May 8, 2007

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

SACRED ART AND CONTEMPORARY ART

Believing and creating. Ideas around art and the sacred realm.

D. Gerardo Díaz Quirós

The territory of the sacred has been particularly fertile for the arts. Faced with divinity, man tries to offer the best of what he possesses to an unknown absolute that, depending on the case, he honors or tries to appease. Offering, mirror, bridge... the best of the subject and of the ingenuity to put at the feet, to open the door to new realities or to evoke them even as a reflection. Believe and Create, a challenge for centuries.

If the architectural construction of the cosmos defined by Vitruvius paved the way for the figure of a God the architect - God the sculptor in Genesis - it also opened the way for the segregation of the architect - and by extension the creator - as privileged in his relationship of likeness. The Christian religion, which considers the veil that covered the Old Testament and hid the face of God to have been removed, founded on the fascinating reality of the Incarnation and alive in the real and substantial Eucharistic presence, has constant recourse to the help of art, initiating, at least on the conceptual level, a "fruitful dialogue that has never been interrupted" -in the words of John Paul II-. He does not hesitate to say to artists: "we need you", but a recurrent topic when approaching contemporary creation linked to sacred spaces, of liturgical use, or even religious in its broadest sense, is that of the artist's faith".

Eduardo Chillida, "Spiritual Canticle".

Is faith necessary to guarantee the validity and efficacy of a sacred work? Is it enough? Is it possible to understand the artist at the service of prophecy and even to read him as a true prophet? Is the whisper between Creator and creator to be considered broken? Whose responsibility is it today to delimit this fear beyond time and space in which to penetrate barefoot? Questions to string together some ideas that lead to the problems of contemporary faith and creation.

Venancio Blanco, "Nazareno", 1963