architecture – eyebeleave

Le Corbusier: the sacred cubic centimeter

Le corbusier

Having come across yet another profoundly misguided piece on church architecture, and not feeling like rehashing previous posts on the subject,¹ I instead set out to learn more about Le Corbusier, whose name the aforementioned piece took in vain.

Le Corbusier defined architecture as “giving living form to dead material” and elaborated on its dual nature of construction and art as follows:

“You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: “This is beautiful.” That is Architecture. Art enters in.”

Even before turning to church architecture, there is a great sense of focus not only on beauty but also on the sacred in Le Corbusier’s thought:

“One preoccupation has concerned me compulsively; to introduce into the home a sense of the sacred; to make the home the temple of the family. From that moment on, everything changed. A cubic centimetre of housing was worth gold, represented possible happiness. With such an idea of dimension and purpose, today you can build a temple to meet family needs beside the very cathedrals.” (Mise Au Point)²

How does one infuse matter with life, introduce the sacred into every cubic centimeter of a home? Again, Le Corbusier’s thoughts are illuminating:

“I am not faultless or simple, I am filled with turmoil and undercurrents. When pondering and working out a project (town planning, architecture or painting), always a long process, I bring into focus, I realise, I come to the point. I have made an immense effort without a word spoken; over the drawing boards of my office […] I do not speak; my private office (used for patient research) […] is opened to no one. There I am alone. Never in my life have I “explained” a painting. The painting will go out and will be loved or hated, understood or not. Do you think that bothers me! (How could it bother me?)” (The Chapel at Ronchamp, 1957)

Ronchamp chapelle le Corbusier
This attitude of infusing matter with purpose, with intention, and doing so in a subtle, hinting rather than overpowering way comes to the fore again when Le Corbusier inaugurates one of his greatest masterpieces – the Chapel of Our Lady of the Height in Ronchamp:

This is “a project difficult, meticulous, primitive, made strong by the resources brought into play, but sensitive and informed by all-embracing mathematics which is the creator of that space which cannot be described in words. A few scattered symbols, a few written words telling the praises of the Virgin. The cross – the true cross of suffering – is raised up in this space; the drama of Christianity has taken possession of the place from this time onwards. […] I give you this chapel of dear, faithful concrete, shaped perhaps with temerity but certainly with courage in the hope that it will seek out in you (as in those who will climb the hill) an echo of what we have drawn into it.” (Le Corbusier’s dedication speech at the chapel’s inauguration, June 25 1955)

To my mind all of the above exudes a profound love of beauty and of the sacred, and a desire to offer it to others in a way that is inviting instead of imposing. Yet, in the course of reading about Le Corbusier, I kept coming across two criticisms leveled against his work. First, that it is inferior to renaissance and antique architecture and that this inferiority stems from ignorance. It is an argument that baffled me from the start, and that I see directly countered when reading about Le Corbusier’s reaction to the Acropolis:

“In 1910 I spent six weeks at the Parthenon. At the age of 23 my consciousness had determined its future direction. “Laborious hours in the revealing light of the Acropolis. Perilous hours which brought a distressing doubt about the (real) strength of our strength, the (real) art of our art. Those who, practising the art of architecture, find themselves at a point in their career,their brain empty, and heart broken with doubt in face of the task of giving living form to dead material, will realise the despondency of soliloquies amongst the ruins. Very often I left the Acropolis, my shoulders bowed with heavy foreboding, not daring to face the fact that one day I would have to practise. The Parthenon is a drama …”” (The Chapel at Ronchamp, 1957)

The second criticism is even more ad hominem and one that I find deeply repugnant. It is an objection to Le Corbusier’s lack of faith and adherence to Catholicism, put forward as a disqualifying obstacle regarding his involvement in church architecture. Such an attitude is exemplified by the following criticism directed at the Dominican³ Fr. Marie-Alain Couturier, O.P., who commissioned Le Corbusier’s work on the Monastery of Sainte-Marie-de-La-Tourette:

“By mistaking the “spirit of the age,” or Zeitgeist, for the Holy Spirit, Couturier assisted in the production of structures by famous modernist architects at the expense of the essential features of Catholic artistic work. […] Couturier placed his trust in artists, believing that all true art revealed something of the sacred. Since true art could only be revealed by true artists, he therefore sought the services of the masters of his time, Catholic or not, to reach the sacred through the production of a supposedly “true” art.”

I couldn’t disagree more! Like Fr. Couturier, and, incidentally, Pope Paul VI,⁴ I too firmly believe that “all true art reveal[s] something of the sacred.”

