Modern Art in Catholicism

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_AnnoDomini

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Hello everyone! This might sound like a bit of an odd question, but what is the Church’s view on modern art? I’m talking more abstract pieces, which are up to the viewer’s subjective interpretation. I personally really like the aesthetic of modern art, but I’ve heard some people say that it’s sinful because of its connection with the Modernist movement. Can you be a faithful Catholic and still appreciate modern art and architecture?

Edit: To clarify, I’m not talking about modern art in churches, but rather in places such as houses, public non-religious structures, etc.
 
_AnnoDomini said:
Can you be a faithful Catholic and still appreciate modern art and architecture?
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Yes. Modernist art - whether the plastic arts like sculpture or literary arts like poetry - is a very broad descriptor, and there is very little substantial connection between many of its most well-known figures (e.g. T. S. Eliot) and the theological heresy of modernism.
 
thank you! that’s what I thought, but when it comes to stuff regarding religion I tend to err on the side of caution 😅 Thanks again!
 
Pope St. Pius X set out very clearly, in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, what the Church means by the term “modernism”. It has to do, above all, with philosophy, theology, and the study of the history of religion. He wrote this encyclical at around the same time that Pìcasso, Matisse, Modigliani and others were beginning to produce what later came to be called modern art, but there isn’t really much of an overlap between the two different “modernisms.”
 
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As long as art is not itself repugnant to faith and morals, the Church generally has no position on it. However, she does have a position on art used in worship. See Chapter VII here for the principles:

https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist...const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html

The Church forbids those works “which are repugnant to faith, morals, and Christian piety, and which offend true religious sense either by depraved forms or by lack of artistic worth, mediocrity and pretense.”

Likewise, artists are reminded that sacred art is intended “to edify the faithful, and to foster their piety and their religious formation.”

Generally, “modern art” tends to fail the above. Especially due to its subjective nature, it often fails to communicate in such a way to edify and aid in religious formation.

Whereas traditionally, art (especially sacred art) sought to convey an objective beauty or truth through traditional and culturally ingrained symbols and forms, modern art seeks to convey a personal or subjective expression of a truth. Thus, not everyone will “get” the artist’s intention–in fact, most people won’t. It’s like speaking a unique, personal, made up language. You may be intending to express a beautiful truth, but most people are just going to hear nonsensical gobbledygook.
 
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_AnnoDomini said:
Can you be a faithful Catholic and still appreciate modern art and architecture?
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Sure you can.
Have you seen some of our post-Vatican II church art and architecture? 😀

Unless art/ architecture is blasphemous or obscene/ pornographic, the Church is not interested in policing it.
 
Modern art is okay as long as there isn’t anything objectable in it.
 
I pray you’re being facetious. So many of our modern churches are travesties.

C. S. Lewis has a great scene in That Hideous Strength where one of the main characters encounters art that is just slightly off and meant to be a desecration of the sacred. Modern art and architecture, for the most part, reminds me of how I felt when I read that scene.
 
The Church has a long history of abstract art, as in the illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels or the stained glass at Notre Dame de Paris.

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Modern art is such a catch-all concept.

There is that hideous “P*** Christ” for example; utterly blasphemous.

Then there are artists like Daniel Mitsui; absolutely beautiful, dense, rich images and Catholic!

And then there is what the majority of Catholics think of when thinking of modern “Catholic” art ==5 decades of “woodcut’ type primitives on the Church bulletin. Seriously, I wish the whole stockpile of those things would somehow spontaneously combust.
 
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