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A Vast, Immeasurable Sanctuary By David Mayernik |
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Painting and scultpture are essential complements to church architecture.
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The subject of iconography, the creation or study of images with specific narrative or symbolic intent, raises complex aesthetic and philosophical questions for the modern world about the universal legibility of pictorial messages. Are symbols cross-cultural or temporal? Should messages be conveyed by realist, idealized, or abstract art? What messages can we all agree on? This complexity has virtually precluded iconography’s relevance to modernist art. But in classical art, and especially in the art of the Church, it has never lost its relevance, because the messages conveyed in religious pictures speak the same messages that have been proclaimed from the pulpit for almost two thousand years.
In any discussion of creating iconographic images for Catholic church buildings, it is first important to understand what it is that...
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