Vatican Trying to Bridge the Gap Between Religion and Art World : Humanities: Conference attempts to open a dialogue with artists. Bringing the sides together will be difficult because ‘the differences are really huge,’ a painter says.

Works of art have sent imaginations soaring to the heavens for centuries--Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Botticelli’s “Spring,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Virgin and Child with St. Anne.”

Twentieth-Century artists such as Wassili Kandinsky and Mark Rothko continued to produce works with profound spiritual content, but what once was a symbiotic relationship between art and religion has deteriorated into one of mutual distrust in many quarters.

On the extremes, many religious leaders cannot look beyond an Andres Serrano exhibit of a crucifix soaked in urine in forming their opinion of modern art, while those in the artistic community see religion as part of the crusade to eliminate federal funding for works some consider pornographic or blasphemous.

Into this tense atmosphere, one of history’s great art patrons--the Vatican--has stepped in to try to bridge the gulf.

“It may sound banal, but if there is ignorance and mutual suspicion, it is best to meet and to share ideals,” said Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with Non-Believers. “We meet around a certain idea of humanity. The church is in charge of good and the artist is in charge of beauty. The good needs the beautiful to express itself.”

A conference on “Religion and the Arts” last weekend at Fordham University was the council’s first formal dialogue with artists, but the recent effort to develop a new understanding of the relation between religion and art goes back to Pope Paul VI, who established a museum of modern art in the Vatican in the 1960s.

When Pope John Paul II visited the United States in 1987, he quoted Pope Paul VI in telling Hollywood’s entertainment community that the church is not asking artists to play the role of moralists, “but we are expressing confidence in your mysterious power of opening up the glorious regions of light that lie behind the mystery of human life.”

Problems remain in relations between the church and the artistic community.

“I think they’re miles apart, to be honest with you,” said painter Adam Cvijanovic. “While there’s obviously some common ground, the differences are really huge.”

Poupard said many within the church have difficulty understanding the importance of artists’ freedom or lack the sophistication to appreciate abstract art.

But there is a similar dogmatic resistance to the church in the art world, some say. For example, Cvijanovic said, while Serrano’s “tedious” work is acceptable within the art community, “what would not be acceptable is a piece glorifying (Sen.) Jesse Helms.”

By holding prejudices against the church that are canonical in their own way, the artistic community is ignoring its own history, Cvijanovic said.

“That’s too bad because art is always a spiritual inquiry,” he said.

That many of the great spiritual works of the 20th Century have been abstract is but one of the ironies that abound in the current dialogue. Both sides agree there is substantial common ground.

The style has changed, but many works of modern art still “will actually be extremely serious inquiries into the relation of form and spirit,” Cvijanovic said.

And while some within the modern art world hold a “belief in unbelief even to the point of martyrdom,” artists and the church share a common enemy of a culture that dehumanizes individuals, said Joseph Mascheck, an art critic and associate professor of art history at Hofstra University.

But the problem lies in where one draws standards for evaluating art.

Particularly in the selection of religious art to be used for worship, the church has a critical role, Poupard said.

“The church is a guardian of the message received from Christ, the Gospel, and this message has content,” he said.

Poupard would measure art by whether it enhances or detracts from human dignity.

“A false culture is one that embitters or degrades the human,” he said.

But artists who are suspicious of any definitions of terms such as truth or beauty may have more modest ambitions.

Mascheck sees the potential for dialogue by recognizing concerns over the art of someone like Serrano.

“What is revolting to me is his . . . blasphemy. Baudelaire himself would retch,” Mascheck said, referring to the 19th-Century poet and essayist.

But Mascheck said he would also ask church leaders to recognize the performance art of Karen Finley, which sometimes includes smearing her nude body with chocolate, as an important message about the exploitation of women.

“We know about art. They know about faith. And we’ll just have to work out the overlap,” Mascheck said.