Art for God's Sake

Young Pierre Couturier, son of the miller of Montbrison in the Loire valley, hoped to be a great painter some day. But after World War I, in which he was wounded, he found a new enthusiasm growing within him; he began to spend more & more time wandering through Paris churches and reading the religious works of Leon Bloy and Paul Claudel. At last he made his decision. In 1925, at the age of 27, Pierre Couturier put away his brushes and became a Dominican monk.

Modern Masters. One day, years later, his spiritual superiors asked Pere Couturier what he thought of the present art in churches. His answer came with surprising vehemence. "Our church art is in complete decay," he burst out. "It is dead, dusty, academic--imitations of imitations . . . with no power to speak to modern man.

"Outside the Church the great modern masters have walked--Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Braque. The Church has not reached out, as once it would have, to bring them in. And here we have men who speak directly to the people with the same simple power of the great artists of the Middle Ages . . . These moderns are greater than the sensual men of the Renaissance." Father Couturier's superiors were impressed. "See what you can do," they told him.

What Father Couturier could do was partially demonstrated this week in a little church in the village of Assy, which celebrated the formal dedication of two handsome stained-glass windows, portraying Saints Veronica and Martha, by the famed contemporary French painter Georges Rouault. Father Couturier had conceived the idea and asked the artist to carry it out. But busy Dominican Couturier was not present at the ceremonies. He was talking to Painter Henri Matisse about the decoration of a chapel for nuns at Vence.

Sins of Imagination. White-robed, ascetic-looking Father Couturier, 51, his tonsure sharply outlined against his close-cropped head, his brown eyes bright with his own soaring imagination, has become the light and power of a small but significant movement among French artists. From the first, his primary concern has been to preach and minister to men. But in his spare time he has devoted his energies tirelessly to visiting the studios of artists everywhere and telling them that the Church is where their work belongs. In addition he founded, twelve years ago, the little magazine L'Art Sacree, which has had a measurable influence on French priests as well as artists.

Gradually he has won the interest of scoffers and agnostics among the painters, even including a few Communists, e.g., Picasso. Father Couturier welcomes them all, whatever the state of their faith. "We start," he explains, "with the assumption that artists are men and therefore sinners. If their sins are sometimes startling, it is because they are men of imagination, artists. But all spring from our culture and even our religion . . . When some think themselves communist, it is as artists are communist, out of love for the poor. We must free them to work for us, give them the right to paint on our walls, and they will tell our great story as it has not been told in 500 years." To those who would draw the line at the abstractionists he says: "Abstract art has as much a place in church as the organ music of Bach."

Father Couturier has several projects in various stages of completion. Sometimes they are delayed by ecclesiastics who have strenuously differing views about how a church should be decorated. But the work of Father Couturier is finding growing support among his fellow churchmen and also among such anticlericals as Henri Matisse, the grand old man of French painting. Said Matisse thoughtfully last week: "Father Couturier is a sensitive, intelligent and capable man. He is very active, very imaginative, and is currently doing a great deal for art."

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