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Ave Explores Series | Art and Architecture | Week 1
Dreaming a Catholic Aesthetic
The Power of Art to Transform
by J.D. Childs
“Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”
—Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists, 1999
I am a Catholic because I see the world with God-soaked eyes. For me, the world is a place of infinite possibility for encountering God. Ours is a world of grace.
Physical reality can convey the goodness of creation and demonstrate the majesty of the Creator by expressing beauty, power, and might.
Beauty puts us in touch with that longing within ourselves to be made whole. Beauty’s power—through sounds and words, colors and shapes—opens new worlds and reveals those hidden depths. Through its impact on us, it italicizes that we are bodies and souls. We are flesh and we are spirit, destined for newness of life.
I remember first learning from my friend and mentor Br. Michel Bettigole, O.S.F., about Andy Warhol’s devotion to the Eucharist and belief in the Real Presence through his extended treatment of the Last Supper, especially his Wise potato chip version (view the artwork here.) We learn in school that daVinci’s The Last Supper captures the moment when Christ says, “This is my body.” And so, when we see Warhol’s depiction of that famous moment, replete with superimposed commercial images, our first thought may well be sacrilege. But Warhol believed one of the purposes of art was to help us see with new eyes. By taking a familiar image and making it different, even shocking, he knew that he could invite us to see the image with a new sense of curiosity and wonder. The Wise potato chip logo on the Last Supper is a reminder to avoid allowing our religious symbolism to become stale. Maybe it is an invitation to engage with our religious ritual in way that imbues meaning and purpose, even devotion, far beyond our everyday eating. Perhaps it invites us to consider the ways that we choose to be nourished through consumerism or through the precious and sacred. Maybe it shows us to learn to look past banal distractions in order to access dimensions of meaning that instruct and inspire, challenge and provoke, asking us to inquire whose body it is and for what purpose?
The burning of the Notre-Dame Cathedral last April had precisely that same impact on me. I first studied elements of French gothic architectural style, especially the transcendent cathedral in Paris, as a freshman in Fr. Bly’s high school religion class. In the wake of the fire, I read more about the cathedral’s art and reflected on its architectural forms, provoking my mind to rise through its material goods to apprehension of the divine. I encountered the immense beauty of the structure as a paean to the Divine, as a revelatory vehicle, in my shocked rereading of articles in The New York Times last April. I saw that ecclesial monument anew for the first time in thirty-six years because I was seeing it differently. It challenged and inspired me in new ways only after being destroyed.
In a speech called “Beauty Will Save the World,” given when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reflected that beauty “is like that small mirror of legend: you look into it but instead of yourself you glimpse for a moment the Inaccessible, a realm forever beyond reach. And your soul begins to ache.” In attempting to describe the salvific dimension of beauty, especially as expressed in a work of art, Solzhenitsyn identifies its uncanny power, pointing out that beauty “prevails even over a resisting heart. In vain does one repeat what the heart does not find sweet.”
I surround myself with beautiful things and especially those that hold personal memories. Typically, these are objets d'art that I have purchased on a trip or an adventure. Oftentimes, items I collect have religious significance. But the connection among the item itself, the religious symbolism it conveys, and the story that is able to emerge is powerful for me. The items are like talismans that transport and connect me to lessons and truths borne of my experiences. They hold power to facilitate reflections that enrich my moral and spiritual life. I think of a metal cross I once purchased at a monastery in Iowa, or an artifact from the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome, or a fluorescent chalk drawing of Jesus given to me by a former student, or an icon of Mary given to me by my late mother-in-law, or a crucifix my wife and I chose after Mass in a small Mexican village a few years back.
I live in Oakland, California, and love to take visitors and guests to Mass downtown at the Cathedral of Christ the Light. For me, the architecture and the theology are profoundly provocative. That Cathedral is just so different that it captivates my imagination. My mind and vision is elevated in the Cathedral, where I pray as if I’m immersed in the tomb of Jonah’s great fish, longing for release in the Eucharistic resurrection. I’m confronted by the gigantic Omega window presenting a foreign image of Christ, an image at once elusive and older, inviting me to reconsider my assumptions, hearing Christ whisper, “who do you say that I am?” And all the while, breathing light, bathed in light, eyes uplifted, longing in that lighted space praying before Christ the Light.
Interior of Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, CA, Skier Dude, 11/05/2008
Last Christmas, I purchased a piece of art called Supermadone by a French artist named Christophe Stouvenel (view the artwork here). The underlayer is comprised of a collage of images from the news that indicate war and strife. Overlaid on the stories and images is a spray-painted, stenciled blue Madonna emblazoned with the red and yellow ‘S’ from the famed caped crusader. This is superhero mythology and power from comic book culture, where good battles evil in modern-day morality plays stamped on deep religious reflection about the power of Mary, Theotokos, precisely in her prayerful and humble origins. Rays of grace echoing the typology of the Virgin of Guadalupe surround her, the rays of the miracle at Tepeyec, the first indigeneous representation of Mary, rays overriding and overlaid atop the media warnings. A stenciled HOPE, hidden amidst the rays, reminds us of the conviction we share in faith that the superpower of humility and authenticity always conquers prolific violence in the end. I never cease to be transported by my reflection upon and appreciation of this compelling work of art, SuperMadonna.
Beauty’s effects on us disclose our spiritual destiny. Art that conveys beauty uplifts our sensibilities, inspires our apprehension, provokes insight, mediates encounters, maddens, heals, gladdens, reveals, discloses epiphanies, and uncovers longing. Art that conveys beauty provides powerful experiences to deepen our faith and grow in our interior spiritual lives.
In a Homily on Love (Homily 8, “Such Love), St. Bonaventure indicated that just as a mirror reflects whatever likeness approaches it, the human soul, like an angel, is transformed into whatever it gazes towards. In other words, what we focus on—how we spend our time and our attention—indicates profoundly who we become in life. The soul is transformed into whatever it looks upon. And so it is a profound opportunity in life to seek connection with works of art that have the power to convey meaning and grace, that hold revelatory power, and facilitate an encounter with our living God who gives us eyes to see and makes us new.
Download this article as a PDF here.
J.D. Childs is a veteran educator and president of Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California.
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