Nov. 21st Meeting of Artists at Vatican City
By Admin | November 23, 2009
At Vatican City, singers, actors, painters and other artists gathered on Nov. 21st in the Sistine Chapel for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. The encounter, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture, took place one decade after the Letter of Pope John Paul II to Artists (April 4, 1999) and in the 45th year after Pope Paul VI’s encounter with the Artists (May 7, 1964).
In his address, the pope thanked those present, of different cultures, nations and religions, because “with their work they pluck man from banality and materialism.” He stated that the Church needs to nurture the friendship with artists, “to help humanity raise its eyes to his fate.” He went on to say that the artists in attendance represented the varied world of the arts and offered to all artists his invitation to friendship, dialogue and cooperation.
He repeated the words of Pope John Paul II in his 2000 address to artists: “We need you,” he said. “We need your collaboration in order to carry out our ministry, which consists, as you know, in preaching and rendering accessible and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our people the things of the spirit, the invisible, the ineffable, the things of God himself. And in this activity… you are masters. It is your task, your mission, and your art consists in grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and clothing them in words, colours, forms – making them accessible.”
Pope Paul VI had stated, at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on 8 December 1965: “To all of you – the Church of the Council declares through our lips: if you are friends of true art, you are our friends!” And he added: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands . . .”
The pope asked: “What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation – if not beauty?” He stated in response: “Dear friends, as artists you know well that the experience of beauty, beauty that is authentic, not merely transient or artificial, is by no means a supplementary or secondary factor in our search for meaning and happiness; the experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful.”
On the concept of beauty, the pope had this to say: “Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy “shock”, it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it “reawakens” him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky’s words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: “Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world.”
He went on: “Too often, though, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed; instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy. It is a seductive but hypocritical beauty that rekindles desire, the will to power, to possess, and to dominate others, it is a beauty which soon turns into its opposite, taking on the guise of indecency, transgression or gratuitous provocation. Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the Mystery of which we are part; from this Mystery we can draw fullness, happiness, the passion to engage with it every day.”
“These ideas impel us to take a further step in our reflection. Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God. Art, in all its forms, at the point where it encounters the great questions of our existence, the fundamental themes that give life its meaning, can take on a religious quality, thereby turning into a path of profound inner reflection and spirituality. This close proximity, this harmony between the journey of faith and the artist’s path is attested by countless artworks that are based upon the personalities, the stories, the symbols of that immense deposit of “figures” – in the broad sense – namely the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures.”
He quoted Hermann Hesse, who makes the point even more graphically: “Art means: revealing God in everything that exists.” Echoing the words of Pope Paul VI, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II restated the Church’s desire to renew dialogue and cooperation with artists: “In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art”; but he immediately went on to ask: “Does art need the Church?” – thereby inviting artists to rediscover a source of fresh and well-founded inspiration in religious experience, in Christian revelation and in the “great codex” that is the Bible.
Pope Benedict XVI summed up in this way: “Dear artists, as I draw to a conclusion, I too would like to make a cordial, friendly and impassioned appeal to you, as did my Predecessor. You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. Be grateful, then, for the gifts you have received and be fully conscious of your great responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and through beauty! Through your art, you yourselves are to be heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity!”
With regard to the link between art and faith, he stated: “Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them, it encourages them to cross the threshold and to contemplate with fascination and emotion the ultimate and definitive goal, the sun that does not set, the sun that illumines this present moment and makes it beautiful.”
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Bridging the gap
By Admin | September 25, 2009
There has been another (not new, but continuing) invitation from a pope to artists to come together, to work together, to help bridge the gap between spirituality and artistic expression.
We know that art inspired by the Christian faith has produced much of the world’s greatest art; but we recognize that contemporary religious art has been diminished by “bad taste.”
Pope Paul VI, John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI have been the moving forces behind the desire to rejoin artistic excellence and faith.
Living Water College of the Arts is poised to join the ranks of this movement, and you can be part of it! Help us to spread the word, to seek students and benefactors, to do God’s will, to bring glory and honour to His name.
Read more about Pope Benedict’s invitation to artists here:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0904049.htm
“Onward and upward!”
