Praxiteles

@apelles wrote:

It’s quite a good video that, pity the camera doesn’t zoom right in at the end to show some clearer detail of the completed drawing. Interesting soundtrack also. . A strange fusion of Classical & Drum n Bass. .Very highbrow.;)

Really.

If I understood it correctly, the idea was to demonstarte how a two dimensional medium could be used to create a three dimensional illusion.

I like the idea of a Salon des Refusés and automatically support the same. A bit like the French Impressionists….

A little domething for the Fr. Teds of this world:

Messing with the Mass: The problem of priestly narcissism today
PAUL VITZ & DANIEL C. VITZ
It has been frequently noted that the mass since Vatican II has fallen victim to various kinds of irregularities.

Since Vatican II the Mass has fallen victim to various kinds of irregularities. This issue has been much discussed from various perspectives, but in this article we will examine a previously neglected aspect of the situation — namely, the psychological reasons why priests have introduced these changes. We will not deal with theological explanations for why the Mass has been subject to liturgical experimentation, nor will we discuss liturgical rationales for such innovations. Instead, we will focus on the psychology of the priest and those assisting at the liturgy — that is, on the psychological motives as distinct from theological and liturgical reasoning.
We propose that the primary motivation behind many of these changes derives from underlying narcissistic motives — that is, extreme self love — found in many people in contemporary culture. This is especially the case with the relatively small changes introduced in an idiosyncratic way into the Mass. We first summarize and describe the nature of this narcissism, then apply it to the situation found among priests.

American Narcissism

Beginning in the 1970’s, a number of major social critics noted and criticized this country’s increasingly narcissistic — that is, self-preoccupied — character. Tom Wolfe’s article “The Me Decade” opened this critique, and many others followed it. Perhaps the most extensive treatment was Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. The first book-length critique of American’s narcissism was written by one of the present authors (PCV), Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship (1977, 1994). Vitz explicitly addressed the basic anti-Christian (though not the anti-Catholic) significance of contemporary cultural narcissism. Robert Bellah and colleagues’ Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life in 1985 continued such critiques. We briefly summarize here key points made by these authors to allow their insights to be applied to the psychology of many American priests.

Lasch emphasized the decline of the “sense of historical time.” (p. 1) Narcissism as a mental framework is easier for individuals and societies when they are no longer connected to the past. It is the past that provides a framework for judging contemporary behavior as good or bad, as appropriate or inappropriate, as traditional or novel. The historical past, with its heroes and its lessons, is a person’s link to family and cultural traditions; it provides norms of behavior and moral strictures. Lasch makes it clear that as the past has faded from American consciousness, the capacity for narcissistic self-indulgence has grown substantially.

Lasch also noted how American society has begun to lose its confidence in the future — something truer still of Europe. This rejection of the future began to become widespread in the 1960’s with the fear of overpopulation. Many began to argue for “zero population growth”, and considered that the future of the world would be better with far fewer human beings. There was also a loss of hope for the future of humanity and traditional social organizations. This same phenomenon is readily discernible with respect to Western culture generally including the American nation. Modern critiques of Western society as exploitive, imperialistic, and even culturally inferior became widespread in the intellectual communities of the United States and Europe. From our colleges, universities and seminaries this general attitude spread out to become commonplace among America’s professional or “governing” class. A related critique of religion itself arose at the same time — and in the same places. Science, technology and secular life were generally assumed to be desirable and inevitable, and religion — part of the embarrassing Western culture anyway — was doomed to disappear. Christianity in any recognizable form was judged as having no future. The evaporation of hope for the future on all these fronts, along with the decline of belief in the relevance of tradition, meant that the “now” was what mattered. Having cut loose from the past and having little confidence in the future, we have allowed the present moment to dominate our consciousness.

