Art Historian Discusses the Importance of Wonder
ROME, MAY 4, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Art and architecture of today is no longer spellbinding, says an artist and art historian.
Rodolfo Papa spoke about the limitations of modern art during a recent conference at Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross on "Poetics and Christianity."
Papa, a sculptor and painter, is an art history professor at the Pontifical Academy of Arts and Literature at the Pantheon, a post to which he was nominated by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
Papa told ZENIT that modern architecture and art are afflicted by "the loss of a sense of tradition and, with that, the abuse of tradition."
"To recuperate the soul of art and architecture," Papa noted, "we must think of man in different terms than those used in political and economic ideologies of the 20th century and in the culture of mass consumption."
Papa added that a culture, including art, "must be human. That is, it must contribute to the cultivation of man."
He said: "If a culture really wishes to be a great one, it must establish deep roots that are able to find nourishment from every level of the earth.
"Therefore, in order to think about the future we must study our past to understand it and rediscover its lost instruments.
"This is what I have been trying to do for many years as an art historian and an artist."
Defining beauty
"That which the technological and consumerist man has lost, during the last century, is wonder," Papa observed.
"Art must return to being a place of contemplation" of the beautiful, he continued.
He defined beauty as "a pleasant knowing relative to sight, which is the most cognitive of the senses."
"I would also add," said Papa, "with Leonardo, that it must 'conform' to nature, that is to say, it must not be unnatural. "
"And, as John Paul II said, it 'will save the world', and that, therefore, it is a manifestation of God's revelation to man," he stated. "In the end, as Benedict XVI said, beauty is 'faith made visible.'"
Code: ZE07050427
Date: 2007-05-04