The Divine Calling of the Artist
Pope John Paul II's extraordinary appeal to the world...
Concern over the direction that art and aesthetics is taking in the Western world has recently emerged as one of the most common talking points on social media.
It is a rightful clamour for beauty to return to our world, along with the deeper meaning underpinning it. Few people, however, have articulated this desire more beautifully than one of the most widely respected world leaders in living memory — Pope John Paul II.
Beyond his more famous achievements, on Easter Sunday 1999 the late Pontiff wrote one of the most extraordinary texts to emerge from the modern Vatican — the Letter to Artists.
A letter from the heart and the soul, John Paul II’s words form a moving call to arms to the world’s artists ahead of the dawning third millennium, urging them to fuse their talent with faith and realize the true potential of the visual media.
Beauty can save the soul, and here is why, from a man whose very duty it was to save souls…
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Art is More Than a Skill
John Paul II begins his letter with a stirring address indeed:
“None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands”
Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists I, April 4th 1999
Immediately, the Pope draws a direct connection between Man and God through the common wonder of the act of creation. The artist, he maintains, when surveying his completed work should evoke the opening of the Book of Genesis. For when God created the world, and populated it with grass, trees, creatures and light, “God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1). If the artist can therefore look upon his work in such a manner, he is, as the Supreme Pontiff records, “sensing in it some echo of the mystery of creation with which God, the sole creator of all things, has wished in some way to associate you”.
In this way, any artist for whom his profession is a calling, rather than a means to achieve material reward, is already turned towards God, whether he consciously knows it or not. It is here that John Paul II states the wholesome purpose of the letter:
“In writing this Letter, I intend to follow the path of the fruitful dialogue between the Church and artists which has gone on unbroken through two thousand years of history, and which still, at the threshold of the Third Millennium, offers rich promise for the future”
Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists I, April 4th 1999
While he will expand on the course of the Church’s relationship to art later in the text, he explains in depth here why theologically it is important for the Church to have such a relationship in the first place. Put simply, as the Supreme Creator, God is the “exemplar” of any person who makes use of their creativity.
Crucially however, this is not to say that everyone or anyone can or should be an artist. Or more correctly, that not all creative art is essential art…
The Mission of the Artist
Just because the act of creation connects us to God does not mean that all acts of creation are virtuous:
“Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term… It is one thing for human beings to be the authors of their own acts, with responsibility for their moral value; it is another to be an artist, able, that is, to respond to the demands of art and faithfully to accept art’s specific dictates”
Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists II, April 4th 1999
Creativity, as the Pope asserts, consists of moral and artistic aspects, and only when both condition the other can the resulting art be a masterpiece. At the same time, a masterpiece must by definition be personal:
“In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth”
Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists II, April 4th 1999
Taken together, it is clear that an artistic masterpiece does not simply seek to imitate others or follow trends, but is a sincere representation of the artist’s soul, while respecting “art’s specific dictates”. Subversion for subversion’s sake, therefore, is a perversion of the artist’s calling as it betrays both principles simultaneously.
That said, since art must be a calling to the artist, it must have a purpose. An artist who is capable of masterpieces is ultimately disregarding his calling if said masterpieces are not elevating Man. In a more mundane sense, the Pope joyfully quotes one of his compatriots, the Polish poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid, who in the Promethidion wrote that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.
Beauty enthuses, however, because it is “the visible form of the good”, and upon beholding it, man waters his taproot to Heaven, just as the artist who created is watering his own to God. If God bestowed the talent of art upon a man, he did so for a reason, and it is incumbent upon the artist to use that talent to bear good fruit. It is as if a spark were before us. We can choose to shelter and kindle it into a warming fire, or sit idly, and waste the opportunity to cast away the darkness, languishing in the cold.
The artist therefore is tasked with labor at the service of civilization. Their talent is a blessing, but so too a clear responsibility to use it for wholesome ends:
“Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labour without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore an ethic, even a “spirituality” of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people”
Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists 4, April 4th 1999
Arguably more groundbreaking, however, is what John Paul II said next. For it is not only that the Church needs Art, but that Art needs the Church too, and only together can the world be renewed…
