Jacek Sempolinski - CAN A CHRISTIAN BE AN ARTIST ?

The problems involved will wander from group to group, because basically it is just one problem, the one described in the title. It's a humorous presentation, to give its author some encouragement: it's easier to joke than to be serious, although I don't know if I'll be able to keep up my humorous mood to the end, since in my own art I can't be light-heart?ed, either, though that's what I'd most like. But let's get on with the matter in hand.

Group One - Pride

In one of his notes Cardinal Wyszynski wrote that you should not give way to your day?dreams, you should simply trust in God. That means leave the initiative to Him in directing your fate and wishes. Your only desire should be God Himself. There's no reason to dream about God; how can you dream about something that's got an objective existence and is given us? There's no point in dreaming about getting close to God, either. You just have to be close to Him. Is there any need for art in a spiritual life organised in that way? Wouldn't prayer be enough? Wouldn't understanding art as prayer seem an abuse of lan?guage, since there are mode9s for prayer recorded in the Gospels? But religious thought suggests - as the Gospels imply - that all of man's conduct and his deeds, his feelings, actions and concepts, might be prayer. But even if this were so, would artistic activity have to be among those prayerful acts? Surely it could be. But must it necessarily be so? An artist has to be convinced that he is obliged to do what he is doing. For by doing one thing he neglects others. As he is painting he is not looking after the sick and the old, or preaching the Word of God, that is he is not active in the most important sphere. Neither is he producing basic essentials, such as food or clothing.

So the artist sets the value of his art by himself. "By himself" means proudly. He is under no obligation to do this. If we accept this distinction, "by himself" and "under an obligation" , we could as it were subdivide art into two different creative paths. One, when the origin of the artistic work is "a commission" from the Church. The decision involved concerning the nature of the painting is then contained in words or in a theological idea. The value of such a picture is determined by ritual and the value comes into existence when the ritual is accomplished. One value of such a picture is the very undertaking of the artistic task, the submission to art. I am thinking of the art of the icons and, to a certain degree, the art of the guilds. This type of art also encompasses the category involved when the artist works as if on his own initiative without submitting to formalised ritual or doc?trine, just under the influence of his own simple faith. It is his faith that guides his hand, more - it models his imagination and his personality. A good example is the art of Fra Angelico. A profound faith and holiness determine what is the most appropriate, perhaps the simplest method of artistic execution. Even if the believing artist had ideas that were not simple, they would be consummated in his religious practice - penance and prayer. What he painted was good and beautiful only; it was what comes after penance and prayer. Strife and suffering have no access to his work; the artist will humbly give them up, just as he refrains from them in his life, melting into the trust he puts in the Supreme Good. He believes in the importance of and need for art, he believes in the sacred principle of art. He is modest, and all his acts are within and under the influence of the light.

The second method arises when the "loneliness" of the artist appears as if "extra?neous" to the process of adjustment to the principles of faith, prayer and penance. This does not mean that the artist does not believe in the Revelation, but that he counterpoises his own isolation as if in defiance of the Revealed Truth. Revelation has in itself hidden chasms of depth which he has to probe, fathom, and experience for himself. He takes on the entire suffering of immanence and transcendence, their unfettered intermingling, and the sin of erring. And if he is a real artist he knows that the instrument for the penetration is his art. It is through his art, not next to it, that he learns and discovers. The struggle with art thus becomes like the struggle with the mystery of creation. What is the role in which he puts himself? In the role of the one who judges what is true, good and beautiful. He brings about these judgements not in church, but in his studio; not with a rosary but with a paintbrush in his hands. As the instrument of truth and holiness, the paintbrush acquires a sanctity. And who sanctifies it? Well, the artist himself of course. In his desire to probe the matter to the very depths he wanders into a boundless loneliness, as it is only then, when there are no more boundaries, that he may touch the frontier beyond which God exists. It is not hard to understand that this is a road on which the Devil will have something to say. He always has something to say, even to the man at prayer; but if someone is walking all alone along his own road, not along the collective road of all the believers, and if he makes isolation the principle for his art, where is the security to protect him? It is easy for him to become a Christ in his own right. He is carrying a Cross, he is going through the loneliness of the Garden of Gethsemane and he cries out, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" And moreover he is sure he is in the right.

