One week after the Pope's meeting with artists, they are still writing about it. Paticularly those who do not want to see it as just a flash in the pan and want an active follow-through. In Avvenire, these two essays were written by two artists who took part - Davide Rondoni, a poet and an editorial writer for Avvenire; and novelist Ferdinando Camon, who stirred up some reaction from fellow artists for what he wrote in La Stampa right after the meeting.
To find around the Pope
even those one least expects
by DAVIDE RONDONI
Translated from
Nov. 28, 2009
Many reactions followed the Pope's meeting with us artists in the Sistine Chapel Saturday before last.
The event made a great impression for the very simplicity with which it was carried out and the elementary force of its message.
The Pope, in short, offered the friendship of the Church to contemporary artists in the name of the quest for beauty.
He did not ask for anyone to adhere to an aesthetic program or to any ideology of art or style. And even if some - including some in the Italian media - sought to snob the event entirely, its importance has been affirmed, thanks to the power of the Pope's message and the reception it got from those who had taken part in the meeting and from so many others who read or learned about it.
Thus, many reactions. Beyond the most banal and superficial over who was invited and who was not, who came or did not - an exercise by those who have little they can say about its essence - there have been reactions from those who would have wanted the message limited only to certified Catholics or Christians; from some who, although distant from the faith, felt quite at home; and from others, who were amazed, and rather irritated, that artists who were far from Christian positions, had accepted the invitation.
To all these reactions one would wish to respond, "That is what the Church is - beauty". Because it seems, that in some sense, there are those among them who have just now 'discovered' that the Church is catholic, universal. The bearer of a historical experience that concerns everyone, that is open to everyone and that dialogs with everyone.
The fact that contemporary artists accepted an invitation from Benedict XVI - from the Pope whom many insist on portraying as an obscurantist - annoys only those who do not know this Pope nor the catholic nature of the Church. It is almost funny.
But it shows the degree to which, in the cultural field, a certain intellectual laziness is active, some preconceptions - laziness and preconceptions as are placed in crisis by an event like that at the Sistine Chapel.
The know-alls have always been scandalized that the Church does not think as they do. And the moralists are scandalized that the know-alls do not think as they do.
The Sistine Chapel initiative, a project dear to Mons. Ravasi, was carried out by Papa Ratzinger entirely in keeping with the essentiality of his message. What went on display, in effect, was a distinctive characteristic of the Catholic experience. Only uninformed and often partisan advocates, or those with an anticlerical drift in some circles, could depict the Church as intent on setting frontiers, putting up fences, formulating codes that would define who may stay in and who must stay out.
The power of a presence which is perhaps the only one in the world who can call together - and has no fear to dialog with - all who work in the quest for beauty, comes from the catholic non-ideological nature of the Church.
In other words, the Church essentially has no 'ideas' to defend but an experience to communicate to anyone who wishes to listen.
It does not mean it does not care about differences, that it does not use judgment to read signs and gestures, nor is it a generic 'let's all wish one another well'.
The nature of the Church could be understood very well that Saturday seeing all of us in the Sistine Chapel. One spoke and proposed, the host offering friendship.
He did not say, to a group than which one could imagine nothing more heterogeneous, "Those who have certain characteristics, remain here; the others may proceed to the exit". And this may have seemed strange to anyone who does not know or feigns to forget what Christianity is.
And yet, it all seemed to be as it must have been in Jesus's time: man of all kinds around him, those you do not expect to find there, those who are there for reasons one wonders about, those who are thoughtful, those who already have a smile in their eyes....
The desire to meet each other
and to stay and talk about it
by FERDINANDO CAMON
Translated from
Nov. 28, 2009
It would be a mistake to 'let go' so soon of an encounter such as the Pope had with artists from around the world - indeed, one must excavate for future remembrance all that was useful about it.
Which is quite a lot. We have already said much about the Pope's discourse.
We who heard him, Catholic or not, were conquered by the amplitude and relevance of his citations and by its fundamental thesis. I wrote, in
La Stampa, that I fully shared the demand that art, while it strives to achieve an aesthetic result, should also strive for an ethical result.
But in addition to my gratitude for the invitation, to the joy of having listened to those words, from that source, in that place, the Sistine Chapel, there is also a regret I feel, and I think I am not alone in this.
Regret that we could not have stayed together - we guests called from all over the world - one more day to discuss among ourselves the implications of the Pope's discourse, the meanings we could draw from it, the uses we could make of these in our daily work, which is not only to make art (books, films, paintings, etc), but also to discuss our work and that of others, our ups and downs, those that our work causes or which cause our work to be what it is.
