Traditional Art Cannot be Revolutionary: Modern Churches and Traditional Parishes - Guest Article by Mr Joseph Bremer

We are happy to share this article by Mr Joseph Bremer, a PhD student at the London-based King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts, studying western iconography, and specializing in the art and architecture of the Romanesque period. He also currently teaches theology and history at Holy Family Cathedral School in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

There seems to be no artistic spirit of our age. Future generations of Church historians will have a profoundly unenviable task ahead; for we can examine a 6th century mosaic covered domed cross church and definitively call it ‘Byzantine,’ a 12th century thick walled stone basilica and recognize it as ‘Romanesque,’ or identify a 17th century sprawling marble-clad church as definitively ‘Baroque.’ One could even travel back 30 years and identify our large monochrome iconoclastic churches as definitively modern, but that simply doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Many Catholic churches currently in use were constructed in the now-outdated styles that dominated the late 20th and early 21st centuries; and it is no secret that most practicing Catholics now find this commitment to post-modern art and architecture deeply problematic. We still inhabit the bones of these modern spaces, but the Church’s architectural turn in the late 20th century is now considered by many priests and parishioners to be a mistake. Our future church historians will have to make sense of a well-meaning, albeit disparate traditional patchwork independent of any overarching style or meaning as we try to patch modern churches with what bits of tradition we can.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles

This is especially true in America, where the Church eagerly married itself to the spirit of the age, but the last few decades has seen her, at least aesthetically, widowed. Our artistic inheritance is the fruit of jaded and betrayed post-modern optimism, and now these modern churches have been all but rejected by the very youth they were designed to appease. A new generation of young, eminently conservative, and overwhelmingly well-meaning priests have been assigned to these modern churches, with a strong will to traditionalize them, but the walls and artwork of our churches preach a theology altogether rejected by many of her parishioners and most of her priests. The pulpit is at war with the building it inhabits, and we are all left wondering ‘what now?’

It is an all too familiar question in our day and age: What is a traditionally minded parish, or at the very least a parish that rejects the maxims of artistic postmodernism, able to do if they inherited the all too familiar 70’s square?

Many parishes understandably see the need to construct an entirely new space. One such example is St. Philip the Apostle Church in Lewisville, Texas; a congregation not known for being exceptionally traditional.

The Old St. Philip the Apostle Sanctuary, construction completed in 1977

The parish, over the course of many years, was able to raise the money for a brand new neo-Gothic church in Flower-Mound, the interior of which is currently incomplete and pictured below.

As beautiful and preferable as the building of a new church is for most parishes, this is rarely an option. The recent agglomeration of small local parishes into larger urban ones makes this very difficult. The late 20th century shortage of priests coupled with a declining percentage of mass attendance meant dioceses in the 1970s and 1980s shut down many small local parishes, and built very large, very central and very modern churches in their place. Building a new large church is a monumental expense most parishes simply can’t afford; and it doesn’t help that construction, labor, and land costs are at an all time high with no sign of decline in the near future.

So can a parish traditionalize a space designed to be antithetical to tradition? This question must be necessarily answered on a church by church basis, but let's first examine what is currently being done. An example I am intimately familiar with is the Church of the Incarnation, a parish located at the University of Dallas which serves as a stark archetype for the difficulties and pitfalls of traditionalizing modern spaces. The University of Dallas teaches us three important lessons in the traditionalization of modern churches: the importance of continuity, of artistic telos, and of recognizing the realities of your space.

The church was designed and built by architects Duane and Jane Landry in 1985 in the spirit of most modern churches, with an express emphasis on the community rather than the liturgy. Its circular form was derived from Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome, but the processional aisle was deliberately placed so that it wasn’t the focal point of the very large narthex. (A cheeky former chaplain reserved the URL www.bigbrowncircle.com for the church’s website) The altar is pushed forward to the center to emphasize communal participation. It is also situated on a North-South axis, and there is no entrance to the church except for from the East. Its paneled walls prevent any other liturgical art but a crucifix. The sanctuary naturally feeds into the narthex, but the narthex rather awkwardly blocks entry into the sanctuary. The sanctuary simply doesn’t feel like the focal point of the church. It is awkward to enter and almost entirely barren.

The blueprint of the Church of the Incarnation 

The Roman basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo

The few pieces of original art adorning the nave take the same form as the space itself: ambiguous, abstract, and brown.

Monsignor Don Fischer, the chaplain of the University at the time of the building’s completion in 1985 was quoted as saying, “This church reflects the radicalness of the changes of the church at the time.” Dr. Kathryn Holliday, director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture, said, “Of all the campus chapels in north Texas, it most fully embraces abstraction and breaks away from traditional worship spaces, creating a humble and warmly contemplative sanctuary from the outside world.” This seems to be true, for not only is the space designed to emphasize the individual participating in the liturgy rather than the liturgy itself; the brick and wood paneling, especially in the sanctuary, prevents any traditionalization short of an entire remodel.

