The Way of Beauty Read online

  The Way of Beauty

  Liturgy, Education, and Inspiration

  for Family, School, and College

  David Clayton

  The Way of Beauty

  Liturgy, Education, and Inspiration

  for Family, School, and College

  First published

  by Angelico Press, 2015

  © David Clayton, 2015

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission.

  For information, address:

  Angelico Press

  4709 Briar Knoll Dr.

  Kettering, OH 45429

  angelicopress.com

  www.thewayofbeauty.org

  978-1-62138-141-9

  Color versions of all the paintings

  referred to in the book can be found at

  www.angelicopress.com/clayton-way-of-beauty/

  Cover design: Michael Schrauzer

  The school is a privileged place in which, through a living encounter with a cultural inheritance, integral formation occurs.1

  * * *

  1. The Catholic School (The Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education).

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE The Connection Between Liturgy, the Culture, and Education

  Introduction: The Way of Beauty and the New Evangelization

  1 Sacred Liturgy and Beauty

  2 Sacred Liturgy and Culture (or Cult and Culture)

  3 Liturgy, Culture, and Education

  4 Art, Grace, Education, and Prodigious Drinking

  PART TWO What Does Such a Culture Look Like? How the Forms of the Culture Reflect the Patterns of the Liturgy: Ordering Time and Space Numerically

  5 The Music, Art, and Architecture of the Spheres

  6 Harmonious Proportion

  7 Golden or Fallen? A Note on Phi

  PART THREE The Forms of Figurative Christian Liturgical Art: A Guide for Artists and Those Establishing a Canon of Images for Study in an Education of Beauty

  8 What are the Figurative Liturgical Traditions of the Catholic Church?

  9 The Theology and Form of the Artistic Traditions of the Church

  10 The Development of the Iconographic Style

  11 What Catholics Believe About Icons and What Makes an Image Holy

  12 Aristotle, Aquinas, and St. Francis: How the New Naturalism of Gothic Art Developed

  13 Gothic Art: Case Studies

  14 Baroque Art: Case Studies

  15 Why We Need Different Artistic Traditions

  PART FOUR Afterword and Appendices

  The Way of Beauty: Afterword

  Appendix 1: Liturgical Science

  Appendix 2: Trinity and trinity: The Beauty of Three

  Appendix 3: Liturgy and Intuition

  Appendix 4: Modern and Ancient Cosmology in Harmony?

  PART ONE

  The Connection Between Liturgy, the Culture, and Education

  Introduction

  The Way of Beauty and the New Evangelization

  Man’s standards are conditioned by those of Earth, the standard of Earth by those of Heaven, the standard of Heaven by that of the Way [Tao] and the standard of the Way is that of its own intrinsic nature.

  Lao Tzu, from Tao Te Ching, XXV (6th century BC)

  I am the Way.

  Jesus Christ (John 14:6)

  IN ITS DOCUMENTS about education, the Church tells us that central to the purpose of Christian education is the formation of the person to be one who is capable of ordering the whole of human culture. This book explains how an education can form the student to apprehend beauty and engender creativity, so that every single one of us can contribute to the creation of a culture of beauty and evangelization of the wider culture.

  This formation has at its heart a participation in the sacred liturgy. From this stem all the other essential parts, such as the creation of schools and colleges as educational communities; and the content of the curriculum taught.

  Because I am an artist, I illustrate the general principles articulated through their application in visual art and an art education. This does not limit their value to those who wish to be artists, however. As I explain, a traditional art education can be incorporated into every Catholic’s general education as part of the student’s formation in beauty. This is why, for example, we include a chapter explaining the stylistic elements in Christian artistic traditions.

  It would be a mistake for the reader to conclude that I am saying that an education in beauty is the only part of an education that is important. I focus in this book primarily on the themes that I do because they are the ones that I feel are currently most neglected. This is why, for example, I spend so much time discussing the study of symbolic number and proportion. However, I have done my best to position the study of these specific items relative to all others within the context of a general Catholic education. For it is important that its position within the whole corpus is understood as much as the material itself if it is to be valuable.

  The Way of Beauty and the New Evangelization

  I am a painter, and this book is the product of several years of research that began in response to the question, how can I be an artist in service of the Church? I anticipate that what it contains will be of interest to artists who are asking themselves the same question now.

  However, to the degree that it will be of interest to any it will be of interest also, I believe, to those with a much broader interest: that of the re-establishment of a culture of beauty in the West. Many of the general principles that I articulate can be applied easily to any other field of human endeavor that might be executed gracefully; or for which the product of that work could be beautiful. In other words, just about any human activity. This is the Way of Beauty—a joyful path to God by which our work shines with the light of Christ and draws people in so that they might share in it. This is precisely what popes from Paul VI onwards have been calling for since the Second Vatican Council, most prominently John Paul II and Benedict XVI. At the time of this writing, early in the papacy of Francis, we see that he too has already spoken forcefully about the importance of beauty.

