Pope Benedict invites 500 artists to the Vatican

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iYTJJgkuCgIW9uM5KqP2awa2xHfQ

Pope Benedict XVI has invited 500 artists from around the world to a rare meeting at the Sistine Chapel in November to revive links between art and religion, the Vatican said Thursday.

It will be the first such meeting since Pope Paul VI 45 years ago met artists at the chapel famous for its frescoes painted by Michelangelo.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Roman Catholic Church’s relations with artists had been good in the past but the two worlds were currently in a “divorce.”

The pope “will invite artists to resume dialogue with the Church,” Ravasi told a news conference, adding that the November 21 meeting would be the “starting stage.”

“We would like for this meeting to be followed by a series of concrete achievements,” he said.

“The pope is opening the dialogue, saying the Church needs to have ties with art. The artists should start responding through their work,” Ravasi said.

The Vatican has invited 500 painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians, singers and film and theatre directors to the meeting, said Monsignor Pasquale Iacobone, head of the culture council’s art and faith department.

Around 75 artists have agreed to attend the gathering so far, including Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone, US stage director Bob Wilson, Italian film-maker Giuseppe Tornatore and Mexican sculptor Sebastian.

In the last meeting nearly half a century ago, Pope Paul VI issued a mea culpa for the Church’s past treatment of artists, telling the group assembled: “We need you.”

Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, wrote a letter to artists 10 years ago insisting that the Church “needs art.”

http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2009/09/11/pope-invites-artists-to-vatican-possibly-for-summit-possibly-for-ambush

In a move that feels like the most classic of traps (in the old, “Come check out this thing in my house for just a second” mold), the Catholic News Service announced that evil church overlord Pope Benedict XVI has invited a marquee slate of artists and creative types to a cultural summit at the Sistine Chapel on November 21 to discuss the impoverishment of relations between the arts and spirituality over the last century.

Either Benedict hopes that meeting the cultural luminaries under Michelangelo’s frescoes will inspire them to start tackling issues of faith with greater fervor, or he’ll have a team of evil monks descend from the ceiling to wipe-out all the artsy atheists.

The latter outcome notwithstanding, there’s something appealing in the idea of putting religion back on the artistic agenda, especially after a decade of the art world being totally devoted to the mystical powers of the market. Additionally, religion is a pretty dear subject to most people’s hearts (and souls, I guess), so it could help with the never-ending push to get more people engaged with contemporary art. The full list of invited artists hasn’t been released yet, but it includes Bono (which, ugh), architect Daniel Libeskind, composer Ennio Morricone and theater director Robert Wilson. Already, artist Bill Viola has turned down the invitation, presumably anticipating the ambush.

http://in.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idINTRE58A67S20090911?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

VATICAN CITY (Reuters Life!) – Pope Benedict plans to meet up to 500 artists from around the world in November, as part of efforts to turn the page on the Vatican’s sometimes conflicted relationship with the contemporary art world. The Vatican said the gathering, to be held at the Sistine Chapel on November 21, is intended as the first step toward a “new and fertile alliance between art and faith”, while the Vatican Museums Director Antonio Paolucci said it could mark a sort of “reconciliation after the great divorce”.

The invitee list includes artists from across five continents ranging from painters, sculptors and architects to poets and directors.

The guests were picked regardless of religious, political or stylistic allegiances, said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Around 75 artists have already agreed to attend, including Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone and avant-garde American stage director Bob Wilson.

The event will mark both the 10th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s ‘Letter to Artists’ in 1999 in which he spoke of the Church’s “need for art” in painting, architecture and music and the 45th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s original meeting with artists in 1964.

Pope Paul VI, whose papacy ran from 1963 to 1978, had a passionate interest in contemporary art and was responsible for inaugurating the Vatican Museum’s department of Modern Religious and Contemporary Art in 1973.

The collection, often overlooked by tourists, includes works by Auguste Rodin, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall.

But works like Martin Kippenberger’s crucified frog Zuerst Die Fuesse and Paolo Schmidlin’s Miss Kitty — which portrays the Pope in drag — have soured relations between the faithful and the contemporary art world in recent decades.

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thanks to nikki6278 for the link

looks like benny wants to make a play for the cultural minds of the next generation..i wonder what pictures they will be asked to create and along what styles?

401

~ by seeker401 on September 15, 2009.