|
The Cloisters in NYC,
Where Art Goes to Die
Due to the vagaries of the weather and the incompetence
and indifference of Delta Airlines, I found myself
homeless in New York City for 24 hours. Although the
airline caused the problem, JFK airport has little
sympathy for stranded travelers. Not finding a hotel
room, I slept in an Airtran car (very comfortable) for
awhile until security hustled me off. All the good spots
at the McDonald's (one of the few places with padded
benches) had been taken, so I pulled up a patch of
marble floor at the American Airlines terminal and
napped there for a while. The marble floor was
preferable to the wire mesh benches, which seemed
designed as instruments of torture.
Not wishing to spend another day at JFK, early in the
morning I parked my baggage and ventured into the city.
I thought I would catch a nice nap at St. Thomas's
Episcopal Church. Not only is it a fine Cathedral, but
the Episcopalians have the best padded pews in the
religion business, and the detachable kneeler makes a
fine pillow. Alas, the caretaker shooed me out of there
as well. Well, if they're going to be that way about it,
I'll just go back to the Romans.
I
caught the early mass at St. Patrick's. At least, it
might have been a mass; the “presider” seemed to be
making up the Eucharistic prayers as he went along;
maybe it was “relevant” in a way I do not understand.
But what was certainly relevant were the images which
greeted me as I exited the Church, pornographic images
supplied by the Armani Exchange store across the street.
This was artistic pornography; you could tell that
because it was in black and white and nobody seemed to
be enjoying themselves. “American Gothic” replaced by
“Armani Gothic.” Despite three larger-than-life pictures
of violent sex, orgies and homo-eroticism the
participants seemed determined to turn it into a grim
duty, far more onerous than anything that would be
imposed by the genial presider at St. Pat's. Here was
the modern predicament in a nutshell: two symbol sets
confronting each other across a crowded street, one
promising ultimate happiness and the other pleasure as a
grim obligation; the former was made bland and makes few
demands, the later demanding most of your paycheck but
making no promises whatsoever. And yet, Armani seems to
be winning the debate. Why is that?
These thoughts occupied my mind because I was returning
from another possible response to Armani Gothic, the
Roman Forum symposium in Gardone, Italy, a sleepy town
on the edge of Lake Garda. To call it a “symposium”
rather understates the whole thing, for what John Rao
has created is more of an ideal community of learning
and leisure, in which dinners (five courses at a
minimum) are as much a learning experience as the
lectures. Our days began with a late breakfast followed
by a lecture at 10, a Latin Mass at 11:30, and then an
hour or two for lunch. Such a long lunch requires a
siesta, so the next lectures were at 5 and 6:30 pm,
followed by a dinner that lasted until 11 or 12, or
maybe later if someone got to singing or debating. Which
we generally did.
Prior to the Mass at St. Patrick's, a guy in a purple
muumuu drifted in from the recesses behind the altar,
quickly followed by a guy in a sports coat; purple
muumuu turned out the be the cantor, and sports coat the
lector. A little later, another guy meandered to the
altar, his chasuble identifying him as the priest.
Purple muumuu called for a numbered hymn from a
perfectly enormous book of them lying in the pews. I
tried to sing along, but the hymn was unfamiliar to me.
And so the Mass proceeded. (Of course, it is unfair to
judge all Novus Ordo Masses by this rather casual
example. Indeed, I have seen it done with some care and
dignity. But not that often, and at the moment I am not
being fair.)
The daily Masses in Gardone were another matter.
Tridentine, to be sure, but even though I grew up with
that rite, these Masses were unfamiliar to me. These
were completely (and beautifully) chanted in Latin, and
every movement was solemn. Now, although I took Latin in
college, I haven't used it since then, so none of what
was sung or spoken was familiar to me, beyond the odd
“dominus vobiscum.” I do not claim to be enough of a
liturgist to sort all of this out, but I do wonder,
“Which forms the better response to Armani—the casual
presider at St. Pat's, or the highly ritualized movement
and prayers in Gardone?”
I
think one could argue that St. Pat's had the more purely
“spiritual” response. That is, the movement and words
didn't matter as much as the “spirit” behind them. At
least, I think that is the rationale. And that is the
problem. The purely spiritual is never a sufficient
response to the purely material. In fact, given the
choice of a pure materialism and a pure spiritualism, I
prefer materialism; the material world at least imposes
some natural limits, which even the materialist
inevitably discovers. The purely spiritual, on the other
hand, imposes no limits, especially when conceived of in
highly individualistic terms. It matters not so much
what you do as what you “feel” about it. A sufficiently
“spiritual” feeling justifies anything. The masses at
Gardone, on the other hand, with their rather strict
physical movements, are firmly embedded in the material
order while simultaneously transcending that order. That
is what ritual does, properly understood.
