Outside a few rare examples such as Ronchamp, I sense that Modernism has failed to deliver an architecture that connects with most Catholics and other traditional Christians. Much of this has to do with fact that Modernism as a cultural movement is inherently atheistic as it is based on a secular materialist philosophy. — newgeography.com
53 Comments
An interesting piece in that many of the reasons why the author finds there is a disconect between modernim and catholics can be said of modernism and mankind. Not to say that many will be absolutely fine with the sleekness of an 'Apple' like building or home, but the idea that any object which reveals a human touch or imput will be more loved explains a lot. One could go further and find a trace of Protestantism in Modernism is equally compelling but definatly more difficult to lay out logically. Less is more means that the Vatican is nothing.
Nothing is more outdated than religion. It is no surprise that modern does nothing for those who seek to halt progress anyways. I see nothing wrong with the wittering of such insulting "life philosophies".
yes religion's purpose is to halt progress
so wise thou art!
This seems like a mean-spirited, intentionally divisive argument relying on over-generalizations of both "traditional" and "Modern", but I do completely agree with the author on one point: contemporary Christian music sucks.
I don't see anything mean spirited about this essay at all. I think the author focuses very clearly on the difficulty of reconciling modernist abstraction with rich symbolic content. This is the reason why so many modernist sacred places and memorials/monuments are unsuccessful. I think this is very well written and insightful, and right on the money. Please note that the author does not say that modernism is incapable of producing inspiring sacred spaces, but that there is a dilemma embedded in the philosophy of abstraction that makes it most difficult.
http://www.jesuit.org/Parish-Center-Detail?TN=CODE-20130715025231
st. francis xavier in kansas city. all sorts of symbolism. it's shaped like a fish. there's a cross. big statues of people i presume are dead.
i believe the architect studied under FLW. the influence can be seen in the parish office. of course this is a jesuit church, and if my religious recollections are correct (i probably just made this up) those are the folks that are allowed to learn new things, as compared to the folks who say stuff has to look like it did at the time of jesus's birth to be considered religiously appropriate.
of course we could also say big concrete fish are traditional. or, you could say that "rich symbolic content" means you glue a bunch of gothic crap to a box. the church as decorated shed, right?
Quondam, it might be difficult to name the failures since one tends to study the stuff they like. Plus, depending on the level of abstraction, it hard to even tell some modernist churches from storage sheds. But keep in mind that the author's criticism was generalized and acknowledges that there are wonderful exceptions.
as thayer points out, people only study the stuff they like. i assume that means one is often unable to appreciate or understand stuff other than what one was told to like as a child.
when one accidentally stumbles across something that is different than what one likes, but that new thing doesn't suck, then one refers to that as "an exception."
Quondam-
I'm wondering....how do you know what level of understanding of Catholicism the essay's author has, or the author's brother for that matter? Do you think that you have a deeper or more sophisticated understanding of Catholicism than they do?
as someone who is catholic (by marriage) and who's working on catholic projects right now... i'll say this made the rounds fairly quickly. personally, i take it as one opinion - one that isn't trying to be mean spirited but which does reveal a kind of fault line in how quite a few of my fellow parishioners also think about architectural matters. i might boil their opinion down to this: the church has been a guardian of the religion/faith for 2,000+ years. changes don't happen quickly nor are they inherently embraced hastily. (it's definitely an issue that cuts both ways and very painfully when it goes wrong in too many cases). modernity is something that represents a kind of internal struggle - not in a 'let's go back to the stone ages' sort of way, but in a 'how can/should the church reconcile itself to the force of change' sort of way. for some of my friends, this is a very real issue. ok. i can't question their searching - it's not mine, but...
i (and probably several people on here) can argue the author takes a far too narrow a view of "modernity", especially as it relates to aesthetics. but in the end, it's hard to say he's speaking any more of a "universal truth" than what he decries. and, to be fair, i don't personally think there are a lot of examples of great, modern CATHOLIC churches (not necessarily christian overall). there are definitely some and some exemplary ones. but the church built a lot of awful buildings in the 50's-80's that still get called home to a lot of people. that's a problem, especially if you're going to compare those structures to a place like amiens, or st. paul's, or whatnot. that's not even a fair fight....
Fair enough, Quondam. I trust that you'll overlook that I didn't answer your questions as quickly as you wanted... I had a very busy day.
