Can the Church win over the art world?
Later this month the Pope will meet 262 leading cultural figures in the Sistine Chapel. We asked 11 Catholic artists for their thoughts

13 November 2009

Pope Benedict XVI will meet more than 250 artists in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday, November 21 AP Photo / Alberto Pizzoli

MUSIC

JAMES MACMILLAN

There has certainly been a breach in the official relationship between artists and the Church. No longer, or so it seems, do the great artists of our time have a close relationship with ecclesial figures who might commission new work from them, as in ancient times. However, the spiritual quality of the arts has never left the wider consciousness, and it is entirely understandable that the Pope is keen to establish a dialogue. As his predecessor said famously in his Letter to Artists of 1999: "Even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience." Only the most prejudiced of secular minds would shrug this off as meaningless and irrelevant.

James MacMillan is one of the world's leading composers

STEPHEN HOUGH

Artists are traditionally loose cannons. Asking them to paint a ceiling, write a motet or sculpt a statue has always been a risk for the churchmen who labour long and hard to keep the theological borders neat and free from weeds. Yet art can elevate the heart and mind above, if not beyond, the cleverest sermon or the clearest catechesis, and, at its best, is a companion to doctrine, not an enemy of it.

Stephen Hough is one of the world's leading pianists

THEATRE

MARTIN O'BRIEN

It seems to me that, here in the UK, a rift has developed between the Church and art not through a lack of inspiration but through a lack of confidence. Like so much of contemporary life, art has been secularised. Given this, it can be difficult for Catholic artists to create and deliver deeply personal pieces of work because they often stand to be ridiculed and rejected. However, I don't believe that we Christian artists should be too militant. John Paul II called us to "look to the future with commitment to a New Evangelisation, one that is new in ardour, new in methods, and new in its means of expression". For me, this means getting under the radar of what is commissioned and disseminated. We do this by creating works of quality, by being in the secular world (though not of it) and by being brave in the truth we wish to portray. At times we may fail and we may be ridiculed, but we may also inspire and challenge the norm.

Martin O'Brien is the artistic director of Ten Ten Theatre, a Catholic theatre-in-education company based in London.

A nationwide tour of schools begins in January

ART

DAVID CLAYTON

It goes back to John Paul II's Letter to Artists calling for a dialogue. There are two approaches to the regeneration of culture. One is to look at popular culture and Christianise it; the other is to look at Christian culture and make it good enough so that it becomes popular. Christianising popular culture immediately creates a conflict. You have to think in terms of the content and the form and the style of it is intrinsically secular. Attempting to Christianise popular culture can only go so far, and to ultimately bring that into Mass is flawed. If you ask me ultimately how I think this is going to happen, what you need is to once again root Catholic culture in the liturgy and devotional prayer that is ordered to the liturgy.

If you look at all the great traditional art movements, the Baroque grew out of the Counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent. It started as the sacred form but then became the form for everything; the sacred and the profane all pointed to the Mass. If we are going to have a Catholic culture again it has to start as a liturgical culture.

It also needs a three-way dialogue between artists, patrons and the Church.

I wonder how many patrons have been invited [to the Sistine Chapel]. If you ask me who I'd go for first, it would be the patrons, not the artists. The artists do what the patrons want them to do.

David Clayton is an icon writer and Artist-in-Residence at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire

PATRICK REYNTIENS

The 1980s and 1990s were absolutely frightful for the Catholic Church and the arts. They went in for plumbing instead.

All Church art from the beginning was local art. The whole of the Italian Renaissance was local art. People in Florence did Florentine things; people in Naples did Neapolitan things. Albrecht Dürer changed things. He invented self-promotion and put woodcuts and etchings before paintings. He could get 5,000 woodcuts distributed throughout Europe. Everybody became interested in Albrecht Dürer.

The trouble is the Holy See is a victim of publicity: it has only invited people who have a public profile.

Patrick Reyntiens is one of the world's leading stained-glass artists

MICHAEL NOAKES

At the time of the Renaissance the arts were in the forefront of knowledge. It was an exciting time, when it was still possible to have read every book that had ever been written. Painters understood linear perspective and had learned a great deal about anatomy. This growing understanding and confidence led to some wonderful commissions, with the Church as one of the leading patrons. This patronage coincided with such painters and sculptors as Michelangelo and Leonardo and architects like Palladio. Without Church support they could not have flourished and Christendom would be robbed of some of its finest works of art.

Now, there are so many calls on the Church throughout the world and the art world is in such turmoil that it is hardly surprising that little money is set aside for art projects. It is a sad vacuum. If only it could once again be filled.

