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R T's avatar

I agree that art should stand or fall on it's own merits and Rupnik's art should have fallen long before any scandal came to light. It's not just perverse, it's bad art. I would depict demons with eyes and faces like that, but never saints. I remember my mother complaining that the hardest thing to take about the new Mass and all it's baggage was just how *ugly* it was. It's oppressively ugly by design I suspect, and so's Rupnik's junk.

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Greg Cook's avatar

Thanks for putting in understandable terms what I found unsettling but could not articulate. It brings to mind illustrations in hand missals. I have several on my shelf: the Angelus Press and Fr. Lasance missals use older, traditional, realistic art and the effect is powerful; I have a JMJ 1962 missal (prayers by Christine Mohrmann. Yay!) what what I can only call vulgar or low-brow art not worthy of the texts; and, I have a 1962 St. Andrew's missal with a sort of woodcut art that is modern but somehow appealing. As a former Orthodox, your points on icons I find spot-on.

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