REGINA: There’s always been a push for doing new, innovative work, but you are stepping back in time.
Daniel: A big problem is contemporary sacred art is the idea that the artistic tradition does not have enduring principles. The usual narrative is that there has been a succession of styles, all equally valid and answering to their own times. The usual argument is only over whether Modernism ought to be included in the list or not, not whether the whole idea is wrong!
There are of course admirable qualities in many different artistic styles and eras, but that does not mean that they all are equally correct about everything. Good intentions on the part of the artist are not enough. Certainly that is what the Second Council of Nicea taught. The principles that endure were handed down from the Church Fathers, but they do not really belong to the past. They are not so much back in time as above time.
REGINA: Some art historians say that Gothic art displays ‘horror vacui’, or a ‘fear of emptiness’.
Daniel: Nothingness doesn’t reflect God. God is the Creator of all things visible and invisible, so anything that has existence at least has that similarity to God. Only nothingness, which is by definition not a thing at all, is altogether
unlike God.
The modern mind has a bad habit of imagining things that are transcendent, invisible, or unknowable as empty or homogenous. But God is not empty; He is rather too full for our comprehension. An art that reflects God should overflow; it should have too much rather than too little. I would rather make a work of art that runs the risk of being called tasteless than one that runs the risk of being called boring.
“You delight in music because you are nostalgic for Paradise; you delight in beautiful pictures for the same reason. If sung words, melodies and musical instruments are means of elevating the mind toward blessedness, so too are works of visual art.” (Heavenly Outlook lecture).
REGINA Nowadays it seems that parishes and dioceses don’t encourage beautiful art or churches.
Daniel: There is not a lot of patronage at the institutional level in the Catholic Church. Part of the problem is obvious; many of the people in positions of control in parishes and dioceses are basically iconoclasts -- they hate traditional sacred art and want it gone. The other part is that even when there is a priest or a bishop or someone else who wants to create put something beautiful in a church, he is concerned about provoking a hostile reaction from the opposing faction.
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