Catholic aesthetics

r8

Maybe that's why art was able to flourish in Catholic areas but not in orthodox areas. A less restrictive aesthetic allowing experimentation.

>You'll find a lot of similarity between Catholic aesthetics from for example 700 AD and 1890 AD.
No, no you certainly won't. The erotic nudity of the Sistine Chapel for instance, and its style, is entirely foreign to Catholicism from 700 AD..

Art did flourish in Orthodox areas. The problem is that your definition of flourishing is realism + nudity.

checked

looks like a Presbyterian meeting-house

Making the exact same image for 1000 years and covering it in gold is not artistic flourishing.

It's not the exact same image, what are you talking about. Past icons were used as references, and often copied, but plenty of variations developed as well. It was far from just copying.

This is my Protestant church and I think it's a bit more aesthetic than the other churches you posted.

The problem with orthodox art, is that it does not follow established fules for aesthetic reasons ,but because of the fear of creating something that could be used as an idol.

The iconoclasm heresy stunted orthodox art into a locked form

Dude, not to be crude, but you're talking out of your ass. Are you also going to say Orthodox hymns and architecture follow a very traditionalist style because of the iconoclast heresy?

>I hate those fuckin' birds on that altar
You mean symbolism for the Holy Spirit?

>I am totally against Vatican II
I'm only in my teens, so I'm still discovering the faith, but you can attend Latin mass at traditional parishes. They used the 1962 missal for masses.

Do you not practice the faith anymore?

You're posting mostly American (I assume) churches that were built in modern times.

Probably built by Catholics before the reformation.

>You mean symbolism for the Holy Spirit?
Like I said, there are Catholic motifs, but no Catholic aesthetic.

>You're posting mostly American (I assume) churches that were built in modern times.
Modernity started in the Renaissance, technically.

As far as modernist churches go this looks pretty neato
>Iglesia de San Pedro Martir de los Padres Dominicos

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What do you think of the incorporation of the symbolism here?

St. Pierre Church – Avignon, France

Basilique Notre-Dame – Montreal, Canada

I don't like the nudity, and I absolutely don't like depictions of the Father apart the hand or some non-anthropomorphic depiction like light or fire. Although I can't fault you for the latter too much, since there are several Orthodox examples of that, even though it is expressly forbidden by us.

I strongly dislike the classical aesthetic used for the framing.

The icons of saints are inappropriate. A total profile (only one eye visible) does in a pinch in depictions with a lot of people in them (although it's also sometimes used to signify evil in that), but in a solitary depiction of a saint, near the alter, both eyes should always be visible to signify they are *with* you, worshiping with you in heaven. The way this iconography is done, it looks like heaven is doing their own thing and we're just peering in. Whereas the Liturgy is about heaven and earth, hand-in-hand, worshiping as one, reconciled in Christ's person.

Also, why no templon?

Can't be worse than the prequels

iconography has literally no dogmatic basis. why should you be surprised the west does not adhere to it?

>iconography has literally no dogmatic basis.
It does for us.

But we're not just talking about iconography, aesthetics also covers things like hymns and architecture.

my western church has icons in the back, facing the altar.

>tfw you'll never celebrate mass at a Trump rally

That isnt what dogmatic means, and yes even popes have gone to prominent eastern iconographiers for art. That isn't the same as being bound to the form

>It does for us.

My understanding is that Orthodox only consider dogma what was handed down by Christ

Orthodox do consider icons handed down by Christ. The Veil of Veronica.

Is a relic rather than a statement or a rule

I challenge you to find the rules of iconography written down before the iconoclasm crisis

Icons are statements. For us, it's a teaching. You see, icons themselves are the rules of iconography. The Orthodox see icons as an expression of doctrine as much as writing is. We didn't write down rules for them because icons themselves were the rules. We almost never right down codifications unless absolutely necessary, since we see codification as often distorting the mystical aspect of a doctrine. Codification is to be used for combating heresy, as well as for non-dogmatic canons. Our tradition of icons was kept primarily through monasteries.

I'll reinforce this: Copts have much the same rules for icons we do, but they never participated in the Seventh Ecumenical Council and their rules remain uncodified.

Would look better without all the gold pillars and fancy engraving. I wish that dark blue stonework that you see on the ceiling continued down to the floor.

You cant define heresy without explicit rules which define Orthodoxy,

If your going to go into the mystical your essentially avoiding a documented narrative. which is fine for church but not for establishing something as a matter of history.

