While in Boston this weekend for the opening night performance of L’Incoronazione di Poppea at the Boston Early Music Festival (an elegant, historically sensitive production, created, like all of BEMF’s work, in conscious rejection of the ignorant narcissism of Regietheater) I went to the Titian-Tintoretto-Veronese exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. Off the top of my head, I can think of no greater marker of the secularization of the West than the near disappearance of religious art over the last two centuries. I would love to see a graph showing the ratio of religious to non-religious art since the 11th century. Eighteenth century Baroque painters like Tiepelo were obviously still creating Christian canvases, but even those were a small proportion of their own and of total artistic output compared to four centuries previously. By the mid-19th century, I can conjure up few major religious works—perhaps a Millet here and there, and some kitschy Beaux-Arts saints. But in general, artists’ attentions and those of their patrons were caught up in the things of this world—history, portraits, landscapes (however occasionally infused with divine light), urban street scenes, peasant labor, domestic arrangements, factories, and still lifes. Churches were more often objects of paintings rather than the source of their content. A chronological stroll through any art museum demonstrates this trend.
All I can say is: Phew! I wonder whether even the religious grow occasionally weary at the pierced, flayed, and bleeding bodies, the bloodless faces, the upturned eyes, the naked babies with the oddly elongated limbs. (The MFA show contained a Veronese thought to show Christ healing a beautiful blonde who had been constantly bleeding (we are not told from where); she touches his garment and is cured. Do our peers find such episodes credible?)
Now perhaps the drying up of religious art says nothing about the course of human preoccupations; maybe there was just no more space needing to be filled. The great eras of Renaissance and Baroque church building obviously ended, and fortunately, no one thought of upgrading a church’s altarpieces and frescoes with the latest Wunderkind’s work. But churches were not the only patrons of religious art up through the Baroque era. Noble families built their own private chapels, and for centuries wealthy bourgeoisie wanted their own devotional paintings showing them worshiping a saint or the Holy Family. But by the 19th century, these religious themes disappeared, leaving only the patron himself.
(Religious music, on the other hand, continues to be produced at a higher rate than religious iconography. I am not aware of even Popes commissioning much religious art anymore. Perhaps they’ve gotten a little self-conscious about the conspicuous consumption that was once the glory of Rome.)
What has been the fall-out of this epochal shift of attention? A highly prosperous, stable, law-abiding society.
Some other observations occasioned by the exhibit (for the record, I have little fondness for Tintoretto, his human forms sometimes border on mannerist, in my view, and his palette is too muddy for my taste. The only two self-portraits in the MFA show are by Tintoretto, however, one at the beginning and one at the end of his life, and they are rivetting. His eyes burn with a terrible intensity):
–Frontal male nudes are far rarer in painting than in sculpture, it seems to me. I’m not sure why that might be.
–While I detest feminist art criticism, there is simply no denying the male gaze in art. Even the popes hung huge fleshly nudes. I’m not complaining, it’s just the way it is.
–One artistic taboo seems to never have been breached: I can think of no copulating couples in Western art (and the Asian versions are clearly intended for use.) There are plenty of images of women being carted away for rape, or symbolic images of rape—Tarquin and Lucretia—and symbolic images of copulation—in this exhibit, Danae being showered by a monetized Zeus—but none of the act itself. A good thing, in my view.
My initial thought was that photography was invented in the first third of the nineteenth century. I don’t know if there’s a relationship between that and the decline of religious art, but it’s an interesting coincidence. Maybe the competition provided by the camera spurred painters to broaden their choice of subjects.
I’m sure the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment had something to do with the secularization of art as well.
“Frontal male nudes are far rarer in painting than in sculpture, it seems to me. I’m not sure why that might be.”
Part of it may be that the ancient Greeks and to lesser extent the people of the Renaissance considered the nude male to be the ultimate standard of human beauty, while over time, now the nude female is considered to be the standard. Since we associate sculpture with old art (all of the certainly beautiful Greek paintings have been lost with time), I think that explains part of it.
So why the switch from male nudes to female nudes? Who knows?