Alongside these two methods there is a third, the resultant of the first two. This happens when an artist wants nothing more than to do justice to the things that exist. The term " supreme justice" is sometimes applied to this. The world is then depicted as it really is, the light, the trees, the people, the objects. And also the harmony existing in the world, and the beauty. The aim is to make all the relations between things and their images real. But again - the one who decides what is real and what isn't real is the artist. His intuition and his senses prompt him and it is his intuition and his sense, along with the skills he has perfect?ed, that he makes the tools of his work. He is avid in his desire to achieve perfection, and once he has attained it he is proud of himself. Even if he feels that he is facing the boundlessness of his own lack of skill and his imperfection, he still knows that he is on a road and that it is his effort that is pushing him forward on that road. The principle behind this kind of behaviour, let me repeat, is the conviction that the visible world should be done justice to. The world is the work of the Creator and painting it is praising the work. But does the world really need that kind of justice? Does its existence require that? The world just simply is. Why copy and depict it? Why process one real thing into another, arti?ficial, one? Why supplement one, infinitely beautiful, thing by another, finite one? Is it not to say, " Look, isn't my painting beautiful, aren't I beautiful myself? Aren't 1 clever?"

The categories which definitely mitigate any "cheating" by the artist in the three groups are truth and beauty. They, so to speak, justify art. As substantially existing entities, truth and beauty are the objectives of art. More - they are the principle of man's most pro?found experiences, irrespective of whether he is a simple and straightforward creator, or the sanctified instrument of ritual, or whether he engrosses himself in loneliness and proudly searches for the principles of those categories: they are the lode-star and the light for the conscience. The artist lives in the circle of truth and beauty, therefore everything he does is good. Goodness is given him, for it is falsehood and ugliness that are evil. Well, but how does he see, how does he understand beauty and truth? They are the attributes of God; they are contained in God, and they are contained in Creation, too. However, Creation is also subject to evil, while what is true and beautiful has first to be discovered and revealed. Moreover a decision has to be made whether in the pursuit of truth an admixture should not be allowed in art of evil, since evil too might have a substantial existence. Apart from that - and this is a fundamental question - in artistic activity all these categories, beauty, truth, good, evil, have to be interpreted. "Translated" into the turbulent matter of art.

Does art have to obfuscate what is pure without art? And if this is done, what should that obfuscation, or interpretation, be? What might it be? Nobody can teach us to inter?pret through art. For even if the painters of a given period - a short space in time - prac?tised the habit of having their tools blessed, this was merely a ritual act; it could hardly be called a sacrament. Despite the models, interpretation was a matter for the artist: he was the one who had to stand in front of the blank board, the bare wall. The blues and the ver?milions, the lines and the surfaces were something that he had to make on his own. So the artist would undertake interpretation at his own risk, regardless of whether he was strictly following a "school" or whether he adhered to tradition in a general sense. Even with the deepest faith and most steadfast will he was liable to stray. And the guiding signs to this along the uncertain road of interpretation were the principles founded by art, or more generally by culture, in other words by all his forebears, the artists and the thinkers, who were of course open to error. For the principles of art have been established internal?ly, within the domain of art, and hence the certainty that that interior has been penetrated and arranged in an orderly fashion by the Divine mind.

