Friday, December 31, 2010
Faith
And meanwhile we talk and talk about what the new school of fusion is going to be, presuming that we own the ages past, simply because we make the mistake of thinking in some linear-historical process (the Pure Medieval turned into the Vile Renaissance and that turned into the Viler Mannerist Period!), and that we can therefore build some Great Cultural Renewal merely by taking parts here and there from said past ages (just like that!), as though Art were merely a sort of intellectual choosing of foods from a buffet, or chemist's mixing of test tube chemicals - both of which remain, in the end, completely in the mind.
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said.
Note: I realize the cathedral doesn't necessarily qualify, either in artistic terms or practical structural terms (though that may not be so: it's not finished; it also still stands after fifty years) to be compared to the great cathedrals and such, but that is not the point.
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2 comments:
That thing's not art, it's a death trap.
I've been a carpenter for over thirty years and I can see how out of plumb and level everything is. And so much of the concrete is honeycombed. God only knows what else is wrong with it.
Someday the final straw will be put in place and the back of the building will break. Mass and sheer size will hold a bunch of weight but if it isn't true and if the loads aren't transferred properly it will fail, no matter how thick the walls.
There's an analogy to our modern world in there someplace.
By the way, I really appreciate the work you do. There's nothing like using your hands to create something from raw materials. Whether a drawing or a house, there's a good deal of satisfaction in it.
Agreed. And thank you for the comment!
You say, "There's an analogy to our modern world in there someplace." I think so too. And not without sympathy. Whether that man in Spain is a fool or an egoist or both or neither, he definitely has a burning faith. To me he is the epitome of today's fatherless artist: yearning to give form to what God the Father has put in him, but resorting (very much out of necessity due to the lack of fatherhood) to pieces of scrap and putting them together into one's own makeshift world - it falls and crumbles and one has to constantly be rebuilding it; the child is unfathered, hasn't been lifted to look objectively on new horizons. That building as an analogy to our modern world...definitely. Metaphors have become all too real in our age. They are no longer metaphors!
But can you imagine what sort of thing might happen if that man's faith and zeal was joined with the "know how", the craftsmanship and the expertise and the purification of talents?
I think my main point is this: all our cultural heritage has a total value of Zero without the faith that that man has - or greater than he has.
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