VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict met artists from around the world in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday and urged them to inject spirituality into their work, saying contemporary beauty was often "illusory and deceitful."
"Beauty ... can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate Mystery, toward God," Benedict said.
The Pope told them that in a world lacking in hope, with increasing signs of aggression and despair, there was an ever greater need for a return to spirituality in art.
"Too often ... the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful ... it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy," he said.
Against the backdrop of Michelangelo's vast fresco of the Last Judgment, which adorns the chapel's altar wall, Benedict lamented that the once-close cooperation between the Church and the artistic community had weakened.
"Faith takes nothing away from your genius or art," he said. "On the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them."
The Pope told the gathering of hundreds of painters, sculptors, architects, poets and directors, held beneath the vaulted ceiling of the chapel painted by Michelangelo, that he wanted to "renew the Church's friendship with the world of art."
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Artistic expression should be separated from any church as far as any approval for none is needed there, however closeness with God is a personal thing and can be wrought from art.The nature of beauty in art is truthful self expression and it will always be so. For what appeals to me may not appeal to others and vice versa, but if I am true to what I express or feel then that will always be beautiful at least to me...and God.I am Catholic but that is a religion and God has nothing to do with religion. Right?
As far as "beauty...can become a path toward the ultimate mystery,toward God" Well this is true if and only if the individual defines what beauty is for them.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as well as God.Art is spiritual only if it is true,for HE made us and so by truthful self expression we are showing him off so to speak.I will end by saying that self expression makes a person vulnerable, it is like staring at yourself in another form.
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