Theology and the Arts

1
Theology and the Arts

• By Richard Viladesau

Paulist Press, 2000
2
Chapter 1 God and the Beautiful Art as a Way
to God
Van Gogh Enclosed Wheatfield with Rising Sun
3
Unify-ing Motif

• Beauty as revelation (cf. Tillichs Primary
  Revelation)
• Art as the human mediation that both enables and
  limits its revelatory power (5) (cf. Tillichs
  Dependent Revelation)

Thomas Cole--The Connecticut River Near
Northhamton
4
Art

• The minds apprehension of God
• Cf. Tillichs Subjective Reason
• Gods self-revelation through creation (13)
• Cf. Tillichs Objective Reason

Paul Cezánne--Mount Saint Victor
5
Trope Revelation All is Number, from The
Hidden Sky

• Music and Lyrics by Mark Foley

6

• The Hidden Sky is set in a post-apocalyptic world
  where scientific and technological advancement
  have been outlawed, mathematical computation is a
  heresy, and seeking knowledge is forbidden, in
  order to protect humanity from destroying itself
  again. Ganil, the protagonist, has been recruited
  by a group of underground scientists who have
  taught her mathematics. On her own, she discovers
  a miraculous set of numbers when rendered
  graphically, the series creates a particular type
  of spiral which can be found throughout the
  natural world. Ganil is completely transformed
  by her realization that numbers lie beneath all
  the wonders in the world.

7

• From the numbers comes the series,
• Comes the ratio, the Golden Mean,
• The balance and the link between
• The shapes that form the spiral.
• A graceful web around me, weaving all around me,
• Weaving into everything around me
• A graceful web emerging from a single thread,
• And the thread is number, a single thread of
  number.

8

• Passing through me, passing under me and over me
• and in and out and then around and back again
• All creation from a single thread,
• That pulls me in my heart, that passes through my
  head,
• That pulls me so I follow where Im led
• On from zero into one and moving higher, passing
  one, two three, and higher still,
• And higher still, and higher to infinity

9

• From the spiral in the heavens to the spiral in
  the seashell, from the swirling of the clouds to
  the whirling water, in the cabbage and the corn,
  from the spiral in the seashell to the spiral in
  the rams horn, in the fist, in the ear, on the
  tip of your finger, all is number.
• From the leaves of the linden to the needles on
  the pinetree, in the leaves of the elm and the
  oak and apple, all is number.

10

• Oh, I must have been sleeping,
• I must have been sleeping,
• I must have been sleeping,
• But Im wide awake now.
• In the eye of the spiral, all around me the one
  great thought, the one great thought,
• The Absolute, the Truly Real
• Its coming out of my head and into my heart, and
  out of my heart and into my head, coming out of
  my heart
• Nothing is random at all!

• Two petals on the nightshade,
• Three petals on the iris,
• Five petals on the daisy,
• All is number
• All is number

11

• Where there is a pattern, there is a purpose.
• There is a pattern!
• There is a purpose!
• An undeniable design

• One mind
• One plan
• One thought

In the spiral in the heavens, yes! In the spiral
in the seashell, yes! In the swirling of the
clouds and the whirling water, yes! Yes!
12

• Three petals on the iris, five petals on the
  buttercup, yes! Eight petals on the daisy, yes!
  Yes! Yes! Yes!O, the Absolute, the Truly Real,
  the Beautiful, the SimplicityI believe, I
  believe, I believe, I believe that

• All is number, all is number. I believe, I
  believe, yes! O, the wonder, O the love, the law,
  the Absolute, the Beautiful, the Simplicity, the
  passionate creation of God!

13

• I have seen the face of God!
• One plan, there is one foundation
• I believe that I have seen the face of God!
• One mind, behind all creation
• Praise God for my longing heart!
• Praise God for my sacred part in the infinite
  art
• Praise be to the mind of God!
• Praise be to the mind of God!

14

• Back before the stars were hung,
• God spoke in His native tongue
• symbol and sign.
• Then the light of the glorious sun unfurled,
• And in symbol and sign, God wrote the world.
• All is number
• In symbol and sign, God wrote the world.

15
Fritz Eichenburg Christ of the Breadlines

• Christian solidarity with the poor and suffering,
  symbolized by the spirituality of the cross,
  introduces a hermeneutic of suspicion to our
  experience of the world and its beauties. (52)

16
he had no beauty in him

• The Christian message is not merely that God is
  lovely, but that God is love not merely that God
  is to be found in the pursuit of what is
  attractive and desirable in the world, but that
  God is transcendently and absolutely beautiful
  and is to be found even in what to the worlds
  eye is ugly and deformed and unworthy. (52-3)

Van Gogh Head of a Peasant Woman
17
Eschatological perspective

• Beautyattains its full meaning only in the light
  of the final, total order and harmony of Gods
  kingdom, the triumph of Gods love over the evil,
  sorrow, and pain, the ugliness and disorder that
  we now experience in an incomplete and still
  evolving world. (53)

Fra Angelico The Transfiguration
18
Chapter 2 Paradigms in Theology and Art
Michelangelo David (1504)
19
(No Transcript)
20
Berninis David (1624)
21
Hellenistic realism
realistic not in an ordinary visual sense but in
a Platonic sense its purpose is to portray not
what is seen but what is known by faith not the
world of physical appearances, but the world of
religious truths not material objects but
spiritual reality. (84)
22
The really real is transcendental.

