Art & Architecture
St. Edmund’s Retreat Center
Cardinal O’Malley of Boston in this week’s blog entry mentions that he was on retreat with his fellow bishops of the New England province at St. Edmund’s Retreat Center on Ender’s Island in Mystic, Connecticut.
I agree with him that it is a beautiful place. I’ve been on retreats there, twice, I think (or was it three times) including the most recent time in 2004 right after Melanie and I started dating. It was our first public event together with our crowd of friends. I have a photogallery of our trip up here.
Incidentally, the chapel has a wonderful Stations of the Cross. All of the stations incorporate locations around the small island that is the retreat center as well as local flora and fauna and of course the traditional Christian imagery, culminating in an additional station showing Christ the King, Resurrected, and St. Edmund on New Year's Day.
They are quite beautiful. I’ve had them on my computer for a while and only just now uploaded them to a set on Flickr.com.
If you ever get a chance to go to Ender’s Island, leap at it.
St. Louis Cathedral
Check out this beautiful photo of the Cathedral in St. Louis as well as this close-up shot of the baldacchino. Click on the links to the larger versions here and here. Just gorgeous.
Photo: creativity+
Sputnik in 17th century Italian church?
Some people say that a 17th-century painting in an Italian church depicting the glorification of the Eucharist also includes a very strange object that looks like Sputnik or something out of Star Wars.
Or are our 21st-century brains supplying an explanation based on matching patterns we already know? Are we just imposing ideas upon something even as we lack the context of the artist Salimbeni?
Technorati Tags: art | science fiction | painting | Italian | Tuscany | Salimbeni |
A hobbit dream house
I’ve found my dream home: a real hobbit house (but not exactly a hobbit hole since it’s not built into the ground).
Asked to design a fitting repository for a client’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter Archer went to the source—-the fantasy novels that describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits.
“I came back my client and said, ‘I’m not going to make this look like Hollywood,’” Archer recalled, choosing to focus instead on a finely-crafted structure embodying a sense of history and tradition.
It’s actually a pretty airy and light structure and despite the architect’s claim that it wasn’t going to look like Hollywood, it is evocative of Peter Jackson’s vision of Bag End, which says to me that both men stayed fairly faithful to Tolkien’s vision.
Of course, Melanie tells me she’s not going to live in some hole in the ground that dark and dingy. I respond that this hobbit house is by no means dark and dingy and we can put in a skylight too, if she wants.
Chocolate blasphemy canceled
The president of the New York hotel that had planned to exhibit the life-size anatomically correct chocolate statue of Jesus in its gallery has cancelled the showing. The gallery’s art director resigned in protest, calling the reaction against the showing a “Christian fatwa,” which is laughable because a real fatwa from Muslims would have been a whole lot more than a call for a boycott. A Muslim fatwa based on an insult to Mohammed would have called for his head.
The six-foot sculpture was the victim of “a strong-arming from people who haven’t seen the show, seen what we’re doing,” Semler said. “They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions.”What could their intentions possibly be that would counter the outrage? Like I said the other day, I’m beyond being shocked by these tendentious “artists”. Offending Christians by blaspheming Christ is old news; maybe they should try offending Muslims next. I’m sure they could get a big reaction from them.
Technorati Tags: Catholic | art | chocolate | sculpture | Jesus | anti-Christian | blasphemy | Cavallaro |
A gift for the Lord
Rob Quagan, a parishioner of the Latin Mass community in Boston’s Indult parish, Holy Trinity, sends along a note regarding some recently re-discovered treasures of the parish.
