within the Catholic Church. Sacred art is one of the only long-established ways laymen can do this, and I wish that more would take the opportunity.
The traditions of Catholic sacred art are not esoteric; anyone can investigate them, and (aided by the gifts of the Holy Ghost) know and understand them. Artistic appreciation and ability are not something elusive; any son of Adam has them within him.
At a time of palpable frustration with the state of the Catholic Church, when so many laymen feel powerless to do anything but opine or complain, I wish that more would consider what good they might do as artists or as patrons of the arts.
For more information about the author’s art, visit danielmitsui.com
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