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Whither The Arts?
It isn’t often that stone steps inspire chills, but to walk where centuries of human feet have literally worn down the stone is to simultaneously become part of history and to realize one’s utter insignificance to it. Walking up the steps and into the magnificent structure, the eye is drawn inexorably from the stones below, upward, high beyond the massive columns, up further where the very walls seem to tilt toward each other and meet at dark, dizzying heights. It was 1989, and I was standing inside the massive cathedral in Cologne, Germany.
I had just finished reading a biography of German WWI ace Barron Manfred von Richthofen in which he described his very first airplane ride as a student pilot. As the plane rolled out for takeoff, the prop wash blew Richthofen’s leather helmet off, along with his goggles and scarf. As the plane rose, and his gloves were also lost to the blast of wind from the propellor, his attention turned to that of viewing the landscape from the air for the very first time. And he wrote of his astonishment at seeing the spires of the Cologne Cathedral from a great distance.
That Cathedral had been there over 600 years when The Red Barron’s canvass and wood plane did battle in the First World War. Those old stone steps were as old as the US Constitution by the time Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World. And yet there we stood in 1989, struck dumb it seemed, trying desperately to comprehend the sheer size and endless intricacies of this colossal structure which literally dwarfed everything around it. To view it from the outside is to feel rather like an ant contemplating a redwood. To venture inside and see The Shrine of the Three Holy Kings (purported to hold the crowned skulls of the Three Wise Men), or the Gero Cross which dates back to 976, or the legions of statues, is to become virtually intoxicated with the divine devotion that conceived and constructed such a solemn place.
Where is there anything in modernity to compare? Camille Paglia poses just such a question, asking (and answering) the question of why so much of our fine arts have devolved into a “wasteland.” “Painting was the prestige genre in the fine arts from the Renaissance on. But painting was dethroned by the brash multimedia revolution of the 1960s and ’70s,” writes Paglia, who then zeros in on a central point: “What do contemporary artists have to say, and to whom are they saying it? Unfortunately, too many artists have lost touch with the general audience and have retreated to an airless echo chamber.”
It’s a chamber where the avant-garde first yielded to iconoclasm, which in turn has yielded to unimaginative and vulgar conformity. One need look no further than the artist who submerses a crucifix in urine, and then congratulates himself for bravely giving the finger to orthodoxy, all while carefully avoiding a cartoon of Mohammed so as to avoid getting his head chopped off. So much for breaking new ground.
So where do we now turn for art? Snoop Dog? Our smartphones? I use my smartphone constantly. Thanks to technological wizardry, I can have a conversation with the thing (it even says, “Who’s there?” when I say, “Knock knock”), but art it isn’t. Among my personal effects is an old pocket watch that belonged to my great grandfather. A functional piece, it retains just enough ornate decoration to hearken back to another time and place. As long as that old watch is around, I feel grounded somehow, which is a feeling that so much of what passes for art fails to elicit. Now, am I channeling my inner fuddy-duddy, or is society losing something? Where art once celebrated eternal truths, what is its point today? To rail against the culture and system that enables it? Again from Paglia:
Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women. The routine defamation of capitalism by the armchair leftists in academe and the mainstream media has cut young artists and thinkers off from the authentic cultural energies of our time.
“We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, a Jewish nation, or Muslim nation,” said President Obama, adding, “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens.” This ideology that seeks to disconnect an entire people from their heritage and culture is the same ideology that teaches students to ridicule and scorn the very system that has afforded them a standard of living and a wealth of knowledge that previous generations could never have imagined. To defeat that ideology is to make possible the day when abiding truths are celebrated and the arts again, as in the past, lift the human spirit up, up toward the Author of all that is truly beautiful.
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Published in General
“AT THE far western end of the … axis that runs from the Louvre down the Champs Elysees ….is the Grand Arch of La Defense…. Designed by Johann Otto von Spreckelsen, a Danish architect of sternly modernist sensibility, [it] is a colossal open cube: almost forty stories tall… faced in glass and …. white Carrara marble.
… La Grande Arche is, quite literally, dazzling. [It’s] rooftop terrace… offers an unparalleled view of Paris….
[The cube] also houses the International Foundation for Human Rights. For Mitterrand intended [it] as a human rights monument, something suitably gigantic to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen….
…. Which culture… would better protect human rights and secure the moral foundations of democracy: the culture that built this stunning, rational, angular, geometrically precise hut essentially featureless cube, or the culture that produced the vaulting and bosses, the gargoyles and flying buttresses, the nooks and crannies, the asymmetries and holy “unsameness” of … the … great gothic cathedrals of France?
….
