Mirabile Dictu: Wonderful to Relate
BETTENDORF NEWS
March 11, 2011
FRANCE - As an artist and founder of the journal “L’Art Sacre”, Father Couturier sought to integrate art and the sacred. Fr. Couturier worked closely with Matisse on the Chapel de Rosaire in Vence on the Riviera. Matisse was a lapsed Catholic, but Fr Couturier said: “Better a genius without faith than a believer with talent…Trusting in Providence, we told ourselves that a great artist is always a great spiritual being, each in his own manner…” Similarly, when commissioned to provide a sculpture of the Virgin Mary, Jacques Lipchitz asked the priest: “But, don’t you know I am a Jew? If it does not disturb you, it does not disturb me” was the answer. Perhaps even more radical was Couturier’s decision to work with twentieth century giant Le Corbusier who “had no place for institutionalized religion within his ideal society”** and sought to demolish historic Paris and replace it with “machines for living” – expressways and high rises. Interesting, then, that the most well known project of their collaboration was the chapel at Ronchamp which was a decidedly uncharacteristic departure for Le Corbusier. About it he said: “People were at first surprised to see me participate in a sacred art. I am not a pagan. Ronchamp is a response to a desire that one occasionally has to extend beyond oneself, and to seek contact with the unknown." [link]
March 11, 2011
FRANCE - As an artist and founder of the journal “L’Art Sacre”, Father Couturier sought to integrate art and the sacred. Fr. Couturier worked closely with Matisse on the Chapel de Rosaire in Vence on the Riviera. Matisse was a lapsed Catholic, but Fr Couturier said: “Better a genius without faith than a believer with talent…Trusting in Providence, we told ourselves that a great artist is always a great spiritual being, each in his own manner…” Similarly, when commissioned to provide a sculpture of the Virgin Mary, Jacques Lipchitz asked the priest: “But, don’t you know I am a Jew? If it does not disturb you, it does not disturb me” was the answer. Perhaps even more radical was Couturier’s decision to work with twentieth century giant Le Corbusier who “had no place for institutionalized religion within his ideal society”** and sought to demolish historic Paris and replace it with “machines for living” – expressways and high rises. Interesting, then, that the most well known project of their collaboration was the chapel at Ronchamp which was a decidedly uncharacteristic departure for Le Corbusier. About it he said: “People were at first surprised to see me participate in a sacred art. I am not a pagan. Ronchamp is a response to a desire that one occasionally has to extend beyond oneself, and to seek contact with the unknown." [link]
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