  The beauty of Catholic culture can speak to all, of course, but it is especially needed in trying to open the hearts of those of the “post-Christian” society in the West. These are people who are not Christian, but whose parents or grandparents were. The task here is more than simply making the information available to them: it is to impart to them the belief that the Church offers them a joyful life that is better than what they have now. This is the aim of the so-called New Evangelization, and every single one of us who does believe is called to be an ambassador of the Church who can reach out to these people, through the example we provide of the joy of living.

  We must all be formed in grace and love, so that our lives radiate with the light of Christ as part of his mystical body, the Church. This is the light that the apostles saw on Mount Tabor during the Transfiguration. We are unlikely to strike people with radiating light precisely in the way that Christ is seen by the Apostles (though it is possible). It is more likely that some aspect of what we do and the way we do it will strike those around us as graceful and beautiful.

  Although I talk a lot about paintings and painters, this book is as much about the formation of these everyday evangelists as it is about forming painters.

  I hope that it might help any who consider the study of our culture and the principles of beauty to be an important part of general education, so that through it might lead in turn to the formation of many more.

  Culture, High and Wide

  Some may be surprised that I imagine that a book that began with a question about painting might have suc
h a broad appeal, and ask why this is. One reason is that I found in the course of my investigation that I had first to consider many of the general principles in order to understand their particular application in painting. As it turned out, therefore, even if I wished to focus only on painting, I could not do so properly unless I considered also the place of painting in the broader culture and what it is, in turn, that makes the broader culture a Catholic culture.

  To illustrate: in order to understand gothic painting, as an example of a Catholic tradition in sacred art, I found that it was necessary also to investigate the nature of the connection between all sacred art and the public worship of the Church, her liturgy; otherwise, I would never know how any particular image, whatever style it might be—Gothic, baroque, Celtic and so on—could support our worship.

  It is the aggregate of all graceful activity and beautiful things that result from that activity in any society that is the basis of a beautiful culture.1 I had therefore to look at the wider culture and try to assess what formed it in order to understand what formed non-sacred painting. In the context of painting, therefore, I had to look at the connection between religious art (that which has an explicitly religious purpose) and mundane art (which does not). Because works of art are by definition created by people, this boiled down to trying to work out what it was that forms a person so that they can create beautiful things.

  As my own research progressed I gradually came to the conclusion that there is a profound connection between all culture and our worship: that our participation in the sacred liturgy is the most powerful force in shaping and forming both the culture of faith and contemporary culture. The interrelationships between the three are as follows: contemporary culture is derived from and points to the culture of faith, which in turn is nourished by and directs us to the act of worship.

  This book sets out and details the general connection between liturgy and culture. I discuss the importance of beauty in culture and how our participation in the liturgy forms us powerfully in our ability to apprehend beauty. Then I look at how the liturgy forms our attitudes to all the fundamental things in life—our worldview—and how this is manifested in both the culture of faith and the contemporary culture so that the forms of the culture of faith and the contemporary culture are closely related to each other. Because I am a painter and painting is the field of high culture about which I know most, many of the examples I use to illustrate general features of the culture are paintings.

  In this regard I draw very strongly on the words of Pope Benedict. According to him there are three traditions of figurative art that are appropriate for the liturgy: the iconographic, the Gothic, and the baroque of the 17th century “at its best.” Those who wish to know more about what characterizes these traditions can look to the latter part of this book in which there is a chapter that describes briefly the essential elements and refers those who wish to go to greater depth to authoritative texts.

  For the Christian, the highest art is that which supports the highest purpose: the worship of God in the sacred liturgy.2 So with art, and indeed all human activity, the mundane is derived from and points to that which goes on “in the temple” (i.e., that which is sacred). Benedict XVI, following Pius X, distinguishes between liturgical forms of art and music and religious art and music in general and then explains how preserving this distinction actually allows the liturgical forms to be the source from which the other religious forms and ultimately all art and music are derived. Following Pius X and then subsequently applying the same principle to the situation today, Benedict says:

  A clear distinction was made between liturgical music and religious music in general, just as visual art in the liturgy has to conform to different standards from those employed in religious art in general. Art in the liturgy has a very specific responsibility, and precisely as such does it serve as a wellspring of culture, which in the final analysis owes its existence to cult.3

  This argument can be used in regard to all aspects of the culture: art, literature, music, architecture. The liturgical forms set the standard for the written word, art, music, architecture of the culture as a whole.

  Considering the past, we can see this demonstrated for example in the baroque period of the 17th century. The art forms that began with the work of Caravaggio in Rome in the early part of the century and which were developed to support the worship of God in the Tridentine liturgy became the standard for all sacred art in the Church, and then the basis for the mundane forms such as portrait, landscape, and still life. This was not restricted in its impact to painting or to the Catholic world. All the Protestants of Western Europe took the forms of baroque culture—sculpture, music, architecture, and so on—as their own.

