Summary
Introduction
1 Art in Human Life
2 Christian Art (Historical Aspects)
3 Christian Art in the Wake of the Second Vatican Council
References
Talking about art is no easy task. Even when restricted to the scope of “Christian Art,” the undertaking remains challenging, given the breadth and complexity of the theme itself. Our proposal is modest. We limit ourselves to making a few notes on the relationship between art and liturgy, and vice versa, based on three points: art in human life; Christian art (historical aspects); and Christian art in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
1 Art in Human Life
It can be affirmed that, since very remote times, art has been intimately linked to human life. It expresses itself in different forms of language: visual (painting, drawing, engraving…), musical (rhythm, melody, harmony…), performative (dance, theater, magic, mime…), etc. Indeed, there is an almost symbiotic relationship between human beings and art:
The human being will always need art to resolve this natural limitation of his to find that part of reality and of himself that his imagination tells him has not yet been known. The function of art is to recreate for the experience of each individual the fullness of what he is not, that is, the experience of humanity in general. And it does so in a magical and playful way, showing reality as something that can be transformed, dominated, manipulated like a toy. […] Our limited “self” undergoes a marvelous expansion through the experience of a work of art. And often, in this process of identification, we cease to be mere witnesses of creation and also become, to some extent, creators of those works that extend our horizons and lift us above the surface to which we are attached (CARMO, 2021).
Art also occupies a privileged place in the religious sphere. It is an integral part of symbolic-ritual actions, proper to each culture. In Christianity, for example, there has been a friendly interactivity between art and liturgy.
In the typical European case, it was Christianity that ended up being the main context for this relationship, with the notable elaboration of art for the liturgy, in a service that reaches almost complete fusion: the great works of architecture, painting, poetry, music were, in large part, works for the liturgy, which presupposed in their very elaboration—and also in their reception and configuration—their ritual integration (DUQUE, 2018, p. 26).
Pope John Paul II, in his famous Letter to Artists, reminds us that Christian-inspired art began quietly, dictated by the need believers had to develop signs to express, based on Scripture, the mysteries of faith and, simultaneously, to create a “symbolic code” to recognize and identify themselves, especially in the difficult times of persecution. As an example, he cites the “first traces of pictorial and plastic art: the fish, the loaves, the shepherd” (JOHN PAUL II, 1999, n. 7). Not by chance, such images illustrated the walls of the places where the first Christians gathered to celebrate the memorial of Christ’s Passover (the liturgy). Like all art, this “Christian art” is a bearer of symbolic density, capable of expressing and reaching the human being in their totality, thus constituting a kind of support and vehicle in which cognitive abilities, worldviews, beliefs, imagination, history, affectivity, technique, corporality, spirituality, and faith are present. And more:
It is a symbolic, interpretive, and challenging language from whose force the human being can emerge as a hermeneut of himself, of the world, of things that surpass what can be directly apprehended by the senses or codified in the coldness of purely rational objectivity expressed in a logical conceptual apparatus (VILHENA, M. A., 2015, p. 36).
These (and other possible) dimensions that encompass symbolic language apply to liturgical action. Thanks to the “art” of the rite, the faithful have free access to that “beauty so ancient and so new” which is the mystery of God himself, revealed in Jesus Christ.
2 Christian Art (Historical Aspects)
As alluded to in the introduction of this text, here too the approach will be limited to a few general notes, based on the relationship between art and liturgy, and vice versa.
a) In the first millennium
From the edict of Constantine (year 313), art became a privileged channel for the manifestation of faith. In the field of architecture, those simple spaces (“house churches”) where Christians gathered for liturgical celebrations were gradually replaced by sumptuous basilicas (“houses of the Church”), in the style of imperial basilicas.
This model was chosen for its practicality: the apse was configured as the perfect place for the bishop’s cathedra and for the semicircular bench of the presbytery; at the beginning of the main nave, the bema with the ambo was installed and, in Rome, the altar was placed in the vicinity of the apse, between the clergy and the people (SILVA, J. P., 2022, p. 132).