Asked and answered:
Well, that’s a consolation prize for the loss of a civilization. (Though the “stable” and “law-abiding” parts are doubtful: is this the same Heather Mac Donald who writes about mass immigration and urban policing in the US?) And of course even by your standards, there’s also the empty half of the glass: empty in the sense of anomie and all that.
Interesting – why a good thing? I ask because this goes back to my main theme here: y’all’s desire to conserve certain specifically Western (read: Christian) traditions and conventions based on reason alone. But reason is actually just as good a base for rival, non-Christian conventions.
Then again some people, like Camille Paglia, say that Western art is pagan as well as Christian, and that a lot of great art (Michelangelo, for instance) is pornographic. It’s kind of puzzling that Paglia, like Nietzsche (from whom she cribbed a lot), is completely ignored at Secular Right.
James Elkins:
Orthodoxy of any sort will always be resisted among the avant-garde.
Art that can be accepted in the art world is marked by “irony, ambiguity, and uncertainty.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/mayjun/onthestrangeplaceofreligionincontemporaryart.html?start=1
I wonder if the decline in religious art correlates with the rise of Protestantism. Protestants are far less approving of religious iconography. If it does correlate, the decline of religious art in the West may have nothing to do with secularization. And the “epochal shift” you trumpet may be merely a shift from Catholicism.
Private patronage, as you note, has been replaced by the state funding. The functionaries of the state are invariably leftist and secularist and use their positions to advance their world view. Given these circumstances it should not be surprising that we see a dearth of religiously inspired art. In fact, we get state funded works of anti-religious bigotry like Maplethorpe’s “Piss Christ” and state funded institutions promoting works like Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary”. At least there are no “upturned eyes or naked babies with the oddly elongated limbs.”
Relative to the rest of the world, the West was “highly prosperous, stable, [and] law-abiding” long before it’s secularization began. If anything secularization as represented by the rise of communism and fascism represented a existential threat to the West. I think that is probably true even in it’s current, less virulent, form.
The secular communist and fascist artists loved “portraits”, “peasant labor”, “factories”, and the like. Tearing down Baroque churches and those troublesome altarpieces was all the rage. The “Wunderkinds” applied themselves to the glorification of humanity and the material world. It was a secularist “Golden Age”.
I know, I know, secularism is all goodness, morality, reason and light. I get it.
I know, I know, secularism is all goodness, morality, reason and light. I get it.
No, no, no, all goodness, morality, reason and light comes from christians.
The Catholic emphasis on religious art relative to the Protestant was, as an intramural Western affair (the Greek Orthodox were all over the map on this, i.e. iconoclasm), is that the art was for decorating churches whose members, for the most part, couldn’t read. Protestantism, who’s motto was every man should read the Bible for himself, therefore is assumed to be literate, wasn’t into art as much, for obvious reasons, though there was a bit of RC’s were idol worshippers thinking in there as well.
I certainly don’t miss all the “pierced, flayed and bleeding bodies” but considering the era from which they came, when taking the kids to a hanging or roasting cats alive was considered entertainment, at least the painters of those kinds of pictures had the moral sense to depict the subject in a tragic way.
I love old church architecture and despise modern church architecture (broadening the subject of “art” to include “the arts” in general).
I love the glorious classical music that was inspired by Christianity. Give me Bruckner’s 9th Symphony over 4’33” of silence.
The old iconography of cherubs and so on may have been boring but the new stuff (iron girders twisted into weird shapes and plonked in front of City Hall) is much worse, since it is actually insulting to the intellect as well as to the aesthetic sensibility.
Art is generally a reflection of the times during which it was created. I get a wonderful feeling in old churches of magnificent architecture and decorated by great artists and artisans.
It’s an appreciation of the work of humans, without judgement of their goals or who paid for it. I can just as easily judge some art as not worthy even if the goal is “lofty”.
Art and nature astound me and trigger emotional feelings. Should I, as a non-believer discourage feelings? Why?
but the new stuff (iron girders twisted into weird shapes and plonked in front of City Hall) is much worse, since it is actually insulting to the intellect as well as to the aesthetic sensibility.
Right but only because modern art seem to have been decaying faster than classic art, in the beginning it wasn’t that bad.
Two words: Jeff Koons.
And while I’m one of those liberal permissive types, I think he made bad art. Hell, he made bad porn!