THE P RTAL
July 2014
Page 24
Displacement
of Reverence
Why silence in the art gallery,
but pandemonium in church?
Geoffrey Kirk ponders this conundrum
Arecent visit
to Siena has drawn my attention to a phenomenon which I had not previously
noticed. I will call it the ‘displacement of reverence’. Let me explain.
The Duomo of Siena is of course
an unparalleled repository of fine art:
the glorious pulpit of Nicolo Pisano,
the frescoes of Pinturicchio in the
Piccolomini Library, sculptures by
Bernini and Michaelanglo. It is also
(obviously) a place of worship, where the
Blessed Sacrament is reserved. But as a
tourist attraction – at twelve euros a time
– it has all the calm of a cattle market.
Pushchairs full of infant art lovers vie
with teenagers taking selfies and adults
vainly trying (or not) to restrain both.
Occasionally a stentorian female over
a loudspeaker system barks a request
for silence, which everyone present
enthusiastically ignores. It is true that my
latest visit coincided with the post-Easter
school holidays, and in consequence
there was an unusual preponderance of
parties of disaffected yoof, but the lady at
the main door assured me that this was
now pretty well par for the course.
things they have come to
see. It is at best ‘heritage’
and at worst Disneyland.
The objects have become
tragically opaque to the
mystery
which
their
creators intended them
to express. They have
been reduced to mere
entertainment; a slideshow between ice-creams.
Perhaps – only perhaps - there is a residual awareness
of their sanctity; but that creates disaffection rather
Consider, then, the contrast with the Museo del than reverence. The modern world does not do ‘holy’.
Opera next door, where Duccio’s glorious Majesta is
displayed in a darkened room to awestruck spectators shading their eyes from the glory of God
who view it in silent reverence. The same is true of the
In the art gallery it is different. There works of art are
other exhibits - though, of course, none is so spectacular. revered as works of man, not as signs of transcendence.
Why the silence in the one case and the pandemonium ‘Isn’t it marvellous that they could do things like that
in the other? It is a question to be pondered. Why does all those years ago’. When the threat of transcendence
there seem to be such a conflicting reaction to works is removed, and the art object is no longer a sign, and
of art in the Church and in the gallery?
no more than an object, then reverence returns. But
beware: Duccio’s Majesta, the Isenheim altar piece,
The answer, I think, must lie in the radical secularisation Mona Lisa, Picasoo’s Guernica and a mandolin by
of modern society. Visitors to the Cathedral