Hideous image in the Vatican Museums, vero?
The artist, who scratched his name on the depicted precious veil, is Bernard Buffet, a crazed bisexual "religious artist" who later committed suicide.
Just do a Google search of any of these artists and you will see that something is out of place (i.e. odd Fascists such as Mario Sironi, Ardengo Soffici, Carlo Carrà , or Socialist Aligi Sassu, homoerotic artist Filippo de Pisis, etc.).
Art historians have complained for years that the Vatican Museums has wasted precious space (some 55 rooms, beginning in the historic Borgia apartment) to exhibit some 600-800 such works by contemporary artists, some still living.
This art was big when it hit the scene, but today is worthless.
Time to let the Vatican know that the Vatican Museum's collection of modern religious art can go, taking up space since 1973 to the detriment of more precious works, now locked in the deposits for "lack of space".
One prominent art historian has suggested that it can all be absorbed into the Collezione Paolo VI Arte Contemporanea now kept at the new Centro Studi dell'Istituto Paolo VI located at Concesio, near Milan: http://www.collezionepaolovi.it/collezione-paolo-vi.asp.
And to the brass of the Vatican Museums: many thanks for having taken away earlier this year the large and offensive painting at the entrance of the Borgia apartment of the depressed business man crucified as Christ on the cross.
Reminds me of the mosaics of Marko Ivan Rupnik SJ.
ReplyDeleteThere is just one reason for keeping these awful pictures on display in the Vatican for centuries to come. In a future Age of Faith, when people look back in bewilderment at the crisis that has afflicted the Church since the nineteen sixties until now, this collection will form an important part of the "mosaic" ( along with the abuse scandal, etc., etc.) Historians will be left in no doubt that the problems that have afflicted the Church in our day have their source in the Vatican, and that Pope Paul VI's "smoke of Satan" had indeed penetrated into the Church. As a future historic record, this collection is priceless....
ReplyDeleteThe problem being that the Movimento Futurista proved just a passing FAD.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/imgres?q=lello+scorzelli&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Xl0&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1440&bih=814&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnso&tbnid=yFiIAITB0hkXgM:&imgrefurl=https://radiocristiandad.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/arte-siniestro-en-el-vaticano-2%25C2%25BA-parte/&docid=3rXKh7ONoDIGjM&w=475&h=640&ei=SsJ5TpuPKsPOswbDka3UDw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=634&vpy=150&dur=431&hovh=134&hovw=102&tx=110&ty=126&page=5&tbnh=134&tbnw=102&start=145&ndsp=32&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:145
ReplyDeletePaul VI instigated this collection, and made room for it in th very early 1970's.
ReplyDeleteIt reflects his radical tastes, of which the Catholic Church unfortunatly knows too well with regar to the Holy Mass, Catholic tradition etc.
Paul VI was a man of very poor taste and judgement. This collection sponsored by him should come as no surprise.
I was going to protest that I liked it, but then I took a good look. The women look like Cruella de Ville and Our Lord like Vincent Price.
ReplyDeleteThis sort of thing is unfortunately not just confined to the Vatican Museums. I must review your photos of Barcelona, but the west front of the Cathedral is covered with figures from Star Wars. Gaudi's bits are gorgeous, but the 1970s bits...
At least it's not as smugly bland as the drawings in the previous couple of posts!
ReplyDeleteThis business began with the 1964 Paul VI meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel in his effort to "re-establish dialogue" between the Church and contemporary art that had been "interrupted for far too long" in his hope that the once prolific relationship could be "revived" once and for all.
ReplyDeletewell, like the dreadful montinian art moderne couch, which John posted some weeks ago, also the "Collezione d’Arte Religiosa Moderna" depicts the dubious personality of Pope Paul VI Montini (R.I.P), the most obnoxious papacy since the pornocracy of the Saeculum obscurum (first half of the 10th century). This "collection" caused utter harm for the historical structures of the papal palaces not only as regards taste but also disastrous for the originally well preserved fresco cycles of the walls of the Appartamento Borgia by Pinturicchio and other historic rooms now draped with dusty brown beige wallpapers, Paul VI like so much.
ReplyDelete:Pavlvs VI: destrvctor vrbis:
ReplyDeletePaul VI was one of the smartest minds and best souls to occupy that office. his person is to be contempleted and not to spit venom on. i pity the people who consider themselves so perfect as to judge him.
ReplyDeletebtw the Vatican is full of "homoerotic" art, even the representation of the Lord on Michelangelo's Pieta could be labeled as such, not to mention all male figures that have ever left Bernini's workshop. The angels on the Ponte San Angelo should be removed first, if this was really a problem.