The University of Dallas has no choice but to try to traditionalize this revolutionary structure, at least for now. The vast majority of the student body, faculty, and clergy of the university desire a much more traditional church. As Matthew Alderman wrote in his article ‘The Dangers of Architectural Positivism,’ “one can only go so far contemplating the bare reality of a building’s skeleton,” and it seems as though the University of Dallas has run up against that wall: that very barren, very brown wall.

So what have they done? In a sense everything.

Beginning in the sanctuary, the university installed beautiful new pews, a great improvement from the previous moveable seating. A controversial modern crucifix was replaced with a more traditional bronze one, but once more, the paneling and overall design of the sanctuary almost forces it into iconoclasm. The prominence of wood paneling, concrete and brick means that for the time being, little more can be done to the sanctuary short of the walls, floors, chandeliers, and even structural columns being entirely gutted and redone. Most of the effort to traditionalize the art has been done in the narthex.

Accompanying the modernist statues are:

A large bright blue painting of the Transfiguration in a modern style

A small traditional Byzantine Deesis

A large icon of Christ the Light Giver

And a large oil painting above the baptismal font

The students, faculty, and clergy of the University of Dallas are good and pious people with an understandable and rightful desire to make the modern space they inherited more beautiful, but while many of these pieces of art are aesthetically appealing, I would hesitate to say that the church is now more traditional.

First and foremost, the University of Dallas is a stark example of the importance of continuity, as difficult as it may be in a modern church. In many respects, modernity drastically overemphasized total aesthetic continuity, or perhaps sought after continuity for its own sake: large blank bland walls, monochromatic color schemes, and a general harshly enforced intolerance of artistic distinction. The Church of the Incarnation itself was an example of this before its more recent updates: absolutely everything, from the building itself to its ornamentation and its furnishings, is of the same color palette, material, and style. A move towards traditional art is going to necessarily be a break. That being said, we can often be so eager to usher in anything resembling tradition, our space becomes schizophrenic. As St. John Paul II wrote in his letter to artists, “In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God.” First and foremost, traditional art has to work aesthetically. We have a treasury of beautiful artwork to choose from, but we must not be hasty and choose everything at once.

The Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas 

St. Peter’s in Lindsay, Texas is a great example of a variety of color and style working together in a cohesive aesthetic. There is deep continuity, but still diversity in color and form.

A total lack of cohesion in liturgical art can be awful aesthetically, but as important as aesthetics are, this issue goes far beyond how appealing uniformity is to the eye.

Liturgical art is a language. The entire physical church: architecture, art, ornamentation, and furnishing all work together in song, each with separate purposes bound together by meaning, ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’. Liturgical art has to be unified in both ascetics, and cohesive in telos. The renovation of a modern church is necessarily going to fall short of this unity (all liturgical architecture necessarily falls short), but we must remember traditional art is much more than just aesthetics: it is art participated in, bound together for the highest earthly purpose. Different styles of traditional art do this very differently. I certainly do think that there can be a profound beauty in a variety of artistic styles if executed properly, but these styles must come together in a common language.

St. Michael’s Catholic Church, Bedford, TX

St. Michael’s after an altar renovation: More or less uniform in style. Aside from the centering of the crucifix and the changing of wood paneling to stone, statues like the ones installed are common in the Roman tradition.

The telos, or end, of liturgical art is the glorification of God, but the manner in which this is done is distinct among different traditions. A piece of liturgical art’s purpose needs to match what it is actually being used for. For example, if you want to hang something on your wall, you could use nails or screws. Let’s say I took a phillips head screw and hammered it into the wall instead of using a screwdriver or a drill. It would get the job done, but it wouldn't work as well as it could, or it should. You would be able to hang what you needed for the time being, but a screw is supposed to be used in a certain way. Your goal, hanging something on the wall, would be achieved, but it would be achieved in an inferior way, because now your wall is damaged and you’ll eventually have to replace the screw or the drywall because of the damage it caused.

There are a lot of hammered screws in the walls of our churches. We have a broad idea of what liturgical art is for, the glorification of God, but the manner in which we use art to achieve that end is oftentimes a misuse of the proximate end of the art. The most stark example of this phenomenon among many is the use of traditional Byzantine icons in Roman Catholic churches.

In the East, the icon and the liturgy are both mysteries, both inviting veneration. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Losky write in their book, The Meaning of Icons, “The mystery enacted and the mystery depicted [in an icon] are one, both inwardly in their meaning and outwardly in the symbolism which expresses this meaning.” To grossly oversimplify this distinction, an icon does not necessarily point beyond itself insofar as you are using it for prayer. The transcendent mystery in the icon and the transcendent mystery of God in prayer unite when you venerate and pray with an icon.

Western art tends to do this differently; rather than veneration, Western art invites something closer to narrative participation.

