by Father Leonard Feeney, M. I. C. M.
Certainly you have been noticing that everything new in art looks strange.
And, just as certainly, you have noticed that what is being passed off as the “modern” look in homes, stores, tables, chairs, paintings, and overshoes, has come in for some healthy ridicule from the great bulk of the American people who still retain their sanity. But in the midst of the digs and catcalls, brought on by living rooms full of wire and canvas furniture, and picture frames full of cows in flight over violins melting in frying pans, it is apparent that very few of you realize what is behind all this madness. How did sensible Americans get mixed up in all the current maze of curved concrete, plate glass walls, and egg crates stuck to the ceiling!
Well, like many of our present problems, this one immigrated here from Europe, where it had been gaining momentum since the year 1906. In that year, a young Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso produced the first of his deranged, erratic, twisted, brainsick, moon struck, crackpot canvases. Over night Picasso became the talk of Europe — and not just because of his spectacular queerness. For Pablo Picasso was that wild and fabulous contradiction: a painter who is a Jєω.
Except for a liberal Jєωess named Rosa Bonheur, who had done some pictures of horses a few years before, Europe had never heard of a Jєω owning a paint brush and easel. Image making of any kind was strictly forbidden by the vigilant rabbis. To enter the world of art meant apostasy from the ѕуηαgσgυє. Pictures and statues had been taken over by the Christians, who commemorated in paint and stone the Jєω detested fact that God had become Man — picturable now, along with His Virgin Mother, His Foster Father and His host of haloed saints.
Picasso finally realized all this, and his entrance into art was not in the least a scrapping of his Jєωιѕн loyalties. For Picasso had hit on a new angle for showing his Jєωιѕн hatred of pictures. He was willing to bet that he could get Gentiles to pay money to see how a faithful Jєω, let loose in a studio, ought to behave toward a piece of canvas.
He would use paint not to make images but to break them.
All the Jєωs jumped on Picasso’s bandwagon as soon as they saw what he was doing. Gertrude Stein wrote two books in praise of him, and young Jєωs from every capital in Europe flocked to Paris, Picasso’s headquarters, to be instructed in the new iconoclasm.
It didn’t take long to figure out that there are two basic ways of obliterating the subject matter of a picture. You can either distort it and twist it and stick it in a setting where it never, in reality, could be; or, you can reduce the thing to circles and squares and haphazard lines, leaving no trace of what you started with. The Jєωs decided that these two styles of destruction were entitled to fancy names, so they called the first one “surrealism,” and the second, “abstraction.”
From then on, modern art became a Yiddish field day — but not an intolerant one. Gentiles could enter the race as long as they observed the rules. Consequently a Dutchman named Piet Mondrain became a leader in “abstraction” and “surrealism.”
With the pictures on the wall gone haywire, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the room, the house and the whole neighborhood followed suit. And naturally, there was a Jєω already posted at each foreseeable point in the process, waiting to give you the “latest, up to date fashionably smart” item, just the way you saw it advertised in the sick Jєωιѕн press.
But before we trace the effects of Picasso’s revolution as it spread beyond the studio and art shop, there is this unhappy realization for Catholics: The Jєωιѕн attack was successful where, of all places it most wanted to be — in pictures and statues of Our Lord and the saints. Just enter any of the brand new churches which your local bishop has lately erected with the help of a Jєωιѕн fund raising expert. Apart from the immediately apparent fact that there are hardly any statues at all, you will notice that Our Blessed Lady has been streamlined, the Stations of the Cross have been reduced to fourteen studies in abstract composition, and the Crucifix (above the altar which looks like a drug store counter) has been distorted into some weird sub-human shape.
An investigation will many times reveal that these travesties on Christian art were done by respected Catholics who, in following the Jєωιѕн line in art, imagine that they are keeping our Church “abreast of the times.”
Thus far, however, “liturgical” Catholic sculptors have not yet reached the extremes of distortion which their Jєωιѕн mentors have. No Catholic, for example, has yet produced a statue of Our Blessed Lord that looks quite as grotesque as the totem pole monster with rope bound wrists which is sketched on the title page of this article. This particular bit of diabolism is entitled “Behold the Man,” is meant to be Jesus in His crown of thorns, and comes to us from the Jєωιѕн chisel of an east side New York sculptor named Jacob Epstein. Epstein does all his carving in London now, and as a reward for a steady stream of blasphemies like “Behold the Man,” he has been made a “knight” by the head of the Church of England, the namesake and worthy successor to Queen Elizabeth I.
By the end of World War I, the Jєωs felt Christian art and sculpture were well launched on the road to destruction, and so they decided to have a fling at architecture. Accordingly, there suddenly broke out in all parts of the Jєω inhabited world a rash of delirious designs on everything from office buildings to hamburger stands. At a loss to explain whence this new, sharply distinct architecture had come — arising in every nation at the same moment, and essentially the same form — bewildered Gentiles dubbed it “International Style” and let it go at that.
One reason for the universal sameness of the new architecture was, of course, that the Jєωs contriving it had all been given the same artistic schooling. They were all bent on translating the perversities of Picasso into concrete. But even more potent as a stereotyper was the single, resolute objective in each Jєω’s mind as he sat down to his drawing board. He was determined that, more than a new mode of building, his blueprint should present the setting for a new way of life.