There were a whole host of church father's east and west who made documented statements, not to mention the bible

This is interesting though after Constantine I have learned to take claims about the closeness of Orthodoxy and Coptic practices with a grain of salt

Orthodoxy cannot possibly be contained in a set of rules, Orthodoxy is about direct experience of the divine, which is only describable in poetic terms. If Orthodoxy could be codified by a simple set of rules, we'd be Sola Scriptura. Our theology is nothing like the West's, it's mostly poetry and elder advice.

Copts and Orthodox do have some different practices, but monophysitism is the only doctrinal one.

I will grant that the theology between east and west is different, but they were also united for over a thousand years and yet their was on strict adherence to iconography at any time in the west to my knowledge. it was a nonissue.

there was not a strict adherence*

No, there was a strict adherence. In fact, the last Western style of art approved by the Orthodox, came up in the West after the schism. It's called "Romanesque," and many Western Rite Orthodox parishes use it. But all styles after that are considered inappropriate.

By the way, Western Rite has the only tradition for *carved* icons in the Orthodox Church. Pic related is a contemporary carved Orthodox icon, according to Western Rite

From the Catholic perspective they were never following the rules formal or informal laid out by the east, hence things like statues.

>Catholic aesthetics are just those of the age

The Catholic Church defined the architecture of the age until relatively recent times, that's just nonsense. Believe it or not, the Orthodox use different architectural styles as well.

Here is a contemporary Western Rite Orthodox icon of the Venerable Bede.

The entire Idea that Christianity had a single aesthetic passed down from the time of Jesus is nonsense. There was an evolving tradition which was adhered to more strictly in some churches than others but only the most fervent would insist this a not a human development

you realize that western rite Orthodoxy, at least in 99.9% of the cases is a recent revival and not a continuing tradition from Roman times?

Statues as icons were not common in the West until after the schism. Reliefs were, though, and those are permissible in Orthodox Western Rite

I don't think the Catholic Church defined the construction of homes, castles, or, well, anything besides churches, at least through the Middle Ages. And Gothic style was not planned architecture, it was actually defined by being something constantly modified by later additions.

The Orthodox have multiple styles of architecture, but all they tend to follow the principle sacred aesthetic of the universe as a church.

Yes, my point is that Western aesthetic, *is* Orthodox. Just not Eastern. That's why it's approved of. Orthodox aesthetic is not just "Eastern" aesthetic.

Statues as icons were not common in the West until after the schism

Any academic evidence of this?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculpture#Early_Medieval_and_Byzantine

It is debatable whether a thousand year old western style revived under the guidance of Greek and Russian bishops is truly "western"

Why wouldn't it be?

This is from the Liturgy of Saint Germanus (revived Western Rite Liturgy): youtube.com/watch?v=GI92g8JWwn8

Are you going to tell me that carved icon isn't Western?

By that article it had caught on (regionally at least) by the time of Carolus Magnus and had fully spread out by the Schism

Care to show me some examples of Carolingian statue iconography?

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculpture#Early_Medieval_and_Byzantine

>a crucifix, which was evidently the commonest type of sculpture; Charlemagne had set one up in the Palatine Chapel in Aachen around 800.

...

>Catholic Church defined the construction of homes, castles, or, well, anything besides churches

Seriously dude? The Catholic Church was the biggest influence on architectural development until modern times.

Gothic gradually evolved from Romanesque.

Until very recently all Catholic Churches had the same layout. I think that modernist churches are a mistake, but mistakes happen.

And this work is from 970, less than a hundred years before the schism, and was clearly an outgrowth of relief work, being done in wood and not intended to be observed from behind. So there was hardly this long period of the West and East in Communion, but having radically different iconographic philosophies.

The Catholic Church, at least in the West, didn't influence architecture until early modernity.

The picture is not the cross in question.

> Charlemagne had set one up in the Palatine Chapel in Aachen around 800

800 hundred and while his was probably one of the most noteworthy of the time it is probably not the first. So we are dealing with a period of over two hundred years, probably more. Nor was it as far as I know one of the primary issues of the schism.

Of course a lot of statuary was probably an outgrowth of relief work

>radically different iconographic philosophies

It's the same principle, Eastern Christians doubled down on icons and created formal rules for them because of iconoclasm, while the West didn't have to deal with iconoclasm. There is literally nothing wrong or unorthodox about using statues. You'll even find Western Rite Orthodox churches with statues in them.