Recreated Romanesque Apse of St Clement in Taull, Spain

Even Western Iconography was different in telos to its Eastern counterpart

The Western sacred image traditionally directs attention to the altar. The liturgy is the transcendent mystery, and the image invites one to further participate in the liturgy through itself; specifically through narrative. Romanesque architecture and mural painting directs attention to the apse, where mass would be. The Gothic cathedral served to direct attention to the heavens: in its art, its architecture, its furnishings, it served to highlight the reality of the liturgy. Renaissance liturgical painting served a similar purpose. The Western image directs attention to the liturgical mystery through narrative and symbolism; the Eastern icon is the mystery, which simultaneously participates in the liturgical mystery.

A few traditional icons like the Salus Populi Romani could be said to be traditionally venerated in Roman Catholic churches, but this is an exception.

Understanding the importance of liturgical art to telos, let's return back to the University of Dallas. Why are there Byzantine icons in the Church of the Incarnation? The answer is likely relatively simple: icons are known to be very traditional, very theological, well liked, and gold aesthetically works well in almost all spaces. The phenomenon of Eastern icons is now seen all over churches in the West. Icon veneration is not only an Eastern tradition, it is frequently incorporated in Eastern liturgy. A Byzantine icon has an expressed primary end: veneration, and their incorporation into Western churches is in many ways the fruit of modern syncretism. The theology behind icon veneration is in no ways contradictory to the Western tradition, but the fact of the matter is it simply isn’t part of our liturgical language. At the University of Dallas there is actually a table and a glass pane in front of the Byzantine deesis, so even if one wanted to venerate the icons they couldn’t! I have no doubt this is almost always well-meaning on the part of priests and parishioners, but a piece of art’s telos must be front and center when deciding if it is appropriate for a church.

Liturgical art always has an expressed telos, and using an icon independent of its primary end is expressly anti-traditional.

Perhaps a more extensive investigation of solutions should be saved for a future article, but if a priest is interested in incorporating more traditional art in his parish and finds himself drawn to Eastern iconography, the West is a treasure trove of many different traditions much more fitting for Roman Catholic churches.

Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Mosaics in the nave of Santa Maria Nuova in Monreale, Sicily

This leads me to my final point, the necessity of recognizing the realities of a liturgical space. Catholics rightly desire truly traditional churches, but ornamentation is much easier to change than architecture. Short of a new church or a total remodel, we must recognize the realities of the spaces we inhabit. Bright blue pieces of art stick out like a sore thumb in a brown and orange modern sanctuary. One could rightly claim that modernism did exactly this, and broadly won. Modern art slowly crept into traditional churches, and it was through this subversion that it was able to become so popular. Tradition, however, is not subversive: it is unwaveringly rooted.

The Queen Elizabeth Window in Westminster Abbey

Traditional art, especially liturgical art, is rooted in the glorification of God: the aesthetics serve to greater enable the arts telos, not the other way around.

This isn’t to say we are stuck with felt banners or empty spaces until we happen upon millions of dollars for a new church, but we must work within the confines of the churches we inherited. Just as a Baroque fresco doesn’t belong in a Gothic arch, so too does it not belong in a modern church. Modernist ornamentation ought to be removed and replaced, but most of the art that ascetically and liturgically works in a Gothic cathedral doesn’t work in a modern church. A church should not be a monument to the individual as the moderns would have it, but it can’t be a monument to contradiction either.

So what can be done? We can build within the tradition of narrative participation while maintaining general ascetic unity with whatever space we are in.

The oil painting in the Church of the Incarnation, though surrounded by a diversity of different styles, seems to do this relatively well. While I personally find the general sense of the painting too sentimental and its placement above the baptismal font inappropriate, its brown and gold generally matches the ascetic of the church. It may not be the highest telos, but its end: cultivating a tenderness for Christ of the Mother of God, is generally compatible with the church it inhabits. It's far from perfect, but it is a good start.

That being said, we have far more traditional recourses. The West has a tradition going back to the 11th century of liturgical narrative iconography in the Romanesque, and it so happens that the colors and forms used in the Romanesque work quite well with the browns and oranges of the late twentieth century.

Fresco of the legend of Pope St Silvester I in the chapel dedicated to him within the Roman basilica of the Four Crowned Martyrs.

Altar frontal from the castle of Besora in Catalonia (12th century)

The ornate Spanish Plateresque could also serve to traditionalize rather barren modern altars.

Santa Maria del Salvador, Carajos, Spain

Reconstruction of 9th Century Ansgar Church in Ribe, Denmark

At risk of disparaging the brilliance of the early Medievals, there are similarities in form and function between some early Carolingian and modern figures and forms.

The possibilities on traditional art within twentieth century churches are many articles unto themselves, but for now, our aim needs to be general aesthetic uniformity, a proper telos, and a recognition of artistic limitations.

Liturgical art shouldn’t infiltrate in a way that violates: it can’t be revolutionary. For traditional art to be subversive would force it to violate the very principles it is built on: thus making it not traditional in the first place. We have inherited modernity, but we have also inherited the tools to transform the fruits of modernity into something far more beautiful.