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Do we need new artistic renditions of our scriptural stories and religious mythology?
Dear Friends,
For years now in my work seeking to illustrate various articles exploring spiritual and religious themes I have encountered a frustration in the lack of contemporary images that keep pace with our developing understanding of the great themes. So much of modern religious graphic art is little more than kitsch — or rooted back in imagery that was given to us sometime in the Middle Ages or even earlier. In a sense the Church absented itself from the field of being a serious patron of the arts around the time talking movies were invented, or possibly further back around the time of the French Revolution. Today, so often the bishop wants to hold the hand of the painter, the musician and tell them how they are to paint — or they want to dictate the words for the musician or writer. These thoughts occurred to me again last night as I searched for images that might illustrate some of the rich themes Dr Ian Elmer is exploring in today's lead commentary where he explores, as it were, the picture in St Paul's mind of who Jesus was. He links Jesus to Ha Adama — the first human. Jesus is presented as "the Son of Man" meaning, I suspect, "the Son of the First Human". Jesus is the New Human — moulded imagio dei (in the image of God) in a new way. As Jerome Murphy-O'Connor suggested in the essay I drew your attention to yesterday, Jesus is presented by Paul as the new "role model" of what it means to be a human being. This is "new language" compared to anything I was brought up on as to who Jesus Christ was — and is. Do we have contemporary artists exploring this territory today in tandem with scriptural scholars? I think not. As I wrote in our forum recently, the 21st Century equivalents of Michaelangelo and Leonardo would probably fail all the obstacles that would be placed in the way of them being given creative commissions today. For a start they'd probably fail "the manner of life" tests of the thought police, LOL, let alone any tests of their "theological correctness"!
Like Benedict's tastes in music which seem to suggest music can't be "sacred" unless it was thought of and written around the time of Mozart, or in the style of Mozart — so also with our visual images: it ain't "sacred art" unless it conforms to the imagery given to us around the time of Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Dante Alghieri and Milton. In the section of his commentary today that I was seeking to find an illustration for, Dr Elmer writes: "In the story of the Man and Woman in the Garden, the original 'being' created by God is a primal, genderless 'everyone' (ha adam) who is born of the earth (ha adama) and the breath or wind (ruarch) of God." Where do we find contemporary visual artists seeking to explore the meaning of imagery like that? Go do a Google image search for a "primal, genderless, everyone, adam" and see what you come up with. The Michaelangelo and Leonardo equivalents of today receive their commissions from Maddison Avenue, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street and the myriad secular arts bureaucracies and film commissions rather than from St Peter's. Perhaps it is little wonder so many have lost interest in church when "the church" has lost interest in supporting those whose brief in society is to explore what violinist Anne Sophie Mutter in the musical context described as "the bond between heaven and earth" [ABC television interview 2000]. Scriptural scholars and theologians today are opening up rich new imagery on the spiritual and religious canvas but so much of our visual art is still rooted back in the literalist images that those great artists of a past era like the four I mentioned above gave us.
This is a rich commentary from Ian Elmer today. Not the broad overview that Jerome Murphy-O'Connor was seeking to paint in yesterday's essay, Ian's commentary today is seeking to look in more depth at just one particular, albeit critically important, part of the canvas: What was the picture of Jesus that St Paul carried in his head? What was the picture of Jesus that Paul was trying to convey in his writing and in his missionary endeavours? Does it differ to other images we have of Jesus and what Jesus is meant to mean to us? Again this is rich adult faith exploration. <Link to Dr Elmer's commentary>
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