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We are God’s Canvases
By Admin | July 26, 2009
Whilst out and about on the www, I found an interview concerning the interpretation and use of sacred art, and the concept of each of us being “unfinished works of art.”
ZENIT spoke with Father Haydu on the occasion of this month’s opening of the renovated Pauline Chapel, a project sponsored by the patrons. Here, Father Haydu shares the experience that brought him to be a lover of the arts — and explains how God himself is an artist.
He effectively points out how one can experience God through art, and how sacred art helped him to realize that “someone who approaches art can be enriched…” by art that opens up a spiritual dimension and communicates truths that might otherwise escape our attention.
“I don’t just ask what the artist wanted to communicate, but above all, what this work tells me about myself.”
“This is what’s beautiful about a work of art: It speaks a universal language, that is, the language of beauty.”
For Father Haydu, and I suggest for all men and women of faith, God is an artist…an artist par excellence! But beyond our typically (human) limited scope – whereby we see His works only in nature, he suggests: “…we can see the marvel of God the Artist in ourselves…we are the canvas.”
He explains it this way. “When we analyze a painting we discover the hand of the artist; we intuit his idea and what he wanted to create. In the same way, in looking at our life, we can discover the hand of God: Our life has been this way because that is how its Artist has permitted it to be, that’s how he has wanted it, and thus we realize that it is not a fruit of coincidence or fate, but rather that behind all this is the loving hand of God.”
When asked what is the aim of sacred art, Fr. Haydu explains: “Sacred art tries to bring the soul toward God. It aims to transmit the message of faith, explain it, share it. That’s why a person cannot pass by sacred art as a mere tourist. “All the great works of art, cathedrals — the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches – they are all a luminous sign of God and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God. If we contemplate the beauties created by faith, they are simply, I would say, the living proof of faith.” (He credits the Holy Father for these words.)
At the conclusion of the interview, he has a request for those who may want to help with the restoration of Vatican artwork. “Anyone who wants to join in the effort to conserve the artistic patrimony of the Vatican Museums in their most perfect state, to preserve these valuable elements of universal patrimony, and to create a Christian culture of man and art. Anyone who wants more information can visit our Web page: www.vatican-patrons.org.”
The text of the interview is located here:
http://www.zenit.org/article-26513?l=english
Topics: Art, Christian Art | No Comments »
Athens with Jerusalem
By Admin | July 9, 2009
I came across an address to a recent (June 30, 2009) Convocation of a college in India that, for me, underscores the importance of the three pillars used at Living Water College of the Arts. The writer is Founder Principal Emeritus of Patkai Christian College (PPC). Without belabouring the point, here are some extracts from:
The Idea of a University-Faith and learning must coexist
By Tuisem A. Shishak – in his address to the first convocation of Patkai Christian College.
(Full transcript found at: www.morungexpress.com/columnists/28055.html)
PCC is a Christian liberal arts college (not a Bible college) in North-East India offering arts and science, commerce, computer technology, Bible, and music.
I have always believed faith and learning must coexist, and ideally be integrated…
He quotes John Henry Cardinal Newman who, in his classic book, “The Idea of a University,” argues that since God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth and everything in them, “all branches of knowledge are connected, because the subject matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the work of the Creator” (p. 127).
Thus all knowledge forms a single whole and each subject is but a partial view of the whole. Based on such Christian worldview, the broad subject matters upon which a liberal education concentrates are God, Man, and Nature (the Universe).
Mere information imparted by teachers and memorized by students is the least desirable of all the products of teaching and learning.
Some of you may wonder how Patkai can achieve intellectual growth if it insists on Bible study, prayer and worship for spiritual growth, as if there is a dichotomy between them. Long ago the Church Father Tertullian asked: “What has Jerusalem got to do with Athens?” By Athens, Tertullian means intellectual culture, the life of the mind, the study of philosophy, literature, history, and theology. By Jerusalem, he means redemption through the blood of Jesus, faith, hope, and love. But PPC as a Christian liberal arts college needs both Jerusalem and Athens because they are complementary.
To me “Jerusalem” means, in the words of the Scripture, “In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord,” and “Athens” means, “Be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have [in Christ]” (I Pet. 3:15). Putting Christ at the center of our life and the intellectual preparedness to defend our faith in Him are two sides of the same coin. This is well expressed by Charles Wesley in the 18th century: “Unite the pair so long disjoin’d, Knowledge and vital piety.”