As to what that new way of life ought to be, Jєωs everywhere were agreed. Instructed by their тαℓмυd, they knew that the welfare of the world depended on Gentiles’ taking the place nature intended them to have.
The first thing you noticed about the new Jєωιѕн architecture, and that you still notice, is the stark nakedness of it. A Jєω-designed house, with its vast expanses of unashamed glass, gives its inhabitant the feeling he has made his bed on the front lawn. It leaves him without a scrap of dignity, privacy, or composure.
With unwonted frankness, the Jєωs describe these houses of theirs as “machines of living.” They are meant simply to facilitate man’s biological functions — to give him a place to bring his food and eat it, a place to protect himself from the elements, a place to sleep and to raise his children. And the Jєωs feel these purposes should be plainly and immediately evident in the house’s construction. The modern family dwelling, they hold, should be designed with the straightforwardness of a bird’s nest — which presents no deceitful fripperies, but is clearly and genuously what it is: a secure spot where the bird may lay its eggs.
To go with their animal-function houses, the Jєωs have also designed some animal-form furniture, the most striking specimen of which is probably the Jєωιѕн chair. It is impossible to see the human body — back hunched, arms dangling — trying to conform itself to one of these atrocities, without either snickering in amusement or gasping in horror.
As with painting, the Jєωs are willing to admit an occasional apt Gentile to the fraternity of architects and designers. But it is always made clear that he is there by sufferance, the show belongs to the Jєωs. Thus, the brainstorms of a ferocious Finn, labeled “lamp” or “table,” might be featured by a modern minded furniture store: but you can be sure that the man who ordered them, and who stands by your shoulder urging you to buy, is solidly Jєωιѕн.
To trace the origins of modem Jєωιѕн architecture, as a central, organized movement, it is necessary to look to Germany. There, by the mid-twenties, a certain Walter Gropius, supported by the Jєωιѕн composer Arnold Schoenberg, Jєωιѕн writer Franz Werfel, and Jєωιѕн mathematician Albert Einstein, was operating a successful school of architecture called the “Bauhaus” (German for “building house”).
The Bauhaus had contracted to be the laboratory for all that was new in art and technology. It aimed at coordinating the twentieth century forces of the studio and the machine shop, with all the work done jointly by a “commune” of students, teachers, artists, and grease monkeys.
By the year 1933, Adolph Hitler had arrived on the scene, and it became quite apparent that there would be no room in Germany for two such contradictory enterprises as the Jєω-ridden, communal Bauhaus and the Jєω-Hating National Socialism. The nαzιs chose to stay, and ordered Gropius and company to pack some realistic luggage and get out.
Although Walter Gropius eventuated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and became our next door neighbor, the idea of a Bauhaus still obsessed his former colleagues. The most capable of them, a Hungarian Jєω named Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, finally persuaded some unwary industrialists to support him in establishing an American Bauhaus in Chicago — the now famous Institute of Design.
When Moholy-Nagy died in Chicago his “new Bauhaus” laid him out in an exhibit of his paintings, sculptures and designs, then hired a Jєωιѕн cantor to come in and lament over the body in proper Hebrew fashion. It was a fitting gesture; for Moholy (as even his wife called him) had rendered his race an immeasurable service.
Under his direction, the Institute of Design had completely assumed the role of the old Bauhaus in Germany, serving as the headquarters for modern architecture. But beyond that, Moholy and his Institute had won the everlasting gratitude of Jєωry by promoting in America the idea of mass housing. This was the most significant advance in the campaign to animalize Gentiles by designing their dwellings since the International Style first burst into being.
It was immediately evident to most Jєωs that there were tremendous advantages in putting lots of Gentile families under one roof and having many such identical roofs congregated in a small area. For those who needed more convincing, the first such assemblages (called by the innocuous name “housing projects”) provided the clincher. Placing the inhabitants in compact, uniform stalls; indiscriminately mixing up black and white families; compelling them to lead a kind of life that strips off the properties and conventions of civilized man — these measures have proven their effectiveness. Housing projects are openly, notoriously, jungles of crime, cruelty, depravity, and vice. As enforcers of тαℓмυdic theology, they are unbeatable.
Although there is no precedent in the animal world which justifies the building of a place for religious meetings, the dispensers of modern Jєωιѕн architecture have produced, along with their housing projects, a number of churches. Each of these looks as though the architect had begrudgingly said to himself as he started off, “Well, if all the pious herd want to be packed into one room at one time, I suppose I can build them a barn for the purpose.”
Lately, the architects have been more enthusiastic about churches. They are now designing a variety which fits quite neatly into the animal pattern. It is popularly called the Interfaith Chapel. It is a communal religious center for the priest, the minister, the rabbi, and its calculated Jєωιѕн effect is to reduce the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, to the level of televangelist fakery and тαℓмυdic filth — a supreme award for eighty five years of plotting on the part of Messrs. Picasso, Epstein, Moholy and company.
Topic: Fr. Feeney: Designs of The Jєωs On Art & Architecture (Read 2547 times)