Ars sacra Contemplating the world of sacral art
MúzeumCafé 8.
Who knows how many hundreds of thousands or even millions of cards are sent and dropped in letter boxes all over the world in the weeks before Christmas? Thus do people across the globe transmit seasonal greetings with images of Christ’s birth from different ages and in a variety of styles. When seeing such paintings, statues, drawings or tapestries which depict the fleeing holy family, the child Jesus warmed by the cattle in the manger or the adoration of the Magi, who thinks what a special field these works represent in fine arts or whether sacral art exists in the secular 21st century, and if so what it is like? Some objects, including works of art, become sacral. Understandably, those in the collection of a museum lose their original liturgical-religious character. Obviously no one would even think of kneeling down and praying in front of the beautiful Gothic winged altars in the Hungarian National Gallery.
Such questions, however, are by no means simple from the start because concepts, at least for non-professionals, are probably rather mixed up. Religious art? Ecclesiastic art? Sacral art? What does each mean and how much do they resemble or borrow from one another? Are such distinctions necessary within art at all? It is undoubtedly true that sacral in the sense of art has a great tradition, if only in terms of European Christian culture. As art historian László Beke once put it at Pannonhalma: “In European culture so-called sacral art has been created since the birth of Christ. Furthermore, it can be justifiably asserted that the largest segment of European culture has been represented by ecclesiastic art or religious art until recently, and as such it can all be called sacred. Needles to say, everything is included – paintings, statues, roadside crucifixes, holy-water fonts and many similar items.” According to the French philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil (1909–1943), “Sacrality is the void which can be filled by God”. If that is so, then the void can assume an infinite number of forms including, naturally, an infinite number of expressions in works of art, craft or ethnography.
The sacral trend in contemporary art, however, has an ecclesiastical character far less concretely than in previous times (despite the fact that churches continue to be built, altar paintings are made, ciboria are crafted, vestments are woven, and so on). Present-day sacral works of art are no longer items created primarily for the purpose of devotion. They are sacral ‘only’ in so far that they are in some way open to the transcendental. Some time ago, during the ‘Night of Museums’, there was an entirely special exhibition which was presented by the Lutheran Museum. On display were kitschy artefacts such as Virgin Mary holy-water fonts with screw tops, figures of Mary in the form of matryoshka nesting dolls, lighters with the words ‘let Mary bring you light’, key rings with the portrait of the pope, plastic Torah scrolls and Luther quotes woven in socks. Yet, fortunately, serious sacral art can still be found, despite all the varied trash inundating the world. With this in mind, let us introduce an unusual 21st-century creator of altar paintings from among the several artists expressing themselves through sacral art in Hungary today.
Gábor Kovács-Gombos has been exhibiting since the beginning of the 1980s and has had more than two dozen solo exhibitions both abroad and in Hungary (including his latest works at Pannonhalma Abbey). In addition, he is also a regular participant of group exhibitions. In the beginning he was fascinated by Hiper or Photo Realism, thus his first canvasses were painted in that style. Later he began turning to sacral art in the wake of a personal family tragedy. At first he painted works depicting ‘realist’ angels, partly in the above-mentioned style, then around 2000 he began making his special ‘altar paintings’. These have now become entirely characteristic of his art. His non-figurative, most often symmetrically arranged, almost monochrome paintings with absolutely reduced composition depict various lights floating in a monochrome ethereal space – ‘gates’ opening to streaks of dazzling light. Kovács-Gombos – who works as a college lecturer and as a PhD student at the Academy of Arts conducts research into the sacral arts – summarises his own artistic credo in the following manner: “… to create modern and sacral painting which is able to mediate artistically unchanging and fundamental content by using and fusing the visual means of the present time within traditional panel painting (going beyond the discord of figurative and abstract). (…) The geometric order, the symmetry and apparent statics of the mainly monochrome surfaces aim to make the viewer recall the image of the perceivable world and refer to the existence that can be discovered only through inner vision (…) a painting, while being definitely sensory in its spectacle, should be suitable for transmitting philosophical and theological concepts.”
As for the essence of sacral art, this is how Gábor Kovács-Gombos formulates his personal conviction: “Every work of art which radiates the strength of some sanctity, prompting the viewer to humility, meditation and contemplation, and which helps as a form of catalyst in the process of opening up towards God can be regarded as sacral.”