The question …. is one of cultural and civilizational morale. And over it… may well hover the choice between the cathedral and the cube. ”
— George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral
Admittedly the exterior of St. Mary’s is a blunder. However, the inside is quite amazing and seems to bear little resemblance to the exterior. Photography probably doesn’t do it justice. I’m pretty sure that my visit to St. Mary’s wasn’t responsible for my straying from the faith (or the annoying folk/rock music in my local San Jose parish that I attended). I think it’s been more of an intellectual journey studying and challenging the precepts of faith and the various claims and interpretations of theology as well intentioned as they are and for the most part as beneficial as they’ve been to make the world civilized. I will admit that King’s College Cathedral in Cambridge is probably my favorite cathedral for the elegance and delicacy of its design, the amount of light that it’s massive windows let in and its fanned vaulted ceiling. It’s simply exquisite:
Like so many of the epic threads on Ricochet, I’m too late to the party, and I don’t know if you’ll see this, but thank you for sharing this. It is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard in a very long time. I lack the vocabulary to articulate this song’s beauty, but at points it almost drives one to tears.
I will admit that King’s College Cathedral in Cambridge is probably my favorite cathedral for the elegance and delicacy of its design, the amount of light that it’s massive windows let in and its fanned vaulted ceiling. It’s simply exquisite: ·2 minutes ago
Now that’s more like it.
I think that one day, when I feel like really stirring things up, I’ll try to start a conversation on the [d]evolution of church music.
If you ever do, I’ll be putting up my dukes, ready to go at it. :)
I mean, sort of. I love sacred music as much as I love sacred art and architecture, but, having come alive, spiritually, partly through the guitar music of the charismatic renewal, I’m ready to defend it. ·57 minutes ago
I’d rather be flayed alive than being subjected to anything outside the repertoire while praying the Mass.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI
Katievs: Thanks so much for the Scruton link – “Wonderful!” Restorative in so many ways…
I was told that Bach was criticized for being to emotional. He apparently composed with minor and seven chords when that wasn’t done.
The music I would defend is the praise and worship stuff from the 90s. Paul Baloche or Dereck Web. Five chords and other voicing lend them self well to acoustic guitars. There was also a movement of Celtic music that was very worshipful.
We (including me) can get stuck in “a way to worship” or “a favorite”. I my experience God is still in the beauty biz and finding a way to experience that can be done in lots of ways.
Also I would say that excellence (not perfection) in worship is a very good thing.
I come from a very different Christian tradition, but I also have a major problem with vapid lyrics. I tried to join the choir in our church, but the music director tends to choose songs that are nearly secular or meta-songs. “What’s a meta-song?” some few here might ask. It’s a song about singing songs or about hearing someone else singing. Being a poet and lyricist, I understand the temptation. One knows about songs, songwriting, and singing, so one writes about what one knows.
I think the one that made my head explode was a “Christmas” song that has been sung by Amy Grant called, “I Need a Silent Night.” It’s a woman whining about how hard life is and how busy she is and she wishes she had lived in an earlier era when life was simpler. You mean the era when a woman might have fifteen children hoping that two or three might survive to adulthood? You mean a period in history where the life expectancy at birth was thirty-five? Are you kidding me? You want the choir to sing this pile of horsefeathers in front of the church for Christmas?
Needless to say, I didn’t even make it to the first concert. The choir has gone from about twenty people to four or five in a few years time. I don’t know everyone else’s excuse, but it was the lyrics for me.
I think the one that made my head explode was a “Christmas” song that has been sung by Amy Grant called, “I Need a Silent Night.” It’s a woman whining about how hard life is and how busy she is and she wishes she had lived in an earlier era when life was simpler. You mean the era when a woman might have fifteen children hoping that two or three might survive to adulthood? You mean a period in history where the life expectancy at birth was thirty-five? Are you kidding me? You want the choir to sing this pile of horsefeathers in front of the church for Christmas? ·1 minute ago
That’s about how I feel about “Christmas Shoes.” Seriously, that song is short one sick puppy and a dad in the military from going critical on the maudlin schmaltz.
Please, all of you, give in to the temptation to put up more links to music you love and beautiful pictures. I’m getting back online later to continue enjoying it. I’ll take your word for it about the bad stuff.
Dave, I was too moved by Whither The Arts to think of trying to focus on Ms. Paglia’s piece. But I’ll try to read it sometime. Katievs, Why Beauty Matters is amazing. dogsbody, I love O Magnum Mysterium. Really enjoyed The Language of Form, Pseudodionysius.
Can anyone still revere the memory of Winston Churchill after reading that he ordered the bombing of the Cologne Cathedral ? (comment#4)
I’m thinking the people who built cathedrals that took generations to complete (comment#16) have to have had a much stronger faith in the importance of their lives to God’s church, and in His love for them, than we do today. They had patience because they had faith in their significance (I think).
I’ve gotten nothing done that I planned to do this evening and I couldn’t care less. Thank you all for this post.
I have long been a music ascetic, but have increasingly come to the understanding that today’s Hymns of the Saints were the religious pop of yesteryear. Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” was, as initially composed, a raucous camp song. The Fanny J. Crosby lyrics on which I was raised were often written to inspire the youth movements.
