Happy Feast of St. Josemaria Escriva!
This painting is done by Sr. AnneMarie Heyne, who is currently a novice with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Florence, Italy. If you would like to support her vocation and promote the sacred arts, consider purchasing her paintings. Contact me at ruahfellowship@gmail.com if you’re interested.
For more on St. Josemaria:
If you’re near the Chicago area, I urge you to attend this.
THE FOUNDATION FOR SACRED ARTS presents
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“How can we go forward in architecture without focusing so much on the past? It seems like there’s so much focus on the past,” the teetering skeptic asked the learned Architectural Historian Dennis McNamara several weekends ago. I went to the Art & Architecture Conference at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in LaCrosse, Wisconsin last Saturday, on the feast of St. Lucy, and couldn’t be more pleased.
Archbishop Burke, back in town for business and a quick holiday visit to family, opened the conference with great depth and simplicity by reminding us that we are all in statu viae. “Every pilgrimage is a return to the Source of beauty, truth and all love,” said the genius of canon law, speaking more like a mystic than an ecclesial supreme judge. He set the tone for the day, reminding us that–as I quoted a friend in a previous entry–the fine arts were born on the altar, and the renewal of sacred liturgy, spaces and ultimately, culture, will end and begin in Christ, our Eucharistic Love.
Denis McNamara is the Jonah Goldberg of Church Architecture. He’s every bit the architectural historian and bow tie sporting professor, but wields a wryness and common sensical dialect all-too-uncommon in churchy intellectuals. This makes him a great teacher and made him a fabulous key note speaker for the Art & Architecture Conference, and certainly good for a couple of laughs. The motivation in his grad studies wasn’t an ethereal encounter with an antique edifice, but simply people asking him at parties, “Why is my church so ugly?”
People have known intuitively for years that en vogue architecture–especially within ecclesial settings–wasn’t….well, quite right. In fact, they sensed it was just plain wrong. What has happened, McNamara says, is that architecture, which has a language, and can be read, has been misread for years, and it seems in contemporary architecture, that language has been forgotten altogether. In its place has emerged a sort of polished neanderthal grunting. In going “forward” with no reference to universal principals, we’ve regressed. Modern architecture is egotistical and centripetal, while classical architecture in a church is meant to be centrifugal, but not just pointing out, but pointing Up, an image of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
In short, we always go forward (Philippians 3:13), but we build upon transcendent truths, including architectural truths, giving our vote to the “democracy of the dead,” the wisdom of the past in all humility. I met an architect in the not too recent past, a proud creator of what Duncan Stroik calls “prayer barns,” and as he explained his multi-purpose church, he *actually* compared his innovation in design to that of Raphael and Michelangelo. While we are all artworks of the Creator in progress, I thought it tremendously ironic that said architect should even utter so vain a thought. It is a privilege to build a temple for the Lord, and a calling, and any artist should give thanks for their gifts and avocation, laying their natural and supernatural gifts at the foot of the altar and before the wisdom of the masters in order to bear fruit. It’s only when we do this, whether literally or figuratively, that true beauty comes forth. Anything less is the mark of the unoriginality of sin, and an icon of evil.
There was really so much packed into his talk to fit in into one entry, and the other speakers were quite good as well. Stay tuned for a full article.
Finally, nothing can speak so well as participating in the Liturgy and praying a walk through the gorgeous shrine as well. You must go, and if you cannot go, visit the Shrine web site.
Happy Christmas, and all the lovely feasts of Christmastide!
JS
Happy Feast Day, artists! Especially if your work tends toward the Liturgical and Devotional Art end of things, because today, you may know, is the feast of St. John of Damascus, or St. John Damascene, Doctor of Christian Art. Monsignor gave a great homily today on St. John, telling us about his heroic defense of holy images against iconoclasm, which should be a reminder to us all to have holy images around us. We don’t have to look like a walking Leaflet Missal Catalogue, either, but the use of sacred images is tremendously important. Do you know how to defend the Church’s teaching on images to Protestants or Muslims?
Though I’m posting this in the evening, here are some ideas for celebrating this feast day–h/t to Catholic Culture for the links:
- Pray for a renewal of the sacred liturgy and the liturgical arts, and make a donation to organizations that specifically promote renewal in sacred liturgy and arts
- Read about his life and writings
- Learn about the value of sacramentals
- Place an icon of St. John in a prominent place with a votive candle
Via the Image Update:
The parish of Our Savior Catholic Center at the University of Southern California is soliciting interest and artists’ portfolios for the numerous works of sacred art to be commissioned for the new church and student center. Interested artists are invited to visit the project website for information regarding the architectural project, the artistic vision, the scope of works to be commissioned, and the submission requirements.
