A Catholic Controversy? - parallels between earlier and modern Catholic artists

In the beginning was the Word--and when it tend hitherwards to controversial art, that's frequently where the matter stays. individual of the curious aspects of new art controversies is the way that art works have gotten reduc to pat phrases: "a crucifix dipped in urine" or "a Madonna splattered with elephant dung" However inaccurate similar descriptions may be, they watch to define the art work for millions who will at no time see the real object, flat in reproduction.

No longer worth a thousand words, or level a hundred, a picture now not seldom clocks in at under ten This verbal deflation of art appear to bes to have been going upon for some time, and its issues can be discerned in many ways. Since the early 1980 it has manifested itself within the art world in a bastardized postmodernism which posited the idea that art works should be "read" like true copys This notion ushered in a whole raft of graphically arresting, text-based works which were essentially one-liners. Meanwhile, in the larger world, a public trained by dint of Madison Avenue to embrace the obvious has draw near to demand the same of art. And all too repeatedly art works eagerly comply.

on the contrary what happens when they don't? What happens when art designed to operate upon multiple levels gets flattened on the outside in a linguistic wringer? What happens when we forget that the visual is not the equivalent of the verbal? What happens when the agriculture of the image butts up against the agriculture of the word?

individual result, it could be argued, is the recurring cultural combat in which self-appointed guardians of public morality like novel York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Catholic League president William Donohue square not on against art-world insiders. The latter prove by experiment to fend off attacks from the conservative and religious right with ineffectual efforts to explicate the more compound meanings embodied by works look uponed "sick," "offensive" and "pornographic." Unfortunately, similar terms seem to trump composed of several elements images and nuanced interpretations each time.

It is clear to each thinking person that, on individual level, these cultural battles are just politics in another guise. In fact, in a radio interview about the "Sensation" debate Donohue finally confessed that his real aim was not the removal of offending art works from the present to view but rather the elimination of management funding for art altogether. And it is generally accepted that Giuliani's newfound interest in art criticism is not unrelated to his senatorial ambitions.

However, something les obvious is going upon as well. The "Sensation" strife of words fits into an established pattern whereby the greatest in quantity embattled art works surprisingly ofttimes turn out to be made by dint of artists from Roman Catholic backgrounds, among them Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Karen Finley, Robert Gober and now Chris Ofili. While they may or may not be practicing Catholics (Ofili is, while greatest in quantity of the others aren't), these artists share a bearing to see the world in a metaphoric way and to use relations to the human body as shorthand for larger meanings. They also share, for literal-minded viewers, a propensity to feast in nasty substances.

As I have argued previously, the leaning to think through the material substance to larger truths is inherently Catholic [see A.i,A., Feb '97 July '98] In the couple Catholic religious art and mystical literature, individual is confronted by startlingly sexy images which are enlisted in the service of spiritual teachings. Bernard of Clairvaux's 12th-century religious discourses on the Song of ballads are bursting with an erotic sensuality which is meant to be read as a celebration of the soul's union with God; the relentles focus upon Jesus' penis in Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child, as Leo Steinberg has pointed on the outside is evidence of a mingled theological argument about the humanity of Christ. And, of course, Bernini's St Theresa is not simply an extravagant depiction of a nun in orgasmic ecstasy, admitting if today's art police had prevailed in the 17th hundred the artist might have been hauled not upon to court on charges of pornography. Instead, the plastic art partakes of a Catholic conviction that physical desire and ecstasy are analogues of more finished forms of spiritual transcendence. Bernini realized that St Theresa's faculty of perception of spiritual union with Christ could alone be expressed through reference to experiences which were familiar to the embodied human beings who would view his work. His audience recognized and understood the metaphor.

Unfortunately, like ease with metaphorical thought and compound imagery seems largely lost to our public agriculture in which the cliches of advertising have become the cliches of politics. Instead, discussions of art which take place outside the privileged confines of the art world mirror a narrow and simplistic vision. individual senses, behind the "shocked" reactions to controversial art works, the vestiges of a Puritan-based worldview which try to finds troth in a literal reading of the Divine Word. The storm surrounding Chris Ofili's The set apart Virgin Mary recalls the flap sum of two units years ago over Robert Gober's chapel-like installation at the looks Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art [see A.i,A., Dec '97] There, also, a brutally reductive verbal description--"the Virgin Mary impaled upon a pipe"--became the touchstone for those unable to diocese in the work a mingled meditation on the realms of spirit, matter, life, death and grace.