Off-Modern Catholic Aesthetics

Rethinking the Role of Religion in Twentieth-Century Art and Architecture
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-69995-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 22, 436 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Studies in Religion and the Arts

Why did Catholic actors embrace modernist aesthetics? And conversely, why did modernist architects and artists embrace pre-modern ideas to look to the future? Off-Modern Catholicism explores the surprising ways in which Catholic intellectuals, faced with exile during World War II, reconfigured their thought to promote modernist buildings and paintings in France and America. By drawing on the life and work of Marie-Alain Couturier, Marcel Breuer, Dominique de Menil, and Jean Labatut, you will be invited to explore a “detour into the unexplored potentials of the modern project” via an encounter between two cultural forces often considered antithetical to each other.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Connor Perks, Samuel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architektur: Allgemeines
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Einzelne Künstler: Biographien, Monografien
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1 Off-Modern Profiles

2 Unpacking the Dynamics of Catholic Modernisation

3 ‘The Eclipse of God’: Transplanted Artists

4 ‘Background Metaphorics’: Exchanges between Art and Religion

5 Structure of the Book

1 Antinomies of Art and Theology. Marie-Alain Couturier and the Contradictions of Modern Sacred Culture

Introduction: Couturier’s Conceptual Zig Zags

Prelude. Paris, 1953. the Contradictoires Text

Sacred Art between the Mechanical and Natural Attitudes

1 Le Saulchoir/Paris, 1918–1930. Catholic Endgame, or the Narrative of Decline

1.1 ‘Down with the Republic, Long Live the King!’: Couturier’s Romantic Anti-Capitalism and the Return to Order (Paris, 1919–1925)

1.2 Couturier’s Neo-Thomist Aesthetics (Le Saulchoir, 1925–1930)

2 Rome/Paris, 1930–1940. the Gospels and Fraternal Catholic Modernism

2.1 The Human Truth of the Gospel (Rome, 1930–1932)

2.2 The Art of the Incarnation (Paris, 1935–1937)

3 1940–1953. the Secular Prophet. Couturier on Modern Sacred Architecture

3.1 The Politics of French Artistic Modernity

3.2 Artistic Abstraction and Catholic Humanism

3.3 Conflicted Temporalities of Aesthetic Categories in Couturier’s Late Writings

3.4 Modesty: a Critical Counter-Concept to Modernity

3.5 On the Autonomy of Modern Art and Artists

3.6 On the Uses and Abuses of Poverty in the Modern Era

2 Between Mysticism and Industry: the Bauhaus Diaspora, the Benedictines and the Ambiguities of Architectural Symbolism

Introduction: Mechanics, Symbols and History

1 Navigating the Divide. Breuer and the Benedictines on Architectural Symbolism

1.1 Breuer’s Pre-Modern Imaginary

1.2 Breuer’s Architectural Symbolism: Tension-Structures

1.3 Liturgy and Labour

1.4 Benedictine Symbolism, Form, and Function

2 Form and Symbolism: the Language of Religious Experience

2.1 1959: a Divided Committee

2.2 Albers on Form and Tradition

2.3 Albers: Spirituality Contra Science

2.4 The Public Dimension of Symbols

Coda. Unpacking the Semantics of the “Sacred” in Modern Architecture

3 Catholic Metaphorology. Dominique de Menil and the Role of Conversion in Aesthetic Education

Introduction

1 ???

1.1 Dominique de Menil’s Rothko Chapel Speech, 1971

1.2 An Intellectual Apprenticeship: Typologies of Engagement

1.3 Conceptual Ramifications: from Religion to Aesthetics

2 Catholicisme Ondoyant

2.1 The Intellectual Context of Congar’s Montmartre Lectures in 1936

2.2 A Source of Congar’s Pluralism: Thomas Cajetan on the Image

2.3 Organic and Embodied Metaphors

2.4 The Social Dimension of Catholicism: Yves Congar on Unbelief in 1930s France

3 Putting Conversion to Work After World War II

3.1 Art Education and Social Justice in the 1960s

3.2 From Heritage to Tradition in Dominique de Menil’s Notebooks

3.3 The Soil Metaphor

3.4 The Fire Metaphor

3.5 Dominique de Menil’s Art Historiography

Coda: A Note on Dominique de Menil’s Catholicism and Mark Rothko’s Abstract Art

4 Recast Eyes. Jean Labatut and the Concept of Crisis in Post-World War II Architectural Education

Introduction: Unpacking Labatut’s Intellectual Framework

1 The Language of Experience. Phenomenology, Visuality and Religion in Jean Labatut’s Intellectual Universe

1.1 “Architectural Humanism” in the United States after World War II

1.2 Labatut’s Visual-Industrial Complex: the Princeton Architectural Laboratory

1.3 Historical Consumption

1.4 Catholic Conversations: Eidetic Visualisation and Cultural Hylomorphism

2 Learning from Labatut. the Divergent Paths of Labatut’s Architectural Programme

3 Diversity with Unity. Francis Prokes’s Theological Dimension of Architecture

3.1 Choice: Christian Existentialism as a Framework

3.2 Involvement: the Theological Grounds of Interdisciplinarity

3.3 Purpose: Theology and Architectural History

4 Visual Historiography: Robert Venturi’s Context in Architectural Composition

4.1 Venturi’s Princeton Formation

4.2 Venturi’s Theory of Perception: Gestalt

4.3 Appropriated Contexts

Coda: A Forgotten Path to Postmodernism

Epilogue: Disentangling the Semantic Knot Between a Secular Infinite and a Catholic Eternal

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Samuel O'Connor Perks, Ph.D. (2021), is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. He has published articles on Catholic thought and aesthetics in journals such as the Journal of Art Historiography and Architectural Theory Review.