The Pope was courageous. Art is beauty, he said, and the world is beautiful. The destruction of beauty in the world, in the name of a progress whose law is exploitation, should offend artists and call them to arms. The artist should not only make beautiful works but also fight with all the means at his disposition against whoever ruins beauty.
I found in this a challenge to be committed - even better than commitment was demanded in the Sartrean years. I would have loved to discuss this with my colleagues who were there. From Europe and from other continents. Because this is a problem that has different aspects in every continent.
"Mankind can live without science," the Pope said, citing Dostoevsky, "but not without beauty. Without bread. but not without beauty".
There is a Chinese proverb I might add: It says if you have six coins, buy bread with three, and buy lilies with the rest. Does this mean that deficiencies in culture could damage livability in any nation? I understood it that way. I don't know what others think.
At one point, I heard the word 'obscenity' coupled with art: "There is a seductive but deceitful beauty which takes on the face of obscenity". I heard in this a reproach to artists who work for gain. Because the obscene obeys the law of the market - it costs little and pays much.
Unfortunately, there are arts in which one cannot work unless on a business basis. As in films. Producers do not want art, they want profit. How can screenwriters, actors, directors, save themselves?
Equally powerful - which needs more examination in depth - is the citation from John Paul II of art that describes evil: "Even when the most upsetting aspects of evil are described, the artist is a voice of the hope for redemption".
I was a friend of Moravia and Pasolini. The accusation against them was that they were immoral writers. But the evil they described (indifference and boredom, in the case of Moravia; subhuman degradation, for Pasolini) - could it not have been a call for rescue? That's what I hope for.
How many of those who were present adapted that thesis to their cultures, to their authors, whom we in Europe hardly know if at all.
All the newspapers wrote that the Pope had given 'a caress to culture'. Certainly, But he did more than that: he gave a directive. Not only to those who make art, but also those who judge art, the critics.
"Arrivederci", he said at the end - till we meet again. So, does he intend to meet us again? If that is so (and it cannot be otherwise), the next meeting cannot possibly be intended 45 years from now (that's how long it took since the first meeting called by Paul VI).
It should take place, let us say, within five years. And I hope it will be organized with that extra day - one day to listen to the Pope, and another day to discuss his message among us.
As I said before, the objectors would call it a lay synod. Let us just call it a meeting. That suffices.
The world of art had need
of the 'shock' from Benedict XVI
by FRANCO PALMIERI
Translated from
Nov. 28, 2007
Early in September it became known that Benedict XVI would meet at the Sistine Chapel with artists from around the world. Some preliminary articles fed the curiosity for what he would say to enlighten men whose occupation is art.
And so trepidation for the event grew during the weeks of waiting. On Saturday, November 21, we were in the car when the first newscast of the afternoon transmitted a few words from the Pope's address, brief but incisive: "Faith does not take anything away from your genius and your art - rather, it exalts and nourishes them".
It generated more curiosity to hear the rest of what he said, and soon there were bits and pieces from some of the witnesses in Rome. "He said that beauty wounds, and enables us to grasp Mystery", they said.
Now the entire speech is on the Internet. I read it, I watch it on video, I reread it, and I have printed it to reread it easier.
These are not words about art as much as a very tender gesture of friendship that the Pope extends to all men who work for art. It is an embrace that the Church holds out to all those who have testified in their life to beauty as the splendor of truth.
The pages of the Pope's address evoke affection and love for beauty as the primary and generative factor of knowledge. Indeed, for Papa Ratzinger, beauty is "a healthy 'shock' that draws man 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".
It is a most beautiful lesson in which life opens up to art, and art opens up to Mystery. The Pope takes artists by the hand and leads them to an immense lecture hall where the masters, with their works, affirm how and when they were wounded by beauty.
And here was the Blessed Fra Angelico, 'model of perfect harmony between art and faith", then Il Perugino, and the writer Herman Hesse, for whom "Art means revealing God in everything that exists". And Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Dostoevsky, who reminds us that "Mankind can live without science, it can live without bread, but without beauty, he could no longer live..."
Benedict XVI cites great artists for their confirmation and launches the same challenge. He introduces the writer Simmon Weil and the poetry of Norwid, "Beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up".
He reads a statement from the painter Georges Braque: "Art is meant to disturb; science reassures", and lines from Plato and Hans Urs von Balthasar: "Beauty is the word with which we shall begin, Beauty is the last word that the thinking intellect dares to speak, because it simply forms a halo, an untouchable crown around the double constellation of the true and the good, and their inseparable relation to one another".