I also trust that you are testing my confidence on this issue, and you really aren't looking for an encyclopedic listing of buildings I think are unsuccessful.
This is my opinion: I live in Los Angeles, and my city is filled with really uninspiring modernist churches and synagogues built in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Dozens and dozens of them. I have been in many of them. Most are based on a classic basilica plan, although there are other configurations. But in the pursuit of reductionist aesthetics, they have had all of the "venustas" sucked out of them. They are bland, dry, soulless. Their architects were uncomfortable with symbolic content and figurative art, so these have been eliminated or abstracted into a muted background. These are the buildings that Gregory is referring to, and I am quite certain I am not alone in calling these buildings unsuccessful.
Gregory, I don't think you need to compare the 50s churches to Amiens or St Peters. There are wonderful churches in most American cities built between 1900 and 1930 that are modest in scale, but are nevertheless inspiring, sublime places. Our parish is lucky to have one of those. We were able to build churches that inspired people then, and we can do it now, whether they are modernist or traditional in character.
I smell astroturf and bad thinking and corporate metrics. nope, not interested. think i'll go 'blend into the environment' cuz my cousins uncle's brother said it was a very zen thing to do. And did you know that spirit requires tchotchkes and chicken soup? fluff fluff fluff gag.
This isn't a discussion about the catholic church or spirituality IMO, but rather another protest against modernism in general, just in the context of religeous buildings. But pushing this into a zero sum analysis that ideologues prefer is also not helpful to thoughtful analysis. As the author plainly states, "While many architects simply choose to employ a historicist style for even newest churches, it is possible to address the particular characteristics of a catholic church while maintaining a modernist sensibility." This can be said of a lot of contemporary work, including the now historical language of modernism.
There will always be a certain percentage of architects who will phone it in by picking an 'appropriate' style while neglecting the architectonic aspects, regardless of style. That being said, like in many other arts, if some will always phone it in, then at least give them the tools to communicate in a way that's meaningful to the public. There's room for everykind of expression, but if you restrict an architect's training to only a conceptual understanding of a building's expression while abandoning the tools that we've used for centuries to make buildings speak to us, then don't be surprised about how dreadful our contemporary environment looks and makes us feel.
This is far closer to the sublime:
than is this:
Donna, you're making the authors case with those two photos. I don't doubt that staring at that concrete wall might evoke sublime feelings for you, but like it or not, 99% of the population would probably prefer the second illustration, tacky as it is. One can claim all sorts of things when throwing up a blank concrete wall, but that dosen't mean anyone will get it. Maybe that's why modernists try so hard to devalue the pedestrian experience... it opens them up for criticism so better just say they aren't qualified to comment. Lke an exclusive country club, just set the entry fee too high and make yourself feel special. It's really not a very original trick. Quondam provides another case proving the authors point. A magic line cathode...really?
BTW, the difference between a concrete retaining wall and the first photo is...black dots.
If you're inspired by a heavenly deity architecture is the least of your problems.
have you noticed how 99% of the population wants to be just like you in your posts? you don't think that's a bit odd? a bit of a narcissistic delusion perhaps?
there's nothing wrong with having bad taste. you're entitled to your opinion. it's just weird that you think everyone agrees with you.
Miles, Non Seq, and other 'progressive' atheists: would you say that to Martin Luther King, or Bach, or Gaudi, or any other of the many great thinkers/artists/architects/humanitarians directly inspired by religion?
curtkram: We both agree that the styrophome gabled church is in bad taste, but where we differ is how to deal with that phenomenon. You might think that one more clever turn of phrase or manifesto might get people to see the sublime light, but I'm not so sure. Conceptually these god-awful megachurches are no different than many of the pre-modernist churches all over the country, ie: decorated sheds, yet even Gregory Walker will acknowlege a difference in the general quality of pre and post modernism. How many concrete boxes do you see out in the heartland vs. those styrophome gables with plastic columns? At some point you have to go with empirical evidence if you are truly modern.
Then again, there might be something to those minimalist concrete churches.
http://gawker.com/woman-crushed-to-death-by-falling-gargoyle-in-chicago-1630998279
would you say that to Martin Luther King, or Bach, or Gaudi, or any other of the many great thinkers/artists/architects/humanitarians directly inspired by religion?
Is Carlos Slim's success the result of religious inspiration? The Koch brothers?
