Important Try

There is nothing modern about modern church statuary. Roman Catholic churches everywhere are filled with mass-production plaster replicas that perpetuate igth Century traditions of prettiness and molasses-smoothness. One reason is that few parishes can afford to commission sculptures on their own. Instead they buy from manufacturers catering to a safely low denominator of public taste. In Paris, a row of shops along the Rue St.-Sulpice supplies the demand. In the U.S., it's Barclay Street, in downtown Manhattan.

The Beautiful & Bland. For 20 years Manhattan's Liturgical Arts Society (dedicated to "improving the standards of taste, craftsmanship and liturgical correctness current in the practice of Catholic art in the U.S.") has battled this kind of traditionalism. The society's main argument is that beauty is not necessarily bland or strictly based on tradition. This week it backed up the argument with examples : the society had commissioned ten modern sculptors to make church statues for exhibition in a Manhattan gallery.

The jury of selection had included only one Catholic: Jesuit Father John LaFarge, who acted as chairman. Few of the artists chosen were Catholics, either. Among them were such big names as Ivan Mestrovic--whose stilted but forceful Madonna and Child was perhaps the best sculpture in the show--and a number of accomplished craftsmen like Oronzio Maldarelli (TIME, Nov. 15). Henry Rox, who carves vegetables for a hobby, contributed a gaunt, convincingly adolescent Joan of Arc, and Helene Sardeau (Mrs. George Biddle) made the same saint look as if she had just been blackjacked.

The Hint & the Jolt. The show was meant as a hint of what might happen if artists and Church were to cooperate once again, as they had in the greatest periods of Western art. It was an important and provocative try. But the ten statues commissioned by the society, while more varied than the Barclay Street product, were not always an improvement.

Most of the ten lacked both the authority of tradition and the excitement of artistic rebellion. That was not too surprising. The chairman of the jury had lucidly described the sculptors' dilemma in a letter sent to each of them before they began work. "I would like to urge you to guide and instruct," he wrote, "to lead strongly in these artistic matters. But it is obvious, I feel, that the beneficial effect of your leadership will be much greater if the sculptural image which we offer is not too much of a jolt . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.