GREAT FRENCH ARTISTS TURNING TO CHURCH DECORATION

Grey River Argus, 22 September 1948, Page 6

GREAT FRENCH ARTISTS TURNING TO CHURCH DECORATION

[From Odette Laguerre, Reuter’s Correspondent]. PARIS (By Airmail). Some "of France’s greatest artists, including painters such as Henri Matisse, Braque and Fernand Leger, and the architect Yves Le Corbusier, are to-day turning to religious art in what may prove a Renaissance of church decoration.

At the same time, many French priests are waging war on the “pretty pretty” style of religious art and on such commercial atrocities as the gaudy statues of oleographs sold by the thousand in shops round the ancient Church of Saint Sulpice in Paris, which is the centre of massproduced objects of piety. Two Dominicans, Father Couturies and Father Reganey, in a series of talks in a suburban Priory, recently made a plea for “living art” in the service of religion. In their audiences were leading religious personalities from all over France. Another priest, the Abbe Morel, has made himself a champion of modern art and more particularly of Picasso, upon whose works he frequently comments in lectures at the Sorbonne University or in suburban meetinghalls. X

The building, or planned building of a number of boldly conceived churches decorated .by well-known artists, adds weight to this campaign. One of these churches, near Mageve, in the French Aljis, is built in the style of a mountain chalet. Its facade is decorated with a mosaic in startling colours by Leger. The stained-glass windows of this church, now open to the public, are the work of Rouault, one of France’s greatest religious painters. A huge tapestry representing the Apocalypse, by Lucat, a sculptured virgin by the Jewish artist Lipschitz, a Mosaic by Matisse, and a painting by Piesse Donnard, who died last year, all beautify the church, attracting many tourists in addition to the faithful. ?

Matisse himself is supervising the construction of another church at Saint Paul De Vence, above Nice. Although a frail old man, of 79, he works several hours a day on stained glass windows, black and chequered ceramics for the church walls, and a set of the Stations of the Cross. ’A third church, still bolder in conception, is still only in the blue-print state. It is a Basilica of Pardon and Peace, to be built in the SainteBaiime Mountains, in Provence, and dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene who, according to local legend, died in a grotto there. It is intended to become an International Centre of Pilgrimage and the French architect, Yves Le Corbusier, who helped to design the League of Nations Palace at Geneva, has been asked to design it. The entrance to the church will be a tunnel, sloping gently down to 150 feet below St. Mary Magdalene’s Grotto. The church itself is to be shaped like an amphitheatre and will communicate with the outside world by a number of natural chasms in the mountain which will permit people standing overhead to hear music and singing from the invisible church below. The altar is to be in cut crystal, and by means of a series of reflecting mirrors, will be flooded by the warm Provencal sunshine. Public interest in church art is also being awakened by a series of religious exhibitions and concerts of liturgical music. , , An exhibition of religious art ranging from the primitives to contemporary artists has been opened at Avignon, in the Chapel of the famous Popes’ Palace. Rouault, Gleizes, Daragnes, Goerg and Lurcat, are among those who have contributed. ■ This revival of religious art after more than a century of mediocrity may be a reaction to the oppressive and uncertain conditions of life in France after the war. It is almost certainly linked with the present general quickening of religious feeling in this country.