  Why, one might ask, did they do this? The short answer is: beauty. Those who saw this culture found its beauty compelling and wanted it for themselves.

  Just as the Council of Trent laid the foundation for cultural renewal in service of the Church in its time, so the Second Vatican Council, in the words of John Paul II (written in his Letter to Artists in 1999), “laid the foundation for a renewed relationship between Church and culture” today. It falls onto us to decide whether or not we wish to build on those foundations through our actions. If we follow its guidance, we can contribute to the rebuilding the bridge that can span the divide that now exists between the culture of faith and the secular culture, a gap that appeared after the Enlightenment.

  Once standards of beauty have been set in our liturgical forms, then a vision of human existence and its ultimate meaning have been established for all to see. We who worship will be transformed by this divine beauty and will take it out into the world, sharing in the Light of the transfigured Christ as we go about our daily activities, drawing people to Him. Society at large, and especially those who otherwise would never enter a church, will tend to measure itself against these standards and draw inspiration from this vision. Beauty is its own argument now just as it was in the baroque.

  We must all be the agents, in the sense of creators if not actually the artists with paintbrush in hand, of the culture of beauty that drives the New Evangelization. When people see this beauty in our work, it will be natural to every person to respond to it by giving praise to the Creator. Some may resist this natural impulse, for they possess as well free will and are more inclined to follow prejudices that tell them otherwise; and some will not have sufficient faith or understanding of this impulse within them to know that it is directed towards God. But with God’s grace these people can respond so that they move closer to that point when they leave prejudice behind, understand, and believe. They will be receptive to the Word.

  We live in an age in which information, including the Gospel, is widely available to just about anyone who wants to get hold of it. How do we attract the attention of those who need God and don’t know that this is what they desire more than anything? This is the special value of beauty. Pope Benedict spoke of this when he described the via pulchritudinis—the Way of Beauty—as the “most compelling” route that leads us to love God. Today this is an almost untapped power that could fuel the New Evangelization, in which the grace and beauty of all that we do will draw people towards not only our work, but also to us, curious to know of its source. What they are sensing is the love that underlies what we do. This, it seems to me, is the great message of Pope Francis to each of us. It requires each of us to look to ourselves first, and in cooperation with grace and through an active participation in the liturgy allow ourselves to be transformed in love.

  In focusing strongly on the past traditions of the Church, there is no suggestion that I am looking for a future that is an unthinking replication of the past. Rather, I hope that this analysis might lead us to a reapplication of the same principles, but in a way that is appropriate to our age. To this end, my intention is to demonstrate how the form of these past traditions reflects the worldview of the artist as much as its content. Each figurative tradition of the Church, for example, conveys a
particular aspect of the understanding of the human person simply by the way that he is painted. Each seeks to portray man as body and soul. It is the controlled deviations from a rigid adherence to physical appearances that communicate to us, at an intuitive level, the invisible truths that are so necessary for the understanding of what a person is. In other words, it’s not just what the artist paints, but how he paints it, that is important.

  It is also possible to communicate something that is false through form. Most (but not all) modern forms of art, for example, communicate through form the errors of modern philosophy. It can happen through ignorance as much as through intent, and it is to avoid an unintentionally negative impact that a Christian artist must be grounded in the traditions of his faith.

  Geometric Art, Symbolic Number, and the Quadrivium

  For the ancients the beauty of the cosmos could be described numerically. This is a tradition that goes back to Pythagoras in the ancient Greek world of the 6th century BC, described by Plato in the Timaeus; it was incorporated into the Christian tradition by figures such as St. Augustine and Boethius about 1, 000 years later. This numerical description of beauty gave rise to a tradition of an abstract, non-figurative Christian art form of geometric patterns, became the basis for design of the proportions of anything from a building to a spoon, and for ordering in principle any aspect of daily living. It is through the writing of Pope Benedict XVI, who draws on the writing of Church Fathers such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor, that I became aware of how the numerical description of the beauty of the cosmos and the culture is connected also to the rhythms and patterns of the liturgy.4 These ideas were vigorously rejected by Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century, and so influential was this rejection that it affected even contemporary Catholic thinkers. The result is that by the early 20th century, the tradition had just about disappeared altogether.

  My own attention was drawn to these ancient ideas by my consideration of two aspects of visual art. The first was in looking for some principles of design when seeking to order figurative paintings. Was I, as an artist, at complete liberty to pick whatever external shape I chose? Could I pick a circle, a square, a rectangle or something bound by a Gothic arch arbitrarily, or were there principles that governed this choice? Also, I wondered, could I place the prominent figures anywhere within it, or was there a set of geometric principles that I could draw on to help me make good choices in the compositional design of a painting? I had seen, for example, complex analyses in which all sorts of lines and shapes were drawn over paintings of the French baroque artist Poussin, for example, which claimed to reveal his design principles. Was there any basis in this?