Bad Art’s Kinship to Idolatry

We are all familiar with the anti-Catholic contemporary accusation that Catholics ‘worship’ Mary. We are also familiar with the historic accusations of the iconoclasts: Catholics are idolaters; they ‘worship’ images. Heretics (Protestants and Muslims) have (they think) inoculated themselves against both of these ‘evils’ by minimizing or completely abandoning imagery. There is a short step between the accusation of worshiping Mary, or any of the saints, and the accusation of idolatry. Catholics have tirelessly attempted to educate non-Catholics, have tried to explain the difference between worship (latria) belonging to God alone, and veneration (dulia), which one can give to a human person. We have also fought against the claims of idolatry, claiming that the image is just a symbol. I will not address the accusation of worshiping Mary, or any saint. The accusation would be laughable if it were not a stumbling block that actually keeps people from considering the Truth of Catholicism. It is akin to ‘blood libel’ against the Jews (the accusation that Jews slaughtered Christians and drank their blood) because it is no more than an emotional outburst exposing bigotry and willful ignorance.

But can we dismiss the accusation of idolatry so carelessly? Shouldn’t we attempt to look inward and examine ourselves to see whether or not we might find traces or tendencies to what we are accused of?
But although the outright sin of idolatry is equally absurd on the face of it, perhaps we should wonder if our heretical brothers sense something we don’t.
First of all, let us examine the word ‘symbol’. A symbol is a thing that represents something else. It enables us to make a quick, easy, and superficial association, usually to something immaterial. Let’s look at the emoji. It is a symbol. A smiley face emoji symbolizes happiness, for example. A sad one symbolizes the feeling of sadness. No one looks at an emoji and thinks that the prototype is a real, particular person. Even of the sender. The receiver may understand that the sender is feeling happy or sad, but never thinks that he is looking at a representation of the person who sent it. A symbol usually represents something immaterial, and general.
So should those who say that Catholics are idolaters be answered by saying that they are not, because the sacred image is a ‘symbol’? Or worse, just a symbol?
Is the Catholic sacred image a symbol? Yes, in a way. It certainly includes symbolism, but it is so much more than a symbol, so much bigger. When we see the Catholic sacred image as only a symbol of something else, we are unwittingly admitting that we stop at the image. We run the risk of thinking that the symbol, the prototype of the image, just represents something immaterial and general. When the Catholic sees a religious image as a sort of ‘Catholic emoji', he divides the image, the physical, and the idea, the immaterial. We seem to forget that the image has as its prototype something real and true, something physical as well as immaterial, something very specific and certainly not general. All good Catholic sacred art is making and asserting a claim. A prototype is not the same as a symbol. And when we forget this, we are forgetting Catholicism, because if Catholicism is the Truth, it must include everything; it must integrate the material and the immaterial. There must be a way to express this in an image. Any bad image which does not try to express this is created by a propagandist, an ideologue, not a respectable Catholic artist.
When the Catholic is given bad art, he really has no choice but to tell himself ”well, after all, it’s just a symbol.” He is forced to stop at the image, to constrict his experience, because he must divide the material and the immaterial, rather than unify them. In a way he must ignore the image and rely on himself. Any meditation or prayer must come from inside of him. In fact, criticism of the image is not even allowed; the viewer is often told that if he doesn’t see the greatness in the work, if he is not ‘inspired’ to prayer he is probably of little faith, that he just isn't ‘spiritual’ enough to see the real meaning.
Think of pagan idolaters. Was not something similar going on? When a society was overtaken and the old statues torn down and new ones were erected, and the people were forced to worship new gods; they were basically told to stop at the image. The pagan had no choice but to worship the maker of the image instead of what he may previously had thought of as the ‘prototype’ of the old images. So the transition to the worshiping of the image itself was made fairly easily. Are we not being asked to do something similar? Except that in a strange way we are being told to stop at the image because the Creator is within us, that we need look no further for Him. But how can that be the truth? Are we not ourselves images?
We, however, although in a different circumstance from the pagans, are heading to (and perhaps have already begun to be in) a similar confused state. When we stand in front of a statue of Our Lady which is full of lies, perhaps an ‘abstraction’ in which she doesn’t even resemble a human, we are actually being given a lie much worse and far more destructive than the pagans were given. They simply experienced an exchange of lies, we are told that a lie actually represents the truth.

“... some Puritans with a sullen type of piety would say,” I have reason to congratulate myself that I do not worship graven images like the old heathen Greeks.” And again somebody ought to say to him, “The best religion may not worship graven images, because it may see beyond them. But if you do not worship graven images, it is only because you are mentally and morally quite incapable of graving them. True religion, perhaps, is above idolatry. But you are below idolatry. You are not holy enough yet to worship a lump of stone.” 1

Because this image is not just a symbol. It is supposed to be an image of a prototype which is something real and true. And we are handed this wrapped in a lie! If we choose to represent the Crucifixion of Christ as a laborer in unfair working conditions, that is a lie. If we are given what looks like a ‘paint by numbers’ picture and are told it is an icon, we are being told a lie.The truth can not be the prototype of a reality full of lies. We cannot hand people lies, which is what all bad art is, and tell them its prototype is the truth.
What would we expect anti-Catholics to say? Well, just what they do say, and frankly, although they do not understand what they are saying, they know enough to recognize something fishy.
In any atheistic, materialistic, totalitarian state, people are given bad art. They are given ‘state art’ that is just a symbol. Why? Because they must be told that there is nothing beyond and bigger than the physical image, except the dictator. The prototype is power, the power of the dictator. Art becomes just another form of propaganda. Truth does not enter into it at all. The people are told how to respond and what they should think and feel looking at the image. That’s the purpose of propaganda, not fine art. I maintain that something very similar is happening with so-called ‘sacred’ art in the Church today. In most contemporary ‘sacred art’ the prototype is actually no more than the ego of the artist himself. Catholics are being given propaganda instead of real art, an unavoidable consequence of having no real art criticism.
This is also a reason why many ‘Catholics’ do not believe in the Real Presence. If we are told that something so fundamental to the human person as the creative impulse only exists to signify a ‘symbolic’ prototype, why should the Eucharist be any different?
We must put an end to the superficiality of the way we look at sacred images. We must realize what is at stake. We must put an end to the artist as an aesthetic bully. We must stop telling lies in God’s house. It is not a question of demanding a masterpiece from each and every artist. We must just demand that he try to tell the truth, which is the true objective of sacred art: to signify, magnify and shine a light on the prototype, to the absolute best of his ability.

1  G. K. Chesterton, Conceit and Caricature (available online) What Chesterton means is this: an artist, as well as a viewer, must be completely in love with the created world. He must be sufficiently in love with it to follow its lead, to follow laws of composition, to master his technique, to master anatomy, etc. He must be willing to go through the physical. In other words, to follow the example and lesson of Jesus Christ Himself. Both the artist using a ramen bowl for an altar and the icon painter blindly following a prescribed method, are below idolatry.