“Frenzy into Folly” at St. Paul’s, New York

Frenzy into Folly

A few days ago a visitor to St Paul the Apostle church on West 59th Street noticed a startling object in a side chapel dedicated to Our Lady: a mihrab!

It is accompanied by an explanatory text perhaps even stranger in a Catholic church:

“The intention of this work is to represent the Virgin Mary in the events of the Annunciation, conception and, specifically here, the moment of the birth of Jesus as it is understood in the Islamic tradition and depicted in the Qur’an. This piece is built to resemble a traditional Islamic prayer-niche known as a mihrab and it has been designed in the proportions of the sculpture of the Virgin Mary by Bela Lyon Pratt in the present Altar of the Annunciation. The script from the Qur’an can be translated as:

And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a date palm. She said:
 “O! I wish that I had died before this, and was in oblivion, forgotten!” 
 -(Surah [of] Maryam, 19.23)
It is worth contemplating that if there are approximately 2.2 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims in the world today, then there are more or less 4 billion human beings who live with an unalterable reverence for one woman, whose life story bears witness to the sacred mystery of creation, of which every human being, as a supposedly cognizant formation of matter, is a recipient: having once been in a state of nothingness, each of us has been rendered into Being. As God states in the Qur’an regarding the conception of Jesus (19.35), “When He decrees a thing, He only says to it, ‘Be!’ and it is.”

But nearby we see this in the chapel of St. Agnes:

And further along we find an image of the dead Christ lying in repose on what seems to be an ichthyosaurus fossil.

Finally we understand that these are actually the relics – the holdovers – of an exhibition of last year: “Frenzy into Folly” – or maybe in part of even earlier exhibitions. Or perhaps they represent the first wave of the new exhibit coming on September 13, “All of the Above.” And as we will see the above “artworks’ are the least of the problems…

The website exitstrata.com devotes ample space to the “Frenzy into Folly” exhibit. There are brief videos of many of the artists explaining their work. James Vandenberg explains that:

Crosses is an attempt to take a very loaded symbol and reinterpret it through the process of painting. The cross as an icon has been used and manufactured for frenzied movements and ideological folly throughout human history. It can be a symbol of faith and love, intolerance and torture, mathematics and astronomy.

Keena Gonzalez opines that:

Through my images, which demonstrate the similarities between Catholicism and Islam, I hope to create a dialogue and a better understanding of how the two religions are not that different.

And from Tim Rusterholz:

Overwhelming frenzy is a pervasive theme within the walls of a Catholic Church. Notable examples lie in theatrical altarpieces and ceiling paintings of Baroque art. Master artists portrayed divinity by transcending human limits with stunning visuals of virtuosity and illusion. The history of Christian imagery rationalizes a divine vision while art challenges logic, producing a turbulent yet poetic depiction in spiritual and aesthetic opposition.

Now how did this exhibit in the “Space” of St. Paul’s come about? In an extensive discussion and set of interviews “Lynne” explains how it arose in cooperation with the Paulist fathers. In 2006 “Father Frank” had founded the collective: “Openings.” “Father Frank” claims a link with the spirituality of Isaac Hecker. According to Lynne:

Suffice it to say, both the history and contemporary workings of this open minded, nonjudgmental, humanitarian tradition, long overshadowed by Papal norms (which clearly was the cause of not a little consternation for this kind and open man) is worth more inquiry, which I encourage you to do if you’re intrigued.

And further:

And, crucially, for the first time in my life, I had a Christian priest acknowledge that the standard use of the word God was delimiting… not only that: that when human beings talk about and define God, that our spirituality becomes confined and domesticated, a situation worth avoiding with great care. Frank quoted from St. Anselm’s ontological argument, noting that when we use the word God as per modern Christianity, we are no longer talking about God at all. He uses the word “spirit,” and spoke with no judgment about all religions’ search for the same thing. He has no interest in conversion and his role is not that of a missionary by any means — with every fiber of his being, it is clear, here is someone who believes that there is a reason why, as he says, Dictators get rid of artists first: because they hold the key to truly understanding the ineffable.

Now admittedly much of this pretentious talk from priests, curators and artists seems faintly ludicrous – much like the dialogue in Roger Corman’s 1959 satire on artists A Bucket of Blood. But we have here on a miniature scale a serious phenomenon that has become a major issue in Europe: the intrusion of “contemporary art” into Christian sacred spaces. The presence of this art, which is often blasphemous, is justified as part of a search for a nebulous “sacred.” But the insertion of this art radically calls into question the surrounding space – which had been a church. Jean Clair and Aude de Kerros have described and critiqued the process. But, as in Europe, the Catholic clergy are the main enablers. As the Openings website states:

The Church of St Paul the Apostle has had one main goal since its inception – to combine the artistic ideals of the past with the American genius of the present day-

The new exhibit “All of the Above” starts September 13.

(Thanks to Dino Marcantonio for the tip.)