He also quotes Kenneth O. Gangel, “Integrating of truth refers to the teaching of all subjects as a part of the total truth of God, thereby enabling the student to see the unity of natural and special revelation”; and then Prof. Arthur Holmes: “From a Christian perspective, all truth is about either God, or God’s creation, or things God knows but never himself created-like technological and artistic possibilities he left for us to bring to actuality”.
History tells us that Christianity and the liberal arts have reinforced each other. Learned people tell us that one reason why there has been no final split between liberal education and Christianity is because “it is our joint heritage from Athens and from Jerusalem, a fusion of Graeco-Roman respect for man as something more than the beast, and Judaeo-Christian respect for man as made in the image of God”.
He then brings in Comenius, the great 17th-century Christian educator prescribed three main tasks of education: “(1) Erudition which aims at man’s reason, (2) moral education which aims at man’s character and independence, and (3) piety which aims at his understanding of God.”
Remember, our College motto is “Light and Truth.” We believe that academic excellence and Biblical Christian faith and practice are essential to a meaningful and purposeful life. “Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell” (Ps. 43:3).
As I see it, Living Water College is “on track” as it strives to unite Athens with Jerusalem!
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We Need Beauty
By Admin | April 25, 2009
A recent posting in the Global Zenit News should strike a cord with many of those who check out this blog. For me, it serves to underscore the value of the “three pillars” program to be established at Living Water College of the Arts.
ZENIT quotes three people involved with the project entitled “Catholic Canvas“, a co-production with EWTN, which will be used to showcase the greatest Catholic works of art and shed some light on their real purpose. Here are snippets from the posting and related interviews:
- We wanted to reclaim the original intent and function of these world-famous works. Using their creative genius, Michelangelo, Raphael and others were evangelizing through art, trying to “incarnate” eternal mysteries.
- Today, more than ever, we need beauty, and although some of the works we filmed are over 1,000 years old, they still proclaim objective truths clearly and powerfully to a frantic world lost in relativism.
- Sacred Art has never gone out of style and there is a reason for that, it appeals to people of all ages, races and creeds.
- …these works are charged with layers of meaning, and to succinctly explain the Church doctrine and salvation history behind a work of art is a lot more challenging that just presenting an agenda and then making the art fit.
- Amazingly enough, once you combine the elements of formal analysis and historical context with faith and scripture, you discover truth really is more beautiful than any secular fiction.
- I hope that viewers watching the invisible rendered visible in the art of the Vatican Museums learn to see that the lens of faith doesn’t dim a work of art but enhances it.
While Living Water College won’t be focused on the production of religious art, the integrated program employing the three pillars (Art, Faith and Reason) will certainly shed His light on eternal truth and beauty.
It’s going to be an uphill battle, trying to “reclaim the arts for the Lord”… but we’re each called to look above our heads and see whose banner we’re under.
If you’re a patron of the arts, what do you think of this observation made by Father Mark Haydu, the director of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums:
- Much of the role of art patronage seems to be in suggesting artists seek the most shocking or counter cultural without concern for uplifting, educating and directing the viewer to what is most sublime, most worthy of our contemplation. “Shock” art gets financing and pays dividends because it makes headlines.
Does this mean that graduates from Living Water College are destined to be financially challenged? I suppose that depends on folks like you and me.
Read the whole ZENIT posting here: http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=zenit&id=25701
Topics: Christian Art | 3 Comments »
More Hope
By Admin | March 13, 2009
From an unassuming and small start (much like David), comes a force to be contended with…; more hope for a new dawn – a reclaiming of the arts for the Lord!
February 20, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Meet Alex Kendrick, a man of unshakeable faith in God, whose incredible success both in filmmaking and publishing can only be described as miraculous. Alex has six children, the eldest age ten and the sixth due to be born in April. He and his brother Stephen have no professional training in film and writing and are in full time ministry at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia.
The pair’s third film, “Fireproof,” starring Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains fame, was the highest-grossing independent film of 2008, with over $33 million in theatre sales, beating out such films as Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (starring Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz), and “Milk,” starring Sean Penn.
