The New Iconoclasts Have Theology Degrees
Psychobabble, pauperism, the craze for Russian icons and a horror for the Baroque... Pietro De Marco uncovers the traps into which today¿s theology falls when it is applied to art
by Sandro Magister
ROMA, August 28, 2003 – The cry of alarm raised in Florence at the end of July over the negligence and disdain that disfigure the art both inside and outside of the churches did not go unseconded. The bishops of Siena, Pisa, Lucca, Arezzo, and the other dioceses of Tuscany - the region with the highest concentration of Christian masterpieces in Italy, and perhaps in the world - announced that they would meet to promote initiatives in defense of sacred art.
But their first task will be that of diagnosing the malady. Monsignor Timothy Verdon, an art historian and the director of the Office for Catechesis through Art of the diocese of Florence, has already made important written contributions on this theme, the last being in the August 4-5 edition of "L¿Osservatore Romano," also available on this website.
The following column is a previously unpublished commentary by another Florentine Catholic intellectual, Pietro De Marco, a specialist in religious geopolitics, but also a scholar of theology, who teaches at the state university of Florence and at the Theological Faculty of Central Italy. In it, De Marco denounces the errors of present day theology as the profound cause of disregard for sacred art. And he does so with keen observations and surprising twists. Here is the commentary:
On the Responsibilities of Theological Milieu for the Negligence toward the Sacred Artby Pietro De MarcoIn my opinion, there are at least two reasons for the negligence that afflicts Christian art: the absence of the aesthetic dimension from religious culture and pastoral practice; and insufficient theological protection for this dimension even where it persists. The second reason is the more profound, but is also less noticed.
1. One can apply to today's theology the analysis that Odo Marquard, in ¿Aesthetics and Anaesthetics,¿ applies to philosophy: when aesthetics lose their connection with the ¿realia Dei,¿ the realities of God, they inevitably end by reducing themselves to the philosophy of nature, and it no longer seems to matter what divine Revelation is, but only what it might mean to me. Part of this tendency is also the widespread acceptance of the psychoanalytical criticism of Scripture (Eugen Drewermann). This is authentic logical and hermeneutical madness: a studiously developed anti-truth adopted as the criterion for validating the truth.
2. If it is no longer the study of supernatural realities, even a lively theology of signs and symbols leads inevitably to a merely aesthetic enjoyment of sacred art, and to the marginalization of that art. This is a tendency that leads from an elitist enjoyment of sacred beauty - architectural, visual, musical - to its rapid abandonment as a part of liturgy, dogma, pastoral practice, and common religious understanding.
3. Analyzing the sacraments in symbolic terms can be a rigorous way of translating the theology of the real presence of Christ into modern thought, but if the symbolic theory is psychological rather than ontological, the result obtained remains incapable, in the end, of preserving the significance of the sacred icon. The contemporary situation demonstrates this. Without the reality of the sacraments and the reality of the mystical body, and thus of the glorified Christ, the icon means nothing, religiously and theologically. The theology of beauty is a useful thing, but if it misses the fact that the iconic symbol is above all a constitutive part of the reciprocity between Creator and creature, it is reduced to a chapter in a treatise on aesthetics, eccentric or even foreign in relation to dogmatics.
4. Common culture, especially common religious culture, abhors Baroque art. Visitors and believers pity the fake Roman style obtained by stripping away and destroying the architectural and iconographic life that grew throughout the centuries on the medieval building works of our parish churches. But the sacrality of the bare walls of today (which never existed before, except in the smallest parishes sunk in utter poverty) is nothing more than the 20th century ¿craze¿ for plain surfaces, plain curves, plain lines, plain materials. It¿s a good thing that in many churches there still remain the ancient and indelible traces of a bit of fresco or an altar piece to establish a figurative contact between the creature and the Creator and the events of His incarnation, and to foster prayer. We must escape from these aesthetic traps. The angels and saints that fill the facades and cornices of the exterior surfaces of sacred Gothic buildings, and the interiors of Renaissance and Baroque churches, are joined to the glorious, and very real, beings that they make present. And the grandiose altars exalt the reality of the transubstantiation that really happens upon them. But even the modest devotional art of times nearer to our own is immersed in the certainty of the presence of the divine body and blood, in the truth of miracles, in the sureness of heaven itself.
5. It is not possible to conceal the failures in the short circuit between scientific exegesis and preaching. They are failures that render impracticable even a renewal of the function of sacred art as ¿biblia pauperum¿, the poor man¿s Bible (a function carried out today by films with biblical and religious themes, which seem strange from a pastoral perspective and thus go without pastoral input). If even the best parish priests can say in a homily that we don¿t know whether the episode recounted in the gospel reading of Sunday Mass really happened or not, but that this is not important from the standpoint of faith, no visual art can any longer make that episode move and speak.
