Good news from Lancaster

Tonight we went to Mass at the Lancaster University Chaplaincy. The Mass was celebrated by our bishop, +Campbell, and the occasion was the blessing of the new Fresco: a reredos that has transformed what used to look like a barn into something that is palpably Catholic.

The image is of the Transfiguration, and shows Christ in the centre, with Moses on his right and Elijah on his left. Beyond Moses is St John, and beyond Elijah, St Peter and St James.

On each seat in the chapel was a beautifully produced and informative leaflet about the fresco.

The fresco was the inspiration of the wonderful young chaplain, Fr Philip Conner, and was painted by Aidan Hart in April of this year. 

The bishop preached a sermon on the Catholic patronage of the arts, and we were treated to some excellent music, as well.
It was a treat to belt out Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise, and Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, and the choir also performed motets by Bruckner, Mozart and Arcadelt (I hadn't heard his Ave Maria for about forty years, and very moving it was). They found the Byrd Four Part Mass rather harder than they had foreseen: a shame, as it is quite wonderful when well sung. 

This was a very uplifting occasion. It was a treat to be in the eldest 10% of the congregation for a change, and to see the reverence of the altar team, and indeed of the student body in general: the holiness of their chaplain clearly has an effect. And it is inspiring to see an investment in art of real quality to transform the chapel into a place that inspires us to lift our hearts and minds to God by the beauty of the setting.

You can see a time-lapse video of the painting of the fresco (two weeks work in two minutes), here. 

And here is Byrd's four part Mass, as a treat!

Icons

I have just heard from Sr Petra Clare about some icons she is painting for us, of the children's patron saints. This is very exciting, of course (and the children don't know about them, unless they stumble across this, which seems unlikely).

But it reminds me that it is a long time since I plugged her work (see here for example), so I thought I should give her another mention. 

Here is an example of her work: a rather wonderful Annunciation. 

More may be seen on her website here. If ever you are stuck for a gift for an important occasion for a Catholic friend, an icon is a wonderful thing to give - and to receive.

The Heresy of Worshiptainment

I saw a link on Facebook to an article called The Heresy of Worshiptainment, along with a comment by a Catholic saying that it was good as far as it goes, given it is written from a Protestant perspective.

I partly agree. The emphasis on entertainment in liturgy is a corruption, and many attempts at stimulating participation fall foul of this. But even from a Protestant perspective I think it a bit lacking.  From a Catholic perspective, of course, it lacks a great deal. 

At the heart of Catholicism is the imitation of Christ. Christ, of course, included reading the scriptures, but also singing the Psalms. He taught us to adore, He taught us to pray the Our Father, and He taught us to invoke the Holy Spirit.  He told us to offer the bread and wine that become His Body and His Blood, and He offered the sacrifice of His life to the Father. He instituted and consecrated the Catholic apostolic priesthood to continue this Saving Work.

Not unnaturally, the Catholic Mass includes all of these elements, and any Protestant service, however full of worship, is lacking at the highest and deepest levels: adoration, the Sacrifice of Calvary made present, and the Real Presence received in Holy Communion.

Christ also ratified, through the Incarnation, the principle that our bodies, as well as our minds, hearts, and souls are important. So the bodily, or even sensory, aspects of our religion are also important. That is why  sacred music has always been an essential element of Catholic liturgy and sacred art an important part of our ecclesiastical buildings. We are not, after all, puritans - and perhaps that is the other error implicit in this article.

Beauty and Truth

It is rare for me to read an editorial of the Tablet with enthusiasm (and I thank Edmund Adamus for pointing this out). But this editorial on Beauty pointing the way to God strikes me as very good.

My regular reader will recall my fumbling attempts to grope my way to some sort of understanding of the importance of aesthetics - and particularly the claim that one can make objective evaluations of the quality of art- which culminated here.

But the Tablet leader reminded me of something else, tangentially related, and that is the effect of holiness on artists. I am not really qualified to talk about the effect on visual artists of painting Madonnas etc, nor even the effect of musicians of composing Masses and sacred music. I am sure my enlightened, educated an esteemed readership will be able to contribute examples.

But I have been struck by the way in which writers, normally unsympathetic to the Church, have been moved to write very sympathetically and often with great insight, when they come to address holy themes - or holy people.

A few examples spring to mind. Anouilh and l'Alouette (The Lark) his play about St Joan of Arc; and Robert Bolt, with A Man for all Seasons. Even the Python team, who had intended to write a pastiche of the Life of Our Lord; when they read the Gospels, they realised that they did not want to mock Christ, so they invented Brian, a separate character caught up in the turbulent religious and political complexities of the time.

