But then again, one might begin to make suggestions that the bourgeoisie in the West have embraced baroque and folk Catholic art as perfectly acceptable. My boss, a wealthy white male who is an agnostic that reads Zen literature, keeps a poster of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the office restroom at work.
Could not the same argument be made about Byzantine Iconography?
14 comments:
I like the Ochlophobist, in that he seems like a decent and intelligent man in an age when most people are either complete dolts or out-and-out scoundrels. He does, however, have an annoying tendency to make great, sweeping remarks of general condescension that are too much to swallow.
Since I no longer comment on the Ochlophobist's blog, I guess here I will post one brief remark here.
In the whole post, I never saw whether he would concede if Sylvia Plath was a great poet or not, or if Philip Glass is a good composer, etc. If they are, then I really don’t see where the fire’s at. If they aren’t they should just say so. And as for Daniel Mitsui, even to the mildly educated Christian, dismissing most Renaissance art as "shit" seems to be characteristic of a person whose mind is too clouded by ideology and personal baggage to see things clearly. I would hope that this is not really the case.
For all we know, the person who painted the icon of the Virgin of the Three Hands was a child molesting pervert who stole his paint brushes. Does it matter, really? It sounds a little pharisaical to drag out artists' lives in order to judge their aesthetic worth. Does that mean that I have to be a saint in order to write a novel? Does that mean that I have to be a Christian in good standing in order to be appreciated as a poet? Does that mean that Owen can't read Chesterton or C.S. Lewis anymore, since both were "graceless heretics"? Last time I checked, for the early Church, heresy was far worse a sin then any of the sins against the flesh. But then again, the former do not offend bourgeois sensibilities as much as the latter. For the "Christian" conservative, as long as the person is "decent" and makes pretensions of loving Jesus, that means they are acceptable and date I say it, "wholesome".
So I say, cast the first stone. Attacking modernism is not the same as being a Christian, even if it scores you brownie points with the reactionary peanut gallery.
Actually the icon displayed is not Orthodox.
It's by Robert Lenz, I believe, who has made a number of icons representing non-Orthodox personages and themes.
Nothing wrong with this but it does anger some Orthodox who think icons and iconography only belong to them.
Mr. Och does have the habit of making rather broad statements, that have a tiny bit of merit, but his "anti-Western" bias oftem makes him miss the forest for the tree he's pointing to.
Evagrius,
I'm aware of the psuedo-Icon's provenance... I've also seen his "icon" of Harvey Milk.
I showed the image because the Ochlophobist was making a broad generalization about Catholic art being co-opted by bourgeoisie bohemians and I wanted to hint that perhaps the same was true of Orthodox artistic forms.
Sorry...my "irony" indicator was off.
I'm more intrigued by what could be called "fictional" icons- icons of fictitious or semi-fictitious personages or events.
Most know about St. George and the Dragon but modern ones are around- the latest being Peter the Aleut, ( in the U.S.), and the last Tsar and his family in Russia being martyred by the Communist.
For Peter see;
http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2007/2007-3.html
No need to go too much about the Tsar- it's controversial enough.
The Peter story is fascinating though.
No worries, Evagrius...
Fr. Seraphim Rose stated that the image of the Antichrist, referred to in Rev. 13:14-15, would be a Byzantine Ikon of Christ. While perhaps some artistic styles are more capable than others of being truly ikonographic, to suggest that only one style has such a capacity borders, at best, on idolatry.
As an aside, a ROCOR priest of my acquaintance collects Coptic-style ikons. However, he is reluctant to share this with his bishop, fearing what the latter's reaction might be.
Sean,
The image I refer to, and the image a comment maker in the thread refers to, and any host of other images used in the same light, is an actual image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Lenz is not writing Byzantine icons, though he certainly puts forth a caricature of the style, and in my young Catholic Worker days I once owned an icon of his made of Charles de Foucould’s image. I knew friends of Lenz some years ago who spoke of the man's sincerity and I make no claim against it. But in the context of this conversation I would stick to real baroque and real Byzantine, not pop caricature.
But you have a point, broadly speaking. I have written before of the various uses of Byzantine iconography on the part of Evangelicals (book covers, electronic worship aids, etc.). Sure. But what you quote of my post is in response to Arturo's suggestion that Byzantine iconographic "sensibilities" are bourgeois, a point which I concede in my post to a degree and in a certain context. I respond to this by pointing out that folk Mexican religious art is also "used" by the bourgeoisie. Emergent churches, I am told, which are about as bourgeois as one can get, borrow much from both Byzantine and Latino pious images. There is also the suggestion in my post that to the degree that the Orthodox desire for the "theological purity" of images might be associated with middle classedness affectations, "incarnationalist" pious art from the "two-thirds" world is far more embraced by the middle classes, broadly speaking, than "theologically pure" Christian art. If would-be middle class valued Christians were in tune with generic middle class values of the day, they would, at least, be no more inclined to convert to Orthodoxy than to Catholicism. In terms of the American economy and class identity, both are today consumer choices. That there are poor hispanic Catholic Americans is circumstance. It does not speak to the nature of Catholicism or of Orthodoxy.