In response to these criticisms, it is worth noting two aspects to Le Corbusier, the first of which is his directness and honesty about his beliefs:

“I am not a churchgoer myself, but one thing I do know is that every man has the religious consciousness of belonging to a greater mankind, to a greater or lesser degree, but in the end he is part of it. Into my work I bring so much effusion and intense inner life that it becomes something almost religious. […] People were at first surprised to see me participating in a sacred art. I am not a pagan. Ronchamp is a response to a desire that one occasionally has to extend beyond oneself, and to seek contact with the unknown.”

To leave a reflection on Le Corbusier’s compatibility with Christianity there would be unfair though and could leave a sense of vagueness and hand-waving. Instead, let me conclude by sharing with you the following passage from his book, “When Cathedrals Were White”:

“But those of us who live intensely in the present moment of modem times,[…] have extended our sympathy to all the world and to all times. We have rediscovered life and the axis of all human marvels and agonies. We are far from the theatrical stage which tries to place events of qualitative interest above and outside of human labors. We plunge into daily realities, are face to face with consciousness itself. […] Life bursts forth everywhere, outside the studios where art is “made,” outside of the small circles where it is talked about, outside of the writings in which the spirit of quality is isolated, localized, and disintegrated. […] Every day, every hour, the Earth sees splendors surging up which are truths and present-day beauty. Ephemeral perhaps! Tomorrow, new truths and new beauties bloom. The day after tomorrow, etc. … Thus life is replenished, full. Life is beautiful! We do not have-do we?-any intention or claim to fix the destiny of the eternal things of the future? Everything, at every hour, is only the work of the present moment. The present moment is creative, creating with an unheard-of intensity.”

If that is not Christian thought (albeit thought by a non-Christian), then I don’t know what is, and to support my claim I only need to look as far as Jesus’ own words:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. […] Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ […] But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

¹ The only point I’ll allow myself to make on account of refuting the ludicrous idea that church architecture has had a golden age in some past centuries is to quote from a great post on the Idle Speculations blog, which presents the killer argument that “[i]n Roman times, the early Roman basilicas were of course based on the public buildings of ancient Rome.” The tradition of church architecture is to be contemporary and not a saccharine pastiche of past forms, like the examples touted as successful by blogs like the one that triggered the present post.
² A great source on Le Corbusier has for me been the excellent “Le Corbusier in Detail” by Flora Samuel, where this quote too can be found.
³ I am becoming quite a fan of the Dominicans, given also their links with Camus, mentioned here before.
⁴ “[T]he Church of the council declares to you through our voice: if you are friends of genuine art, you are our friends.” (Council Closing Messages December 8, 1965 By Pope Paul To Council Fathers)

Contemporary art and its enemies

To paraphrase Karl Popper, let me start by saying that it is “impossible to make art in such a way that it cannot be misunderstood.” Over the course of this last week I have come across no less than three articles in which Christian authors denounce the evils of contemporary art.

First, there is our old friend Nikos Salingaros – of Oakland Cathedral review fame, who has a go at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels this time. His argument is again the same: “We have here a celebration of asymmetry, which might be understandable if there were a sound reason for it coming either from design necessities, or from religion.¹ But there is none. The building’s asymmetry serves an essentially negative purpose: to deny coherence and harmony.²” And there is the usual litany of nonsensical gems like: “geometrical fundamentalism,” “naked concrete walls [being] ultimately unpleasant,” lacking “connective ornament,” and claiming that religion “has a natural affinity with traditional architectural expressions of coherence” before taking Antoni Gaudí’s³ name in vain. There is only one thing to say in response to this: bullspit! Instead of trying to debunk this junk head on, I think that I have a sense of the root cause of his confused misreading of this piece of architecture: an expectation of the literal. God is perfect harmony, so churches need to be perfectly symmetrical; the Church values continuity, so a church needs to look old; the soul needs to ascend to God, so there need to be vertical lines in the church’s geometry (and the list of naïveté goes on and on). What I believe this approach entirely misses are two key aspects of beauty: mystery and surprise! Why is it that an object evokes emotions, triggers reflection, prompts insight and delivers aesthetic joy and pleasure? Sure, there are plenty of theories, but periodically an artist comes along and creates a piece that breaks them, yet that is unmistakably appreciated as art. Surprise too is a key element of art, in my opinion, and the kind of literal expectations that Salingaros relies on would entirely eradicate it.

