High Concepts: Can This Be the Catholic Moment in the Arts? 0
?Irish poets, learn your trade.?
So W.B. Yeats admonished his fellow Irish poets in his celebrated poem, ?Under Ben Bulben.? With a slight amendment, it?s an admonition that could well apply to our Catholic artists.?
The other day Emily Stimpson, a blogger over at CatholicVote.org, wrote an inspired piece called ?Telling the Catholic Story.? In it she laments, after noting certain admirable exceptions, the current state of Catholic art, in particular our storytelling in the media of film, television and literature. Her lament pointed up the question: why aren?t Catholics today known for creating artistic masterpieces, or at least compelling works of art? Stimpson herself has difficulties zeroing in on the reason:
So again, why? Why can?t we match in quality and skill the media being made by our secular counterparts?
I?ve put that question to a lot of smart people over the last couple weeks and the answers they gave were plentiful: a dearth of excellent training programs at faithful Catholic schools, a reluctance and/or inability to invest substantially in high quality media, poor understanding of the medium of media itself, a distrust of Hollywood and the tools of social media, and the misguided belief that what we have to say is so compelling that we don?t need to worry about how we say it.
Those are all good answers. They?re true answers. But I don?t find them entirely satisfying. They explain why the media we?re making now is not up to snuff, but they don?t explain how the Church of the Sistine Chapel and Mozart?s Requiem became the Church of Therese and There Be Dragons.
Catholics once financed and made the greatest works of art the world has ever known. We used the primary mediums of the day?painting, sculpture, literature, and music?to express the beauty and glory of God, the truth about the human person, and the pathos of the human condition. We understood the power of beauty and the power of story, and for centuries, creating art that reflected that understanding came as naturally to Catholic artists as breathing.
Stimpson is right that the various answers she received to her question were all good and true. The diagnosis must certainly be a complex one. Catholic education, the American reception to Vatican II, scorn of Hollywood and the entertainment industry generally, lack of money–all of these are contributing factors to the current Catholic malaise in the arts. I would add that the political culture wars of the last forty years, as crucially important as those have been, have tempted Catholics to neglect the power of art to shape culture. They have led to the distrust of the entertainment industry that Stimpson mentions in her piece.?
But there is one other reason for the malaise in Catholic art that I would like to identify, one that I think lies even closer to the nub of the problem:?
The absence of a devotion to craft.
I choose the word ?devotion? here carefully. Devotion indicates love, passion, total commitment. For the Catholic artist, his or her work must be inspired, first and foremost, by devotion to God. But this is not enough to make a beautiful and powerful work of art. The devotion to God must ?spill over? into a devotion to craft. And here I choose the word ?craft? carefully. For anyone who writes a novel or poem or screenplay will admit to ?loving? what he is doing. But there is far more to a craft than this.?
To be devoted to a craft means to submit oneself to a discipline existing outside one?s thoughts and feelings. And such disciplines do not arise out of nowhere. They come into being and flourish within traditions of thought and practice, traditions that often stretch centuries into the past.
In recent decades Catholic artists seem to have forgotten this sense of devotion to a craft tradition. But when one looks to past examples of great Catholic artists, such devotion is everywhere in evidence.?
Consider Dante. To be a poet, in Dante?s mind, was to submit oneself to the great minds and works of Greece, Rome, and Christian Europe. Thus The Divine Comedy reflects Dante?s passionate study of Aristotle, Virgil, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Or consider, to take a somewhat more contemporary example, Flannery O?Connor. O’Connor did not shy away from serving her apprenticeship at the very mainstream secular, but artistically pre-eminent, Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She knew that this was where she had to be in order to become excellent at her craft. And the result of her efforts was a strikingly counter-cultural and singular contribution to literature in the 20th century.?
What we learn from Dante, O?Connor, and other great Catholic artists is that devotion to craft means disciplining oneself to learning from the best minds that have worked in that craft tradition. Which means seeking out those mentors, and becoming part of those institutions, which embody that tradition in the present-day–not all of which (as we learn from O?Connor?s experience at the Iowa Writer?s Workshop) will be Catholic.?
Many Catholic individuals and institutions have recognized this truth. Barbara Nicolosi and her efforts in founding Act One, and John Paul the Great Catholic University and its mission to educate students in the arts and new media, are just two examples that readily come to mind.
But so many more devoted artists are needed.?
Catholic artists, learn your trade.
* The photograph at the top is of Flannery O’Connor’s writing desk at her home in Milledgeville, Georgia
Source: http://danielmcinerny.blogspot.com/2012/02/can-this-be-catholic-moment-in-arts.html
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China sub makes first dive to below 4,000m (AFP) 0
BEIJING (AFP) ? A Chinese submersible conducted the country’s deepest manned dive ever Thursday in the latest milestone for China’s deep-sea ambitions as it seeks to exploit the vast resources of the ocean floor.
The Jiaolong undersea craft — named after a mythical sea dragon — reached 4,027 metres (13,211 feet) below sea level in a test dive in the northeastern Pacific, the State Oceanic Administration said in a statement.
“The success of this test dive has laid a solid foundation for completing the mission of diving to 5,000 metres,” it said.
Chinese technical capabilities have gathered pace in recent decades, exemplified by a fast-growing space programme that in 2003 made China just the third nation to conduct manned space flight.
The Jiaolong’s range theoretically gives China access to nearly all of the world’s deep-sea areas, and state news agency Xinhua quoted the administration’s director Li Cigui as saying the vessel was a “marvel” of Chinese engineering.
The craft is designed to reach a maximum depth of 7,000 metres and in a dive in the South China Sea last year it made China only the fifth country to go deeper than the 3,500-metre mark.
The craft carried three people in Thursday’s test and was due to attempt to reach 5,000 metres in another dive on Friday.
Xinhua news agency reported however that the dive was cancelled early Friday morning due to “unfavorable sea conditions”, citing the State Oceanic Administration (SOA).
The conditions were expected to remain rough in the coming three days and the SOA was waiting for a suitable time to re-attempt the dive, Liu Feng, the mission’s commander-in-chief, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
The deepest dive ever conducted was by the US Navy, which reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench — the deepest point in the world’s oceans at 11,000 metres — in 1960 in a manned undersea craft.
China has pushed hard in recent years to obtain oil, minerals and other natural resources needed to fuel its growth.
It has said its development of submersible technology is aimed at scientific research and the peaceful exploration and use of natural resources.
But China’s appetite for resources, rapid expansion of its military capabilities and increasingly strident territorial claims in the ocean have caused concern.
During the vessel’s dive to the bottom of the disputed South China Sea last year it planted a Chinese flag in the seafloor in what was seen by some as a provocative act.
The South China Sea, which is believed to be rich in oil and gas, is claimed in whole or in part by China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia.
Tensions in the region have spiked in recent months after several incidents at sea involving China and its neighbours.
Scientists say the ocean’s floors contain rich deposits of a range of potentially valuable minerals.
However, some concerns also have been raised that deep-sea vessels could be used to tap into or sever communications cables.
Xinhua has quoted officials saying the Jiaolong’s crew would conduct tests in the Pacific, including taking photos, shooting video, surveying seabeds and taking samples from the ocean floor.
It also would examine possible sites for a potential future test dive to its maximum depth of 7,000 metres, Xinhua said, giving no timetable.
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