All of us who paint, paint in a context. We either paint in Western traditions, or Eastern traditions, Oriental or African traditions, and so on.
We do not paint in a vacuum. We may choose to depart from centuries of symbolism, but we cannot entirely do that without destroying history, symbolism and imagery. The desconstructionists and post-deconstructionists do this in philosophy and linguistics-destroy the meaning of word and, therefore, destroy context and the search for meaning.
There is no artist who can create something "new" as only God can create out of nothing (poesis), while artists only imitate (mimesis). We, creatures ourselves, "make" art which is already in the mind of God.
Now, there is demonic art, as well as good art. There is art which is pornographic, violent, and prurient. There has been in my lifetime many examples of blasphemous art. One thinks of the horrible statue of the Holy Virgin Mary with elephant dung as part of the depiction. It was rightly declaimed as rude and an insult to Catholics. The use of fetuses in art in England when I was there almost thirty years ago was another example of "statement art" which was horrible and most likely satanic.
But, Christian artists can make mistakes, gross errors of judgement, by ignoring the symbolism and imagery of the last two millennia. David Jones wrote of "The Break", the time in the early Twentieth Century, when art was separated from Western symbolism.
I found this to be true when I was teaching a class on the literature of the Holy Grail. Some students did not know what a chalice was, what the word meant. They knew only the word "cup".
The great symbolism of the Holy Grail cannot be taught without context and the same is true of reading Dante, or Eliot or Jones and many others.
When an artist paints Christ or Mary, there are hundreds of clues which one can read which are like shorthand, telling us the meaning in a painting. Icons are full of these clues. To ignore or purposefully distort these ancient images and symbols indicates a Protestant or secular mindset.
Why show the Wedding Feast at Cana with customs which were not known at the time, or without the traditional symbolism? Why attempt something new just to seem trendy or to supposedly "appeal" to modern, contemporary life? We do not learn anything about Christ and Mary out of context. The Scriptures give us the context. They were Jews, living in a very ordered and stratified culture, plus enduring Roman civilization and conquest.
For example, to depict Our Lady as controlling the entire event of the changing of the water into wine misses the entire point of the event. "Do whatever HE tells you"....Not, "Do whatever I tell you." Mary would have not be prominent after Christ entered into the action, and the older paintings which show her in the background or off to the side make this point.
Small hints in a painting or drawing point to truths and realities of the mind, heart and spirit.
I can tell a modern Protestant painting of the Baptism of Christ, done by someone who believes in the heresy of Christ not knowing He was God until that moment, from a Catholic one, which depicts the humility of Christ in the Presence of the Trinity from all time. All types of hints show us the beliefs of painters.
To show Christ as an Arab is absolutely wrong. He was a Jew and still is as Man of that ethnic group. There is no such thing as a "cosmic Christ" or a Chinese Christ. That Mary has appeared to some as a member of an ethnic group has to do with God allowing Mary to appear to the senses of the person who is witnessing the apparition. So, Our Lady of Guadalupe reveals Mary as an Aztec princess, with many symbols and images to show she is the Mother of God.
But for a Western painter to show Christ as someone other than He is begs the question of whether this artist actually has a relationship with Christ.
Now, missionaries may show Christ as an Inuit Baby in the Manger, but at some point, they would teach Christ as in the line of David, of the Royal House, with a genealogy which includes some Gentiles, like Ruth the Moabitess.
To deny Christ's Jewishness is racist at worst and mythology at best.
For artists to take chances or push the envelope regarding the depictions of Christ and His Mother seems not to be the reason for painting. Painting is an act of prayer, or adoration. Those who paint icons know this. One goes to Mass, Adoration, prays and fasts before "writing" an icon.
Sadly, EWTN missed a great opportunity for teaching about the God-Man, about the Incarnation and the truths of the New Testament times in the series of new paintings in the mysteries.
I hope never to see them again. Some are actually disturbing in their falsity. Some are misguided attempts to be inclusive. Some are just not "good" art and many have left the 2,000 year heritage of images and symbols at our command, our shorthand in painting.
Father Z. just highlighted a magnificent print depicting the Wedding Feast at Cana in Japanese terms. But, the real symbolism is still there. The artist has not changed the role of Mary or Christ. There are six wine amphorae, shown as beautiful Ming-like ware. But, the spirit of the work is that of the Scripture passage. There is Christian imagery on the screen. Inculuration is not the same as distortion.
EWTN is an American company. It ministers around the world, but mostly to the English speaking world. I could bet that most of those who watch EWTN are Americans.
I cannot understand dropping centuries of richness for the sake of appeal. It does not work.
