We live in a world which has in many ways been uglified, and it’s a world that we want to redeem so that we are part of it once again. Beauty is, then, the search for home, for a place where you can be at home with yourself and with others, but in particular where [...]
In two famous paintings of female nudes, we see more than just two differing depictions of the same subject. We see the essential differences between the Traditionalist and Modernist artist: The former looks outward, seeking something higher than himself to contemplate, while the latter looks inward, seeking to assert his own will upon the world. [...]
During the Japanese-American internment of 1942-1946, there arose a style of art that drew from elements and techniques of Western and traditional Japanese forms. Through a closer look at these works of art, Japanese-American internment art can serve to reflect the internees’ cultural, social, and political resilience while also allowing us to study the forms [...]
With Aristotle, Gerhart Niemeyer saw art as being closer to philosophy than to history. Like philosophy, art begins and ends in wonder—it promotes a deeper sense of the mystery that bounds our experience. In the great works of art and literature, the relationship between art and religion is that of a seamless garment, and not [...]
The highlight of a pilgrimage to Rome is to join Liz Lev for one of her increasingly famous tours of the Vatican Museums. Her high-energy presentation, vast knowledge, and enthusiasm are matched by her warm welcome, sense of humor, and genuine faith. […]
Maurice Denis reengaged with myth, symbol, and the human figure at a time when Impressionists had narrowed their focus to mundane subject matter. He showed that there could be an art that incorporated the best insights of abstraction, and the psychological focus of expressionism, but remained wedded to the canons of beauty, harmony, and order. [...]
Words are only one level at which we can understand the world. Franz Liszt used sounds, melodies, and changes to convey the religious experience of Alphonse de Lamartine’s poem “Apparitions.” That is the joy of listening to classical music: It is an exercise in understanding the mind of a genius on a deeper level, one [...]
While much Western art immerses us in the richness of this world with its spacial and emotional realism, the Eastern Orthodox tradition uses only painted images, with icons of Christ, Mary, and the saints functioning as “windows into heaven,” by way of stylized forms that convey a Platonic ideal of beauty and truth. Virgin [...]
The humanly full life is concretely local and intellectually wide, to be lived in a face-to-face community whose members can talk to each other about anything, where nothing of human interest is interdicted; where no one owns a specialty so that others have to venture opinions with the disclaimer, “Of course, that’s not my subject.” [...]
Like the abstract painters, poets abandoned form and gave themselves over to free verse. Since the close of the 20th century, however, the tide of postmodernism has turned somewhat in art and poetry. A shift back toward tradition and form is taking place. To call World War I a catastrophe for the West is akin to describing [...]
A satirical spoof on the pretentiousness of modern art, “Batman” episodes “Pop Goes the Joker” and “Flop Goes the Joker” are side-splittingly out-loud funny while being simultaneously the best exposé of the naked nonsense beneath the Emperor’s new clothes. The secret’s out. My dual identity has been discovered. By day, I spend my time in [...]
A thought occurs to me as I contemplate the architectural updating of our parish church, which will paradoxically make our church appear older and timeless: Although God doesn’t need beautiful things, he is infinitely deserving of them, and we need to make them—for the good of our souls. My parish church is undergoing an aesthetic [...]
Although The Logos Theatre is a somewhat small apostolate, tucked away in the South, on the buckle of the Bible Belt, far from the madding crowds and the madness and mayhem of Broadway and Hollywood, it punches beyond its weight and, to switch metaphors, it lights candles of joy and beauty, dispelling with the light [...]
The Patent Office now houses one of the most splendid collections of American painting and sculpture, housed in an impressive work of architecture. Our national character has never been solely about commerce and machinery; from the beginning we have made fine achievements in art and the imagination. “Among the Sierra Nevada, California,” by Albert [...]