A Modern Sistine Chapel

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 21 July 2014.

Why isn't the project overtly religious?

Not because we don't believe in God, but because we do believe more and more in a God-with-us. In past centuries, the religious topics were a fitting challenge for art. In our age, they are a cop out.

How so?

Why is a Cathedral, fresco, statue, or stained-glass window no longer the opportunity for a great work of art? While I rejoice at the renewal of orthodox concepts in Catholic architecture, sculpture, iconography, stained glass, these no longer provide a fitting frame for great art.

A religious theme used to be a mind-blowing opportunity for an artist. The whole world showed up to see. It was a frame ready-made for universal significance.

Now, people are generally more aware of the frame, the conceit, the motive, the contrived occasion or excuse for a work of creation. People are focused on that moment when a work of art hollows out the space it will occupy.

Why is a Cathedral, fresco, statue, or stained-glass window almost certainly not going to be an opportunity for breaking new ground? Is it due to our shortcoming or our strength that we no longer look to find art in those places? Would a modern Sistine Chapel--were such a thing possible--help us or hold us back spiritually? It now seems that a modesty of artistic ambitions is appropriate for a sacred space.

And one of the first gestures of that modesty is eschewing the term "artist." The best modern churches would be made by master craftsmen, not artists. I believe there is such thing as a sacred craftsman; I'm not sure I believe in the possibility of a sacred artist, one who works within an overtly religious or liturgical frame. I don't know why that is yet...it just seems to be the way things are. Is God slowly weaning us of graven images? Are we more able to worship "in spirit and in truth"? Or am I unwittingly giving voice to latent Puritanical proclivities I possess as an American?

If sacred art can no longer happen in a sacred space, where does it happen?

Is there any metaphor for leaving the cool confines of the Church and going out into the wilderness, coming back with something prophetic? Yes, the Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life," but so much of what is arrayed around our altars is either a decent approximation of what has come before, or mediocre, or just awful. None of it is art. And ironically, much of it is awful in direct proportion to its ambition to be great.

I would go as far to say that John Paul II's "Letter to Artists" is not addressed to people making even the best of these aesthetical works. Obviously, musical and visual works still enliven our liturgies, but I wouldn't say it's art, at least in the sense that I understand that concept. What am I missing?

And where does our project fit in?