Can the Pope abolish hell and make peace with contemporary art?

We recently visited the Vatican Museums during a day that, according to the staff we spoke to, was even busier than usual. Flocks of people moved across the various galleries and gardens in controlled, yet overwhelming, flows. We entered motivated to follow our own path throughout the collections but unfortunately we soon found out that the touristy and rigid course could not be avoided due to both the lack of space (indeed there had to be more people than what the buildings could bear) and the strict system of barriers.

 

Keenly looking for some tranquillity to enjoy the art with the time and space this should require, we were not surprised to finally find it in the least publicised and popularised section: the Vatican modern art collection. History has it that in the 1960s and 70s Pope Paul VI wanted the Roman Catholic church to play once again the role of the art promoter it had for millennial. A meeting with contemporary artists in the 1964 was organised to discuss the limits of artistic freedom and their possible independence within contexts – religion and church – that base themselves on orthodoxy and discipline. Pope Paul VI finally decided to dedicate a fairly big section of the Vatican buildings to the so-called Modern And Contemporary Religious Art Collection which opened to the public in 1973.

 

Despite the calmness we could at last enjoy in these rooms, we found the entire collection quite disappointing for two reasons. The first one was that the Roman Catholic Church – contrary to its historical function as financial sponsor – simply put on display various donations it has received since the 1960s, avoiding economical support to artists and therefore missing the direct dialogue with them that much has brought in the past. The second reason was the apparent absence of real care for what is currently on show.

 

To begin with, the rooms dedicated to the collection are oddly shaped and strangely positioned within the visitor path. The majority of them are small and packed with too many artworks. After the Borgia rooms, they feel like little niches on the side of a straight long corridor that seems to be telling the visitor to briefly look at that modern art as it were minor decoration on the way to what comes just after it and has been looking forward by the majority: the Sistine Chapel. One could argue that the Vatican Museums buildings with their frescoes and ceilings aren’t exactly the most flexible spaces to show art, though considering how nonchalant the church can be when it comes to art – isn’t Bernini’s altar in San Pietro made of the fused bronze statues from the Pantheon? – and that the walls in the modern art collection are mainly plain white, can the preservation of the past really be an excuse for the impossibility of a more enhancing set up?

 

And there are other examples of this absence of curatorial project for the modern art collection: poor illumination, bizarre installation, confusing positions (why randomly going from thematic to chronological?) are just a few. Even when this modern art is bluntly displayed along with ancient one, like in the case of Marino Marini’s sculptures next to 15th century frescoes of the Borgia apartments, the associations don’t seem to be coming from a precise intellectual effort that should prompt poetic dialogues between the older and the more recent past.

 

Perhaps the loss of political power and the constant secularisation of the Western World in the last centuries have made the Roman Catholic Church more and more blind to what art means these days – or too aware, hence suspicious of it? An innovative common ground shared by both doctrinal religion and the individualistic artist striving for independence in today’s capitalistic societies seems impossible to envision. Not surprisingly, the recent Petition To Pope Francis For The Final Abolition Of Hell promoted by Etcetera collective together with Franco Berardi “Bifo” states that it is only provocation, humour and naive critique that move the artists in their attempt to talk to a deaf listener.

 

January 7, 2015