6. Western fashion for Russian icons, to which everyone or almost everyone succumbs, is symptomatic of this problem. It accompanies the theological decrepitude of the persons and communities that display them. One pretends to compensate for the iconophobia reserved for the world of visible Catholicism (note the elimination of devotional images and the near complete reduction of great church art to something like a museum collection) with the ¿pure¿ sentiment of the sacred icons. But this is entirely a 20th century sentiment, absolutely distant from the sacramental theology and the ¿religio¿ of icons in the Orthodox world, which, if anything, is much closer to our realistic devotion for statues and Marian images, or the Sacred Heart, or the saints. I say ¿20th century¿ because setting Greek or Russian icons against the sacred art of Renaissance Italy is a typical Western fruit of the avant garde¿s primitivistic and anti-Renaissance hostility, apart from being a polemical use of Burkhardt¿s theories about the anti-Christian character of modernity.
7. An aesthetic education is not enough for the clergy or the laity (who are already widely tempted to unload the "burden" of the artistic patrimony of Christendom onto the states and universities, for purposes of care, study, and diffusion). Nor is the idea good enough that the deep form of beauty is that of a gift (PierAngelo Sequeri). This may motivate Christian artists, but it will not produce artists capable of imparting form and beauty to the channels of grace, to sacred spaces and times, and to sacred actions, because this very dimension has been demolished in contemporary common theological opinion. The problem of the sacred art, including music, entrusted to us by tradition, is not that of the current dearth of religious artists, in which case only ancient art would have religious validity and be worth preserving. The problem is that contemporary religious art is rarely art that is based on reality, but is almost always emotional art, religiously pre-theological, pre-cultural, pre-theologico-political. It¿s too easy to portray a "good pope"; it would be instructive for an artist to produce something with the same symbolic power as the contemporary portrayal of Boniface VIII by Arnolfo di Cambio [see above photo]; the only intuition that comes close to a similar modern reading is the depiction of Karol Wojtyla struck down by a meteorite, but not crushed, much less defeated, put on exhibition by Maurizio Cattelan at the Venice Biennale of 2001:
8. It is not surprising, finally, that the contemporary iconophobia of the ordinary Christian clergy and people is allied to a 19th and 20th century aesthetics of poverty like that of Victor Hugo, Léon Bloy, and others, possibly originating with Jean Jacques Rousseau, which doubtless has its peculiar greatness but is inconsistent when applied to theology and implicitly carries perverse iconoclastic effects. A pauperistic realism in regard to Revelation, sociologically insensitive and theologically inflated, replaces the realism of the propositions of the Creed.
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Useful LinksThe Theological Faculty of Central Italy, headquartered in Florence, where Pietro De Marco teaches, has dedicated a special edition of its magazine "Vivens Homo" to the intertwining of theology and art. Here are the index and the articles:
> "Ratio Imaginis". Esperienza teologica, esperienza artisticaThis year, the Faculty is inaugurating a Master¿s degree program in theology and church architecture, with the patronage of the Pontifical Commission for Cultural Heritage and the Italian bishops¿ conference.
The course is directed by Fr. Severino Dianich, an ecclesiologist, with the collaboration of the architects Fabrizio Rossi Prodi and Paolo Zermani, and of the theologians Gianni Cioli and Alfredo Jacopozzi. The teachers include art historian Timothy Verdon and philosopher Sergio Givone.
In this interview, Severino Dianich explains the reasons for and objectives of the Master¿s degree program:
> L¿identità cristiana e il progetto architettonicoAnd here is a link to the Faculty¿s home page, which uses the ¿Tondo Pitti¿ Madonna and Child by Michelangelo as its logo:
> Facoltà Teologica dell¿Italia Centrale__________
Point number 7 of Pietro De Marco¿s commentary refers to an Italian theologian who is among the most competent on this subject: PierAngelo Sequeri.
A priest of Milan, Sequeri teaches fundamental theology at the Theological Faculty of Milan, and the theology of aesthetics at the Department of Sacred Contemporary Art at the Academy of Brera. He is also a musician and a musicologist. This is his most recent book, on the relationship between art and religion:
PierAngelo Sequeri, "L¿estro di Dio. Saggi di estetica", > Glossa, Milano, 2000, pagine 498, euro 25,31.__________
Here is a link to the background of Pietro De Marco¿s commentary and to Monsignor Timothy Verdon¿s article in "L¿Osservatore Romano":
> Churches Under Siege. But the Reconquest Is Beginning in Florence (8.8.2003)
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And here are some other articles on this theme, on this website:
> Forgotten Stones. A Guided Tour of the Places of Liturgy (14.7.2003)
> Revelations. Liturgical Art for the New Millennium (26.6.2003)
> Pentecost on Mount Athos, Between Heaven and Earth (18.6.2003)
> Arte sacra. Ritratto inedito degli italiani (26.11.2001)
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Go to the home page of
> www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english/, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.
Sandro Magister¿s e-mail address is
[email protected]
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28.8.2003