We don't know what the cross he set up looks like, it was probably closer to a relief.

Notice that Copts and the rest of the Oriental Orthodox don't use statues, and they never had the iconoclast crisis. There also is no formal rule, either in Oriental, or in Eastern Orthodox, against statues, because as I've said, rules (like laws) are only made formal when they're needed.

That is a big assumption on your part, if you look up articles on Christian statuary they all describe the Carolingian period as being big start of the practice aside from some small earlier examples

>There also is no formal rule, either in Oriental, or in Eastern Orthodox, against statues,

Then what is the problem with them?

I don't think this makes any sense. The only examples you've furnished are wood sculpture with no back, whereas the big Catholic practice uses marble and has a 360 dimension.

There is none, because we don't do it. If a lot of bishops started building statues, though, you can be that would be addressed. The Russian Orthodox Church is in strong protestant against the *state* building a statue of Jesus: newsweek.com/russias-church-opposes-giant-jesus-statue-petersburg-479432

>Catholic """aesthetics"""

Behold TRUE aesthetics!

ldstemple.pics

Mormon architecture must be literally the worst architecture in the history of humanity.

>implying

Another angle of the same building

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Mormon architecture must be literally the worst architecture in the history of humanity.

Modern Catholic """architecture"""

Mormon architecture must be literally the worst architecture in the history of humanity.

>mitt shitposting because trump won

I don't think this makes any sense. The only examples you've furnished are wood sculpture with no back, whereas the big Catholic practice uses marble and has a 360 dimension

One is far more complex than the other, and it makes sense that the latter would follow from the former

westernorthodox.blogspot.com/2006/06/eastern-orthodox-statues.html

This article argues there were a good deal of Orthodox statuary worthy of icons status and the practice became unpopular over time for social reasons

>One is far more complex than the other, and it makes sense that the latter would follow from the former
Yes, the point is that iconographic statues were not an independent creation. People knew what statues were back then, including marbles statues, they just didn't use them for religious purposes. Statues were an outgrowth from carvings, and the earliest true statues, as in the sense they describe something from all angles, were wooden. This can sometimes be done in Orthodoxy (pic related is an Orthodox, Western Rite, 3-D wooden icon). But it has to be done very carefully. This, for instance, despite being 3-D, is not intended for observing from behind. It's also intended to avoid exciting passion, but to induce spiritual contemplation (more on that in a second)

But again it is never clear that these rules were at any point recognized in western theology before or after the schism.

Of course for a long time the art was similar because they were working from the same Greco Roman origin, but at some point they deleveraged and it was before the schism proper.

Even the article I posted written by an Orthodox priest essentially calls your argument crap

"Ecstasy" comes from Greek for "stand outside [yourself]. In the West, after the schism, this was increasingly portrayed as a state of extreme passion (pic related)

In Orthodoxy, ecstasy comes from radical asceticism and intense serenity. It is referred to as "the fire of dispassion". You become more like the divine. Saint James the Brother of the Lord is a good example of this. His forehead was said to resemble a camel's knee in callouses, due to his intense prostrations. But he was so serene otherwise, some said he seemed as if dead. He was truly dead to the world, as all Christians are called to be

>The world is said by speculative examination to be the extension of a common name unto distinct affections. If we wish to call the passions by a common name we call them world; if we mention the passions separately, we call them by their separate names.
-Saint Isaac the Syrian

>The same may be said of the practical disappearance of statues as opposed to icons over large areas of the Orthodox Church. The lingering memory of the Iconoclasts encouraged reticence and the Moslem conquest froze Orthodox art in its most limited form. In the conquered areas the Church was driven indoors, bells were proscribed, and the externals of Christian worship were forbidden in public. While all representations of creatures were banned for Moslem, and pressure put on Christians to conform as much as possible the icon survived while the statue could not. Only in Russia was the Church free enough to maintain its full aesthetic devotional tradition.

Rules aren't generally expressed by the Church unless they need to be. Just like there isn't yet a concrete rule against saying Jesus was conceived through surreptitious extraterrestrial DNA splicing. If a lot of people within the Church started saying that, though, an explicit rule would be formulated against it.

Greco-Roman art was big into marble statues, so your argument kind of falls apart right there. As for paintings, while there is some Greco-Roman heritage, Christian iconography of the Middle Ages, both in the East and West, intentionally departed from realism.