• Hellenistic thought takes a Platonic view
• Things of the material world are shadows or
  images that refer to and to some degree
  participate in the divine Mind. (97)
• Cf. the Parable of the Cave

23
Duccio di Buoninsegna (fl. 12781319) Last Supper
24
Giotto di Bondone (1267?-1337) Last Supper
25
Caravaggio The Supper at Emmaus
26
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) Supper at Emmaus
27
I think, therefore I am.

• The knowing subject is the starting point of
  philosophical reflection.

René Descartes
28
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) The Luncheon of
the Boating Party
29
(No Transcript)
30
Vincent van Gogh Starry Night (1889)
31
the structure of the world

• Per Ortega, with Cézanne painting recovers volume
  and attention to shapes. (92)

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
32
Still Life
33
The really real is transcendental.

• Hellenistic thought takes a Platonic view
• Things of the material world are shadows or
  images that refer to and to some degree
  participate in the divine Mind. (97)
• Cf. the Parable of the Cave

34
From Cézanne onwards, painting paints only ideas.
(92)

• Cézanne and Gauguin represent a rebellion, based
  on the conviction that art must be revelatory.
  (92)

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
35
Spirit of the Dead Watching
36
The real world is invisible

• Painting, like music, should devote itself not
  to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but to
  the expression of the artists soul. (93)

Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944
37
Composition 6
38
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) Blue Plane
39
Salvador Dali Christ of St. John of the Cross
40
Sacrament of the Last Supper
41
Edvard Munch (1863-1944) The Scream
42
Chapter 3 Art as a Theological Text
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Starry Night (1889)
43
Art as Locus of the Faith Tradition
Sandro Botticelli (1444?-1510) Annunciation
44
Different realms of meaning

• Spirituality
• Transcendence
• Preaching and worship
• Common sense and imagination
• Conceptual theology
• Theory and intellectual interiority
• Popular piety and official doctrine

Campin, Robert (13781444) Annunciation
45
(No Transcript)
46
Localization conveys theological truth and
relevance.
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) The Feast in the House
of Levi
47
the sorting out of conflicts within the
Christian tradition
James Christensen Jonah
48
The encounter with the plurality of images in the
tradition can be liberating insofar as it allows
us to imagine differently.
James Tissot Journey of the Magi (1894)
Edvard Munch Madonna (1906)
49
Pictures become an auxiliary text, an
interpretive gloss that consciously or
unconsciously bears a further dimension of
message. (143)
Fra Angelico Crucifixion with Sts. Dominic and
Jerome
50
Art as Visible Reflection of the Divine Beauty
and Mystery
Van Gogh View of Arles with Irises
51
The Beautiful

• is itself a word about God and of God, even when
  it is not explicitly tied to the sacred.
• In sacred art, then, we encounter not only the
  beauty of the salvific message, but also the
  beauty of form in general. (144-5)

Boticelli Annunciation
52
Tradition

• Roman Catholic theology consistently affirms that
  there is a genuine knowledge of God through
  creation and human history--a self-manifestation
  of God attainable independently of explicit
  biblical revelation. (146)

Fra Angelico The Stoning of St. Stephen
53
Not simply sensible pleasure
Matthias Grünewald (Died 1528) The Crucifixion
54
Limitations of Art as Text and as Revelatory Word

• Symbols and representations do not necessarily
  yield their original meaning easily, even when
  they have a positive aesthetic or spiritual
  effect. (157)

55
Sacramentality vs. Idolatry

• The iconoclast controversy highlighted the need
  to distinguish between sacred arts
  sacramentality and the widespread notion of the
  religious image as the material abode of the
  deity or repository of divine power.(159)

56
Sacramentals

• Things or acts that are used as aids to the
  Churchs principle acts of worship and
  fellowship. (158)

57
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) The Creation
of Man (detail)
58

• The concreteness and specificity of the work of
  art are an integral part of its power but at the
  same time they can also overdetermine its message.

59
(No Transcript)
60

• Signs may draw attention to themselves as signs,
  rather that to what they represent. (162)

61
Anti-signs The Opiate of the People
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825- 1905) The
Thanks Offering
Karl Marx (1818-1883)