That success is all the more stunning considering the film was made with an all-volunteer, 1,200-person cast and crew, drawn mostly from Sherwood Baptist church. Fireproof is the third major film venture by the church’s volunteer production crew, dubbed Sherwood Pictures. “Flywheel,” produced in 2004, has sold 200,000 DVDs. “Facing the Giants,” in 2006, earned $10.1 million at the box office and has sold more than 1.6 million DVDs in 58 countries, in 14 languages.
Read more on LifeSiteNews: www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09022009.html
View the YouTube trailer for “Fireproof“: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5lSu6GkC2k
Praise God!
Topics: Film | 1 Comment »
Art That Teaches…
By Admin | March 6, 2009
Some of you may know that our Director of Fine Arts, Frank C. Turner, is a talented and inspired writer of iconography. In 1991 he began studying iconography under Vladislav Andreyev and continued his learning as a frequent attendee of the Mount Angel Iconography Institute. Here he spent time under the instruction of Charles Rohrbacher, Mary Katsilometes, and Cathy Sievers, and has more recently studied with Father Gianluca Busi in Bologna, spending six weeks there in 2007. An article which we found poignant in voicing the living tradition of this art was reported by Zenit news service, “Theology’s Visual Side,” located here. To be able to use your senses in understanding God has always been such a necessity to the human mind. And it is yet another example of His willingness to teach us how to reach Him by being in this world, but not of it.
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Of Doves and Serpents
By Admin | January 27, 2009
In this InsideCatholic.com article titled Our Age’s Reigning Sin: Now on DVD, John Zmirak (Writer-in-Residence at Thomas Moore College, New Hampshire, USA) reviews a good film and makes a great point. The Film, Longford (HBOfilms, 2006) tells the story of British Lord Frank Pakenham, the 7th Earl of Longford, a Catholic, British politician who staked his name and career to campaign for a notorious serial killer. In addition to a powerful performance by Jim Broadbent (perhaps best recognized as professor Kirke in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) the film also reminds us that sometimes things, and people, are not as they seem. As followers of Christ we are called to be compassionate but not stupid.
Topics: Film | 1 Comment »
Naughty or Nice?
By Admin | January 21, 2009
Google is acting with a bit of a double standard these days. After the State-side elections in the fall, Proposition 8 in California was passed – a constitutional amendment which eliminated the rights of gay couples to marry. This was a major victory for the Christian and pro-life movements there. However, it recently came to our attention that Google announced it’s opposition to Prop 8 based on it’s “support for equality,” and filed an amicus brief challenging Prop 8. The full story, complete with the brief, can be found here on their official blog.
This week, however, Zenit announced that Google was teaming up with the Vatican “in a joint venture to give Benedict XVI his own YouTube channel.” On it’s own, this is an excellent method of bringing Christ back to the media; an example of the course communications media should be taking much more often. The full story here.
So, what’s up with Google these days? Moral qualms, anyone?
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Anything Goes?
By Admin | January 14, 2009
Every now and then one finds a story so bizarre that one stops and says “say what?” Here is just such a story: “Artists” in a so-called “performance piece” at the Wechselstrom gallery in Vienna, plan to remove a 22-week-old embryo from a living cow and eat it as part of an exhibition.
At least that is the story. Our calls to the gallery at (+43) 0676/3098066 have gone unanswered, but a number of animals rights groups are certain that the plans are real enough to have begun a series of protests and an on-line campaigns against the gallery.
According to an article in the Austrian Times the “artists” plan to carry out the stunt this Saturday and serve up the unborn calf with organic wine from local vintners.
Organizer Christoph Theiler claimed the calf’s mother would not be hurt saying: “The meat is very soft. The embryos are about as big as a cat. It will only take around five minutes. The adult cow will not notice anything.”
OK – stop the tape. What, you might ask, does eating a cow embryo have to do with art? An excellent question. With other “non–traditional” form of art such as extreme non contact methods (e.g., Pollock and the like) one can at least discuss the artist’s mastery of basic principals of form and color. Venture into the anything goes land of “it’s performance art because we say so” and well.., like missing the last step on a flight of stairs one never knows how one might land.
Though not intended for the Arts per se, G.K. Chesterton put it best when he quipped “when a man stops believing in God he doesn¹t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”
Topics: Art | 1 Comment »