Sea and Sky

 

Saint John has a seaside sculpture walk. This is one of the sculptures, randomly chosen.

Why? What is the point of this?

The point of art is to express beauty. This is not beautiful. None of the sculptures along the walk are beautiful. 

You will object that I am a Philistine who cannot appreciate an abstract sculpture. But that is not quite the issue here. An abstract sculpture is less likely to be beautiful, but it might still be beautiful. Any building is an abstract sculpture, and some architecture is beautiful. I.M. Pei’s purely abstract forms are nevertheless beautiful. A well-cut gemstone is beautiful. 

This sculpture, and all the others along this walk, lack the obvious elements of beauty, as defined, for example, by Saint Thomas Aquinas: symmetry, proportion, or balance; clarity; and integrity or a sense of completion. Most modern sculpture seems to deliberately violate all of these elements, actually striving to look off-balance, incomplete, and indistinct in form. 

The point of it all seems to be to protest against beauty itself. 

Why on earth would anyone want this in a public installation? And, worse, why on earth would anyone want to actually pay for having it?

The present sculpture is titled “Sea and sky.” Nobody needs even a beautiful sculpture simply to express “sea and sky.” We can see both plainly enough. We need art solely to express the unseen. 

And there it is, in perfect irony, obscuring the pedestrian’s view of sea and sky. 

It illustrates how decadent our culture has become.

For contrast, some beautiful public art in Saint John: the war memorial.

The Three Phases of Culture According to J.J. McCullough

 

J.J. McCullough divides art into three categories, pre-modern, modern, and postmodern, and opines that now, after postmodernism, there is nowhere else to go.

Pre-modernism, he says, is characterized by beauty, craftsmanship, and religious values.

Modernism is defined by rationality and efficiency, rejecting beauty, craftsmanship, and religious values.

Postmodernism is defined by the rejection of rationality and efficiency. “Subverting whatever art is supposed to be.” “Weird for the sake of weird.”

McCullough sees these as the only possibilities; and we have exhausted them. So from now on… he suggests perhaps we will see a mix of them all.

His analysis seems flawed. To begin with, it takes no account of non-Western art. And restricting ourselves to Western art, there is a strange imbalance in his timeline. Pre-modern goes up to the late 19th and early 20th centuries; postmodernism appears in 1917 with Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.” Leaving perhaps 17 years for modernism. McCullough suggests that postmodernism too is now exhausted and done.

If these really are the three inevitable approaches to art, why is it that only one of them ever occurred to artists in the millennia up to 1900? Why wasn’t art always a mix of them all, as McCullough suggests it should be in the future?

Rather than three approaches to art, it looks as though we have art, then two failed approaches to it. Art is craft plus vision; it means to convey the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Rejecting craftsmanship and religious values means, then, rejecting art.

If, as McCullough says, modernism is about rationality and efficiency, “form follows function,” we have a problem. Art performs no obvious function. Again, this is a rejection of art.

As is postmodernism, as McCullough says, it is “subverting whatever art is supposed to be.” That speaks for itself.

What we have is a collapse of the arts about the beginning of the 20th century, which has since then progressed to the point of nihilism. Not three approaches to art, or even two, but just one. Duchamp’s “postmodern” “Fountain” actually appeared three years before Eliot’s “The Waste-Land,” from which modernism dates in poetry.

The real difference between modernism and postmodernism is simply that modernism lamented the loss of art; postmodernism celebrates it.

Which is why there is now nowhere to go. The last embers of the gallery have been burned down to ash.

It is the suicide of a culture.

Kurelek

"Crows leaving for South"

“I don't know much about art,” the saying goes, “but I know what I like.”

I'm not sure you ought to have to know anything in order to appreciate art. If you do, isn't the art to that extent a failure? Isn't it then just a dry academic exercise? What happened to the aesthetic experience? If a work of art needs an explanation, why bother with the art? Just read the explanation.

I guess that makes me a philistine. It certainly queers me on most contemporary art.

