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Modern Art: Friend or Foe? | Joseph Pearce | From
Literary Giants, Literary Catholics
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Is modern art merely a load of old rubbish--or, rather, a load of old new
rubbish? Certainly much that passes as "art" in our muddled modern
world is not worthy of the name. Take, for instance, the garbage posing as art
during an exhibition of the shortlisted "artists" for the 2004 Beck's
Futures Prize at London's Institute of Contemporary Art. Among the finalists
for the £20,000 prize was a British "artist" who had produced a video of two Cilla
Black impersonators singing the star's first big hit, Anyone Who Had a
Heart. Another finalist, who described
himself as an avid train spotter, had produced a twenty-seven-minute video of a
freight train. The winner, however, was a Brazilian "artist" who
specialized in making sculptures of animals by scraping fluff from new carpets.
Meanwhile, in Cardiff, the Artes Mundi prize, worth £40,000, was won by a
Chinese "artist" who had gathered dust from the ruins of the World
Trade Center and had scattered it on the floor before tracing a short verse
about dust in the dust. Works of "art" honored with major prizes in
previous years include piles of bricks, soiled nappies (or soiled diapers for
our American readers), an unmade bed decorated with debris such as condoms,
dead animals, "sculptures" made by urinating in snow, and the work of
an "artist" who specialized in sewing things to the soles of his
feet. Et cetera ad nauseam.
The exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) opened a few hours
before the millionaire collector and patron of modern art", Charles
Saatchi, threw a celebrity-thronged party at his private gallery to launch a
new exhibition, titled New Blood,
which also professed to champion the avant-garde. The exhibition was greeted
with howls of derision by Saatchi's rivals at the ICA. "We're showing the new
blood. Saatchi's got old blood", sneered a spokesman for the ICA. Philip
Dodd, the ICA's director, added that "the nicest thing to say about
Charles is that several artists in his show were in our Beck's exhibition a
year ago." In dismissing his rival, Dodd had also unwittingly dismissed
himself, and the so-called "art" he promotes, to the dustbin of
history. As his comments make abundantly clear, this sort of self-styled modern
"art" is not about quality but novelty. It's not about how good it is
but how new it is. This year's artists are better than last year's artists
purely because they are this year's artists. Last year's artists are already passé.
It is, therefore, easy to dismiss this sort of
"art" as nothing but dust and fluff that will be blown away by the winds
of fashion. After all, as C. S. Lewis quipped, fashions are always coming and
going ... but mostly going.
So much for fashion and the false "art" it promotes. What about real
modern art? What about art that is truly modern and truly art? Is such art a
friend or foe of the Faith? Should Christians be suspicious of such art? Should
we trust it?
Such questions cannot be answered-and should not even be asked- until we have
asked and answered the more fundamental and radical question What is
modern art? And, as is so often the case,
it is best to begin by asking what a thing is not before we proceed to a
discussion of what it is.
The first thing to be understood is that modern art is not particularly
"modern". In the same way that modern history begins several centuries
ago, modern art is already many centuries old. It is, in fact, impossible to
point definitively to a particular moment when art became modern. The departure
from iconography was "modern"; the science of perspective was
"modern". Giotto was "modern" in the fourteenth century;
Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael were "modern" in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. If "modern" means up-to-date or innovative
within the context of one's own time, these artists qualify in every respect as
"modern". Paradoxically, they are permanently modern, in the sense
that the freshness of their vision is perennial. Their art is fresh because it
is incorruptible. One can hardly say the same of soiled nappies, condom-strewn
beds or carpet fluff. In this sense, Giotto, Leonardo and Raphael have far more
claim to being modern than have the nameless and soon-to-be-forgotten
"artists" of today. And, of course, they have a far better claim to
being artists.

If we move our discussion of modern art to the nineteenth century, we can see
the paradoxes and the tensions at the heart of any discussion of art and
modernity. Impressionism, for instance, was perceived as very avant-garde, even
dangerously so. According to G. K. Chesterton, a critic who should never be
taken lightly, impressionism was the product of philosophical relativism, the
absence of definition in the former being the result of the absence of definitive
objectivity in the latter. One can see Chesterton's point, and even agree with
it, but are we to conclude that there was no good impressionist art? Surely not.