We (or at least, I) often think about the ennobling effect of art on the viewer or listener; but perhaps we (or at least, I) have not thought enough about the effect on the artist.

Bow, Bow, ye Lower Middle Classes!

I started my musings about art and truth prompted by the poor quality of liturgical music, and now I find that I have come full circle, thanks to a comment on Twitter by @cumlazaro, of the excellent Cum Lazaro blog.

He tweeted: ‘It’s perfectly clear that, objectively, a lot of Catholic music is extremely poor, both liturgically and aesthetically. And that matters.’

Which made me reflect that there is something else I think worthy of comment. This is not directly about the quality of music, or art, but rather our (societal, and specifically ecclesiastical, and more specifically clerical) attitudes to that question.

My Parish Priest, for example, would not deny (I think) that most of the music perpetrated during liturgies at our church is pretty poor aesthetically, both in conception and in execution. However, he has little interest in changing that. Because his criterion of what is good liturgically is based on a different standard, one that over-rules all other considerations, and that is participation.

This widely misunderstood concept is the trump card: every other standard bows, when it is paraded.

Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!

Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow, ye masses,

Blow the trumpets, bang the brasses,

Tantantara! Tzing, boom!

That is why we endure readers who cannot read out loud without mutilating the text with misreadings and misleading prosody. It is why the Mass must be disrupted so that the children back from their ‘children’s liturgy,’ may parade in the sanctuary with their drawings. It is why icons written by masters who have studied the tradition for decades are out, whereas felt banners produced by parishioners with more time than taste are in. It is also why we endure poor music, poorly performed.

The notion that we might participate better by experiencing beauty than by engaging in banality is completely incomprehensible to many priests educated since the Second Vatican Council.

The notion of training the laity, and particularly selecting those with aptitude, to use higher levels of skill, would be seen as elitism, and excluding. Anathema sit!

And of course, if they do put their toe in the water, and have one piece of chant at Mass, they get complaints from the usual suspects, and announce, ruefully, that they were right and that ‘the people’ don’t like that kind of thing. (My post on Junk food and junk music refers…)

Artisprudence

This is why I love blogging. I thought I had said all I had to say about objectivity and art, over the last week or so, in a series of blog posts, starting here.  Then Ttony and Part Time Pilgrim left comments on one of my posts, pushing me, and making me take my thinking further. I was already dimly aware of my underlying thoughts here: the criteria of truth and beauty refer, and some of the comments on Twitter also, about the recognition of beauty, really resonated.

So here is where I am up to...

I maintain that my approach is not gnosticism but rather its opposite. That is, I believe one can discern that there is a Natural Aesthetic similar to Natural Law. It is written in our hearts, but obscured by Original Sin, miseducation, current intellectual fashions etc. Hence the educational programme is firstly wide exposure and the stripping  away of the barriers.

Thus my posts on criteria were more like a primitive jurisprudence. We recognise the Natural Law intuitively, if we are both honest and undamaged. We know it is wrong to lie, to commit adultery, to murder and so forth. But it can get complex and there are certainly moot points, or at least points worthy of discussion (the issue of lying to expose evil in abortion clinics was one such recently). So jurisprudence is developed over the years: the collected wisdom of generations in determining how law applies in particular cases, and the extrapolation of broader principles from that, always subservient (if it is good jurisprudence) the the Natural Law and (if it is Christian jurisprudence) the Divine Law.

Likewise, I think that we recognise beauty and truth intuitively, if we are both honest and undamaged (or healed). We know that admiring the wonder of the stars, the mountains and valleys, the oceans and landscapes, in which we find ourselves, or the dewdrops on a spider's web, the snowdrop peeping through the snow, the snowflake itself, and so many more things in between, is not a mere subjective notion. These things are worthy of admiration, because they are the artistic works of the Creator. Human art is sub-creation, as Tolkien was keen to point out, and as such when it works, it reflects Him and His work. 

All my attempts to identify or define good art are really groping towards that fundamental truth. I have decided to call this approach Artisprudence, for the obvious reason. 

I am not the first to coin the term but can only find two prior uses of it. One is in Scholae Academicae an account of changes in the University of Cambridge during Victorian times, by Christopher Wordsworth, published in 1877. He uses the term once and does not seek to define it. The other use is as the title of a short story, written c. 2004 by Christopher Rowe, and revised in 2008.  I have not read either work, but believe I can adopt the word to my use for the obvious etymological reasons.