Group Two - Submission

Here I have in mind submission to the requirements of faith and religion. The man who accepts his acquiescence lives in a certain way. He avoids sin, at any rate he wishes to remove sin from his life: if he falls he regrets it and wants to improve. He divides up his life into days of work and days of rest; he keeps the sabbath day holy; he honours his father and mother; he does not covet. But in devoting himself to creative work he is not always able to keep these commandments. Often he has to transgress, since the rhythm of his life is subject to the dictates of art, if he wishes to achieve something in art. It's well known that in art you have to put in a colossal amount of punishing work, some?times at a mad pace, not at all in line with the Christian principle of work that is digni?fied, tranquil and blessed. Many masters of art pass on to their disciples the home truth that in order to get to the priceless nugget you have to dig your way through many tons of earth. So you can't adopt the principle that you're going to dig that earth only from nine to five, because you never know just when you're going to discover that nugget. Perhaps that moment might come just when you ought to be looking after your sick elderly mother? To give up shifting the earth when your time should be devoted to the sacraments or to people is potentially tantamount to giving up the search for the unique and priceless nugget, which you might be just about to miss. To give it up means condemning yourself to half-measures, and once you accept half-measures even in just one field you accept it as the guiding principle of your life. Everything becomes a half-measure, work, the sacra?ments, helping your .neighbour. So you have to give up "in the face of" half-mea?sures: give up by making a choice- between either a godly life or art, or alternatively you can muddle along through the contradictions, with a sense of transgression, but laying it at the feet of God's love and mercy. But how far can you go in overtaxing God's forgive?ness, using it as an excuse and letting yourself off? Of course there is always the signal value of the sacrament of penance, but should the penitent lumber the confessor with this kind of complex and, what is more, specialist problem? In response you may well receive a conventional appraisal, and rightly so, as man's life is meant to be conven?tional, although every individual soul is personal. Submission received as a virtue may become the chief principle for art, the nature of which, however, is contrary to this. If the artist is to do something that does not exist he cannot subject himself to a straightforward kind of submission. He has to be in pursuit of something inexpressible, and such a chase is never easy - from goodness to goodness, from truth to truth, sometimes through contra?diction.

It's time now to move on to the third and last group, Transgression.

Transgression becomes something that is simple and natural if the artist has an anthro?pocentric view of the world. Such an approach incorporates the renowned energy vital , which becomes the guiding principle of the artist's spiritual life. Through this the question of transgression as conceived in this essay is not so much taken into account, as is alto?gether non-existent. Only the goal of the artist's life exists; and you can only transgress the conventions of life and the social norms. In a theocentric view of the world trans?gression is neither a psychological nor a social category, but a religious one. Of course, I've applied quite a considerable simplification, because the loneliness of anthropocentrism leads into the regions of darkness, all the darker the more profound the loneliness. It also brings suffering, because it is a pure loneliness, in its most far-reaching consequences existing not with respect to God but with respect to an empty Heaven.

Art and creativity demand religious transgression of the artist. Not only because they are an anarchic activity, but because they themselves have a status that has not been stabilised. The stabilisation of art does not come from the outside; it is left to the artist. Thus it condemns him to lonely decision-making, to a fundamental test: either to a perfect lone?liness, or to a loneliness which he will consider a position destined for the special intercep?tion of God. A place like St. Paul's road to Damascus. But the artist's road must be perma?nently bereft of Vocation, for if Vocation appears, the source and the need to create must dry up. Thus the artist has to be a pagan in a permanent state of conversion. For him two points in time, before and after illumination, must be merged into one.

But what should you do if you are only an average believer, not a convert to Christianity through a personal and uncommon manifestation of Christ? Should you obey the laws of art, or of religion? You cannot rationally regress to the pre-religious condition, but equally you cannot rationally create that place of isolation for the intervention of God - it would be an artificial conceptualisation nourishing neither art nor religion. The place of loneliness emerges only thanks to the will of God and if is not so much the waiting for the intervention of God but rather the continual risk of inner - terminology. The game is set in the darkness, which must remain dark.

Of course, you may treat transgression as a violent and sometimes blasphemous aggression against God, a demand for grace, for the light to penetrate the essence of divinity, for the gift of creativeness regardless of everything. This all sounds like an arrogant prayer - one that is not said on an everyday basis, out of fear. You say, "Our Father," and, "lead us not into temptation." But why should the question of art be made so pathetic? Because, perhaps, I am important and therefore my painting too? Or is it because art is so important? I think both these motives are equally important - I myself and art. Myself, because I have an immortal soul; art, because it is my instrument of discovery.

