Word: couturieres
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Missing Spark. Meanwhile, the art of the churches, predominant in Western culture for the first 18 centuries of Christian history, lies torpid. A French Dominican friar named Marie-Alain Couturier put the situation even more bluntly. Shortly before his own death this year, Father Couturier wrote that "Christian art is...
Couturier went on to explain that today's sacred art is "constantly repeating the old styles of past centuries, slavishly rebuilding romanesque, gothic or renaissance churches, never utilizing modern forms until they are already outmoded-or else employing them artificially, in ... borrowings that lack any spontaneous spark of life...
But Couturier was a bit harsh. The very fact that Rouault was admitted (to the little church at Assy-TIME, June 20, 1949) shows that the situation has begun, just barely, to improve.
Couturier himself supervised the adorning of the Assy church, which also boasts works by Braque, Léger, Chagall and Bonnard, and he inspired Matisse to design, singlehanded, a chapel at Vence. Frank Lloyd Wright, among others, has produced radically new churches in the U.S., and André Girard'...
Weak Faith. These advances have followed a pattern which Couturier eloquently urged. Churches, he argued, should commission the very best artists available, and not quibble over the artists' beliefs. His reasoning: "Where traditions are still living traditions, minor artists are enough to insure the continuous production of whatever art...