“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
November 24th, 2009 by 
ruah 
No Comments »
