The Adoration of the Magi, Franklin Carmichael
When I grew up in Croydon in the 1960s ("What a cultural paradise!" I hear you say) the fashion of the time was to regard "modern" as an adjective which invariably conveyed a compliment. Whether it was the Nestles building (nobody ever referred to it as Nestlé), the underpass or the new flyover or whether it was the replacement of the delicious current buns we were given at playtime by a Peek Freen wafer biscuit, or the static-charged polyester vestments that came into vogue a little later, anything modern was good, and to decry something it was a discourse-ending assertion to say that it was old fashioned. Without blushing, theologians would justify almost any departure from traditional teaching by saying that it was more relevant to modern man (feminism had not yet made its mark.)
An obvious danger for us today is to follow the pendulum blindly and decry anything that is modern. The New Liturgical Movement does a great service in correcting this reflex with its posts on the Other Modern. There was a good example the other day with Shawn Tribe's post on the Murals in St. Anne's Anglican Church, Toronto - an example is shown above.
Personally I very much like the Rosary Basilica at Lourdes (apart from the rearranaged sanctuary) and the Basilica of St Thérèse at Lisieux:
Here is a google search on the NLM site for Other Modern from which you can browse some of the previous NLM posts on the subject.
3 comments:
Dear Fr. I find the Magi scene, shown in your Post, most attractive.
However, one wonders as to why Saint Joseph is depicted without a halo ?
I love some modern artwork which is religious, as long as it is not sentimental. The example you gave is lovely. Sometimes people think "primitive" art is valuable in religious contexts, but outside of historical monument churches in Latin America, I think much of what passes for "art" is not. I would like you opinion of Coventry Cathedral, the great tapestry.
I really like the glass windows of Laurence Whistler, which I have written about on my blog. I also like the religious work of David Jones.
What is not to like in the Rosary Basilica? Could it be the tabernacle inspired by a telephone kiosk or a TARDIS? Or maybe it is the symbolism of an altar with emergency lighting? How could you fail to tilt your biretta to the modernist magnificence of the Basilica of St Pius X or as one earnest Westminster Press Pilgrim assured me,"a recreation of Noah's Ark."
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