I like William Kurelek. For my money, he is the best visual artist Canada has produced. His work is not realistic—if you want realism, why not just take a photograph? The point of art is not to “hold the mirror up to nature.” Nature needs no mirror. It cannot see itself anyway. But neither is Kurelek abstract. Abstract art cannot convey much; it is nothing more than décor. Visual art's purpose is to depict not nature, but the imagination, which is, literally, the image-making faculty.

A Northern Nativity

This is just what Kurelek does so well. His images are like the images one sees in memory, or in a dream. They are, that is to say, symbolic. Not allegorical; they hit a deeper level. Again, if the referent for the symbol were obvious, there would be no need for the symbol, only the referent.

Kurelek is also deeply religious—a Catholic convert. It does not need to be orthodox faith, but any art that is not deeply religious is, to that extent, lousy art. Religion is meaning, meaning is religion. An art work without meaning is mere craftsmanship.

Except, of course, much contemporary art is not even that. Lacking either vision or craftsmanship, it is just neurotic narcissism, or a con.

Kurelek has both: vision, a deeply religious vision, and remarkable craftsmanship. While his paintings are not “realistic,” they are intricately detailed.

"Harvest of our mere humanism years".

One of the outstanding things about the Internet is that it brings to our monitors, right in our homes, a lot of the world's best art. Even if you get to the Louvre, you probably only get to see the Mona Lisa at a distance, over the heads of a few hundred others. On the Internet, you can zoom in and see every brush stroke.

There is a great Kurelek exhibition here. Go have a look, especially if you do not know him. Welcome to the essence of Canadian culture. I'll wait here. Or rather, I'll be there too.

I won't say anything about any individual paintings. As I say, art ought to speak for itself.

Fox and geese.

Manifesto of the New Pentecost

North Rose Window, Notre Dame de Paris.

Art is the production of beauty.

Without beauty no art.

God is perfect beauty is God.

All beauty is a window on the divine.

All beautiful things are icons.

We must not be distracted by the object itself, or its human creator.

Beauty in artifice is God’s creation just as is beauty in nature.

Beauty without faith is dead and deadly.

Faith without beauty is dead and deadly.

The beauty of the art it evokes is a reliable measure of the worth of a religion. 

Sinulog (Feast of the Child Jesus), Cebu, Philippines.

“By their fruits you shall know them.”

Beauty = truth = good.

Without truth, beauty dies.

Without goodness, beauty dies.

Beauty is unmediated meaning.

Beauty is a priori.

Beauty is in the soul, not the eye, of the beholder.

The Lady and the Unicorn: All My Desire. Paris.

The Beatitudes, the Beatified, and the Beautiful

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! 

--St. Augustine

The Beatitudes seem to fairly precisely describe the abused and the depressed as Christianity’s target audience.

So what does this mean in terms of the best “treatment” for depression? What are the implications for the “depressed”?

We have noted that Jesus’s advice to “turn the other check” is actually good practical advice for anyone who finds himself in an abusive situation. But that does not itself deal with the lasting effects of the abuse.

Surely there is more here; for Jesus himself promises it: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Sounds good; especially since free-floating anxiety is the most common feature of what is called “depression.”

Obviously, the first thing and the main thing is to embrace Christianity; to, as AA has it, submit to a higher power. This is no small detail. Even those raised Christians, even those who are practicing Christians, may not have really done this in their hearts. There are conversion experiences, and conversion experiences upon conversion experiences. Mount Carmel is a long climb.

But Jesus also seems to suggest something more specific. In his next words, immediately following the Beatitudes, he advises:

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

This is not just a matter of receiving the sacraments, is it? This is not just a matter of letting Jesus into your heart. These sound much like marching orders.

The most obvious thing is that they are supposed somehow to be noticed: like salt, or light; to be very apparent to the senses. And “good works”: that seems clear enough. We as Christians are supposed to do good deeds: clothe the naked, visit prisoners, feed the hungry, and so forth. The corporal acts of mercy. Check.