In these large spaces, pictorial, sculptural, and musical arts developed concomitantly. At the threshold of the 8th century, the Roman liturgy had reached its full form, duly compiled in liturgical books (sacramentaries, lectionaries, antiphonaries…). “Gregorian chant,” in turn, was also fully structured and, like the entire Roman liturgy, was exported to the Franco-Germanic empire. This chant, over the centuries, would become the typical musical expression of the Church’s faith, celebrated in liturgical actions. If, on one hand, one must admire the beauty of these temples, with their highly sophisticated music, on the other, this new format (“houses of the Church”) favored clericalism and the progressive distancing of the lay faithful from participation in liturgical action.
Within the Byzantine Empire, between the 8th and 9th centuries, the Church had to fight against some emperors and bishops who supported the so-called “iconoclast movement.” This movement repudiated the use and veneration of images (icons). It was a turbulent period and even one of extreme violence, including exiles, imprisonments, tortures, and deaths. Supported by texts from the Old Testament and “ideologies” that arose in Judaism and Islam at the time, the iconoclasts rejected any imagistic representation of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. In their opinion, this constituted idolatry. The iconoclasts came to the unusual conclusion that the only icon of Christ is the Eucharist (the Eucharistic species); they also repudiated the veneration of saints’ relics.
Various synods and even councils discussed this theme. The most notable was the Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 787. There, the legitimacy of images and their cult was established, thanks to the help of solid theological arguments. The axial axis of this theology was the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word. John Paul II, in the Apostolic Letter Duodecimum Saeculum—on the occasion of the 12th centenary of the said Council—expresses it thus:
The iconography of Christ, therefore, implies the whole faith in the reality of the Incarnation and its inexhaustible meaning for the Church and for the world. If the Church is accustomed to putting it into practice, it does so because it is convinced that the God revealed in Jesus Cristo has truly redeemed and sanctified the flesh and the entire sensible world, that is, man with his five senses, in order to allow him to constantly renew himself “in the image of the One who created him” (Col 3,10). (JOHN PAUL II, 1987, n. 9).
Recognizing the importance of iconographic art, as well as its rediscovery in current times, the then Pope encourages the faithful to an effective veneration of this millenary art, in these terms:
The rediscovery of the Christian icon will also help to raise awareness of the urgency of reacting against the depersonalizing, and sometimes degrading, effects of the multiple images that condition our lives, in advertising and in the “mass-media”; it is indeed an image that brings to us the gaze of an invisible Other and that gives us access to the reality of the spiritual and eschatological world (JOHN PAUL II, 1987, n. 11).
b) In the second millennium
In the second millennium, Christian art, especially in the West, expanded vertiginously. In the field of architecture, striking styles emerged in the buildings of churches and abbeys such as, for example, Romanesque, Gothic, Classical, and Baroque. Painting and sculpture reached high degrees of technical and aesthetic perfection, to the point of no longer needing, a priori
, of sacred spaces and its connection with faith. “Sacred music”—which was basically limited to monophonic chant, for exclusive use in liturgical actions—gradually gained diverse forms and contours. Alongside “plainchant” (monophonic), sophisticated polyphonic textures (of two or more voices) developed, as well as the increasingly frequent use of musical instruments. All of this contributed to this music surpassing the limits of the liturgical sphere. Not by chance, the “Mass” (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus, Agnus Dei) became a kind of musical form, alongside the suite, the sonata, the symphony, etc., and began to be performed in theaters as well. Throughout the second millennium, great names stood out, such as: Palestrina, Orlando de Lasso, Victoria (classical polyphony); Handel, Bach, Vivaldi (Baroque); Haydn, Mozart (Classicism); Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Liszt, Verdi (Romanticism).
Unlike the West, Eastern Christian art did not allow itself to be “contaminated” by aesthetic thoughts and/or ideologies that arose outside the ecclesial sphere. Iconographic art, for example, remained faithful to the theological-liturgical-spiritual canons elaborated by Byzantine orthodoxy. The basic criterion of this art is not the reproduction of nature as such (naturalism/realism), but the representation of an image transfigured by spiritual interiority. In the icon, everything is pregnant with symbolism: colors, vestments, bodily expressions (hands, face, eyes, nose, ears, mouth…), that is, nothing is subjective. “The icon, seen with the eyes of the heart illuminated by faith, opens us to the invisible reality, to the world of the Spirit, to the divine economy, to the Christian mystery in its otherworldly totality. It is a theological locus, rather, ‘visual theology’” (DONADEO, 1996, p. 20). Byzantine “sacred music” has also maintained, over the centuries, its main characteristics, namely: it is essentially vocal and monophonic; it is modal (structured on the eight Greek modes); it prioritizes the theological-liturgical meaning of the text and/or words.