With this direct and cordial encounter, Papa Ratzinger responds to the statement by his predecessor in his Letter to Artists of 1999: "Beauty is a key to the mystery, and a call to transcendence... In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art, but does art need the Church?"
Seated with the 'dramatic beauty of Michelangelo's painting' behind him, the Pontff asked for the friendship of artists, men who communicate beauty, the mirror of truth.
He repeats this many times with the words of Paul VI: "We need you. We need your collaboration in order to carry out our ministry... And in this activity, you are the 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, colors, forms - making them accessible... The world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink to 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... Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in this world".
With words from St. Augustine, this spectacle came to a close and launched an image which provides the energy for a new beginning: "Therefore we are to see a certain vision, my brethren, that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived: a vision surpassing all earhtly beauty, whether it be that of gold and silver, woods and fields, sea and sky, sun and moon, or stars and angels. The reason is this: it is the source of all other beauty".
The wish that Pope Benedict expressed to all the artists of the world is "to carry this vision in your eyes, in your hands, and in your heart, that it may bring you joy and continue to inspire your fine works".
And what remains with me, after this exceptional encounter? Perhaps just the daily task of facing work in the company of these words which are building stones: "In abandoned places, ket us build with new bricks", T.E. Eliot wrote.
Since Saturday, Nov. 21, the bricks are here, and this is the hope with which I now set out to work.
And finally, this article based on an interview with art historian Timothy Verdon, which I did not get to see till now:
'Theologian Benedict XVI has done more
than the aesthete Paul VI in 1964'
by PAOLO RODARI
Translated from
Nov. 24, 2009
An art historian who studied at Yale University, someone much appreciated in the Vatican, the American Mons. Timothy Verdon told
Il Foglio last Saturday that in the Holy Father's meeting with artists at the Sistine Chapel, "the theologian Benedict XVI did much more than the aesthete Paul VI did in 1964".
"Whereas Paul Vi spoke at the Sistine Chapel without ever referring to the Sistine, Papa Ratzinger explained art as an expression of hope by referring directly to a specific work of art. He referred to Michelangelo's
Last Judgment which loomed on the wall behind him. He gave a true and proper catechesis, basing himself, as he often does when he finds himself in places within the Vatican that are particularly evocative, on the images offered by the works of art around him."
"By making the artists look at the
Last Judgment was as if he wished to show all the artists present, believers or not, an example, Michelangelo himself, who converted while working in the Vatican. His conversion was an encounter with Christ, a possibility that the Pope offered to all artists on Saturday".
And what had the Pope told the artists? "The Pope was addressing people who had received a great gift of talent. He invited them to collaborate and asked them not to fear the Church. Papa Ratzinger spoke to them of beauty, what each artist refers to whenever he creates. But everyone should acknowledge that each one's concept of beauty is partial, that every beauty that is translated into artistic form, interpreted in a work of art, is nothing but the reflection of a far greater beauty. But every partial beauty reverberates the absolute. And for the Church this greater beauty has the face of a man, Jesus Christ. He is the way - he is the beauty which takes away nothing and offers opportunity!"
But the Holy Father spoke of two possibilities in the quest for beauty, and therefore, of two types of art, one of them not authentic. It is that art which escapes into the irrational or into mere estheticism. "A beauty that is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed" - a beauty which soon becomes 'obscenity and transgression'. An aesthetic after which much art in the past several years has been created.
Then there is authentic beauty which, according to Benedict XVI, "unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to known, to love, and to go toward the Other, to reach for the Beyond".
Verdon explains:
"Artists have the freedom to choose between these two types of beauty. It is up to them. And in this sense, the Saturday meeting was important: the Pope opened a way that anyone who wants to may follow.
"It is true that the reality around us today is often negative. Papa Ratzinger, as a good German philosopher, starts from the fact that the reality around us is often negative. Because he is a realist who does not tend to indulge in optimism withut sense. But he is also a man of faith who projects himself towards vaster and farther horizons.
"He knows that although reality is often evil, one can hope. This hope is what he proposes to the artists. On Saturday, the model to look to was before everyone's eyes: Michelangelo's
Last Judgment is a reminder that the history of mankind is a constant ascension, an unending tension toward fullfillment. This last horizon is a goal to which everyone should aspire. This is the hope that artists can try to offer in their work - hope that is indissolubly linked to beauty - the full and absolute Beauty that Christ is for all believers".
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/12/2009 03:23]