Second Vatican Council finally produces Worst Altar in World

Creating space for the soul

 There has always been art in the church.  The confrontation with art of our time creates friction, sometimes disturbs, irritates.  Why it is necessary was the subject of the study day "Why art in the church? - with Bishop Hermann Glettler and 60 participants.

"What kind of nonsense have they put up there?" a church visitor asked Bishop Hermann Glettler when he was still parish priest in Graz-St. Andrä.  Flowers made of concrete in the church: "Such a coarseness," she said shaking her head.  Bishop Hermann Glettler talks about this encounter in the church.  He smiles and his eyes light up: "Yes, art is also a placeholder for nonsense.  For what doesn't have to be but can be.  It is first and foremost about encounter and processes that are set in motion and not about the work of art," he says at the study day of the Institute for Pastoral Continuing Education in the Linz seminary. For more than ten years, as a parish priest and curator, he promoted encounters with art in his parish and learned a lot himself through it.

Disturbance

A shrouded altar and ambo in cardboard from a hermit who had been living and working silently in the organ loft for 40 days, a wooden nave in the middle of the church space that made the question of how to deal with refugees impossible to miss, a glass window with an entrance door. Useless and yet like a gateway to heaven, as one child thought.  - These are just a few of the examples he made possible with the art dialogue in St. Andrä.  Contemporary art breaks with familiar images, expectations and attitudes. It disrupts the usual routine, and that is precisely where its strength lies. "People have to function today.  Always and everywhere.  Art relieves, irritates, creates free spaces, creates spaces of curiosity, spaces where the soul can breathe," is how Glettler describes his approach. In other words: "Art and the Church try to counteract the banalisation of life and the fatal pressure of the total economisation of our lives. This happens in and beyond familiar church spaces and always has a future where church and art take each other seriously as self-determined partners."

Quality

Art can be temporary, as in many events in Graz-St. Andrä, or it can take the form of artistic designs that leave their mark on spaces and places for decades.  In the Diocese of Linz, more than 200 sacred spaces have been redesigned by artists in the last 15 years, either by direct commission or following competitions; the Art Department of the Diocese of Linz is the point of contact here. "I congratulate them, the Diocese of Linz is one step ahead," says Glettler appreciatively. The churches have always paid attention to quality. It is important to trust the advice of the experts: "What is art is determined by the experts and not by the parish church council.  One becomes an expert through a lot of "looking at art", years of experience, through comparisons and encounters with artists. The benefits of working with experts are impressively demonstrated on this study day by two practical examples: the redesign of the funeral chapel in Pabneukirchen by Alois Mosbacher and the Parish Church of Wels-Heilige Familie by Gerold Tagwerker.

Encounter

Bishop Glettler warns against seeing art as a panacea for life's frustrations and states of exhaustion, nor is it a superficial decoration for a bourgeois lifestyle: "Contemporary art is to a large extent a commodity, a speculative good and a capital investment," Glettler explains soberly. What is needed here is the discernment of spirits. - First and foremost, in the concrete social areas of life, it is about encounter, about building resilient relationships, about closeness and comfort, about solidarity and pastoral care.  "It is not about furnishing church spaces with artefacts." That has its place and its meaning.  Old and new art - both have their value and create identity.

"But an open-mindedness of the church for the culture of the time is simply an imperative of hospitality," says Glettler. Contemporary art, he said, is often about setting social processes in motion, redeveloping a neighbourhood and creating networks to protect weaker members. That the church is there for all, also for the "others", for marginalised groups and those far from the church, this idea of universality is also affirmed by Glettler in the evening as a speaker at the "Thomas Academy".

Vitality

Art can help to keep this "more of life" in mind, and brings a plus in vitality and intensity, also for one's own congregation - and one's own life. "I am grateful for the encounters with artists", says Bishop Hermann Glettler, "for the more vitality, alertness and attention". And you can feel that.

1st picture

Consciously missing everything.  This was the programme of Christian Eisenberger in 2007, who lived and worked in the organ loft in the parish church of St. Andrä for 40 days during Lent and kept silent.  During this time he covered the altar and ambo with packing cardboard and wooden poles (picture) - a new interpretation of the Lenten cloth.  However, Bishop Hermann Glettler generally warns against too much interpretation: "I sometimes feel the mandate to have to protect the secular, the unwieldy and incomprehensible in art from the all too well-intentioned grasp of overzealous spiritual interpretations."

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