Arturo,
I read this blog. You may, if you wish, leave the comments on my blog, which you are more than welcome to do.
You are the one who mentioned a "vaccine against the passions" with regard to the value of particular arts, and I refer to particular artists’ lives in the context of that statement. If the artist who created the art in question did not benefit from the vaccine created, does this not beg a question? You put the question in moral terms. That said, aesthetic creations are evaluated in the light of persons. You have made adamantly clear that you evaluate certain pious images/practices through the light of your pious grandmother. Yes, a molester can write an image worthy of veneration. But the images written would then be subject to a venerative tradition that is quite beyond the person of the “artist” in question. Modern poetry, art, and painting, especially those you reference, are manifestations of the catharsis of the artists in question. In such cases the merit of the work is far more connected to the personal inclinations of the person behind them than the traditional icon. That said, the person who writes the icon does matter, as you well know. For crying out loud, if you could own an icon written by a person you knew to be holy, or by a person who had molested you, which would you chose to own? Orthodox canons, as you well know, hold icon writers to certain ascetic requirements, and Orthodox assume that a willful ignoring of these requirements will in some fashion bear itself out. Obviously your question regarding my reading of Chesterton and Lewis is hyperbole. I have never suggested that these are graceless heretics (you again and again attempt to paint me in an Orthodox camp to which I do not belong), and even traditionalist Orthodox who use such language usually refer to those who willfully and precisely affirm certain theological positions of Western Christian groups against Orthodox teaching. Lewis posited his admiration of Orthodoxy after his trip to Greece and his George MacDonaldian soteriology at very least was as close to Orthodoxy as one could get without being a proto-Orthodox Anglican along the lines of Hugh Wybrew, and Chesterton in his few comments on Eastern Christianity reveals his utter ignorance thereof (in one instance he goes after the Christian East on the aesthetic basis of clerical beards and black cassocks – if I must dismiss all of his work on the basis of his dismissal of my faith then who is the ideologue here??). As for bourgeois sensibilities, sure, you have those ECUSAs who left after Gene Robinson but who did not leave after Spong, but, then again, you had those who did leave after Spong. It seems to me that your comment, and previous comments, holds to a certain anachronism. The middle classes today are no more interested in sexual morality as they are in theological “purity,” you are playing games to state as much. Sure, some really go after homosexuals, but the place one is most likely to hear a sermon against phariseeism is in a white middle class suburban church. The most common place to hear Laissez-faire morality is in conservative and/or liberal middle class churches. Scads of Evangelical and conservative suburban Catholic parishes are full of twice and thrice marrieds whose kids give each other oral sex, and Presbyterians and Episcopalians, well, yeah, the same or worse. As for non-Christian bourgeois sensibilities, again, they are as concerned with heresy (departure from secularist ideals) as they are with a deviation from their sexual relativism. American middle class folks are not a flock of Matthew Arnolds. Yes, they do not really believe anything, but they also want to have as many orgasms as possible and entertain themselves with media forms that encourage such wants. For the record, of the three artists you mention and I mention in response, I only bring up the sexual perversion of one of them, J.P. And also for the record, my problems with pansexualism are first and foremost theological, as I have made clear in past writings. Again and again I have made clear the many mitigations of culpability regarding those who get caught up in pansexualist praxis. Pansexualism is a religious stance, a broad idolatry, and it is far, far more complex than any given sexual act. As I have made clear Dobson and his ilk are, in this respect, idiots. The problem is not MTV or network sitcoms or this or that legislation. The problem is far deeper than that – the whole basis of modernism is based on a perversion of eroticism (a thesis which I learned and accepted, more or less intact, from E. Michael Jones, an irritating, obnoxious eccentric, yes, also a traditionalist Catholic, what a bad, bad, Orthodox I must be, along with Wendell Berry and Ivan Illich – though I also get some nods from Paul Vitz, whose library I once helped buy, and who is a novus ordo Catholic), and that perversion is so pervasive that the right wing of the culture war, or at least the bulk of them, do not get it. But to be a person who is concerned about pansexualism does not mean that one is given to such simplistic views of “wholesomeness” as you suggest. Sure, there are plenty of white Baptist kept women with big hair in Dallas who are what you suggest, but, believe it or not, there are people who seriously uphold chastity whose standards of wholesomeness in some recognizable manner correspond to a traditional Christian understanding of sexual norms, and are not simply show. The fact is that holding all the right beliefs and having sex with one’s fiancé can, in a given instance, be just as conducive to the development of a hatred of God as heresy. Most of those who embrace heresy today have not departed from authentic Christian faith, they never knew it, and thus their culpability is mitigated. Far more of those who profess Christianity but engage in sinful sexual practices are seriously culpable for their actions. Furthermore, in your own rhetoric you have downplayed sexual morality, consistently painting it as a concern of the white middle class, while upholding right belief, particularly the venerable (as you see them) beliefs of Mexican Catholics. But virtually every bit of “evidence,” from the anecdotal to the peer reviewed sociological, shows that in three generations the grandchildren of Mexican immigrants are as impious in belief and practice as any other American Catholic (birth control, divorce, loyalty to RCC popes & hierarchs, church attendance, etc.). In my opinion, this is in part because they have in that time embraced pansexualism. A theology which does not aggressively confront pansexualism today, will in day to day practice succumb to it. And even if you say that does not matter because the right piety trumps such concerns, in three generations you will have yoga attending, Dali Lama devotional reading theological relativists on top of your run of the mill serial sexualist. Frankly, if one is getting a nice piece of ass on the side, eventually one will adopt a theology to support the practice if one does not repent.