I
was pondering these matters when I decided to visit a
museum I had never seen before in my many visits to the
city, namely The Cloisters. Now, The Cloisters are in
the 190's and despite being a bona fide part of
the island of Manhattan, most New Yorkers consider this
area as remote as Poughkeepsie. Alas, most New Yorkers
deprive themselves of a very fine place. Two fine
places, in fact. The first is Fort Tryon park, which I
prefer to Central Park and which has beautiful views of
the Hudson. As a man-made “wilderness,” it is wild
indeed. But the park also houses The Cloisters, and The
Cloisters house one of the best collections of Christian
art from the middle ages that I have ever seen, largely
works rescued from the destruction of the French
Revolution. But it is not just the exquisite art, but
the setting that sets this collection apart. It is
housed in a faux monastery, and as faux monasteries go,
this is the best. It is actually a collection of
architectural styles, from the Romanesque to the Gothic
meant to display the building elements in something like
their “native” mode. Thus, where they have acquired an
authentic Romanesque apse, they built on a small
Romanesque church to display it; a Gothic arch merits a
small Gothic church, and so forth.
The collection is absolutely stunning, and the museum
displays it in a way that is quite intimate, much better
than the displays at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (of
which this is a branch). Further, since it is in
Poughkeepsie—I mean the 190's—the site has few visitors,
and it is like having a whole museum to yourself, or
nearly (which may account for the “suggested” entry fee
of $20.) And the museum shop actually sells some
reproductions that are worth having.
The world view (that is, the Catholic Faith) which
inspired the art of The Cloisters did not make a strict
separation between the purely physical and the purely
material, much less place the two in opposition to each
other. Rather, as befits an incarnational religion, the
material world was an expression of God's own creativity
and order. True, it was a fallen world, but it was also
a redeemed order. The world, though not an end in
itself, was nevertheless a means to an end, the ultimate
end in fact. The nature of God could in some sense be
read in the nature of the order he created. This is not
the “naturalism” of the Enlightenment, on which all
modern science is based, but a hyper-naturalism, in
which the entire created order points to something
beyond itself.
One cannot help but be moved by the quality, care, and
faith that made this art. Or at least, I thought so
until I made the mistake of taking the “tour.” The tour
guide, although more or less competent in matters of the
art itself, kept making statements like, “They really
believed in such things,” a statement which never failed
to bring guffaws from the assembled yokels. As a person
who still “believes in such things,” I was offended, but
as there is some Government Regulation or other against
striking Metropolitan Museum Tour Guides about the head
and shoulders, I refrained from expressing my opinion.
Nor would my opinion have made much headway against said
yokels, who likely take more seriously the grim
symbolism of the Armani Exchange.
Nevertheless, this is still just a museum, the place
where art goes to die. Art really only counts not when
it is an “artistic” or “intellectual” pursuit, but when
it is embedded in the very fabric of life. The art
gathered in the faux monastery is there precisely
because it is no longer woven into the lives of the
people as it once was. That is to say, it is in the art
museum because it is no longer art; it is a curiosity
offered to gawkers (like myself) of another age who not
only look at it, but in a sense look down on
it. But if civilization is to be saved, then it must be
in some sense a civilization of artists, because there
is no other kind of civilization. Real communities are
always based on shared symbols invested with real
meaning by people who still “believe in such things.”
That is to say, they are based on liturgy, on public
worship of something that includes yet transcends
everyone's personal feelings, and directs those feelings
towards a summum bonum.
So
how shall we construct a response to Armani Gothic? Will
it be from St. Pat's or from the Roman Forum and all the
things each represents? The question now presses us with
an urgency that it hasn't had before, since I believe
that the moral, social, and economic bases of our
society are rapidly disintegrating; soon we will be
called to rebuild the social order in the midst of the
barbarism that is fast upon us. Questions once
considered “theoretical” now enter the practical realm,
and enter it with the force of a freight train. And the
most practical questions of all have to do with liturgy
and art, since all social cooperation depends on our
shared understanding of what is truly good, an
understanding that is always embodied in liturgy and
art.
The new Mass began as a response to the modern social
order. It is 40 years old now, and I think there has
been enough time to judge whether it was an adequate
response. Its defenders will no doubt point to its
spirituality, and I would not dispute them. In fact, I
would point out that its spirituality is precisely the
problem, since it is a highly individualized spirit.
Indeed, it is almost like a “product,” a spirituality
that one can fashion according to one's individual needs
and desires. It is a privatized spiritualism, serviced
by the Churches but custom-made to one's exact (if not
exacting) specifications. As such, it is just as modern
as Armani, and indeed shares all of its shortcomings.
But in any case, it does not seem to have made any dent
in a world dominated by Armani Gothic. Indeed, it
doesn't really stand in opposition to Armani, but in
addition to it: just another acquisition in a life
dedicated to acquiring things.
Holy Communion, my more progressive friends never tire
of reminding me, is a meal. This is certainly true, but
the real trick is to turn an ordinary meal into a holy
communion. You might say that a good dinner is the art
of communion, while the Mass is the root of that art:
God gives himself to us in sacrifice and we give
ourselves to each other and hence to God. This we did at
the Roman Forum, where dinner was worth three or four
(or five) hours of one's time, not just for the meal but
precisely for that sense of communion.
The art of The Cloisters is the art that Armani and the
whole modern world would like to destroy, or at least
reduce to museum pieces. And given the help they get
from the presider of St. Patrick's, they will likely
prevail, or already have prevailed. See it while you
can, even if you can only see it in a museum. Surely,
this art no longer inspires the builders of modern
churches, and gets about as many guffaws from them as
from the scattered visitors to The Cloisters. See the
heritage that the modern world wants us to exchange for
the Armani Exchange. |
VIDEOS
