Vatican Sessantannale? 60 Famous Artists From Around the World Celebrate the Pope's 60th Anniversary of Liturgical Service

Starting July 4th 2011, the Vatican will host an exhibit of sixty famous artists from around the world at its Paul VI audience hall to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's ordination to the priesthood. (1)

Besides the importance of the unprecedented exhibit itself, it is important because it sets the foundation of the Vatican's future cultural policy. The exhibit may be used as a kind of laboratory to experiment with how to communicate the Vatican's message through modern art. This experimentation may center around questions about just how abstract or representational effective modern religious art should be. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, expressed the problems facing such modern religious art exhibits back in 2009 by saying "some will accuse us of giving credit to 'depraved' art and others will criticize our selection as being too 'religious.'"(2) The Holy See will need to navigate a middle path, and this sixty artist exhibit will help them to figure out how to do this.

Why is this particularly important now?.....................Venice Biennale 2013, the first in which the Vatican will participate.

Minipost: Pope John Paul II and Modern Art

The other day I was visiting the Vatican City when I saw the banner pictured below. What I first noticed about the image was how moving it was, particularly because it was such an intimate close-up depiction of the former Pope. Seeing so much of his face, I was able to ignore his position for a moment and see him as a person. A person whose face tightened up in a moment of reflection. A person whose individual strands of hair were pushed here and there by the wind.


What I noticed next was the form of the crucifix he was carrying during this moment of thought and reflection captured in an image that the church chose to remember him by. It was a bronze crucifix produced in not quite realistic form. It reminded me of the type of modern form employed in the statue dedicated to Pope John Paul II that I discussed in an earlier post. It seemed to me that there could be no greater testament to Pope John Paul II's approval of such modern form than this image.

Il Papa, non Il Duce: a defense of Rainaldi's statue of Pope John Paul II

By: James Fletcher
Recently a modernist sculpture of Pope John Paul II by Oliviero Rainaldi was placed in front of Rome's Termini Train Station.  Soon afterward, the official newspaper of the Vatican condemned the statue as unfitting to the memory of the blessed Pope. (1)  It has been condemned by Romans on two grounds: the similitude of the statue's head to the head of Mussolini, and the fact that it's non-representative, "it doesn't even resemble the late pontiff." (2)  This post defends Rainaldi's statue against these objections.

Images provided by the artist, and reproduced here with his consent.

To the first objection, that the statue is non-representative, I would point out that the Vatican museum itself features a collection of "Modern Religious Art" inaugurated by Pope Paul VI in 1973. This collection features works by such paradigmatically non-representative artists as Paul Klee and Kandinsky. It is apparent in the address by Pope Paul VI upon the inauguration of the collection, excerpted below, that he conceived of modern religious art as (potentially) more effective at communicating to the modern man.

The Diary of Banned Frank

T., Banned Frank, 2008, silkscreen print on paper

Banned Frank is a 2008 image that inspired a great deal of debate in the Netherlands and on that lightning rod of controversy we call the international blogosphere. In this post, I want to write about the image itself briefly and then discuss some of the controversy. The intent is not to feed the fire because honestly, the debate is over. I just recently learned about this image and wanted to offer my own perspective.

Karma Phuntsok--Tibetan Thangka Painting in Australia

Karma Phuntsok, a Tibetan-born artist now living in Australia, creates work that reflects this hybrid existence by using aspects of traditional Tibetan painting in new ways.  After fleeing Tibet with his family following what is referred to as the Tibetan Uprising of 1959, Karma Phuntsok eventually studied the traditional Thanka style of painting from a Thanka master in Nepal.  Since 1981 he has been living in Australia practicing his art. His application of traditional methods to new uses and settings is a reflection of the existence of the Tibetan culture in exile, forced to adapt to new settings while maintaining a cultural heritage and tradition.  In doing so, this art offers his audience a visual model of the mediation between two cultures, which serves a social function within the exiled Tibetan community in addition to its aesthetic purpose.

Guru Rinpoche, Karma Phutsok, 2001

Image reproduced with consent of artist.