3 Christian Art in the Wake of the Second Vatican Council
The brief message from Pope Paul VI, addressed to artists on the occasion of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, masterfully summarizes the empathy for the dialogue between Church and culture, with immediate reflections in the field of art and the consequent reverence for its creators:
To all of you, artists, who are captivated by beauty and work for it: poets and writers, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, men of the theater, filmmakers […].
For a long time the Church has been allied with you. You have built and decorated its temples, celebrated its dogmas, enriched its Liturgy. You have helped the Church to translate its divine message into the language of forms and figures, to make the invisible world perceptible.
Today, as yesterday, the Church needs you and turns to you. And it says to you through our voice: do not allow an alliance so fruitful to be broken. Do not refuse to place your talent at the service of divine truth. Do not close your spirit to the breath of the Holy Spirit.
The world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, is what brings joy to the human heart, it is that precious fruit that resists the wear and tear of time, that unites generations and makes them share in admiration. And this is through your hands.
May these hands be pure and disinterested. Remember that you are the guardians of beauty in the world: may this be enough to turn you away from ephemeral tastes without authentic value, to free you from the search for strange or indecorous expressions.
Be always and everywhere worthy of your ideal, and you will be worthy of the Church, which, through our voice, addresses to you on this day its message of friendship, of salvation, of grace, and of blessing.
This message must necessarily be read in the light of the Constitutions and Decrees of the Council itself, especially the Constitutions Gaudium et Spes (GS) and Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), and the Decree Inter Mirifica (IM).
In Gaudium et Spes, for example, it is said:
Literature and the arts are also, in their own way, of great importance for the life of the Church. They seek to express the nature of man, his problems, and the experience of his attempts to know and perfect himself and the world; and they try to identify his situation in history and in the universe, to make known his miseries and joys, needs and energies, and to unveil a better future. Thus, they succeed in elevating human life, which they express in many different forms, according to the times and places.
Therefore, efforts must be made so that artists feel understood by the Church in their activity and that, enjoying a convenient freedom, they have easier contact with the Christian community. The Church must also recognize new artistic forms, which, according to the proper genius of various nations and regions, are adapted to the demands of our contemporaries. Let them be admitted into the temples when, with suitable language and in conformity with liturgical requirements, they raise the spirit to God (GS, n. 62).
In turn, Sacrosanctum Concilium states:
Among the noblest activities of the human spirit are, by full right, and very especially religious art and its highest peak, which is sacred art. They tend, by nature, to express in some way, in the works of human hands, the infinite beauty of God, and will be more oriented towards the praise and glory of God if they have no other end than to lead the human spirit piously and as effectively as possible, through their works, to God.
This is the reason why the holy mother Church has always loved the fine arts, trained artists, and never ceased to seek their contribution, ensuring that objects pertaining to worship were worthy, decorous, and beautiful, true signs and symbols of the supernatural. The Church has always considered herself to have the right to be, as it were, their arbiter, choosing from the works of artists those that were in accordance with faith, piety, and the venerable orientations of tradition and that could best serve worship […].
The Church has never considered any style as her own, but has accepted the styles of every age, according to the character and condition of peoples and the needs of the various rites, thus creating, over the centuries, an artistic treasure that must be carefully preserved. Let the art of our time, the art of all peoples and regions, also be freely cultivated in the Church, provided it serves with due reverence and due honor the requirements of the sacred buildings and rites. Thus it can add its voice to the admirable chorus of glory that great men raised to the Catholic faith in past centuries (SC, n. 122-123).
Finally, Inter Mirifica states:
A second question arises regarding the relationship between the so-called rights of art and the norms of the moral law. Since the controversies that often arise on this subject originate from false doctrines on ethics and aesthetics, the Council proclaims that the primacy of the objective moral order must be accepted by all, because it is the only one that surpasses and coherently orders all other human orders, however worthy they may be, not excluding art. In reality, only the moral order reaches, in its entire nature, man, a rational creature of God and called to the supernatural; when this moral order is observed integrally and faithfully, it leads him to perfection and full blessedness (IM, n. 6).