Pace Chesterton, we cannot see
Monet's masterful vision of Rouen Cathedral in full sunlight as anything but
sublime. Similarly, the pro- to impressionism of J.M.W. Turner was truly
"modern" in the sense of being avant-garde or ahead of its time.
Although one critic dismissed a particularly monochromatic Turner seascape as
nothing but "soap-suds", it is the artist and not the critic who has
stood the test of time or, more correctly, the test of timelessness. It is
indeed a paradox worthy of note that Turner's greatest champion among his
contemporaries was John Ruskin, who, as both artist and critic, is better known
as a neomedievalist who championed Gothic "tradition" than as an advocate
of modern concepts of "impressionism". It is, in fact, an even
greater paradox that Ruskin's championing of another artistic movement, the
Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, exhibited the surprising fact that even tradition
can be modern
The Pre-Raphaelites, as their name suggests, sought a return to the purity of a
medieval vision of art. In contradistinction to the pastel haze of the
impressionists, the Pre-Raphaelites painted in the bold daylight of primary
splendor. Their subjects were often taken from literature and myth and were
imbued with neomedievalist romanticism. It is a medieval victory over Victorianism, and yet it is also medievalism
modified and modernized by Victorianism. And herein lies the dynamism of the
paradox. Neomedievalism is both new and medieval. It is the light of tradition
seen through the telescope of modernity.
And so to the twentieth century.
Arguably, of all centuries, the last was the worst-at least in terms of the
divorce of modernity from tradition. And if this is true of culture in general,
it is certainly true of art in particular.
Perhaps Pablo Picasso is more culpable than most for the divorce. He was
certainly guilty of adultery, in the sense of the adulteration of the gifts he
was given. Unlike many of the modern "artists" who followed his
example, Picasso could paint beautifully. The problem is that he ceased to do
so. Having established a solid reputation, he sullied himself with inferior
"primitive" experiments utterly unworthy of his talent. This, in
itself, might not have mattered too much except for the fact that a legion of
disciples who, unlike their master, could not paint, crept wormlike through the
crevices of credulity that the weight of Picasso's fallen talent had caused.
The result was an artistic revolution as nihilistic and destructive as were the
political revolutions of the century. The cubist castration of art heralded the
omnipotence of impotence made manifest in the dust and fluff of today's artless
moderns.
It is not all bad news, however. Much art of real stature has emerged in the
twentieth century. The art of Otto Dix is as gruesome as Grünewald in its
graphic depiction of the ugliness of sin, and the surrealist symbolism of
Salvador Dali has more in common with the artistic vision of Hieronymus Bosch
than with the heinous bosh of "postmodern" pretentiousness. Unlike
many of their contemporaries, Dali and Dix have retained the critical connection
with tradition that is essential to all true art. Their art is the product of
the marriage of tradition and modernity and, in consequence, will survive
alongside the modern art of previous centuries. The rest of the ephemera masquerading
as "art" will decay in the putridness of its own corruption. Will
anyone remember the nameless Brazilian artist who creates "art" from
fluff in a century or so, or next year for that matter? Of course not. Ashes to
ashes, dust to dust ... Will genuine art, modern or otherwise, survive the test
of timelessness? Of course it will. Vincit omnia veritas.
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:
Evangelizing With
Love, Beauty and Reason | An Interview with Joseph Pearce
The Measure of
Literary Giants | An Interview with Joseph Pearce
The Quintessential--And Last--Modern
Poet | Fr. George William Rutler
British
author Joseph Pearce has
firmly established himself as the premier literary biographer of our time,
especially in interpreting the spiritual depths of the Catholic literary
tradition. In his book, Literary
Giants, Literary Catholics, Pearce examines a plethora of authors,
taking the reader through a dazzling tour of the creative landscape of Catholic
prose and poetry. Literary
Giants, Literary Catholics covers the vast terrain from Dante to
Tolkien, from Shakespeare to Waugh.
Focusing on the literary revival of the 20th century, Pearce touches
on well-known authors like G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien, but also
introduces readers to lesser-known writers like Roy Campell, Maurice Baring,
and Owen Barfield. Anyone who appreciates English literature will be entranced
by the wealth and depth of this masterpiece.
For more about Pearce and his books, visit his IgnatiusInsight.com Author Page.
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