Examples of the preoccupation with the present — “now” — at the expense of the lessons of the past and concern for the future abound. Consumer society, with its obsession with consumption, and its encouragement to incur debt with a disregard for future consequences, is perhaps the most obvious example. The glorification of transient sexual gratification and sensory pleasures is another commonplace example of this peculiarly contemporary focus on the present. The entertainment industry feeds — and feeds on — preoccupation with the present moment. This mindset promotes narcissism, because persons firmly wedded to their tradition and mindful of their future have inherent restraints on personal self-indulgence and gratification. Such persons instead draw gratification from continuing an admired past and projecting it in a positive way toward a hopeful future. In short, the “now” and narcissism go hand in hand.

Vitz, in his treatment, identifies the self-psychology of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and other psychologists as a central causal factor, especially in these psychologists’ preoccupation with self-actualization and self-fulfillment. He also notes how this psychological narcissism morphed into the New Age emphasis on spiritual narcissism: “When I pray, I pray to myself.” The self, for many, has become the absolute center of values and preoccupation. Such an attitude is a form of idolatry, obviously related to the traditional vices of pride and vanity, and well summed up in the truly ancient temptation — “You shall be as gods.” Of course, most of today’s self-oriented American narcissists do not go quite so far, but there is a strong temptation for individuals today to agree with the Burger King erstwhile motto — “Have it your way.”

The narcissism discussed by Lasch was refocused in Bellah et al’s well-known Habits of the Heart. This book primarily identified American individualism and the autonomous self as the cultural culprit underlying America’s social fragmentation, loneliness and personal alienation. Although American individualism is not quite the same thing as narcissism — in some ways it is more moderate — Bellah et al conclude, “in the end, its [individualism’s] results are much the same” as narcissism or egoism. Bellah agrees with Lasch that with American individualism, “people come to ‘forget their ancestors,’ but also their descendents, as well as isolating themselves from their contemporaries.”

Narcissism of a General Psychological Type
The preceding summary has interpreted narcissism primarily within a cultural or social framework. However, a psychological definition of narcissism is also relevant. Genuine clinical narcissism, such as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), is a relatively uncommon major disorder and is not of concern here. Instead, our focus is on the more moderate narcissistic traits found in many individuals today. Five characteristics are relevant, all part of narcissistic personality disorder as described in the DSM-lV-R description of NPD. (Words from the DSM are in Italics.)

1.Requires excessive admiration; with this comes extreme sensitivity to criticism. Such criticism often leads to social withdrawal or an appearance of humility. Often this is associated with obvious attention seeking behavior. These narcissistic traits are frequently found in those who introduce and participate in liturgical innovations.

2.A sense of entitlement, of unreasonable expectations of favorable treatmentand ofautomatic compliance of others with one’s suggestions and expectations is another narcissistic trait. An attitude of the “rules don’t apply to me” comes with this sense of entitlement — for example the rubrics of the Mass don’t really require me to follow them.

3.A belief that they are superior, special or unique and expect others to recognize this; that they should only associate with other people who are special or of high status. For priests this may show by extreme needs to associate with high ranking clergy or with liturgical experts.

4.Another narcissistic characteristic is showing arrogant,haughty behaviors and attitudes. At times priests show this in their liturgical style, emphases or innovation or when criticized for such innovations. Such attitudes often underlie the very assumption that one has the right to change the liturgy.

5.A lack of empathy, that is, an unwillingness to recognize oridentify with the feeling and needs of others. This is sometimes shown by contempt or anger toward those who are offended by changes in the liturgy — often changes that have no real canonical support.

All of the above don’t need to be present in a given individual for the general narcissistic personality of the person to be clear, but any of these traits to an extreme or any two or more as obvious, would be enough to identify a “narcissistic type.”

Catholic Expressions of Clerical Narcissism
Lasch, Vitz and Bellah never touch on the Catholic Church in the works cited above, but their points apply to the situation of the Church in the United States over the last several decades. Setting aside the important underlying theological issues, we can see deeply rooted psychological motives behind the American priests who “individualize” the Masses they celebrate, placing their “personal stamp” on the liturgy. These priests play fast and loose with the rubrics of the mass, transform the “very brief” introduction after the greeting of the people, as authorized by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, into another homily. Some even individualize the prayer of consecration, and in numerous other ways seek to make the Divine Liturgy conform to their own tastes and views.

