Without form and void

[anglomedved]

Let me comment on some earlier journal entries which have been heavily critical of post-war Christian architecture. I can understand this from a Russian standpoint, but let me suggest a western European slant on this.

Dare I suggest that in much of European Christianity there is a sense that tradition – predanya – has got so lost, confused or compromised, that one has to venture out afresh. And to do so by a radical going back to roots, as far back as Genesis 1 when 'the earth was without form and void', very literally. To a situation in which, in Gospel language,  'rebirth' or ‘new creation’ becomes possible.

Many post-war churches literally reflect this 'without form and void'. It strikes horror into many Orthodox souls, but it is perhaps a salutary passage, at least in the western situation, and at least for some. It may indeed be that an entire culture has to be rebuilt. And expressed in the church in terms of a whole rethinking, reassembling of liturgy:  language, vestment, iconography, vestments, music everything. Not everything will be new (the Christian rebirth itself is basically a re-directing of existing material), but it must come together into a consistent whole.

In any event there are three caveats:

a) This does not have to be a mono-culture situation. The ideal for the moment may be to keep the very new and the quite traditional running side by side. The worst situation is the neither-nor solution (I'm thinking here of Würzburg and Munich cathedrals).  

b) This reworking is going to take time. Two, three, four generations. Don’t try and ‘cast in stone' after 10 years. Indeed try to cast it in stone as little as possible. Roger Schutz of Taizé used to speak of the ‘dynamique du provisoire’.  

c) On a similar line: it is going to take an incredible deep level of religious experience to get right and anchor any new culture. I am not sure whether there is enough of this experience around – in particular in the areas of art, architecture and liturgy. Much of the new architecture and most of the new art bespeaks a lack of depth. Curiously enough, one man who may have got it more right than most is the Spanish mystic-architect Gaudí. Looking at the towers of the Sagrada Familia, I feel he might have been on the right track.

The inevitable result is that outwardly a lot of this look - at least for the time being, very bleak, ‘Zen’ – bare, almost bleak, naked. But it may be that it is a necessary nakedness. What also strikes me is that this 'Zen nakedness' works quite well against a background of Cistercian and early Dominican architecture. Which is perhaps where we in the west have to go back to in order to get back to solid roots and perhaps reconnect with some sort of tradition.

Comments

[mmekourdukova.livejournal.com]

Ну да, вроде как красивая мысль. Безвидность и пустота как основание для грядущего взлета. Звучит заманчиво. Если бы не два фактора:
1) Почему эта безвидность и пустота наличествуют в Церкви (вернее, в какой-то ее части) в то самое время как в другой части Церкви (и даже вне ее) есть вполне отчетливое понятие о форме, о НАПОЛНЕННОЙ (духовным содержанием) ФОРМЕ?
2) Создатели безвидного и пустого (в архитектуре или в других видах искусства) - явно не суть наиболее высокодуховные члены Церкви, и творят явно не от полноты своей любви ко Христу.

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

The second factor we both agree on.
My first reaction to the first is 'numquam reformata, quia numquam deformata'. Though numquam deformata can be simply be a symptom of passivity.
I don't think that the Russian Church has ever really been through the process of feeling it has to radically call itself into question because of somehow being co-responsible for something terrible which has happened. Of the Stalinist persecutions it portrays itself more as victim, and not in any way responsible for the advent of Stalinism. But this is an inter-Russian debate which as an outsider I prefer not to enter into in the public domain.

[yakov-krotov.livejournal.com]

Любое утверждение, начинающеемся со слов "явно", вызывает у меня глубокий протест. Что до "наполненности", то я что-то её не вижу - не буду утверждать, что "явно налицо лишь имитации", но многие так утверждают. В любом случае, мысль Михаила Вильгельмовича мне кажется о том, что "наполненность" - прошлая и наличная - довольно пуста перед опытом зла (я не склонен разделять зло по национальным границам и не вижу никакой разницы между гибелью десяти моих еврейских дядек и десятков тёть и пр. в погромах белых и красных 1918 года, в расстрелах 1938 года и в машевском гетто 1943 года). Ни Рафаэль, ни Скобцова, ни Рейтлингер, ни Теодор не впечатлили бы - и не впечатляют - выживших. А Бэкон - впечатляет, его работы им что-то говорят. А во всяком высказывании, включая изобразительное, нужно думать не только о том, что я хочу сказать (хотя и об этом), но и о том, что слышит второй участник коммуникации.