I would also suggest that our nervousness around this topic, that terrible fear of snobbery, elitism and so forth, is very much a product of our current intellectual and moral climate; and that we should not be afraid to stand up for absolute truth and objective reality in this sphere, any more than in any other - though we must necessarily be humble about claiming that we know what it is.

AMDG

An Artistic Education

All this talk of art and music, and especially my passing comment about the need for education in order to discern the good from the bad, made me reflect on what I meant by education in this context, and indeed on my own artistic education.

By artistic education, I don't mean teaching This is the canon: Shakespeare at the top and the rest in some sort of hierarchy beneath him;  or Mozart at the top at the top and the rest in some sort of hierarchy beneath him; or Leonardo da Vinci  at the top and the rest in some sort of hierarchy beneath him...

I think it a gentler and more reflective process; as much to do with exposure, the removal of barriers, and perhaps the discussion of context and why and how some works get their effects, why some are perceived as great, and so on.

The result of that may be an educated taste that goes a little deeper than the immediacy of an uneducated taste. I have likened this before to weaning children off a diet of junk food. 

If the only music a child is ever exposed to is what's currently in the charts, or used in advertisements, or accompanying tv programmes or computer games, it is pretty pointless to expect him or her, at first hearing, to enjoy the Beethoven string quartets, beautiful though they are.

I make no secret of the fact that the visual arts are not my forte. All I learned in art classes at school was that I cannot draw: a conviction it took me many years to shed. (For anyone similarly afflicted, I recommend Betty Edwards' book, Drawing on the Left Side of the Brain). However, I was fortunate that an enlightened General Studies teacher told me to go to the National Gallery and choose a painting, and look at it for thirty minutes. That seemed a tall order, but I decided to give it a go, and stood in front of one of Monet's paintings of waterlilies.

Prior to that experience, I had always preferred photographic realism: the more like the real thing it looked, the better I thought it was. Monet taught me to look differently.

My musical education was richer. My father was a fine pianist, so from earliest childhood I would go to sleep to the sound of him playing Bach, or Schubert, or Chopin, or Rachmaninov or... Then as a schoolboy I joined a good church choir, and quickly learned to love early polyphony. It was very obvious to me that Byrd, Tallis, Gibbons and so on were doing something rather more wonderful than Gregory Murray, Wilfrid Trotman or Joseph Gelineau.


Strangely (or perhaps not, given the historical context, early 1970s) we sang almost no chant. All I can remember is a version of the Ave Maris Stella, with alternate chant and polyphonic verses, which was magnificent. We also sang some Duruflé, based on chant melodies, which was also ravishing.  But my love of chant comes much later in my musical education, and is based on obedience to the Church, and then the discipline of learning to sing it, and, eventually, falling in love with it.

As I wrote that, I suddenly wondered how we have educated the children, artistically. They have not had the same opportunities as me: no good church choir locally, no National Gallery... But I think we have managed to achieve the same basics via different means. They have all learned to play at least two instruments to a reasonable standard, and played in the school orchestra and various other ensembles, which has given them a fairly good exposure to a broad repertoire. It must be a product of Original Sin that their musical taste (like mine) remains execrable. But while they may, for choice, fill their playlists with Disney songs, they genuinely enjoy it when we get the opportunity to go to a concert and hear, dare I say it, good music.

In the visual arts, their school education has been very much better than mine was; and not only have they learned to draw and paint, but they have been encouraged to do artists' copies, which again has exposed them to a range of works, and some understanding of both aesthetics and technique. In that field, as in so many, they are ahead of me.

And in literature, I do my best with them. Again, they read a ton of junk, but in between they occasionally read something worth reading; and again, genuinely enjoy the live screenings from the National or RSC (we saw the Broadway production of 'Of Mice and Men' this week, and very good it was too. And Dominique loved it).

So, a long and rambling post, but I think the point I am edging towards making is that the need for education to appreciate and evaluate art is not some induction into a world of snobbery; but rather a truly Catholic approach that exposes one to a wide range of works, and that good learning will ensue.

Jackson Pollock and Historical Perspective

In the second of my two recent posts (here and here) about reaching an objective judgement about the quality of works of art  (and in particular, music) I proposed some criteria for reaching such a judgement.

I also mentioned that Jackson Pollock's name had been mentioned in this regard, and now I want to return to that, and as a result propose one further criterion.