Much of this change was long attributed to the “Spirit of Vatican II”, but in fact, our point is that the secular and narcissistic spirit of the times lies beneath these liturgical irregularities. This secular spirit, as described by Lasch, was explicitly self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing. The rationale of those who “personalize” the liturgy is clearly one that rejects the Church’s history and tradition — just as society in general has rejected its past. This is easily seen in the frequent neglect and sometimes even explicit disparagement of the Church’s liturgical tradition by those who should be most closely wedded to the Church — priests.

These abuses also reflect a real disconnect with the Christian future. The future is a central focus of the liturgy as properly understood. The liturgy reflects the longing for God that we hope to realize at our deaths, but perhaps even more importantly the Mass presages the Last Judgment to be visited upon all mankind. At its heart, the Divine Liturgy is an expression of hopefulness for the future, and is an earthly manifestation of our ultimate goal — Heaven. The Mass should take us out of the present — should have a transcendent timelessness — and should also give us an awareness of the long traditions of the Church which precede us. Unfortunately, the congregation in many of today’s liturgies leaves the Mass with little awareness of the liturgy’s meaning for both the Church’s past and their eternal future. The Mass was just a transitory emotional experience, and easily forgotten.

The common contemporary focus on being “relevant” is a straightforward articulation of making the Mass focus on the “now” with a serious neglect of where the Mass came from and where it is leading us. To be relevant is to be involved in the present, commonly at the expense of the past as well as the future. In fact, most of the innovators would argue that a “relevant” liturgy is one that speaks to the people “now”, rather than serving as a fixed reference point in a confused and changing world. The “now” is also an expression of narcissistic preoccupations. Indeed, it is difficult to disentangle the connection between narcissism and “relevant” liturgy: focusing on the “now” breeds narcissism, and narcissism creates a preoccupation with “relevance” and the “now.” We turn now to some specific examples of our thesis.

In 1990 Thomas Day, in Why Catholic Can’t Sing, gave some clear examples of the narcissistic phenomenon in the Catholic liturgy — a phenomenon that he calls “Ego Renewal.”

“It is Holy Thursday and we are at the solemn evening mass in a mid-western parish. The moment comes for the celebrant of the Mass, the pastor, to wash the feet of twelve parishioners, just as Christ washed the feet of the apostles at the last Supper. During this deeply moving ceremony, the choir sings motets and alternates with the congregation, which sings hymns. Finally, this part of the liturgy comes to a close with the washing of the last foot. The music ends; you can almost sense that the congregation wants to weep for joy. Then, Father Hank (this is what the pastor wishes to be called) walks over to a microphone, smiles, and says, “Boy, that was great! Let’s give these twelve parishioners a hand.”

A stunned and somewhat reluctant congregation applauds weakly. Father Hank continues….

One by one, Father Hank goes down the row of twelve parishioners; each one gets a little testimonial and applause. With that job out of the way, Father Hank, visibly pleased with himself, resumes the liturgy, while the congregation, visibly annoyed, contemplates various methods of strangulation.”

This is a narcissistic example of “personalizing” the liturgy, and Day points out that “Father Hank’s” antics, far from being selfless, are fundamentally intended to draw attention to himself. Any psychologist would be aware of Father Hank’s underlying insecurity and consequent need for personal affirmation, and we can see this same psychology on a lesser scale when the celebrant leaves the sanctuary to shake hands with the laity during the sign of peace or nods and glad-hands his way through the congregation during the recessional as though he were a local politician running for office. Day displays acute awareness of the narcissism underlying many liturgical problems, and as noted aptly refers to it as “Ego Renewal.” A similar, real-life example of this personalizing of the liturgy in a way that detracts from its spiritual significance occurred at a large Mass, attended by the junior author, in which the main celebrant introduced each of over twenty other concelebrants at the start of the mass, inviting applause for each as they were introduced.

With rare exceptions the introduction of applause within the Mass is a display of the ego needs of the priest or priests who are modeling the mass on show business and on public demonstrations of emotional support at the expense of Christ and an attitude of reverence.