I had an opportunity to see the contents of Holy Trinity’s Sacristy Safe after Stations of the Cross on Friday, 3/9 with the head sacristan, Carl Camelo. I was shocked to discover that it contained many, many relics (perhaps 100), that we (the Latin Mass congregation) have never been made aware. I wondered if the Administrator(s) was even aware of their existence since there was never any suggestion for veneration on particular feast days. In recent decades Holy Mass has been only a weekly occurance at Holy Trinity. I suspect their existence was held over from the days of Jesuit control and daily Mass. I was also stunned to find a very beautiful chalice that is often used on special feasts such as Christmas, Easter and Trinity Sunday. The following was in the January 2007 Monatsbote (Parish Newsletter, published continuously since 1899). It is a reprint from the November 1945 issue of The Monatsbote which provides interesting details about this remarkable sacred vessel:What struck me about this story is not that an expensive gift was given to the parish—even today there are many generous people who leave gifts to their parishes—but that it was gift of the whole parish, not just of money, but of precious objects. It’s not like the people of the era had lots of gold rings and jewelry hanging about. I’m sure that much of what was donated were the personal belongings of the parishioners given not out of their excess, but out of their need. It reminds me of the story of my own parish, whose current church was built 149 years ago with the pennies and donated labor of its Irish immigrant people.“When the Golden Jubilee of the new church was approaching (1927) it was felt that for this occasion the parish should have a new chalice. From the start, the parishioners were told that it was not to be a gift of a single individual or a church society, but of the whole parish. Consequently all were invited to contribute gold, silver and precious stones, or cash. In the course of time, hundreds of gold rings, gold watches, chains and other gold ornaments were sent to the rectory, and, above all, gold pieces. All these things were melted and sent to a first-class firm in Germany, Messrs. Koesters & Seegers, Kevelaer, who at the request of Rev. Bernard Wildenhues, SJ had submitted an original sketch of a chalice, which was accepted by the pastor (Rev. Charles P. Gisler, SJ).
“At first it had been the intention to buy a chalice of solid silver only, but of exquisite workmanship, to cost about $600. But as gold, precious stones and money began to pour in from all sides, it was decided to have a chalice of solid gold, with a large number of jewels. It is of Roman design, of exquisite workmanship--no factory work; everything made by hand requiring months of labor.
“The cup is ornamented with six pictures, representing Christ the King, the Annunciation, the Blessed Trinity in Heaven, the Baptism in the Jordan, the Blessed Trinity with Jesus Christ Crucified, and the Transfiguration. The base contains six pictures of saints, in delicate enamel: St. Ignatius, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Peter Canisius, St. Francis Xavier, Blessed Nicholas von der Flue (the Swiss national saint) and the Little Flower. The artist had been expressly told not to put the picture of the Little Flower on the chalice, but he seems to have misunderstood the order.
“The chalice contains about one hundred fifty precious stones - pearls, rubies, amethysts and diamonds. Stem and base, and also the lower part of the cup, are made of the most delicate filigree work. The whole chalice is a masterpiece of workmanship, a worthy gift of the parishioners to the Blessed Trinity, to whom the church is consecrated. May the blessing of the Blessed Trinity rest upon all who have contributed toward the chalice.”
There was a different sensibility then, which isn’t to say that people aren’t generous today. For one thing, there are a whole lot more charities asking for money: colleges, kids’ schools, poor charities of local, national, and international flavor, hospitals, you name it. Also, folks today usually have more disposable wealth than free time. And their wealth is more likely to be in liquid assets, like cash and stock, than in hard goods like precious metal and jewels.
Still, there may be a lesson to be recalled from the example of our grandparents’ generation that thought nothing of such sacrifices if only for the greater glory of God through a precious chalice to hold the Precious Blood of Our Lord (and not some glass or ceramic goblet bought at Crate & Barrel.)
Technorati Tags: Catholic | chalice | Mass | liturgy |
Chocolate blasphemy
Sad to say, but the blasphemies of Jesus by the art world are just getting tedious. Where is the shock value anymore? It’s been so done.
That hasn’t deterred Cosimo Cavallaro, who has created a six-foot anatomically correct naked chocolate Jesus he calls “My Sweet Lord”, and displayed it in a New York art gallery.
“I’m truly thrilled to be working with Cosimo again,” says Matt Semler Creative Director of the Lab. “The sign of any great artist is how their work affects the observer. His art always gets a reaction, but this is the most dramatic piece of his career. It is absolutely amazing.”Yawn. If Cavallaro really wanted to get a reaction to his art, he should have created a six-foot anatomically correct naked chocolate Mohammed, but like the rest of the “daring” blasphemers of Christ out there, we know he won’t because the reaction from Christians may be outrage, but it is peaceful. The reaction by Muslims would be anything but. Just ask Theo van Gogh.
Instead, the Roger Smith Hotel, where the gallery is located, can expect a boycott led by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, which isn’t a bad response, although I wish we could just ignore the unimaginative blasphemers. (Which we can’t because the media laps it up.) Thank God that Donohue and the rest of us Catholics actually follow the teachings and example of our Lord. Twenty centuries ago He was spat upon, beaten, scourged, and crucified and did not lift a finger in His own defense, but instead prayed for his tormentors.