I still prefer the majestic old hymns, but am more tolerant of modern compositions.
Ansonia, feast your ears on Palestrina.
re: comment 139
Unearthly beautiful. It’s angels singing. Thank you, Katievs.
What would Brunelleschi have thought of HKS Architects or their stadium?
Or these:
I love the great cathedrals and have visited many of them – Cologne, Westminster, Cantebury, Salisbury, King’s College – Cambridge, St. Patrick’s, St. Paul’s. But it should be noted that there is some truly amazing and transcendent works of architecture all around us that are more modern and that speaks to what man can achieve if inspired. Not everything modern in architecture was driven by the merely Stalinistic utilitarian or the lowest common denominator for the masses.
Regarding cathedrals here is my favorite. And my senior thesis work was initially supposed to refer to these from the national cathedral.
I love the individual sculptures imbedded throughout Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia.
Carver, I’m sorry if I misrepresented what you meant to say. I didn’t mean to.
To me, even while it’s possible to find beautiful things if picking through a heap of trash (and some people are better at this than others), it remains true that a heap of trash is ugly. And ugliness affects us.
“Amazing” is something different. I mean, it’s in a different moral category from the wonder induced by beauty, which is so necessary to the flourishing of the human soul.
I hope you’ll watch that BBC production. Scruton expresses what I want to say with so much more deep understanding and articulateness than I can muster.
Agreed Brian. It’s not all “worker housing”. And I’ve said it before Wolfe’s critiques of Modern art and Architecture are two of my favorite books (Bauhaus to Our House and The Painted Word).
Count me with Pseud and Benedict.
But let me add something. As someone who used to organize liturgies, it’s important to remember that liturgical music and worship music are not the same thing. Liturgical music has a function; it has work to do. I argue that the its function is integral to its artistry.
In a liturgy, music has two basic functions. It either “covers” movement, or it “embodies” a prayer. When the priest and the “altar party” enter the church and take their places, we sing. When we sing the Gloria, we sing it as a common prayer, read “common” as communal.
And yet, I’ve been to many masses where the priest and congregation stand there, waiting, while the guitarist in the “band” finishes his riff. Sure, it may have been a riff worthy of Clapton, but it had nothing to do with what the rest of us were doing.
Music transforms a procession from something we watch into something in which we participate. Music transforms a prayer from something we think or say into something we do.
The genre of the music (classical, folk, etc.) is one thing, but liturgical music has a job to do.
Prepare for the Instalanche.
I hate to burst anybody’s bubble about the ‘miraculous’ survival of Cologne Cathedral in WWII, but it was anything but that. When my parents were touring the cathedral years ago and the tour guide began describing this miracle, my father, who actually had bombed Cologne, whispered to my mother, “We left it standing because it was perfect for targetting the rest of the city.” On the same trip, sitting at a cafe enjoying his morning weiss beer and veal sausage, a local struck up a conversation with him, eventually asking, “Have you been to Cologne before, Herr Malone?” My father casually replied, “No, but I’ve flown over it a couple times. . .”
Very interesting, and this information does not surprise. Thanks for “the rest of the story”.
re comment#143
So, Cologne Cathedral was spared sort of the way Joseph was spared, after his brothers were persuaded to sell him as a slave instead of murdering him ?
It was…what? More providential than miraculous ?
A facebook friend today linked this 10 minute documentary about the Sainte Chappelle in Paris. We visited it in 2007. The heart melts. The mind reels.
I wept over the illuminated manuscripts in the adjacent library. The chapel was commissioned by Louis IV in 1239 (to house relics of the passion, including the Crown of Thorns) and completed in 1248. Think of it, Rico friends. Nearly 1000 years ago. Could we match its splendor today, with all our technology and machinery? Could we come close to matching it?
Ignore the language issue (if you have it, as I do.) You only need eyes.
A lot of blue and gold for some reason. ;^D
I wept over the illuminated manuscripts in the adjacent library. The chapel was commissioned by Louis IV in1239 (to house relics of the passion, including the Crown of Thorns) and completed in 1248. Think of it, Rico friends. Nearly1000 years ago. Could we match its splendor today, with all our technology and machinery? Could wecome closeto matching it?
Ignore the language issue (if you have it, as I do.) You only need eyes. ·7 minutes ago
Saint Louis did a good job there, eh? I had the sound down because my wife is working on something beside me. The sound track was mostly music with the explanations/subtitles throughout. I started reading them and thought, these aren’t in French, so why am I reading them? Then I realized they were in Portuguese. Later, there was some actual verbal explanation in French as the Portuguese subtitles continued. Trying to listen to French and read Portuguese is enough to stretch the mind a little for a good ol’ ‘Merican boy.
That you knew it was Portuguese counts for something. More than I could have said.
The French I could follow a little. Sad.
I was surprised by how much I could read. I have neglected my Portuguese since studying it many years ago.