Michael Noakes is the only artist to have painted an official portrait of Pope Benedict XVI

AUSTIN WINKLEY

Young artists tend to feel alienated by the Church - especially with that one yardstick that to be a Catholic you have to go to Mass on Sunday. And in England we are a pretty obedient lot and if somebody sets out a rule like that we take it quite literally. Yet our churches and galleries are full of paintings and sculptures of saints and the presence of God in symbolic ways.

Young people have a strong link with spirituality, and I think the arts are very closely linked to the message of Christ and the Church, whether artists know it or not, because of the natural desire for the spiritual.

The dialogue between Romano Guardini [the Italian-born German theologian] and Rudolf Schwartz [the German architect] was inspiring for me. It's that kind of dialogue that we have to encourage.

There are relatively few priests at the moment who are inspiring young artists - though I think we are at the beginning of a new wave. Fr Bruno Healey, Fr Peter Newby [organising the] architects' Mass -_they are examples of the Church reaching out to architects and artists.

Austin Winkley has been a church architect for more than 40 years

LAWRENCE LEW OP

The fine arts point to and participate in beauty, which, as St Thomas Aquinas reminds us, is most properly appropriated to Christ. Sadly, modern art is seldom orientated towards beauty, which is an objective truth extrinsic to oneself, but is rather directed inwards as a kind of subjective self-expression.

This rift can be healed by a contemplation of beauty, and ultimately of truth, revealed by the light of faith. For without faith one remains blind to God, and therefore one's art can only reflect oneself, which does have a natural goodness but it is not opened to the infinite truth, goodness and beauty of the Divine.

I find that the art of photography requires us to seek and contemplate the beauty of God's work in creation, and to share that beauty with others using the photographer's talent and skill. So, photography can be put to the service of the Church, to lead others to a contemplation of beauty, which is the noble and proper end of the arts.

Brother Lawrence Lew OP is a photographer based at Blackfriars, Oxford

FILM

JOSEPH CAMPO

There is not necessarily a rift between art and the Church. The shift is in culture. Culture directly affects art, and art directly affects culture. Since culture is characterised by its art, all you have to do is look at what is being created today to know what the state of affairs really is. The Catholic Church has produced some of the finest works in the history of the world. The Holy Father is asking artists to use today's new technologies to reflect on the spiritual and physical. This is the job of the artists, to uplift souls with their God-given talents. As the Holy Father said, a revolution is taking place in the realm of social communications. It is up to us artists to set this revolution into motion. By applying the highest quality available to each work of art - be it music, film, performance or words - only then will truth, beauty and goodness be made manifest, thus reflecting the Divine.

Joseph Campo is the executive producer of Grassroots Films, a Catholic company based in New York. Its latest feature is The Human Experience, which is being screened in the UK for the first time today, at the Prince Charles cinema in London.

PETER FUDAKOWSKI

I think [the Pope's meeting with artists] is a very good initiative, although I would not really agree with the criticism of artists that they have abandoned "the idea that artwork embodies a transcendent vision of being".

My own experience with the film Tsotsi is that it has been enthusiastically used by Church groups worldwide. The redemptive theme has been used to speak to London homeless, street children in South Africa and countless college groups in the US. It has very often been shown as a fundraiser by parish groups. To my mind, this proves that, given the right material, film-makers and the Church can co-operate very effectively. I am very often asked to advise on films suitable for Church groups and find that there are plenty, but they are very often films which are not multiplex fare. Sadly the sort of films which are made especially for pastoral use are often very poor quality because they are too earnest.

Peter Fudakowski is the producer, along with his wife, Henrietta, of Tsotsi, which won the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2005

FRANK COTTRELL BOYCE

Holding the symposium in the Sistine Chapel reminds us that Catholics have an astounding artistic heritage to draw on. We tend to idealise art and artists nowadays but the Sistine setting also underlines the fact that great art is parasitic on great power. The field of modern art in Britain, for instance, is sustained by money from banks and advertisers. And it expresses all the things they want to say - that the individual comes first and that life is meaningless (but you can give it meaning by buying stuff).

I think as a Catholic writer I feel my mission is to do what St Paul said and "think on what is good", to remind people that life, even in the worst circumstances, contains the possibility of joy. In a world which is dominated by governments and corporations that feed on fear and misery, this is a profoundly subversive message.

I used to feel anxious about pushing my Catholicism but in fact the two things I've done that have been most warmly received - Millions and God on Trial - are the things in which I was most upfront and honest about my faith.

Frank Cottrell Boyce is a novelist and screenwriter. Millions, directed by Danny Boyle, was released in 2004