What happened to Catholic art?

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“Cristo Risorto” Catholic Church of Padergnone, Italy
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A terrible looking cross
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Main enterance
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What is this?
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Angellic or demonic?
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Snakes on the main entrance to a Catholic Church
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Side door is just as horrible
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It just gets worse in side
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Paul VI Audience Hall in the Vatican
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What is that diabolic looking sculpture?
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It is meant to be the resurrection of Christ
 
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Art can be used to glorify God or to insult God!
To encourage belief or discourage belief!
 
I must be weird or something, because the first church posted appears to me to be artistically depicting a rising or a reaching up to heaven, which would fit with the church’s name, “Cristo Risorto”.

I also don’t think the rest of the art in the first post looks all that bad. I’ve definitely seen much, much wors. For one thing, the pictured art looks like the sculptures were done by someone with actual art skills, not a 5-year-old with a can of Play-Doh.
 
Pai_Nosso said:
Snakes on the main entrance to a Catholic Church
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You might enjoy reading the book of Numbers to learn about the bronze serpent that God commanded to be fashioned and raised up for all of the Children of Israel to look upon it and be healed.
 
Two reasons for ugly Church art and architecture: a lack of appreciation for the value of tradition in the arts and the subjective nature of modern art and architecture itself (which are really the same reason).

Many times churches that look like this are designed with the best of intentions. If the architect or artist gives his reasons for its various aspects and design, they are often grounded in Catholic truths and intended to express them.

The problem is the genre of modern art/architecture itself. Whereas traditionally, art sought to convey an objective beauty or truth through traditional and culturally ingrained symbols and forms, modern art seeks to convey a personal expression of a truth. Thus, not everyone will “get” the artist’s or architect’s intention–in fact, most people won’t.

It’s the opposite of inculturation–I call it deculturation. Instead of using traditional symbols and forms to express the truths or sentiments they traditionally express in a culture, they are replaced with new symbols and forms, which , while they may be intended to convey the same truths, express something different or nothing at all in the culture where they are introduced.

It’s like speaking a unique, personal, made up language. You may be intending to express a beautiful truth, but most people are just going to hear gobbledygook.
 
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I admit the ressurection depiction looks creepy, but I like the rest. Art is subjective. Nothing happened to Catholic art, other than that it has been added to. In my opinion, a lot of old art looks bad. Why do so many depictions of Mary and Jesus look like she is holding a shrunken person instead of a baby?
 
I’m a big fan of “modern art” and mid century architecture. It is not everyone’s taste, but, that is the beauty of this world, we can like different ascetics.
 
From what blog or website did you get these images? It is a forum rule to attribute the source.
 
TheLittleLady said:
I’m a big fan of “modern art” and mid century architecture. It is not everyone’s taste, but, that is the beauty of this world, we can like different ascetics.
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I also appreciate mid-century modern design. I don’t live with it except in it’s infancy as it grew out of the Art Deco period.

the fact is not all art is good art. Yes, there is bad renaissance art. There is bad modern art and bad post modern art. People were horrified at the ‘bad art’ of El Greco. Van Gogh never sold a painting, except to his own family. Gothic was a term meant to insult the art form.

Tastes change, popular styles change. This is much ado about nothing.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Every one of us who put up that Klimt poster in the late 80’s would have to agree
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I love Klimt!

These kinds of threads are a pet peeve of mine. If you ask the average person why Rembrandt’s Night Watch is a masterpiece most wouldn’t be able to tell you beyond ‘it’s old and pretty’. Mid-century modern is having a revival now and it is amazing how beautiful the designs actually were. I think the real problem is that people just aren’t exposed to a lot of art. They see the same things and just like the familiar.

Personally I adore Caravaggio. But I live in arts and crafts design with a touch of Art Deco.
 
Personally I think painting and sculpture peaked in the 19th century.
As photography grew the demand for skillful painters and sculptors became less.

As for architecture after the renaissance period I like the art deco style of early 20th century.
Now i think architecture is cheap and nasty.
 
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Vote with your feet and with your tithes and offerings. Find a parish that looks unmistakably Catholic and has a suitably reverent approach to liturgy, and make that your home. My heart aches when I see a beautiful Catholic church shut its doors while a few blocks away a church that looks like a bloody Howard Johnson’s continues to operate. One of the loveliest churches in my city, St John the Baptist’s of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was closed down in 2012, while there are a dozen modernist abominations within a five mile radius that carry on.
 
vsedriver said:
These kinds of threads are a pet peeve of mine.
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Agreed.

I think another dimension of church buildings that many people seem to neglect is the “habitability”, especially in climates that are radically different from Europe.

From my perspective, any charm of old churches quickly evaporates once you’ve worshipped for midnight Mass in a humid, 105 degree Victorian-era sandstone church that has no air conditioning and minimal air circulation. Compared to that, my “modernist” parish church built in the 1950s was a glimpse of beatific vision with air conditioning and climate control.

Aside from this, another issue is the obscene cost of traditional materials and workers in many parts of the world, both for the initial building and later maintenance.
 
Just curious. Where do you have 105 degrees at midnight Mass? Isn’t Bithynia roughly in the Northern part of modern Turkey?
 
thanks for the information!

I look at the “diabolic” sculpture in the Paul VI audience hall.

Someone can find it horrible (I do) but if you lok closely you see the dead people who are raising with the Christ. So it seems Christian art, not diabolic one. Old painting has also shown dead who go outside their graves to ressucitate. Nothing new.

I am also concerned by the details in the Christo risorto, and find it inappropriate to have deamons and diabolical creatures and snakes in the main entrance. These horrors are alos found in Middle Age churches pilars, but on the north side, the side where the light does not show, as to evoke the hell, so it is more naturally justified and discreet.
 
aroosi said:
Isn’t Bithynia roughly in the Northern part of modern Turkey?
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My username is a bit misleading! I actually live in Sydney. I remember that Mass from several years ago: the congregation was extremely sweaty, even the priests had handkerchiefs stuffed up their sleeves in order to dab at their faces. There was the usual summer thunderstorm that night, so it was terribly humid.
 
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