Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna personally commissioned Alfred Hrdlicka to produce the sculpture of the Blessed Sr Restituta Kafka who was murdered by the Nazis during Second World War, she was declared a Beata by Pope John Paul II.
It was blessed yesterday by the rector of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.
Last year outraged Catholics forced the Cardinal to close a controversial exhibition of homoerotic pictures of the passion and death of the Lord he allowed to be displayed in St Stephen's.
16 comments:
One word response - grotesque!
Well, I can't see what it looks like because of the arrow, but twice it's made my computer crash after the opening bars!
Non mi piace.
What is it with ugly art? I can well remember the revulsion I had for a piece of sculpture I saw in one of our "modern" circular churches. The church was in the suburbs, new, circular, souless. What was commissioned for this "thing" which was already behind the 8 ball? Something inspiring and uplifting to take the curse off it? No. A larger than lifesized sculpture of the Mother of God, bent backwards from her knees, as one doing the limbo, arms outstretch for "balance" and out of her stomach popped the figure of a 3 year old Christ Child. At least the figures were clothed, otherwise at the tender age of 13, I think I would have taken a sledgehammer to it myself. Suffice to say we did not attend church there often -- only if we overslept and had to go there as punishment. Some 30 odd years later I remembered this statue (some 3000 miles away now) - and on a whim I picked up the phone and found directory information for that church - called its rectory, and fortunately got "an old hand" who upon inquiry informed me that the "thing" in question had been donated to a local art museum. I was relieved it was gone from the church but non-plussed to find it hadn't been smashed by then. Where's an iconoclast when you need one. It was uglier than mortal sin.
Does Alfred Hrdlicka want us all to suffer whilst looking at her distressing creation???
Why do these artists try to make art so ugly? Is it a reflection of our times???
The ugly art is a sign of our moral decline, Cardinal Manning predicted this would happen if Europe ever rejected Christianity and our times have proved him to have been absolutely right.
That's vile.
Ugly is apparently the new pious and beautiful.
Abp Barry Hickey of Western Australia is quite orthodox yet he has commissioned a barn-like soulless cathedral. I guess orthodoxy and taste needn't come together.
This article is on the topic
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/30265/sec_id/30265
Beauty and the Best
by Theodore Dalrymple (Jan. 2009)
Wow-that really is nasty isn't it?
Peter Kreeft has a good lecture on his website about truth and beauty.
Perhaps some of these artists and Cardinals need to understand it. *sigh*.
Volpius Leonius- do you have a ref for that about Cd Manning; I would love to use it in teaching art (i home ed) thanks.
"Volpius Leonius- do you have a ref for that about Cd Manning; I would love to use it in teaching art (i home ed) thanks."
"That the material foundation and progress which consists in the action and development of the reason and skill of men in arts, science, industry, wealth and natural prosperity, as it existed before the moral foundation of a higher life and law was laid, so it may for a time survive the loss of that higher life. Great economical and material prosperity may be found, at least for a time, when the moral life of a people is declining, or even low...As Lord Bacon says, 'Time destroys the fictions of men, but confirms the judgements of truth.' Given time enough, and we see that the greatest material prosperity, unless supported by a higher principle, cannot endure; it carries in itself the principle of its own dissolution."
HENRY EDWARD,
Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster.
April 12, 1878.
BARON DE HAULLEVILLE, Protestant and Catholic Civilisation Compared. The Future of Catholic Peoples, p. viii - ix
I have posted the full text by H.E. online HereAnd you can download the book in which the preface by Cardinal Manning is found Here
For people having trouble seeing it, right click on the image and select the option to switch to full screen.
O my... that poor Blessed Sister; this monstrosity is an insult.
What was the Cardinal thinking?
What was the priest who blessed it thinking?
What was the artist thinking? What ever his thoughts were, they were certainly not heavenly ones.
This is who the Cardinal is, the pictures of Christ and the disciples as homosexuals was much worse, this is nothing by comparison.
That is very gross objectively speaking! Does Cardinal Schoenborn loves ugliness? If so......
Volpius Leonius
Thank you-that's great.
What is wrong with the Cardinal? Just imagine he was considered to be 'papabile'. The piece is hideous and anti-Christian.
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