Second, I have made the virtual acquaintance of another budding art critic: Jimmy Akin, who takes it upon himself to have a go at the Vatican’s touring art exhibit: “The Vatican Splendors: A Journey Through Faith and Art,” exclaiming that the works “from the mid-2oth [sic] century onward were terrible.”⁴ Akin is much more to the point than Salingaros and doesn’t even feel the need to back up his claims – the art of the last 60+ years is just “terrible.” But what he lacks in specificity, he certainly makes up for in initiative, with the “brilliant” idea to do something about “all the lousy Catholic art” by “supporting Catholic art education so that we can get better Catholic artists.” So far so good – I am filled with anticipation of the centre of excellence he’ll propose to support and the examples of their great Catholic art, done right [no, not really]. Instead, Akin unveils the following “stupendously amazing” piece by a 12th grader:

And, just to underline the horrors of the “lousy” art we have had to put up with, he pulls out Pericle Fazzini’s “The Resurrection” situated in the Vatican’s Paul VI’s hall:

I am stunned by this guy’s barefacedness. How can he put a school-kid’s (admittedly skillfully executed) drawing of Michelangelo’s Pieta beside Fazzini’s masterpiece (a 66×23 foot bronze created it in 1977 and showing Jesus rising from the crater of a nuclear bomb) and say: more of the former and less of the latter, please! The mind boggles!

Third, I have come across a far more cogent, yet – to my mind – still misguided, piece by Francis Phillips. Here the composer James MacMillan is first quoted as saying that “[a]rt can be a window on to the mind of God. Through this window we can encounter beauty and divine truth” and I am thinking that I have finally come across a good piece on the subject, following the arid head banging of Salingaros and Akin. Sadly, Phillips decides to take us down a frustrating route too, by turning a promising piece into a crusade against the National Gallery in London showing Richard Hamilton’s “The Passage of the Angel to the Virgin.” The piece is a giclée photomontage that bases itself on Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, but with two female nudes where Fra Angelico has the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. Phillips proceeds to label it as “scandalous,” as “shocking to Catholics, who have a particular reverence for the Virgin Mary,” as skewed for “[p]ortraying the Angel Gabriel as a young woman [since] the traditional Christian understanding of angels [is] as sexless spiritual beings”⁵ and as “desecrating.” Personally, I have a profound love for Mary and a deep gratitude to her for being the model of the perfect Christian, but I have to say that I disagree with all of the above. Since some of you may side with Phillips in your reaction to this piece, I will not reproduce it here, but only provide this (NSFW) link for those of you who choose to follow it. I have to say that I am not a fan of this piece by any means, but my reaction is one of curiosity about why Hamilton made the choices he made in it. Instead of a feeling of indignation, my response is more one of boredom and I would just walk past it and enjoy the rest of the National Gallery’s exquisite collection, instead of mounting a (failed) attempt to have it taken down, as Phillips did.

A point that seems to emerge to me from these last two articles is one of a decorative and exegetical role for art. A looking for pieces that would be good interior decoration for a church or that would illustrate a passage from Scripture or the Catechism. While some great art can certainly do that, it will do so in a way that transcends the simple, literal and functional. Other, equally great art would be entirely out of place as decoration though, yet would have the capacity to “be a window on to the mind of God.” I am certainly not thinking of Hamilton’s piece here, but more of something along the lines of Richard Serra’s work, such as his “Trip Hammer”:

Relegating “the mind of God” to decoration just seems like something that not even a heathen would do …

UPDATE (12/11/2012): My bestie JM went to visit the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels, with my über-besties MR and RR, and had the following to say:

I went to visit the Cathedral last weekend, in anticipation of coming down either on the side of its supporters or detractors. Instead, while I am undeniably an outright fan of it as a place of worship, I have to say that it is so ugly on the outside that only its mother could love it. You would be forgiven for mistaking it for a car park or a storage facility, if it wasn’t for the separate bell tower carrying a cross and the rather beautiful statue of Mary above its main entrance.

The interior is another story and is an unreserved and total success. The space is vast without being overpowering; it is light and welcoming and beautifully laid out not only in the main nave but also with its numerous chapel-like spaces that face out and away from the building’s main volume. They, like the whole church, are bathed in natural light and house content as diverse as a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Día de los muertos arrangement, a temporary exhibit by a local painter, artifacts from Pope John Paul II’s visit to LA and the confessionals. Outside too, the space is at the service of the community, with a great playground and a cafe/grill on the other side of a large square adjacent to the Cathedral.