I do not like Pollock's work. I find it does not move me; I am not sure what it is trying to do, and therefore cannot evaluate how well it does it. I question whether it really demonstrates any skill, or any insight. So, in my judgement, it does not meet many of the criteria I proposed. However, I also recognise that all of that is a subjective perspective, and at least in part based on my ignorance. Others clearly think it is art of stature.

I compare my reaction to Pollock with my reaction to Mondrian. At first glance, I had a similar view of Mondrian's work; but the more I see of it, (particularly originals - his work does not reproduce well, I find) the more I question that. I think he really is onto something, though I would struggle to say what.

But again, I recognise that is a subjective view. And there is (a large) part of me that wonders if most modern art has lost its way, and is pulling a fast one, as it were. And that too is a subjective view.

So I am prepared to hold fire, and not have a strong opinion (well, I do on Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, but the less said about them, the better). Nor do I find there are many cultural or artistic critics in whom I have sufficient confidence to accept their judgements pro or contra. 

The same is true of some modern music: serialism does nothing for me, for example. But that may be a failing in me, not least due to a lack of education and understanding.

But the most important additional criterion, I think, is the judgment of time. Artistic judgements are subject to fashion. Even Shakespeare was out of vogue for a period, and during the Restoration there was a marked trend to improve his plays to conform to current tastes. But over time that shakes down: the genius of Beethoven or Van Gogh is clearer with historical perspective.

So I am happy to remain agnostic about Pollock and Mondrian, and let our descendants be the judges. But that does not, I think, detract from my central thesis that one can make objective statements about the quality of art. It just suggests that education, understanding and perspective may all be necessary in order to do so.

Some criteria for discernment...

In yesterday's post I spent most of my time making the easier part of my case for being able to claim that some pieces of music are intrinsically, objectively, better than others. That was the argument from craftsmanship.

That alone, I think, suffices to justify my claim.

However the second part of the case I treated rather lightly, though in fact I think it the more important aspect. I wrote: 'I would also argue that some forms of art are (when well executed) intrinsically better than others (even when well executed).' 

I then exemplified that by citing The Beatles  and P.G. Wodehouse (chosen because in terms of personal taste, they are favourites of mine) in contrast with Mozart, and Shakespeare.

However, I did not argue that case. So here I propose to do just that.

This is, of course (and particularly in our current intellectual climate - a fact I find very significant) a much harder case to make. Arguments of the 'What is Art?', and particularly of the 'What is Great Art?' variety are notoriously difficult.

The modern temperament on this topic is admirably captured at the start of the film Dead Poets Society, when the hero (John Keating, played by Robin Williams) tears up, in contempt, the opening pages of a worthy book on literature that attempts to do this by saying that one can determine great art by multiplying the greatness of the theme by the quality of its execution.

Keating's view, as far as one can gather, is the more fashionable one that great literature is literature that moves one, and that is finally a subjective judgement. That is, I think, the great Romantic conceit: the elevation of personal sensibilities to be the supreme measure of judgement.

That is not to say the the potential of a work of art (including literature or music) to move one is irrelevant: far from it. But it is not the only criterion, any more than 'greatness of theme and the quality of its execution' are the only two.

Since discernment is all the vogue these days (and my readers know how important it is to me to stay with the fashion) I thought I would offer a few criteria for discernment when trying to think about whether a particular work, or indeed a genre, is great.

I offer these with some trepidation, and am certainly open to suggestions for criteria I have missed, or better expression of the ones I have identified. And I make the claim for these criteria that Stoppard makes for the cricket bat in the passage I quoted yesterday: they do not exist because of some conspiracy by the academy, but rather because experience has demonstrated that they work...

My first draft criteria for evaluating a work of art as good:

• It does what it sets out to do skilfully
• What it sets out to do is worth doing
• It moves the audience/viewer/reader/listener 
• It moves the audience/viewer/reader/listener repeatedly when engaged with on second and subsequent occasions
• It both demonstrates and provokes insight
• It makes demands on the audience/viewer/reader/listener
• It has some element of novelty or originality
• It mediates truth and beauty (though that may be in the negative way: eg demonstration of evil at work etc)

I think that interesting, as one can then see both why a successful soap opera or a good pop song works (eg it does what it sets out to do skilfully, it has some element of novelty or originality, it moves the audience) and also why it is unlikely to be watched or listened to again by succeeding generations (it may not meet many of the other criteria).

I am also interested in the fact that many people will find this a difficult argument to swallow, but want to think further about that before I write too much more.

And I am also interested in the link between this argument, and C S Lewis' The Abolition of Man, but again, I want to reflect further on that before committing myself (others, of course, think I should have been committed years ago, but that's another story...)

