Earlier this summer there was a remarkable meeting at the Vatican. Pope Francis sat down with 200 artists and sought common ground. The guest list ranged from Dutch violinist Andre Rieu to British Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor and pretty much everyone in between.
Now if it were the 1500s, this probably wouldn't make headlines and I'd be talking with you about something else right now. But it's not-and there have been seismic changes in the place of art in society, and the relationship between art and religion since the days of Michelangelo painting another Pope's ceiling. The contemporary artists gathered with the Pope this summer under that very ceiling operate from a very different set of priorities.
Still, the idea for the meeting was that art and religion can share common ground. The Pope wanted to emphasize areas of agreement. He told the gathered artists that "neither art nor faith can leave things simply as they are: They change, transform, move and convert them."
The gathering this summer had an antecedent when Pope Paul VI first invited artists into the Sistine Chapel in 1964, hoping to renew the friendship between the Church and artists. In past centuries, that friendship had resulted 'masterpieces. A decade later, the Vatican Museum opened a Modern and Contemporary section that's celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Recently the Vatican has become even more involved in the current art scene. Starting in 2018, it began sending an exhibit to the famed Venice Biennale.
The Pope described today's artists as having some pretty serious forebearers. "Like the biblical prophets," he said, "you confront things that at times are uncomfortable; you criticize today's false myths and new idols, its empty talk, the ploys of consumerism, the schemes of power."
Some have criticized the Pope for the meeting as some of the artists have been Controversial, but Bishop Paul Tighe, the Number 2 in the Vatican's culture and education ministry, responded well. "We all just have to work on the presumption of good faith of the artist who is trying to say something challenging and may sometimes have to resort to strong measures to wake us up."
That I think is something that we all should consider when we find ourselves initially put off or even offended by something an artist has created.