I think that’s what Christ would have us do for Cavallaro and his enablers. Lucky for them.
[Hat tip to Kathy Shaidle.]
Technorati Tags: Catholic | art | blasphemy | Jesus | chocolate | anti-Christian |
Houses of worship hallow the city
David Garrand writes in The City Journal about New York City’s churches and the important role they play in the city’s architectural and civic life.
A city without significant places of worship is like a garden devoid of flowers. Images immediately spring to mind: Christopher Wren’s St. Paul’s, its majestic dome looming above London like a guardian angel; Notre Dame of Paris, perfectly expressing, in the words of Victor Hugo, “variety and eternity”; Amsterdam’s severe but noble seventeenth-century Spanish-Portuguese synagogue; and Antonio Gaudí’s breathtaking, unfinished Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, forever growing like a tree whose final height is incalculable. Yet to be significant, a place of worship does not have to be of great scale but only to possess something of beauty and something of memory.
Many American cities—Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, for instance—have downtowns almost swept clean of places of worship. Either they never existed, or they followed the faithful to the suburbs. Two old cities, Boston and Philadelphia, do indeed possess notable churches at their core, but no American city approaches New York in the richness and variety of its churches and synagogues. Part of what makes the metropolis great, they are wondrous depositories of architecture and art, of history and urban memory.
He then gives a grand tour of some of the significant churches. I think he makes an important point about churches, especially churches that look like churches. Houses of worship are as important to a vital urban (or even rural) downtown landscape as mom-and-pop stores. They are a sign that people live there, that it’s not merely a place that fills up with office drones during the day and turns into a ghost town at night. Cities used to be places where folks lived, not just in proximity to one another, but in community. Churches are an element of the bonds that create that community, even among folks who do not go to the same church or belong to the same faith. The fact of faith was enough.
The presence of churches also reminds us that our sum of existence is not the commercial enterprise or the pursuit of money and goods for survival’s sake. We are transcendent beings, meant for higher purposes. Imagine what the presence of the massive Chartres Cathedral meant to the average medieval French peasant going about his daily business, how the edifice reminded him of heaven and God and his ultimate end every day. We need churches around us to remind us that faith is not something that comes out of the box for an hour every Sunday. This is why the closing of so many parishes is indeed a tragedy partially caused by the abandonment of their faith by so many Catholics.
Technorati Tags:church, church property, civics
Guerilla art on the Taj Mahony
“Church sign a billboard? No, it’s art”
When people talk about seeing holy signs, they don’t usually mean “Your Ad HERE” on the side of a church.
That 50-foot message, visible to thousands of commuters on a nearby freeway, was projected Wednesday evening on a dark portion of the bell tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
The sign was gone within hours, but the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese was not amused.
... However, the sign wasn’t really trolling for advertisers. It was a guerrilla art piece by James Cui, who included a telephone in the projected image.
“I’m flattered you noticed,” the 28-year-old Highland Park graphic artist told the Los Angeles Times. “I hoped I was hitting a lot of people with it.”
Cui uses a laptop computer and a video projector powered by a portable generator to cast his images on blank walls.
Perhaps if the Taj Mahony was not a giant blockhouse with long expanses of smooth concrete devoid of any architectural or artistic interest, the projection of the image would not have been so successful. Wouldn’t it have been ironic if he had projected a beautiful, traditional image of Catholic artwork?
Technorati Tags:art, Catholic, Los Angeles
Another look at St. William Church in Round Rock, Texas
About a month ago several Catholic blogs were discussing a new church built in Round Rock, Texas, called St. William. (I wrote about it too.) Since it’s not far from Austin, where Melanie’s parents live, we took a trip over there today to get a closer look.
It’s a very nice church. I’m no architectural expert, but I would call it neo-traditional, being a clear development of the classic pre-Vatican designs while using all the more modern conveniences.
Here is a whole set of photos we took, including some architectural details for you church building geeks. The artwork is nice. I wouldn’t call it austere, but it’s certainly not ornate. My guess is that they’ve left room to add more artwork in the future.
There are many nice touches. The ladies room has a nursing mothers’ area with a privacy screen, a glider-rocker, and a TV to keep up with the Mass via closed circuit. There are also flat-panel TVs in the very large narthex, presumably when they have overflow crowds on big holidays. The Church will seat 1,700 and I bet they can get more than 100 in the narthex alone.