All Saints' Day

Of course, the bishops in England and Wales have the authority to move the local celebration of the Feast of All Saints to the nearest Sunday.

Of course, they were unwise to do so.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to celebrate the Feast on its time-hallowed day - the day on which our forefathers have celebrated it for centuries, and indeed the day on which most of the Catholic Church celebrates it even now.

So Mrs T and I went to Preston, to St Walburge's, for Mass this morning: in the Extraordinary Form, we keep the traditional calendar. It was wonderful to be able to do so, but also sad to see how few went to Mass for the Feast. Given what a centre of the Faith Preston has always been, I had hoped to see more than twenty people at Mass, particularly as today is one of the great Feasts of the Church's year.

On the feast of All Saints, we honour all those who have achieved their heavenly goal, known and especially unknown; and we ask for their intercession as we, the Church militant, struggle on.

Here is Victoria's wonderful setting of O Quam Gloriosum Est:

O quam gloriosum est regnum,

in quo cum Christo gaudent omnes Sancti!

Amicti stolis albis,

sequuntur Agnum, quocumque ierit.

Oh, how glorious is the kingdom

in which all the saints rejoice with Christ!

Clad in robes of white,

they follow the Lamb wherever he may go.

--

After Mass, Mrs T and I spent the day in Preston. We visited the beautiful Jesuit Church, and then went to the Harris Museum, which has a fine collection of art, a fascinating costume gallery, as well as many other artefacts of interest. It is also currently curating an exhibition of Marian Clayden's work, which I enjoyed much more than I had feared. Not only had I not known she was a native of Preston, I had never even heard of her. (Don't tell Mrs T, to whom I nodded sagely when she suggested we should look in on the exhibition!)

Memorial for unborn children

This is the work of a Slovakian art student, Martin Hudáček.


I think it speaks for itself.


H/t and fuller story: LifeSiteNews

Pictures for Mysteries

In a recent post I mentioned meditating on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary using Art.  A friend has given me a couple of wonderful books: one is the Annunciation and the other is the Crucifixion, as represneted in art. Both contain hundreds of images from the 5th century to the present.  

They are both fabulous books, and provide a rich source of images to choose from, to aid your meditation.  I say images, rather than paintings, as they include pictures of statuary, mosaics, stained glass windows and other media, as well as icons and paintings.

Looking at the Annunciation first; there are many favourites are here, of course, such as Duccio, and Fra Angelico, but there are also many new (to me) things to discover.  I was not familiar with Brice Marden’s Annunciation before (see image), but find it strangely compelling.  There are a few disappointments (there are only so many counter-reformation putti I can take, and Salvador Dalí’s Annunciation leaves me cold), but overall the selection is fabulous, and having them brought together chronologically is fascinating.

Turning to the Crucifixion, it is a similar story: Fra Angelico again turns in a fabulous image, and there's a wonderful Rembrandt etching I hadn't known before. Perhaps there are more pictures in this book which I dislike: but given the subject matter that may, of course, be a good thing.  Incidentally, Dalí’s Crucifixion (based on a drawing by St John of the Cross) is one of his works I really appreciate.

As far as I can see, they are the only two that Phaidon do (but I got bored of looking after checking for Visitation and Nativity, so if you want to prove me wrong: here’s your opportunity).  But they are both rich sources for meditation on these particular mysteries.

Meditating on these Mysteries - in Art

As I continue on my journey into the mysteries of the most holy Rosary, I was delighted to discover a series of articles at Crisis Magazine, on praying the Rosary through Art.  (I should give a H/t to whoever it was on Twitter who pointed them out, but carelessly, I have not kept the link and can't remember: apologies, if you are reading this: feel free to take the credit (and add any observations) in the Comms box.)

As ours is a religion of Incarnation, use of visual imagery to stimulate prayer and meditation is both apposite and valuable.

There are pictures and commentaries on:

The Joyful Mysteries

The Sorrowful Mysteries

The Glorious Mysteries

There are none on the Luminous Mysteries (and I’ll come back to that).

Many of the works of art are familiar, some are new (at least to me).

And some I like, but others are not my favourite representations of a particular mystery (Poussin’s Assumption, for example, really doesn’t do anything for me).

Which leads to a new game: collecting one’s favourite artistic representations of each mystery: and that, of course, means one can add in the Luminous Mysteries, should one wish to do so.

Anyone with particular favourite paintings of any of the mysteries, feel free to add them in the comms box.  Who knows, maybe one day I’ll list them all...