This sample of conciliar texts suggests that the Church has always shown appreciation for art and its creators. Not by chance, John Paul II, in the aforementioned Letter to Artists
, stated categorically that the Church needs art to transmit the message that Christ entrusted to her, because it (art) makes perceptible the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. And he concludes by saying: “Art possesses a very particular capacity to grasp the various aspects of the message, translating them into colors, forms, sounds that stimulate the intuition of those who see and hear” (JOHN PAUL II, 1999, n. 12). It is worth noting, on the other hand, that this attitude of reverence on the part of the Church does not exempt her from the constant vigilance of exercising critical judgment in the face of certain artistic expressions that may legitimize unethical stances contrary to the Gospel, such as injustice, xenophobia, sexual discrimination, social exclusion, etc.
The Western Church has not chosen a specific style of art for itself, but has accepted styles from various eras. The Holy Scriptures and the Liturgy have played a decisive role in the process of discernment regarding what should be accepted or rejected. More than ever, this millenary principle imposes itself in current times, marked by a plurality of styles and experiments, sometimes charged with excessive doses of a “personalist subjectivism”, which boasts individualized, surprising, hermetic, and even offensive forms to the Christian faith. Juan Plazaola adds to such subjectivism other characteristics of contemporary artistic sensibility, namely (cf. PLAZAOLA, 2006, p. 22-31):
a) Essentialism: The search for the essential. A reaction against artistic expressions of the past, characterized by an excess of details and adornments. The challenge consists in maintaining the right aesthetic balance, so as not to fall into minimalism;
b) Sincerity: Rejection of simulacra. Preference for real and non-fictitious elements, such as, for example, the use of false materials that imitate stone, wood, light, etc. This “sincerity” in the creative work is fundamental for art linked to Christian worship.
c) A moderate functionalism: To aesthetic beauty, one seeks to add the (sacred) functionality of art. Here, a challenge imposes itself, especially in the field of architecture: not to be carried away by the wave of mere “comfort,” reducing “functionalism” to something merely aesthetic-practical.
d) Economy and sobriety: When applied directly to Christian art, this characteristic coincides with the recommendation given by the Vatican Council: “Ordinaries are to take care that, in promoting and encouraging truly sacred art, they aim for noble beauty rather than mere sumptuousness. This should also be understood of sacred vestments and ornaments” (SC, n. 124). However, it is worth noting that this “noble simplicity” should not be confused with the artificial and banal.
e) Purity: This characteristic is closely related to the previous one. “Purity,” here, does not mean “coldness,” “cerebralism”…, very common in 20th-century artistic movements such as Cubism.
Purity is respecting the sacred aura that intact things created by God seem to radiate. […] Fortunately, it seems that today we are recovering, in the West, the “gift of attention” to the elementary and pure objects of Creation. And in things created by human hands, we also prefer simplicity and integrity (PLAZAOLA, 2006, p. 29).
In short, any and all judgment passed on art and its creators is, to some extent, incomplete and partial. The “mystery” of art does not allow it to be framed in categories that are sometimes subjective and reductionist. Regarding this issue, J. Plazaola ponders:
History proves that the works of sacred art that survive and that continue to delight and inspire, throughout subsequent centuries, are precisely those that reveal not only universal aspects of human nature, the attributes of divinity and holiness, but also the authentic way of being and the spiritual demands of their time. And this fidelity to the spirit of an era is not incompatible with the “durability” of the work (PLAZAOLA, 2006, p. 21).
In the light of faith, every artistic expression—especially that which extols human dignity and the beauty of the Creator’s work—manifests the mystery of God: “With loving condescension, the divine Artist transmits a spark of his transcendent wisdom to the human artist, calling him to share in his creative power” (JOHN PAUL II, 1999, n. 1).
Joaquim Fonseca, OFM. ISTA, FAJE. Text sent on 09/30/2023; approved on 11/30/2023; posted on 12/31/2023. Original Portuguese text.
References
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