The parish has a big plot of land with a whole lot of parking, but also empty land to grow on.
Overall, it’s a nice looking church and--apart from all other considerations--I could certainly get used to going to Mass there on a regular basis.
Technorati Tags:architecture, art, Austin, Catholic, church, Texas
The phenomenal cathedral of Wheeling, West Virginia
Gerald at The Cafeteria is Closed was recently in Wheeling, West Virginia, and took photos of the diocese’s cathedral that he has put up in a stunning photo gallery. The Midwest and Northeast are full of these little architectural treasures scattered all over the landscape in surprising places.
Gerald also wants you to know that he’s available to do similar photoshoots around the country for very reasonable rates.
Beautiful new church in Austin diocese
Looks like good things are happening in the Diocese of Austin, Texas. A large parish in Round Rock, Texas, where Dell Computer’s headquarters is located north of the Texas capital, is being billed by the local media as a “mega Catholic church” with more than 12,000 registered parishioners. The parish and the area population have grown so rapidly that a new building was needed to replace the old church, which itself was replacement of an older structure dating back to the parish’s founding in 1940.
Check out the before and after photos on the New Liturgical Movement to see the old ‘60s era drab box they replaced and what a beautiful and timeless new church they’ve replaced it with.
Based on the parish’s web site, it looks like there’s a lot that’s good going on there. Melanie and I will have to visit when we’re down in Austin at Christmas.
Technorati Tags:architecture, Catholic, church
Applauding the pedophobe
Here is the epitome of post-Enlightenment, post-Modernist European nihilism. An artist, Carsten Holler,--trained a research entemologist--used to make avante garde art projects that fantasize about murdering children to creating whimsical installations. But don’t get the wrong idea. Children are still an abstraction divorced from real love or anything apart from the self.
He came to fame in 1990-93 with an exhibition of devices for catching and killing children; one, for instance, was a swing fixed to the roof edge of a high-rise building. Was he really such a paedophobe? ‘Well, now I have a daughter I’ve changed my mind! I never hated children, but I hated the idea of making children, the whole reproductive process. There’s no freedom if you cannot get rid of the biological machinery that makes us decide to do this thing and not that thing. I thought very much about how you could break that chain. I was determined and convinced that I would not have children.’
So what happened: did he fall in love? ‘I fell in love all the time! Very much so, even more, because I would not have children. But I think once you have really explored a certain conviction, it is time to give it up. I don’t think you should go on holding it for the rest of your life. So I thought it was time to have a child, to see if I was right or wrong. And I found I was both right and wrong.’
To paraphrase Mark Shea, show me a culture that despises chastity and virginity and I will show you a culture that despises children. Any normal, sane society would denounce the man as a sicko and ostracize him. But this one lionizes him and calls him a great artist.
Michelangelo was a great artist. Holler is a hack who uses shock to gain attention.
Holler’s deathswing; exploding bicycle; and his slide exhibit at the Tate Museum in London.
The Church that Fr. Stephanos built
Gerald of the Cafeteria is Closed writes that the blogging monk Fr. Stephanos has consulted on the construction of a new church in Southern California and provides a nice photo tour of it.
Technorati Tags:architecture, art, Catholic, church
Only in the People’s Republic of Cambridge
In the City of Cambridge, Mass. (which some people call the East Coast Berkeley), they had a problem with aggressive driving through a particular intersection. In typical liberal fashion, they decided to deal with this problem by paying $10,000 in taxpayer money to an artist to paint a “rotary mural” on the road. This was supposed to calm drivers down.
The city’s Arts Council recently paid a local artist $10,000 to paint the rotary on the intersection of Walden and Reservoir streets and Vassal Lane.
The 20-foot art circle is supposed to help calm traffic by forcing drivers to slow down to drive around or across the rotary at a slower speed.
Residents have criticized the West Coast-inspired idea and many motorists are ignoring the painted mural and speeding by the makeshift rotary.
The art circle was loosely based on the Portland, Ore., project “City Repair,” according to Susanne Rasmussen, director of environmental and transportation planning for Cambridge.
That’s right, the Arts Council fixing traffic problems. As one commenter told the reporter, they would have been better off giving the 10 grand to the local schools for art supplies.
Methinks the Arts Council is overfunded if they have money to throw away on stuff like this.
Technorati Tags:liberalism, Massachusetts, politics