In many ways this church is like one of those great Northern European cathedrals turned inside out. Instead of an ornate exterior and a plainer interior, here money has been spent on the interior space that church goers enjoy (including a great set of tapestries showing the communion of saints – and not only of canonized ones) while leaving the exterior plain and purely functional. Would I have preferred a more pleasing external architecture? No doubt! But, I believe the diocese spent their money where it matters to its members and visitors. This is a church that embraces those who come to it, instead of advertising itself to all. Not that the latter has little value, but I see why they would have favored the former. For some photos of my visit, see this Flickr set.

¹ I wasn’t going to engage with this nonsense, but – come on! – to claim that there is no “religious” reason for asymmetry! How about the following (vastly incomplete) examples: good – evil, infinite – finite, uncreated – created, selfless – selfish. And the list could go on and on.
² How about: to show movement, ascent, growth, a pull towards God?
³ To invoke Gaudí in an argument for traditional, symmetrical, literal architecture is just beyond nuts!
⁴ The hubris here would easily make Achilles’ dragging Hector’s lifeless body behind his chariot in front of the gates of Troy an act of level-headed diplomacy.
⁵ Not noticing the irony of this objection. Would the sexless angel better be portrayed as a man? Why?

Stubbornly unholy brutalist: church architecture today

Which of the above churches looks more aesthetically appealing to you? The top or the bottom one? If you answered ‘top,’ kindly move along as you will at best find offence in what follows. If, however, your answer was ‘bottom,’ please, come with me on a brief journey of ‘I can’t believe they said that!’

The church at the top happens to be the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston while the bottom photo shows the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland. Now, why did I pick these two churches for the following rant? The choice was far from random and was in fact motivated by an article published two days ago by an ‘architectural theorist,’ ‘the author of many books.’ At first I hoped to learn something interesting from reading it, but instead it just made me outraged at the pure nonsense of the views it propounded.

In summary, the article’s author argues in favor of the traditional (yet to the author ‘innovative’) Houston [co-]cathedral, which provides “[h]armonious ornamentation achieved through multiple symmetries [that] nourishes our senses and creates in us a healing state.” The style is even likened to Viennese Secession! [Wagner and Olbrich are spinning in their graves …]

Instead, the Oakland cathedral is an exercise in technocratic self indulgence, failing to provide a “traditional church volume” and opening itself to criticisms like the following: “Why are the wooden slats horizontal instead of vertical? Are we not trying to connect vertically to the universe, to transcend the materiality of this building so that our souls can rise upwards?” Aside from the obvious counter arguments of why bricks or stone slabs in churches built in the past are not positioned vertically but instead horizontally, I find the idea that the orientation of wooden slats can inhibit transcendence preposterous and trivial (reminding me of the tin foil hats worn by those afraid of having their minds intercepted). Let us take a look at the interior of the Oakland cathedral to get a first hand feel for its potential to enable a rising up of souls:

And for comparison let’s also look inside the Houston Co-cathedral:

If you’ve read this far (and are not doing it just to raise your blood pressure), then the above needs no explanation.

Then there are also those “stubborn asymmetries,” “the use of brutalist concrete[, which is] fundamentally unholy [and does not] conveyed a love for the Creator,” and not being “appropriate for housing the timeless truths offered by religion.”

Wow! Not only does the author not like the Oakland cathedral, but considers it unholy and inappropriate! I couldn’t disagree more and am baffled by his credentials.

First, let me get one point out of the way: I am grateful for the existence of both buildings since they provide spaces where the Church (i. e., people) can meet to build a community, celebrate mass and house the Eucharist. That is not what this rant is about.

Second, let me challenge the conclusions of the article on theological grounds. Christianity is an incarnate, living, historic religion where it’s “timeless truths” are timeless in substance but very much temporally incarnate in form! Since the person of Jesus, the Church has been a body with spatio-temporal location, evolving its understanding and putting into practice of the revelation Jesus brought. How can it therefore be claimed that there are some ancient, preferred church architectures rather than a preference for using the best of contemporary architecture?! Weren’t the Hagia Sophia, the Antwerp cathedral and the Sagrada Familia all children of their times? Should church architecture have stopped at the catacombs? I find this kind of thinking as incongruous as that of Catholics who want to cling onto tradition as it was in the early 20th century (but why then?!). Authentic tradition leads up to the now and is the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s continuing life in the Church.

Third, let me argue that the Oakland cathedral is aesthetically vastly superior to the Houston one. Just look at them! The former looks like the result of inspiration meeting taste, while the latter seems to me like a conveyor-belt, Disneyfied knock-off. I guess you either see that or not …

Apologies if this was too harsh, but I couldn’t let a piece like that just go. Not only are there plenty of ‘Catholic’ voices out there that make us seem like fools, but also fools without taste, like the one I tried to respond to here.