Immaculate Conception

Stoddart is critical of modern artists who he claims are probably not equipped to produce what their predecessors might have, say a century ago. We seem to have lost a mainstream classical art tradition in modernism, but why is that? Coming back to the theme of the molten calf – why the curious title of this lecture? The molten calf of course refers to what the tribe of Israel crafted whilst Moses went up to Mount Sion. On his return, seeing the tribe dancing around it, Moses demanded the statue destroyed, ground up into dust and those involved to be executed. Something I have never thought much about before, is why does the second commandment, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, come before the sixth commandment, Thou shalt not murder? I suppose we need to consider what a graven image might be. Sandy’s lecture discussed the golden calf representing something that goes against the Lord as a life-giving God. Those who are prancing around the molten calf in circles, are not able to speak from dancing, and have descended into something God does not want and is bad for humanity. Idolatry is representative of something apparently worse than murder. If we start drowning out what gives life, we revert back to primal nature and abandon all our progress as a civilisation.

Although the golden calf was a statue and ‘graven image’ of an idol, the Catholic Church from an early stage specified that it is good and acceptable to adorn our homes with statues and holy things. Sandy Stoddart’s main point of the lecture, was that art which embodies our ideals and exhibits a perfect state which we can aspire to, contradicts the primacy of nature. Unfortunately there seems to be an inner human instinct to destroy public art displayed for this purpose. Think of the ‘IS’ islamists blowing up the ancient mosques and churches they didn’t like. Or the Taliban dynamiting the ancient Buddhist statues in the desert wilderness. And the abandonment of the sacred in Christian churches, replacing religious imagery with pebbles, rocks and plant pots.

And herein lies the challenge. Where a sculpture, painting, and so on might cause us to be captured – it stirs our soul. Throughout human history, there is a tendency to deface and destroy things which hold a certain stillness that grab the viewer’s attention. We have seen this in the past, for example in the iconoclastic period of the reformation, where Statues of Mary were obliterated, ornate carvings chiseled out of churches, rood screens dismantled and burned, and priceless stained glass windows smashed apart. Sandy claims that artists, musicians and creative types like him, are fighting against a tide. Nature would rather we did not explore the works of art which make us stop and think, and introduce something wonderful to us, something we cannot immediately understand.

What is it about humanity which sees this resistance to a style of art which makes us stop and think? Statues, paintings or buildings which we can look at and see the truth and beauty which lies in the artist’s work? Sandy’s point was that art which contradicts the primacy of nature, seems to be vulnerable to an inner human instinct to destroy it. Today’s feast is of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the doctrine that the mother of Jesus was born without sin. I saw this statue of Our Lady of Aberdeen in the Notre-Dame-du-Finistère church in Brussels, on a visit this summer. The statue was sent from Scotland to Belgium in 1625, probably to save it from destruction during the reformation.

Our Lady of Aberdeen, Notre-Dame-du-Finistère, Brussels

Catholic Churches have always adorned the Blessed Virgin and had statues, frescoes, paintings and so on, because such statues contradict the primacy of nature – moreover the primacy of the nature of original sin in humanity. If Mary was born without original sin, then she is indeed something that will stir our soul. Statues which make us stop, ponder the point of stillness of say, the appearance at Fatima, help give us this vision of the most perfect.

– Br Luke Doherty, O.P.