While living in Princeton in the 1990s, I sometimes resorted to a telephone
service that offered succinct sketches of current movies, from Catholic
commentators. This, both to
help determine which films might be suitable for family viewing, and for my own
guidance. I wasn’t looking
for religious instruction per se (this was prior to my own baptism), but
knowing that the reviewers stood on firm moral ground was reassuring, e.g. in
learning whether an “R” rating had been bestowed owing simply to a naughty word
(no obstacle in my view), or in light of a production’s cynicism, nihilism, or
depravity (which themselves might not suffice, in the teeming marketplace, for
that monitory majuscule).
Such distinctions were not guaranteed from purely secular critics: my favorite in the ‘60s and ‘70s was
Pauline Kael; but some of her
raves sent me to movies I walked out of with a shudder. (As, “Last Tango in Paris”, which she
praised as the best movie in a quarter-century.)
Later, something like such concerns formed a (subsidiary )
part of my appreciation for Sister Wendy’s The Story of Painting. Her perceptive appreciations and
graceful style are a perfect
fit for art produced during the high Christian centuries; more problematic are the
effluvial emissions of our own time, which yet find praise among the arty
crowd, and high prices from oligarchs at auctions. These I shun
like dreck on a sidewalk, and think of them no more; but was curious to see how Sister Wendy would deal with
them: her history begins with the
cave-paintings of Lascaux, and it
would be structurally awkward to simply lop-off developments since the Dadaists
et ilk. She gamely wades into this
boggy terrain; but prefaces her
chapter on the twentieth century
thus:
It has been calculated that there
are more artists practicing today
than were alive in the whole Renaissance. But … there is no mainstream. The stream has
flowed into the sea.
Accordingly, “The story of painting now loses its way.”
We find a similar assessmen from the later critic Peter
Schjeldahl, lamenting having to review a prestigious retrospective exhibition
of the egregious Francis Bacon (in The New Yorker for June 1, 2009): “Francis Bacon has long been my least
favorite great painter of the twentieth century.” Yet Bacon’s postumous reputation continues to swell (to
become more swollen), and Schjeldahl must acknowledge:
But I’m aware that the scorekeeping
applies to a game not won or lost, but
called on account of rain: proliferating
points of view that have swamped
all would-be authoritative accounts of art history, along with those of
history, period.
~
Yet nota bene:
Precisely because Sister Wendy understands what is sacred and central to
human life, she is not in the least prudish. As, she presents a canvas from ca. 1537 by Lucas Cranach the elder, depicting a
recumbent nude. In the upper left
corner is a superscription “Fontis nympha sacri”; in the lower right, next to
her feet, a couple of birds. And
behind her, a cavern releasing a thin stream from a rather urethral-looking
aperture towards its upper arch.
That caught the attention of the Old Adam, for which I somewhat blushed.
Not so the Sister.
The section is titled “The seductive nudes of Cranach”:
These coy creatures have the rare
distinction of fitting in with modern tastes, being slender, free-spirited, and
even kinky. A distinctly
diaphanous wisp of silk draws
attention to her loins by ‘covering’ them. She is clearly only pretending to be asleep.
Seeing more than I had, she identifies the birds as “a pair
of partridges (the birds of Venus)”;
and as for that problematic micturating cavern, she names it plainly,
as a symbol of “the female hollow”.
~
A term I learned from her discussion of Braque: papiers
collés, meaning the art of collage -- scraps of this and that, assembled
and recontextualized.
That is basically what I have been trying to do, with far-sought
sentences or phrases, rather than with images, in the “found poetry” posts on
the blog. And lo, her own can contribute some
snippets to that effort:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2025/08/sister-wendy-fiat-lux.html
