In the summer issue of the newsletter by Commonweal Magazine, there was an essay by Pat Ballan entitled “Every Picture Tells a Story.”
The essay was about a painting of Joan of Arc that is present in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. I wonder if I have ever thought of paintings as telling a story.
I hope in the future to approach paintings as though they are telling a story, and I suspect that if I do approach a painting in that way, my appreciation of the painting will deepen. I may have seen Jules Bastien-Lepage’s portrait of Saint Joan during my visits to the Met. If I did, I know my reaction was nothing like Ballan’s.
The following are the opening words of Ballan’s essay:
“The first time I saw Jules Bastien-Lepage’s portrait of Joan of Arc at the Met last fall, I was bowled over. I was struck by Joan’s very aliveness. I’d recently read George Bernard Shaw’s play “Saint Joan,” and I felt myself increasingly preoccupied by the two works. I wanted to know more: to ask why and how this androgynous teenage martyr exercised such a tight grip on the literary imagination for centuries to follow. I also wanted to explore the fraught relationship between mysticism, autonomy, and sexuality. While Lepage’s painting renders Joan a Pre-Raphaelite vision, for instance, Bernard Shaw is adamantly anti-romantic in his portrait of her as a headstrong female genius. Why? I wanted to try to answer these questions in essay form. And I knew ‘Commonweal’ was the only publication that would let me probe them in the open yet rigorous way I craved.”
My guess is that I have seen the painting of Joan, though I am certain if I did, I did not have the fabulous experience Ballan had. I envy her. In the past, my visits to the Met did not allow me to spend sufficient time viewing the masterpieces. I think it was Sister Wendy who suggested that when we visit museums, we should only view three masterpieces. I am afraid that I almost rush through the corridors of a museum. I will have to change that if I take seriously what I am writing about art in this series of columns.
Frequently, when I visit the Met, I feel very ignorant. So many masterpieces are present within the museum’s walls. I am trying to sort out the several reactions I had to Ballan’s reaction to the painting of St. Joan. I probably have seen that painting in one of my visits to the Met but I have no recollection of my reaction if I did see it.
I immediately felt envious of Ballan’s sensitivity and receptivity in the presence of the masterpiece. There are many masterpieces in the museum, so much beauty within its walls, so much meaning and mystery in the building that I feel challenged by it. For me, visiting the Met is a little bit overwhelming.
As I am writing this column, I am thinking of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the home of countless efforts by artists to say something significant and important with their creations. So many of the artists probably spent their lives trying to create art that would touch people deeply. So many of those artists succeeded. What a wonderful way to spend a life, trying to capture and present something of the beauty of God’s creation. I immediately think of the first two lines of Gerard Manley’s Hopkins’ poem, “God’s Grandeur.” The two lines are: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will blaze out like shining from shook foil.” I believe that serious artists, even if they do not consciously believe in God, are involved in imitating God as creator.
In his magnificent “Letter to Artists,” Pope Saint John Paul wrote the following:
“God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman’s task. Through his ‘artistic activity’ man appears more than ever ‘in the image of God’, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous ‘material’ of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power.”
Of all the marvelous and beautiful edifices that architects and builders have constructed, I am wondering if the building that most resembles a church is a museum. Great museums almost seem to be holy places. I want to remember that thought the next time I visit The Met. I also want to slow down as I move through the corridors.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. He presents two 15-minute talks from his lecture series on the Catholic Novel, 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday on NET-TV.