So everything prior to the early 1960s is good and everything from the early 1960s is bad? I get it now. The Baroque was not necessarily the be all and end all of 'taste.' I'd suggest the Romanesque and Gothic eras could stand their own with any fiddleback and putti! Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteI recall that the editors of the venerable Liturgical Arts Quarterly,
ReplyDeletewho had been publishing since the early '40's, had expected that the
Holy See would use them as a resource when bringing this collection
together. After all, no other organization here in the states had their
combination of liturgical scholars and liturgical artists to hand. Sadly,
their expertise and connections were not used as the Holy See chose
to rely on the advice of the owners of several New York art galleries
instead. Naturally, what they ended up purchasing was not the
product of artists sympathetic to the liturgical/artistic needs of the
Church, but what was 'hot' in the galleries at the time, produced by
artists who often had a barely passing familiarity/naked hostility
to the needs of the Church.
I'm guessing that the same deferral to the art establishments of
other countries was SOP during the time the collection was put
together. It should have been a collection of artworks made for
the Church by artists thinking with the Church. Instead it became
a collection of what gallery owners and art establishment types
at the time thought "church art" should look like.
I once wandered into those rooms housing that collection. I recall
only two works, a Botero and a Matisse paper cutout, that were not
either pitifully dated or simply bad. One other thing I recall about
my wandering into those rooms was that I encountered no one else
in there the entire time. Folks are staying away in droves!
I was in the VM again this summer and went through these galleries. In my view, poor art for the most part. It needs to shelved and put away for another time. It was Paul VI's idea and his view of art was somewhat different...hence the pastoral staff that he carried and the re-designed papal medals pro ecclesia et pontifice and benemerenti.
ReplyDeleteThe space could be better used.
L'Arte Salva L'Arte.
ReplyDeleteBlame Antonio Paolucci. He is Italian.
ReplyDeleteOooo, that is uuugggly!
ReplyDeleteAnother reason to detest modern 'art'.
Wow, the comments here about Pope Paul VI are pretty strong!
Barb
Berenike, the bland drawings from the hand missals never had pretentions to be great art; the twisted horrors which are the subject of this post did and do.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous (Sept 21 1:40), Undoubtedly the flourishing condition of the Catholic Church today in every corner of the world is due principally to one of the "smartest minds and best souls to occupy that office." Just ask Cardinal Mindszenty and the Spanish Jesuits. The Vatican is not filled with "homoerotic" artworks; it is filled with art which the diseased mind of modern culture does not know how to look at without thinking of sex.
Anonymous (Sept 22 3:09), Antonio Paolucci has only been in charge of the Vatican Museums for a few years; the Modern Art collection predates his tenure by decades.
said...
ReplyDelete"Paul VI was one of the smartest minds and best souls to occupy that office. his person is to be contempleted and not to spit venom on. i pity the people who consider themselves so perfect as to judge him."
This really doesn't merit much of a response other than "You've gotta be joking!!" Get real : )
Paul VI was one of the smartest minds and best souls to occupy that office. his person is to be contempleted and not to spit venom on. i pity the people who consider themselves so perfect as to judge him.
ReplyDeleteSir, if you say that you are Napoleon, I can only give you the following answer: Certainly, Sir, you are Napoleon!
Paul VI died in 1978, he can be made responsible for the state of the Church only until that point. please remember that nobody knows what he would have done later. this is important because it was actually the polish pope who went on with his bad initiatives, so personally i put the blame more on him.
ReplyDeletei am Hungarian, i can read Mindszenty in original and i don't like him. as a result of his failed out of touch policy no authentic bishop was left in place in my country, a circumstance that has catasthrophic consequences up to this very day. If only we too have had a Cardinal Wyszynsky, a man of wisdom and consideration...
ReplyDelete"Paul VI died in 1978, ... please remember that nobody knows what he would have done later." And don't forget to thank the good Lord for that fact!
ReplyDeleteGregory, I was commenting more on Our Gentle Host's commentary on the stuff in this post and the previous one.
ReplyDelete"Just do a Google search of any of these artists and you will see that something is out of place (i.e. odd Fascists such as Mario Sironi, Ardengo Soffici, Carlo Carrà , or Socialist Aligi Sassu, homoerotic artist Filippo de Pisis, etc.)"
ReplyDeleteThis debate raged in the '90s when Eric Gill's perversities, including sexual abuse of his daughters, came to light. Should his much-loved Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral be removed? Church authorities resisted these demands, knowing what a can of worms would be opened if they agreed. Would churches have to be purged of works by Caravaggio, a homicidal thug and low-life? Or the music of Gesualdo, a double murderer? Or the work of Filippo Lippi, a runaway friar who fathered a child by a nun? Or Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps a frequenter of male prostitutes? What of the Raphaels, and Berninis? And where would the purge stop? At Mozart, who was a Mason and had a dirty mouth? Or Michelangelo, who merely wrote rude letters to popes and cardinals?
It seems your moral test for artists would involve the casting of very many stones indeed, a task best left to those without sin.