Is Carlos Slim's success the result of religious inspiration? The Koch brothers?
what does that have to do with the price of coffee in ethiopia?
thayer, most people don't need someone to explain clever manifestos to them to appreciate good design. that's your thing. go to a mega-church after services some day and ask people why they're their (without leading the question to the response you want them to give). i bet most people really don't give a shit if it's "traditional" or not.
i don't think most of the mega-churches here are concrete. mega means big, which means spanning long distances, which tends to mean not concrete. it was god that made concrete not act as well in tension, and god that made gravity, so really, religion is the reason mega churches are built the way they are, and the people that attend those venues tend to appreciate them. that's why they go there instead of a smaller 'traditionally' designed places.
also, mega churches are pretty much always evangelical and not catholic.
Modernism and religion, that is a fun one....from Beyond the Outsider by Colin Wilson...suggesting its possible to be modern and religious, although its physics, but same mode of abstract architectural thou h t required to be modern......"“In his plodding, unemotional way, [Isaac] Newton was a religious man. But what he had done, without realizing it, was to dispense with the necessity of God. The Principia destroyed the authority of the scriptures at one blow. With the discovery of the scientific method, the human mind became airborne; what was to prevent man from learning anything, becoming anything? From the earliest times, it had been universally taken for granted that God never intended man to know too much; what else is the meaning of the legends of Prometheus or of Adam and Eve? man was a creature. his relation to God was like that of a dog to its owner. Suddenly, the dog had discovered how to use the arts of its owner; not only that: the owner had totally disappeared, and there was every reason to believe him dead. Newton was the true father of the French revolution, not Rousseau. The storming of the Bastille was a symbolic act; it was the official coronation of Newtonian man as Lord of the Universe. The Marques de Sade wrote a curious pamphlet called Frenchman, one more effort if you want to be Republican, in which he told his countrymen that they should follow their execution of the king with the execution of God. And he took in one stride the step that has taken other European thinkers a century and a half of nervous edging forward: the idea that values are relative, and that therefore all men should adopt Rabelais’s motto: ‘Do what you will’. In a sense, De Sade’s pamphlet might be regarded as the true assault on the Bastille. it was the first great gesture of romanticism: the formulation of the question: ‘Why is man not a God?’” Enjoy.
"go to a mega-church after services some day and ask people why they're their (without leading the question to the response you want them to give). i bet most people really don't give a shit if it's "traditional" or not."
Great point curtkram. So why are so many architects so hung up on it?
God, that Venturi project is SO GOOD. Soooooo good.
what does that have to do with the price of coffee in ethiopia?
It's the same as your question.
you just sank my battleship!
“In his plodding, unemotional way, [Isaac] Newton was a religious man. But what he had done, without realizing it, was to dispense with the necessity of God."
This is what the proto-moderns thought he had done...or hoped he had done. But Newton's model was incorrect. The new science has shown very clearly that the universe is anything but the deterministic clockwork machine that Newton described.
Hi Donna-
Regarding your two images, I think you are setting up a false choice. It look to me like your images must have resulted from a pair of Google searches like: "panel-formed, concrete" vs. "tasteless, ugly, fake, classical, church".
Better comparison:
How about these two...which one gives you a sense of the sublime?
"Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church I grew up within was very much a deterministic clockwork machine (for collecting tax-free dollars, among other things)."
Indeed it is. :)
2 words for ya....hologram Jesus... Im mot even religious and id go to church if there was a hologram jesus.
Here's the formula...
Concrete box + hologram Jesus = everyone's happy.
EKE, I don't need the church surroundings to find the sublime. Any concrete - the material, chemically-reactive, gravity-ruled existence of concrete is sublime. That's all I need to find joy in this finite existence.
So you'd be in paradise existing in a board-formed concrete box for the rest of your life.
no need to turn a reasonable statement into an extreme to try to discredit the statement eke. you know what she's talking about.
fay jones isn't traditional. he was a FLW apprentice. that means he's 'modern.' also, why not show pictures with similar f-stops and shutter speeds? i took your point to be 'brighter is better,' but big ass stone gothic churches without electric lighting and small stained glass windows shading the light were not bright.
i do like how you show a church with an electric chandelier designed to look like candle-light. it's all theater trapped in a gilded cage anyway, right?
The rhetorical sparring is fun, and interesting. But setting that aside for a moment, can't you folks take an empathetic view, to understand why Catholics might not be excited about a place of worship that looks to them like a concrete cafeteria? I understand that you like concrete. As an architect, I often like it too - and I use a lot of it. But my practitioner's fascination with it, or Donna's association of it with the sublime, is probably not shared by most Catholics.