I know that article you posted by a priest dissents, but I'm not expressing the dissenters.

>The lingering memory of the Iconoclasts encouraged reticence and the Moslem conquest froze Orthodox art in its most limited form.
Again, this is purely speculation, and doesn't make sense, since Orthodox hymns and architecture is also very much about traditional aesthetics. Did Islam freeze Orthodox hymns? I don't think so.

it isn't pure speculation because he lays out the previous existence of statuary previous to iconoclasm and the Moslem conquest, and their continued existence in areas that were not conquered

Much of late roman painting had a roughly "flat" appearance, and it is admitted that most early Christians with some exceptions had an aversion to statuary.

Basically, religious brutalism. And like brutalism, it's cool and underrated.

Here we go again.

Not in religious worship. Statues were mainly personal figures, or commemoration of secular rulers. This wasn't just the case in the East, but in the West too, as you yourself have noted. There were no religious statues used in worship in the West for hundreds of years after the fall of Rome (despite even primitives being able to make statues), and they didn't reappear except as a gradual outgrowth of relief carvings. People didn't just forget what statues were, they chose not to use them in worship.

It's really just about appearing "flat". Roman portraits are distinctively more realist than either Western or Eastern Christian icons of later times, and that's just just about dimension, it's about things like proportion and style.

personal figurines*

Yes but the writer does give several notable exceptions were statues were used as funerary pieces and even icons. That this was not the norm did not make it forbidden or heretical.

None of those were made by the Church for use of veneration. The only one that probably was, Our Lady of Montserrat, is very much in the vein of this
As for catacomb art, some depicted Christ as a Apollo, not the best of references

What evidence do you have to counter the author's assertions, other than your feeling that it isnt true?

The burden of proof is kind of on him, and he doesn't really provide any primary sources except some examples, most of which are problematic.

Your both making arguments so the burden falls on both of you, your only citation thus far is a Wikipedia entry that partially contradicted you.

As it stands we know statues are currently being used in western rite orthodox churches,
They were already in use in Catholic churches before and during the time of the schism without issue. and there is the disagreed on assertion that there are examples of eastern Orthodox use.

So from my perspective your case, at least when it comes to the acceptability of statues is pretty weak. the central thesis of this thread that Orthodoxy had a single aesthetic while Catholics were slaves to the times (and therefore spiritually inferior) is of course an absurdity which doesn't even deserve to be taken seriously

"Without issue" is hard to substantiate. Charlemagne was already proving major doctrinal issues, he both petitioned to the Pope to add the Filioque, and to amend the 7th Ecumenical Council, since he found veneration of icons idolatrous (but religious art itself acceptable). Now, presuming there was no issue with Western icons at this time (which, though, we cannot substantiate, I see no reason to deny, since the examples you presented would be acceptable), we already established that they were outgrowths of reliefs that were hardly synonymous with the later sculptural practices of Catholicism. They were meant to view from one side, they were not intended to convey passion, and they didn't accentuate the flesh of the subject. The Orthodox ones I disagreed with, were classical style marble works intended to be examined from all angles, and not used by the Church. That these existed, only reinforces that knowing how to make these kinds of works was not a lost art, but that it was not used by the Church.

>So from my perspective your case, at least when it comes to the acceptability of statues is pretty weak. the central thesis of this thread that Orthodoxy had a single aesthetic while Catholics were slaves to the times (and therefore spiritually inferior) is of course an absurdity which doesn't even deserve to be taken seriously
How can you say it's absurdity when Catholics introduced rampant nudity and eroticism in their art during the Renaissance because of the revival of interest in ancient pagan culture and art? 8th Century Catholic art, Renaissance Catholic art, and contemporary Catholic art (I'm including sculpture--not just statues--, painting, music and architecture), and you see major discrepancy in aesthetic. There is certainly a unity of motif and subject matter, but that's where the similarity ends. The Orthodox aesthetic is very unified throughout the ages: for instance, Saint John Chrysostom says music instruments are not to be used in worship.

>he both petitioned to the Pope to add the Filioque, and to amend the 7th Ecumenical Council
Both were obviously completely rejected, of course. The Pope said he could not add the Filioque because he could not count himself an equal, let alone a superior, to the Holy Fathers, and he had the Creed without the Filioque engraved on silver tablets to ensure it would not be altered.

>nudity of the Sistine Chapel
>erotic
pick one

You realize the pope was just as interested in placating eastern authorities as with maintaining the faith.