Being as jaded about California Liturgical Art as I am (I lived there), I hesitated before posting this. (See World’s Ugliest Buildings.) However, this following rendering was encouraging:
Slightly less encouraging is the removal of the tabernacle from the altar, and placing it in the apse. The apse is better than, say, a super hidden side chapel, but the tabernacle should be where all good Christians are: front and center and ready to take up one’s cross.
They are clearly not looking for anything ultra post-modern, but I am confused about this statement:
We are not looking for any dry, academic mimicry of historical styles. On the one hand, we are looking to renew the narrative figurative tradition, respectful of the Christian iconographic tradition of symbols and conventions which has expressed the Catholic faith across the millennia.
I wonder what (or who) they would consider “dry, academic mimicry of historical styles.” Mimicry is a strong word, and I wonder they would consider an architectural ventriloquist? Very confusing. What do you think?
On a far different note than the last blog entry, A one day conference on sacred art and architecture will be held on December 13 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in LaCrosse from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.. The day will include discussion of sacred architecture and art, Mass celebrated by Archbishop Raymond Burke, founder of the shrine, and ending the day with a walking tour of the Shrine Church led by the artists and architects who worked on the shrine church and grounds. See www.guadalupeshrine.org for more information. The cost is $20 per person. Seating is limited and
registrations will be considered on a first come – first served basis
The Schedule is as follows:
8:00 Registration
8:45 Archbishop Raymond L. Burke Welcome to the Shrine
9:00 Keynote Speaker: Denis McNamara Shadow, Image, and Reality: Church Architecture as Image of Heaven
10:30 Christopher Carstens: An overview of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’Guidelines on restoration and building of
sacred places
11:00 Holy Mass Main Celebrant: Archbishop Raymond L. Burke.
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Michael Swinghamer: Architectural Challenges in the Buildingf the Shrine Church
1:30 John Canning Bringing Ecclesiastical Beauty to the Shrine Church
2:00 Anthony Visco: The Art of Devotion
2:45 Walking tour of the Shrine Church Led by Anthony Visco, join artists and
architects for a first hand look at the Shrine Church
4:00 Adjourn Program
My friend, Matthew Milliner, wrote some time earlier this year a succinct summary of everything I believe about contemporary art, namely that contemporary art is corrupt, is based on poorly formed principles (if any) sans the transcendant, and needs very much the simple, faithful return to classical foundations in a truly creative way that is based in, above all things, the sacred Liturgy, whether directly in the liturgical arts or flowing from the altar itself by grace. His very direct and lovely way of communicating this comes down to two bird analogies: the swallows of Capistrano (as taken from Jody Bottum’s article in First Things) and the sparrows whose littleness trumps the eagles of the art world (as taught by John Walford of Wheaton College).
Do read the article. It’s not a sound bite, hyper-summarized, bite size chunk of cultural niceties and theoretic sentamentalism, so don’t expect something that the average Facebook user would read and dig. It’s probably not something your average artsy fartsy person would dig either. Average, I said. It’s edgy, and a little (wee) bit long, but it’s worth the perseverance. So read it. It might offend you, and that’s okay I say. Truth offends. If we had more people willing to offend the Church we’d be in a much different place in respect to many things today.
Favorite quotes:
“A nearly universal response to contemporary art today–one that impressively transverses race, creed age, or class–is ‘What?’”“The decades to follow gave us conceptual art, landscape art, performance art, outsider’s art, found art, and (most revealingly perhaps) auto-destructive art.”
“The cult of celebrity–with its exorbitant votive prices–drives the art world today, leaving envy and resentment in its wake: a convocation of belligerent eagles.”
“We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another–doubtless very different–St. Benedict.” And lo, our Benedict has come.” [Props to Matt for the B16 reference--check his flickr account for his pics from the April Pope visit]
If wit was the eighth gift of the Holy Spirit, this might be the fruit of a new Pentecost. I love it. Thank you Catholic Minority Report for your spot on witicisms on the reform of the reform. I especially liked the “50% less Bugnini.” (Have you read the review of Marini’s (which means Bugnini’s) book in Adoremus?)
To get to the Other Side!
I have a visually-based vocabulary and memory, so in an effort to develop my soul’s anamnesis sparked by a pilgrimage of the past, I decided to look up the Phoenix.
Do you know the difference between indigo, royal purple and tyrian purple? Oh do ya? Well, I dare you to read this fabulous article on what is the right violet for the Roman rite anyway.
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