Seek Giacometti’s “The Palace at 4 a.m.” Go back two hours. See towers and curtain walls of matchsticks, marble, marbles, light, cloud at stasis. Walk in. The beggar queen is dreaming on her throne of words…You have arrived at the web home of Marly Youmans, maker of novels, poetry collections, and stories, as well as the occasional fantasy for younger readers.
Today I commented on a not-new and rather irascible thread, even though I meant not to do so--I don't really like web-contention or find it worthwhile. Both the article and the thread made me feel the urge to reach out a hand toward the long-dead artist. It's not just that Bernini arouses controversy; it's a certain lack of courtesy and understanding and love for the works of the past that bothers me.
Why attempt to sink into a work of art when we are so very different (and better, surely) now? We're sex-friendly, so Bernini must have just been wanting to show the world a sexual image and plunk it down in the middle of Cardinal Cornaro's chosen burial site. As for Teresa of Avila, a mystical nun, and her precisely stated account of divine contact, what do we care whether it was a direct source for Bernini and accurately portrayed? What does that have to do with anything?
Anyway, I thought that "entering in" to a work of art is an important topic for people who love the arts and the achievements of our predecessors, so I am sharing my comment here. See below the picture for a link to the original article.
from "Sexuality and Love in Art"
The critic says that some of the shots he included were stills
from Schama's Power of Art DVD--not sure whether this is one.
The desire to depict the overwhelming nature of religious ecstasy and the ravishment of the soul led Bernini here. You can find parallels in written art--in John Donne, for example. The biblical concept of the body of the Church (that is, the company of all believers) as “bride of Christ” is here taken to its passionate, baroque extreme.
Judging by this thread, I would say that the secular eye and the religious eye are not seeing the same piece of art. Two world views, two versions.
The secular viewer is constrained to be reductive and perceive only sex. To use a proverb with a few sexual connotations of its own, “When you’re a hammer, all the world’s a nail.”
Meanwhile the religious viewer sees the sensuality of this bride of Christ, yes, but in the form of an utter abandon of the human body “slain in the spirit.”
Bernini was not a secular man but a Christian, and here he presents divine joy in a way utterly right for how St. Theresa described her mystic union with God. “The Ecstasy of St. Theresa” shines with his genius for bringing passionate life to stone and a thrilling ability to create dramatic architectural design as setting for his sculptural works.
A hallmark error of our era is to diminish the glories of the past in an effort to make them better “fit” our modern times and modern sensibilities. Not only is there a lack of sympathy for religious experience and transformation, but there is a determined and even self-righteous lack of imagination, which has already begun to close off the great works of past time from many secular viewers.
Why attempt to sink into a work of art when we are so very different (and better, surely) now? We're sex-friendly, so Bernini must have just been wanting to show the world a sexual image and plunk it down in the middle of Cardinal Cornaro's chosen burial site. As for Teresa of Avila, a mystical nun, and her precisely stated account of divine contact, what do we care whether it was a direct source for Bernini and accurately portrayed? What does that have to do with anything?
Anyway, I thought that "entering in" to a work of art is an important topic for people who love the arts and the achievements of our predecessors, so I am sharing my comment here. See below the picture for a link to the original article.
The critic says that some of the shots he included were stills
from Schama's Power of Art DVD--not sure whether this is one.
Judging by this thread, I would say that the secular eye and the religious eye are not seeing the same piece of art. Two world views, two versions.
The secular viewer is constrained to be reductive and perceive only sex. To use a proverb with a few sexual connotations of its own, “When you’re a hammer, all the world’s a nail.”
Meanwhile the religious viewer sees the sensuality of this bride of Christ, yes, but in the form of an utter abandon of the human body “slain in the spirit.”
Bernini was not a secular man but a Christian, and here he presents divine joy in a way utterly right for how St. Theresa described her mystic union with God. “The Ecstasy of St. Theresa” shines with his genius for bringing passionate life to stone and a thrilling ability to create dramatic architectural design as setting for his sculptural works.
A hallmark error of our era is to diminish the glories of the past in an effort to make them better “fit” our modern times and modern sensibilities. Not only is there a lack of sympathy for religious experience and transformation, but there is a determined and even self-righteous lack of imagination, which has already begun to close off the great works of past time from many secular viewers.