Usually what art critics like, I don’t. My tastes in art is a gut sort of thing or maybe intuitive. I know what I like and what I don’t regardless of what the experts think.
Around 2010 I acquired the Latin Edition of the 2002 Roman Missal—the “reform of the reform” Bugnini Mass approved by Saint Pope John Paul II.
The art used in the missal looked childish to me, maybe from an art contest of high school art students. And the Vatican chose the winner.
Only today, when I was looking at Fr. Z’s blog, did I realize that it is Rupnick art! Lord have mercy on his soul!
This is what I read at Fr. Z’s blog and no, I didn’t know until now!:
And did you know that the current, official, 2002 3rd editio typica of the Novus Ordo Missale Romanum contains throughout artwork by Rupnik?
What a mess artistically and financially for the Church as decisions are made to hide or remove these expensive works of art.
Is it best just to cover them and in 100 years uncover them again? What if we had direct evidence that Michelangelo and Davinci had similar or worse immoral backgrounds, should their art be hidden or removed?
3 comments:
His "art" is puerile.
This work is, and always has been, repulsive; and one has to wonder at the minds that embraced it. By their fruits ye shall know them!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. True, the Roman Church is not locked into any particular style. I prefer Roman to Gothic architecture. Gothic-revival (if that's what it's called that took root in the U.S.) is fine, I don't dislike it, but, I naturally gravitate towards Roman and Byzantine styles. Similarly, I prefer Roman-style vestments to gothic-style and the poncho style with the large collars that has taken root in recent decades. Like suit styles that have come and gone, I look forward to the day when this style joins them. All I see are drapes with floppy collars, not tailoring.
To my eye, primitivism, though not outright offensive, is a reduction of meaning. Iconography cannot be reduced to stick-figures, or primitivism. Where done, it ceases to be iconography and becomes icon-like. The resulting image has too much theology removed. That said, if the intention is simply icon-like imagery, I guess that's fine. That doesn't mean I have to like it, however, and I do not and never have.
IMHO, primitivism doesn't help people to relate. To me, it either oversimplifies truths as abstraction, or as suggested, implies childishness.
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