Describing the essence of the art of one of actresses, a certain critic said that there were actors who had the ability to apply les intonations justness, and others, the greatest ones, who had the talent to discover les intonations rare . He goes on to write about `the extra gift', that is something that is not part and parcel of the language of art itself, but in a way exceeds it, at the same time determining its greatness. What is this `extra gift' , what are les intonations raves? I would refer all who are interested to Wieslaw Juszczak's book, Zasfona w rajskie ptaki (The Bird-of-Paradise-Patterned Curtain). On my own part I can say that the desire for that `extra' leads the artist astray. It led that great actress, Irena Eichlerowna, through neurosis, extreme eccentricity, into anarchic tension and egotism. And frequently through an erosive self-destruction and self-dev?astation. Eichlerowna hardly ever performs on the stage, whereas other actresses who are her contemporaries but have been able to fit into an ordered life very well perform very frequently and receive appreciation. So there are as if two types of art, as I have tried to show: one decent and the other licentious. And it is the licentious type that brings the artist trouble. And the critic, too. If it is licentious and causes trouble, why does it exist? Wouldn't good art be enough, why have great art? Good art will fit perfectly in the canon of Christian life: it could be modelled in accordance with its laws. For great art is a tyrant, and it demands submission and transgression.

You could risk a statement that the essence and aim of art is Form (see Wieslaw Juszczak again here), understood as an absolute, as something that is unattainable. The extra gift is located beyond the frontier of achievement but, although it may at most be sensed, nevertheless it as if casts its shadow on the achievements. And the shadow will be a visi?ble one, if the artist relates to it by some sort of gesture, thereby marking it out. Thus form is the phenomenon through which , so to speak, runs the boundary of the absolute. In one of his sketches Stanislaw Vincenz remarks that the secret of art is "recollection", the remembrance of reality - prehistorical or mythical, and that this remembrance imposes a particular form of conduct on the artist. This is certainly true. You can travesty it in the following way. Man has a recollection of ideal existence, of the time when the world was created, and of Eden, from which he is cut off. However the reflex of that exis?tence is contained not only in his memories but also in reality. There are fragments of this left, shreds that have been trampled underfoot and held down by the consequences of sin and everyday toil in the sweat of your brow. You cannot overlook either the conse?quences or the toil; you are immersed in them and you have to submit to them. But you can't repudiate the recollections, either, and in order to let the memory make itself known you have to as if pass beyond ordinary work. You can turn solely and exclusively to God with that memory, you may become holy, but you may also do justice to the recollections in some other way. What is immediately suggested as the primary medi?um for this is precisely art, but that second kind of art, the one with the `extra gift'. Art suggests form, which is as it were memory itself. This is how it may be justified: both form, and that dark, anarchical position, and the transgression.

In his old age Titian used to approach a painting as a vulture flies at a carcass. Yet earlier he had known and possessed the principles of `divine' harmony; for him this was not enough - he wanted a `rare' harmony. In his conversations with Czapski, Pankiewicz used to say that Titian's artistic vision was extended by every step, that his paintings would gradually cease to be a harmonious collection of forms, and become one form. The artist was reducing multiplicity and searching for unity, denuding his pic?tures of unnecessary elements and creating essential ones. But perhaps Titian's divestment was more than just artistic in character - perhaps in the world of the spirit he had looked on unity.

The shift backwards of the prehistoric time mentioned by Vincenz can never be crowned with success; the memory must remain itself. Of course, it need not be accom?plished through anarchic activity; it may be brought about through activity that is lucid and distinct from eschatology and darkness, showing the simple logic of the elements that as it were constitute the scenography in which the concept of God will in any case express itself if it so wishes. But the lucid art is deluding itself if it thinks that there will never come a time when it will not be a mystery. It is different from the former kind of art, the dark kind, only in the fact that the dark art is as it were put in parentheses , in quota?tion marks, by the memory, which does not approach it directly. Perhaps it is more blessed because of this?

Writing all this - about the extra gift, about the memory, about transgression, I am all the time suspicious that I am somehow slipping into a misappropriation. I'm most worried about transgression, the mechanism of which is virtually incomprehensible but which effectively leads to the transgression beyond art, to the destruction of art. Does all this not depend simply on talent? Would it not be easier to search for another, theoretical, problem, which would be like a surrogate, since it would be describable? Why trans?gress beyond art and destroy art if you can stay within it? The transgression must surely be an art, too. But the inner life is nevertheless decisive and, perhaps, we transgress not `against' the precepts and duties, but in accordance with our calling. In the final scene of Bergman's moving film, Silence, the heroine, gravely oppressed by sin, sensing the approach of death, says, " We try, we adopt various concepts, but the forces are stronger."