But wait. There is a problem here. For, later in the same Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns expressly against doing such good deeds so that others can see them:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

Accordingly, while we are certainly called upon to do good deeds, and to pray, and to receive the sacraments, this cannot actually be what Jesus is referring to here. Attending church, praying, and the corporal acts of mercy are all supposed to be done in secret. This is no city on a hill, no lamp shining, no salt spreading its taste to the meal. Just the reverse.

Is he referring instead to the “works of the spirit”? The gifts of the spirit are listed variously in different places, but include, according to I Corinthians: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, identifying spirits, speaking in tongues, interpreting tongues. They were, most famously, given to the apostles at Pentecost. Jesus does, certainly, in this same passage, compare the depressed to the prophets: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” That's the most obvious gift of the spirit cited.

Yet it seems this is not meant either. In the same sermon, Jesus warns of false prophets:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

If prophets themselves are to be recognized by their fruits, then the visible fruits cannot be the prophecies. That they already manifest, by definition. It seems reasonable too to suppose the same of the other works of the spirit. Indeed, in the sermon itself, Jesus makes clear that non-believers can pull off many of these things as well:

“Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'”

The visible fruits mentioned--presumably the same thing meant by “shining light,” salt, and “city on a hill”--must be something else.

I doubt many will imagine that the fruits and the works he calls for the dispossessed and poor to do are material riches; perhaps some Calvinists will. But Jesus dismisses this notion smartly enough as well, warning against both riches and, Protestant work ethic to the contrary, working hard and getting ahead.

19 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

25 "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.

Are the “good works” going forth and preaching the gospel, converting and baptizing the nations? One might well suppose so; for later, this is indeed what the apostles are called to do. But this too does not seem right. First, at this early stage in his ministry, Jesus tells his apostles not to do this, but to speak only to the lost of the children of Israel; and he strives to keep his own Messianic identity secret. Jesus also warns in the sermon that "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” So no, it seems that preaching the gospel (i.e., saying "Lord, Lord") is not the fruit either. It is not in itself, although desirable and demanded, “doing the will.”

Jesus also says, in the same sermon, apart from any obvious context, “6 Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” Isn't this actually a warning against preaching the gospel straight up, out in the market place? Note too the echo here of the image of salt being crushed underfoot. In other words, whatever salt is, it is not saying things straight out to anyone who will hear. That is the opposite of salt; that is salt that has lost its savour.

But look again at that passage. Isn't it our key? Isn't it a skillful signal that the entire Sermon on the Mount is a riddle, that the primary point is not being said straight out? It is meant to reveal itself only to those who will ponder it in their hearts.

So what is left, then? The depressed, the abused, are called on to do good works, to let their light shine, to bear good fruit, to do the will of their father. But this does not mean doing good deeds in the common sense. It does not mean prophesying, or performing miracles. It does not mean preaching the gospel. It certainly does not mean getting rich. What is left?

Perhaps it is just my limited imagination. But the only thing that seems to be left is the creation of beauty through artifice—what we might call “art.” The "work" of an artist.

Indeed, if we read the Sermon on the Mount as a riddle, it is itself a good example of the concept. Even if we do not, the saying about casting pearls before swine certainly is; and so is Jesus's characteristic teaching technique, of telling parables. He is an artful storyteller, and storytelling is an art.

So is the image of a “city on a hill,” to which he compares the depressed. A city is an artifice. So is the seasoning of a meal with salt. So is setting a lamp on a stand, and lighting it.

Beauty appears to us through our senses; hence the references to flavour (salt, fruit), light, and the eye. Indeed, what else but the expereince of beauty can Jesus be speaking of in the cryptic phrase:

22 "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

To be able to appreciate and respond to beauty is apparently of the essence. And, while a much larger group is called to be disciples, to be an apostle, one of the twice-called, implies the production of such beauty in some way.

This just makes sense. God, being Supreme Being, is by definition not just perfect goodness, and perfect truth, but also perfect beauty. Just as revering him demands a commitment to truth, and to the moral good, it must also demand a commitment to beauty.

It is in the beauty of the natural universe that we see God.

It is in the beauty of our artifice that we honour him. 

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In this sense we imitate Christ. In this sense we are in the image of God.