Postmodern heretics - influence of Catholicism on contemporary artists

Art in America, Feb, 1997 by Eleanor Heartney

While Smith feels deeply connected to Christian symbology, she also shares her mother's ecumenism and willingly draws imagery from other belief systems into her pantheon. Thus, her Fawbush "chapel" show also included figures drawn from European folklore, Classical myth and the Old Testament. For Smith, these forms, which included an assortment of faeries, the Greek nymph Daphne and Lot's Wife, embodied different kinds of "female God attributes." Appropriately, she found a different material for each sculpture: the Faeries were small winged figures of tin, the plaster figure of Daphne sprouted branches of blue glass, and Lot's Wife was made of plaster and salt.

As in the work of the other artists discussed in this article, iconography doesn't tell the whole tale. Smith's Catholic roots are most strongly revealed not in her borrowings from art history, but by her attitude toward the body as a vessel of the soul. While Smith, like Serrano, has made works dealing with bodily fluids, she seems more interested in the problems of the flesh. Underlining this point, she observes, "Catholicism is a ritual religion, and as such it romanticizes the pain of flesh." There is a markedly visceral character to her late-'80s representations of body fragments, works which include red-soaked paper shells resembling flayed fragments of human bodies, severed hands made of latex, as well as bronze and ceramic replicas of internal organs (wombs, hearts, stomachs). Despite the almost clinical tone of such works, the delicacy with which they are fashioned out of diverse materials precludes any suggestion of the medical school or the operating room. While insisting on the corporeal basis of our common humanity, Smith's sculptures are touched with both pathos and a peculiar allure.

Smith also draws upon what she calls the "pagan side" of Catholicism: modern survivals of belief in the magical power of faith such as the wearing of medals and scapulars to ward off evil, votive candles lit for the dead, money left on the statues of saints as a plea for heavenly intercession, crutches thrown away at pilgrimage sites. In a sense, she sees her works as carriers of this kind of magical force. Just as the human body, fragmented or whole, is a vessel of transcendental spirit, the work of art preserves the miracle of creativity. "I'm an idol worshiper," Smith says; "I believe objects hold power, that they retain the energy you put into making them. That's why I'm an artist."[15]

Why should we care about Catholic references or themes in the work of these four artists? There are several reasons to insist on its significance First of all, it helps us understand why works like Piss Christ and the "X Portfolio" were considered so inflammatory. In Catholicism, the continuum between body and soul, earth and heaven, human and divine, suggests an inevitable corollary -- a link between the sacred and profane. Earthly pleasures may be man's downfall, but they also allow glimpses of heavenly ecstasy. Although by no means the exclusive domain of Catholics, such themes as the extremes of human sexual expression, the honors of decaying flesh and death, and the forthright depiction of the body's excretions and physical processes are especially well-suited to the Catholic imagination. This is not to deny the social and political conservativism of the Catholic Church as an institution or its stand against abortion and homosexuality, as well as pre- and extramarital sex The point, rather, is that Catholicism encourages a multilayered view of the world, a view that tends to persist even if an individual has discarded the Church's orthodox doctrine.