Attacking modernism is not the same as being a Christian, but neither is embracing modernism, nor is being neutral regarding modernism, nor is occasionally flirting with modernism for kicks, and with all four cases one can point to instances of ideology. Your comment here offers nothing of the sort of wisdom you suggest.
Sylvia Plath is not a great poet (the genuinely eerie affectation in her voice as recorded on the link on your blog is discomforting enough, but her poetry alone hurts to hear); she has made a place in letters, but more, in my estimation as a sign of where not to go. As I have suggested to you before, Glass’ work is of a certain serious sort, and your take on it is considered, but I would hardly refer to his work as good. It is noise, even if carefully articulated noise with a meaning beyond that of arbitrary noise. I see no good in it, no “verse” worth memorizing for the health of the soul. And I see both Plath and Glass as utterly decadent. Anything can be recapitulated, but the same could be said of the whorehouse or the Mormon temple.
Also, if a mildly educated Christian dismisses Daniel's dismissing of most Renaissance art as "shit" as characteristic of a person whose mind is too clouded by ideology and personal baggage to see things clearly that mildly educated Christian would himself be an ideologue, informed, to be sure, by ideologically driven pop sensibilities. Daniel's thoughts on these matters are not those of the elitist aesthete. They are very much concerned with the on the ground livedness of human experience and its relationship to various sorts of signs. But they are also formed in light of a vast amount of experience, and in reference to a wide variety of sources, some of which are purposefully forgotten and not engaged for prapagangic reasons. When those who embrace the place of Renaissance art in the Church offer a constructive criticism of Mâle, I will begin to think an honest debate is at hand.
When I once worked for one of the few places on earth one could purchase Mâle on a semi-regular basis, even the learned novus ordo Catholics there recognized that he was a most serious force to be reckoned with, though none of them were prepared to do so in a manner that defended modern norms of RCC aesthetics (even pre-VatII). Daniel makes serious arguments. They should be seriously considered, as Arturo once considered them, and not cheaply dismissed. Daniel does not dismiss Renaissance art in haste, but carefully, and he has, on his blog, articulated at length his reasons for doing so.
Owen,
I'm not sure that I would agree that a "poster" of an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe displayed in a lavatory is all that different from one Lenz's "icons." But it does seem that I may have missed some of the nuances of your post... apologies.
Owen and Arturo,
It seems my blog has become a sort of Panmunjeom for you two... welcome!
Owen,
I don't like to respond on your blog because the time I would need to respond to every single point would involve me having to give up certain non-essential activities that I enjoy, such as sleeping and working. (Seriously, Owen, why do you have to respond to every sentence I write with at least three paragraphs?)
Anyway, I can concede the weakness of my catharsis argument, though I still find it a fascinating in the original text of Iamblichus.
And Owen, please, try not to take yourself so seriously. It really doesn't become you.
These paragraphs are point by point responses to comments you make. I will let others decide if my long responses to your machine gun brevity are the verbose banality you suggest. I am taking your words seriously. You like to mention that you do not take yourself seriously. Great. You write a post in which you present an argument or something akin to an argument. Persons write responses in which they disagree. You write responses to them, sometimes on the blogs of others, generally not rising above rant dismissal for reasons which sidestep the issue at hand (Daniel is now an extremist, I am a bourgeois ideologue). Point by point responses are given in return, and then you escape back into the virtue of unseriousness. Like unto Nietzsche, I’ll grant you that.
Dang!
What a load of logorrhea!
Obviously some people have never learned the art of saying things simply with as few words as possible.
Post a Comment