Art

Francis, the Venice Biennale, and the Vacuum of Belief

Francis is the first pope to tour the Venice Biennale. May he be the last. A good deal of sugar has been spun from the unexamined conceit that art—Art—is a moral pill to treat social problems. A trademark of upper-middle and upper-upper class groupthink, it was in high relief on Sunday, April 28. That day Pope Francis helicoptered to Venice for a tour of the exhibition “With My Eyes” at the Holy See Pavilion. The word pavilion here is a moveable concept that applies to a temporary installation housed this year in the women’s prison on Venice’s Giudecca Island. Continue Reading
Beauty: Fragment on a Theme

I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher. I am simply a painter whose faith takes color, tone, and bearing from the Catholicism into which I was born. But even a cat can look at a king. From my place—well beneath the box seats of beauty-minded theologians and theological esthetes—I wonder if Hans Urs von Balthasar’s legacy is as wholly salutary as it has become fashionable to believe. This is a risky confession, my brothers and my sisters. I know that. Continue Reading

Culture is not an ornament of leisure to be measured in museum attendance, opera subscriptions, theater going and the like. It is, rather, the fiber of life—a living tradition of values—that lends meaning to a society’s artistic production.The nature of our culture is gauged more accurately by the character and political temperament of the men and women a still-free people entrust with public office. By that measure, American culture is on the ropes. No amount of art appreciation or museum acreage can sustain a people who confuse a presidential election with voting for American Idol. Continue Reading