I never framed this as a "traditional" vs. "modern" dichotomy - you did. I have always said on this board that modernism can create beauty, and create buildings that resonate with us as human beings. I think it's generally proven to be a less steadfast path, as a drive through most modern cities will confirm, but that has to do more with the underlying philosophies of the architects than it does with the language of modernist architecture. It's really about creating awe and beauty, instead of brutality and ugliness.
Fay Jones is doing exactly that. He's tapping into our true nature as human beings, into that feeling you had as a child when you walked into a forest, and looked up into a glorious canopy of old trees. Nobody needed to teach you that it was beautiful. A child knows it innately - we are hard-wired to appreciate it. The symbolism in Jones' chapel allows us to recall that feeling, and experience it again. That's where the magic is.
Now, you may believe that this appreciation is embedded in our DNA because we evolved to appreciate it, since our ancient ancestors were forest dwellers, and the forest represents safety, and being attracted to it conferred evolutionary advantage. Or you might believe that it's embedded in our DNA because God put it there, so that we can find our proper home on Earth and connect with it. Or you might believe that it's both.
EkE the paragraph before that notes Isaac Newton thought his best work was not Principia but his biblical study of when god created the earth...I should of included that one.......Donna I showed my grandma Tadao Ando's church once and she simply said "too cold, I don't get it." I grew up in an Evangelical family, the churches were in old warehouses, theatres, or big box construction.....so yes no one gave a shit. Not to mention the living quarters (dare I say compound) was in a later condemned former weapons factory in germany....god is greater than chemicals (my wife blames this for my brain activity)......Ronchamp is the best church I have ever been in.
concrete + catholic
is probably not shared by most Catholics
i don't think that part was based on a reasonable statistical sampling. there is nothing wrong with people preferring a traditional design, and i think it's great if the church hires an architect to design a facility in a traditional style, if that's what the users of the building want. however, i disagree with the notion that we should assume people prefer traditional design just because they are catholic.
plenty of people are afraid of the forest, of bugs, of ticks, etc., and might find the remote nature of fay jone's chapel disconcerting. that is not my opinion, but i respect their opinion, and don't make assumptions that those people should like what i like or what everyone else likes.
i don't think dna carries a notion of beauty. i also don't think there is a deity, anthropometric or not, who guides what we are supposed to enjoy. if you had a magical moment in a forest, there will be a different emotional appeal for you in a forest compared to someone who might have been stranded in a forest.
it's thayer's dichotomy, not mine. i think dividing all architecture into 2 styles is terribly dumb.
Denis Dutton - A Darwinian Theory of Beauty - well worth watching:
https://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty
Curt- Serious question: Do you believe that there is such a thing as "human nature"?
The article falls apart at the last 2 paragraphs and conveniently or naively forgets the Gothic churches of the past are nothing more than technology and engineering exhibiting its ability at the time and the floor plans were a very abstract form - a cross. A protestant would tell you if it was not for Martin Luther you would not have Humanism and the modern man...which is maybe what some do not want....If you were to take the Freemasons perspective of the time shortly after Newtons groundbreaking work Principia, geometry and mathematics are god, which would then make parametric architecture more godlike than traditional. This article is an argument for the decorative. Adolf LOOS reinterpreted would suggest then a successful catholic church may be a crime - architecturally at least.
Quondam - its hard to tell on my phone but did you photoshop Eke's two images together in 31 minutes and repost?
Quandam - Did you need to be taught by your culture that the woods are beautiful?
I am pretty sure he did. Mad photoshop skillz right there, I tell you.
It's a bit disconcerting to see that image, actually, because that's my church in the image. Seeing that altar in that dungeon is pretty disturbing.
:)
EkE - kind of like the Satanic Church? which in itself is an oxymoron intentionally by those who know.
I think Quondam may have been doing an inverse Venturi + Rosch? Putting the craftmanship in the brutalist ship? (Nave...from the article)
Or, perhaps the appreciation of those objective qualities of that particular spot is something you are both predisposed to find beautiful , because human beings have particular nature, which you both share.
Nimiety is a lovely word that I had not heard until today. I'm 47!
I'm enjoying your posts here, Quondam, and glad you brought up Vatican 2.
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