Why Artists are God’s Gift

This month’s Jubilee of Artists offers us a good opportunity to reflect on the rich artistic heritage we have as Catholics — but also to ask ourselves what we are doing in our own time to add to that heritage.

It is almost a truism that so many of the riches of the Western artistic tradition — which through European empires have spread across the world — are of Christian and mostly Catholic origin.

We can all list works that inspire us: some of the more obvious ones would be paintings like Da Vinci’s Last Supper, sculptures like Michelangelo’s Pietà,  music like Mozart’s Requiem, or architecture like the newly reconstructed Notre Dame in Paris. In the world of theatre, we have everything from the Medieval Mystery Plays to religious “operas”, from Handel’s Messiah to Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat by Lloyd Webber and Rice.

The content of our faith provides great stimulus for the artistic imagination: Madonna and Child, the crucifixion, angels and demons, martyrdoms.

But that rich heritage is also due to the people who paid for the arts, at least until the 19th century, who either were holy (popes, bishops, religious orders) or wanted to be seen as holy (kings, dukes and rising cities). In fact, one of the recurrent tropes in paintings has been to include the face of the patron alongside other religious figures, perhaps with the shepherds at the manger or in the assembly of saints surrounding Christ.

New religious art?

Given this wonderful heritage, it strikes me as unfortunate that these days a piece of new art having an explicitly religious theme is hard to find.

In London’s Trafalgar Square there’s an open plinth which every year or so houses a new sculpture. There have been 15 since the turn of the century, but only one, the first in 1999, with a religious theme. It was called “Ecce Homo”, which readers will spot as a reference to the tortured Christ being presented to the crowds by Pilate on Good Friday — “Behold the Man!”

The statue by Mark Wallinger showed a small, vulnerable man (but in a strikingly bright white marble) overwhelmed by the noise and grandeur of everything around him — a very clever reference to the fact that the world was marking 2000 years since the birth of Christ with most people barely giving Christ a thought!

One of the usual arguments is that we do not have the money to spend on art. As someone who focuses on using money to help the poor, I have some sympathy with that argument. But even at the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC) in Durban, we have enabled a number of works of art to be created — plays, films, dance, sculptures, paintings — by working with the artists and contributing if not cash then space and opportunities.

It may also be that artists are not the people we would expect to see in our pews on a Sunday — they are almost by definition unconventional in their lifestyle and their dress. They may not feel comfortable in our churches and they might make us feel uncomfortable.

But, to quote from Mexican-American Cesar Cruz, the role of the arts is precisely that: to disturb the comfortable; and to comfort the disturbed.

Power went off

A few years ago I was teaching a class at St John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria about representations of Jesus in 20th-century art. The young priests-in-training were intrigued to see how Jesus had been depicted with clear Jewish imagery (by Chagall) or with references to the concentration camps (Sutherland). They were excited to see Jesus being depicted as Indian or African — which, after all, is no more unhistorical than showing the Middle Eastern Jesus as blond with blue eyes.

However, they were more disturbed when I showed them Jesus with the sarcomas associated with Aids (by the HIV+ Lawton). And when I showed an image of a crucified woman, “Christa” by Sandys, the room erupted.

Just at that moment the power cut off and my projector went dark. A clever student — now a clever priest in the archdiocese of Durban — said that this was the Holy Spirit punishing me for showing a heretical image. I replied that perhaps the Paraclete actually wanted the students to see the image and then, by cutting the power immediately afterwards, give them time to reflect on their reactions.

Of course, the artist is not saying that Jesus was a woman, any more than other artists were saying that Jesus was Teutonic or African. But why do some images shock us and others comfort us in our prejudices?

In a similar vein, there have been some striking images that show Jesus in solidarity with the poor. At the DHC we have a copy of Eichenberg’s “Christ of the Breadlines”, in which Jesus is standing in a queue with other homeless men waiting his turn — a good reminder to us as we serve the homeless that each one of them could be, and in a sense is, Christ in our midst.

Unexpected images

Holy Trinity church in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, commissioned a statue by Schmalz which looks like a grimy old man sleeping on a park bench — until you notice that he has the marks of nails in his feet.

In fact, the Jesuits, who run Holy Trinity, have been among the most committed patrons of new Catholic art in South Africa. They have particularly supported the South African artist Joseph Capelle. Commissioned by various Jesuit parish priests and chaplains, over the years he produced several sets of Stations of the Cross for the churches in Rivonia, Braamfontein and Orlando West as well as the chapels of St David’s Marist College and the Jesuit retreat house in Zinkwazi.

Other themes for Capelle’s painting have included the Trinity, the lives of various Jesuit saints, and the Holy Family. His works are also in the cathedral of Christ the King, the parishes of Edenvale and Maryvale, and St Mary’s Anglican School in Waverly.

When so many Stations of the Cross seem designed to blend unobtrusively into the church walls, Capelle’s images scream out because of their vivid use of colour and the abstract and sometimes surreal imagery. His stations draw us in to ask questions — where is Christ, what is he doing, what is the relationship to those around him, and — most importantly — where do I stand in this image?

Lent starts soon and I would commend to you the reflections by the artist and by Fr Russell Pollitt SJ, who commissioned them in 2012, as a new way of praying the stations. See jesuitinstitute.org.za for more information.

Joseph Capelle died in November at the age of 85. He had outlived by a few months his partner of 50 years, William Falkson. Capelle’s lifestyle was one that is not approved by the Church. But if we were to reject religious art because it is created by people who do not live by the rules of the Church, the cardinals would be sitting in a very sparse Sistine Chapel when they next meet in conclave.

Often it is people living at the edge, for whatever reason, who are best placed to make art which can be held up to us as a mirror, to help us see and feel things more deeply. Let us hope that we once again appreciate that this is why artists are God’s gift to the Church.