Modern Art

The book I am reading now (well, one of them--I’ve always got four or five on the go) is by a married woman, a poet, who joined the Catholic Benedictine order as an oblate (an offering; a vow-taker). She lived for stretches in the abbey, working at her writing going to prayers, but she always returned to her husband and her job and her Protestant church after her retreats. The liturgy schedule ran:

3:30 Vigils

6:30 Lauds

9:15 Tierce

11:45 Sext

1:45 None

5:30 Vespers

7:30 Compline

The 3:30am prayer no longer throws me off because I wake then so often. (Today I woke at two. Steroids can do that. Watch out!) I wonder what it would be like to be so steeped in daily, public Bible reading, prayer, and meals. Kathleen Norris’ writing gives a taste in The Cloister Walk.

Kathleen calls the monks poets because both have a sense that there is treasure in all things, and so "they commit absurd acts: the poem! The prayer!” She describes an exhibition entitled “Degenerate Art” that set side by side art approved and art denounced by Hitler.  The approved art was clearly propaganda. The other didn't follow the state's agenda because Art doesn’t like to be told what to say. Kathleen quotes Pat Robertson as saying once that modern art was a plot to strip America of its resources and that the material of Henry Moore’s sculptures should have been used to make statues of George Washington. Gloomy Plato, who never knew a good Creator God, would have agreed. He never wanted art to interfere with the ideal Republic’s program, and when you let “degenerate art” escape onto the stage, there’s no telling how humans will react. For the sake of predictability and control, you have to keep a lid on things that hint of counterculture or mystery.

Robert is building modern art right now. A friend of his brother bought a sculpture from the university near here, built with lumber that’s fallen apart, so Robert, his brother, and an apprentice are recreating the piece from scratch. It’s massive, as big as an elephant. It’s a team of seven ( of course) men hunched over every which way, holding a 17 foot beam over their shoulders as they walk, and it’s titled Endless March. Very cool. The artist, an Israeli living in New York now, is going to come back to see it when it’s finished. Must feel strange to have someone else go through the steps you took to make a piece like this.

I think God would say he liked this piece Robert is building, just as he would say he liked Henry Moore’s smooth, round mounds, if God were standing next go me, commenting. I suspect he’d like either of these better than another classic statue of Washington. God’s the one, after all, who creates art, and inspires art, and inspires us to create art. The freedom this requires costs him because we abuse freedom like we abuse all things, but I’m glad he loves us that much. I wish I could write the poem or the prayer or the update that said thank you well enough. Maybe the monks are on to something. Psalm 81, which I read today, exclaims, "Sing! For this is required by...the God of Jacob!" 

(Re-reading that final sentence I realized I was missed the "g" in the first word of this quote. Awkward. Always proofread! Artists do make mistakes, apparently. And sometimes their artwork falls apart.)

Enjoy Henry Moore's art, which will be around for a very long time as you can see, despite Pat Robertson:

Transcontinental (imagine it)

Mother and baby (notice the hollows; I get this one!)

Vertebra (this one just feels right)

this is in a park: looks like it should be titled "Play ball"