Dr. Fleming on art

From a comment to this post by Scott Richert:

I promised to stay out but I will answer this question. You raise a serious question but one in which too many questions are begged. I don’t like Leonardo at all, and if the Last Supper was a great painting, we shall never again be able to judge because it has been entirely ruined by restoration. Could the world do without Renaissance painting? Rather easily. Are most Renaissance painters Christian? No. Is it better to study more Christian art? Emphatically yes.

I find it difficult to regard as serious art any form of communication nor depiction that is a vulgar imitation of perceived reality. This includes photography and film. That some film-makers can succeed in making a kind of art, despite the obvious limitations and liabilities of their form, I do not doubt. But in such a case, they are either veering toward some other art, such as narrative fiction (Ford), drama (Sturgess), or painting (Renoir). I have seen many of Gibson’s films and seen interviews with Gibson himself, and it is impossible to take him seriously as an “artist.” Simply because one likes something does not justify one in calling it what it is not. A big Mac is not good food, Braveheart is not art, much less great art.

While good character and great art are more often allied than is commonly supposed, we live in troubled times. Pasolini, whose film I recommended, was a homosexual communist, but he was, insofar as he was able, an honest man and not a bad poet. He was reaching for the truth and did not import into his film anything not in the text of the Gospel. (Note the singular.) Gibson, on the other hand, has posed as a family-values Catholic while betraying his wife. I have not seen his film and do not wish to under any circumstances. We have four Gospels and do not need a fifth. Besides, the ultra-graphic technique of modern film can only distort the text. That would be enough to condemn the production. Then there is the problem that he picks and chooses from four texts. The most famous attempt at this in the ancient world was done by a heretic, and with good reason. Each version has its own focus, its own vision, and although scholars and theologians are quite right to compare the versions, each is meant to be taken on its own terms. Then there are the things that Gibson has introduced. Where in the world did this sweet-cheeks actor get the idea he could do his own Gospel?

Finally, let me repeat what i have said many times. It is never right for an artist to manipulate and stimulate the passions directly. It does not matter whether the artist in question is Beethoven or Caravaggio or a simple tool like poor Gibson. I do not mean to say there are not fine things in romantic symphonies or mannerist art or Baroque sculptures, but that we have to be on guard against them, lest we fall under their spell. When people tell me that their faith was strengthened by seeing a movie, I am stunned. I would shock them if i told them the truth, which is that they are, in the first place, fools, and in the second place, they are making their faith dependent upon the basest of arts, cinematography. I, who have seen more evil and more bad art than most people and survived, would not willingly undergo this sort of temptation. I would more willingly watch a Korean vengeance film or piece of French pornography. While this junk does work upon our lowest instincts and probably degrades everyone it touches, it is not presented in the guise of religion. It is one thing to look at pornography; quite another to take pornographic pictures of your wife or daughter. If there are Catholics who do not understand this, then my advise is to kick in their TV, never go to movies, get off Facebook and Twitter, and read nothing written in the past 500 years.