Changing the rubrics sometimes panders to the narcissism both of the congregation and the priest, such as when the celebrant states to the congregation, “the Lord is with you” instead of blessing them, “the Lord be with you.”

Lest the reader think that the cited examples belong to the 1980’s and 90’s, here is a fall 2006 example from a good sized diocese noted in the January 2007 First Things. A Halloween Mass in a parish that we will leave nameless “featured musicians decked out as devils and people in demon costumes distributing the Eucharist. I stopped watching the widely available video of the Mass at the point when the pastor introduced the Lord’s Prayer with the words, “As goblins and ghouls…,” and so I missed the part where, reportedly, he arrayed himself as the purple dinosaur Barney to conclude the ceremony.” The obvious narcissistic points are that this Mass was videoed for distribution, and that the pastor appeared in the costume of a well-liked media dinosaur. (What does a dinosaur costume say about his attitude toward the priesthood and the Church?) There is also, of course, a more sinister theme in this “performance” — one that suggests an association between narcissism and heresy.

Most changes and additions to the Mass are not as lengthy or obvious to the man in the pew as the above examples. Nevertheless, they can be just as disturbing, and equally unsound theologically. On one occasion the junior author noticed that the words of consecration had been altered by the priest during a daily Mass in a major cathedral. After Mass he approached the priest and politely asked about the changes, and was told that they were “just a little thing that I always do.” Another example occurred when this same priest so modified the words of the Mass that the congregation lost its place and didn’t realize its cue to say the appropriate responses. Still another example, involved a priest who memorized the gospel each week and then recited it from memory rather than reading it. This novelty drew considerable attention to the priest, of course, and many lost the gospel message by concentrating on the performance. Likewise, a priest was reported to us who mimed the homily, again drawing undue attention to him and his performance. Imitating Christ’s self-forgetfulness and humble heart are the antidotes for these tendencies.

The laity is recruited to narcissism as well today. The mass is presented as a celebration of the assembled faithful themselves rather than a celebration of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. This is part of the motivation behind applause elicited from the laity. Perhaps the most obvious example of narcissism in the laity assisting at the mass occurs in the realm of “music ministry.” Day focuses particularly on this aspect in Why Catholics Can’t Sing; one notable aspect of this phenomenon is the moving of the choir from the choir loft and onto the sanctuary, where they are better able to “perform” to the congregation and to be seen an applauded. Indeed, there is a growing sense that the music at mass is more a performance than anything else.

One of the unanticipated results of priests customizing the liturgy — changing it on their own authority to suit their particular predilections — is that the laity sometimes follows suit. Following the American consumer mentality of “having it your way,” is potentially available to the lay faithful, not just to priests. If every priest is pope, why not every layman a pope as well? When the priest says, “The Lord is with you”, what is to stop the man in the pew from saying: “I know, amen.” After all, the laity has their own narcissistic needs that could easily show themselves in disruptive ways during Mass. Some of the laity’s narcissism already shows up in the way they often insist on controlling the mass and prayers at weddings and funerals. These services are increasingly custom-made by lay insistence.

It is important for priests to keep in mind that most Catholics go to Mass to encounter Jesus Christ, and not to come into contact with the particular psychology of the celebrant. They go for something that is not present in the popular culture — a sense of the sacred and a recognition of the need for humility. We do not want to come away from the Mass being affirmed in where we are, we want to be drawn toward where we long to be — closer to Christ and to Heaven.

Given the tendency toward “ego renewal”, self-esteem and self-aggrandizement, priests and seminarians should be made aware of the danger of inserting one’s personality into the liturgy. This tendency toward narcissism needs to be addressed especially in the context of the Mass celebrated versus populum — facing the people. Regardless of one’s view with regard to the respective merits of the mass being celebrated ad orientem or versus populum, there can be little question that the temptation to grandstand is much greater when the celebrant is facing the congregation. Cardinal Arinze, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, recently commented on this issue, saying, “If the priest is not very disciplined, he will soon become a performer. He may not realize it, but he will be projecting himself rather than projecting Christ. Indeed, it is very demanding, the altar facing the people.”

Since the narcissistic or vain needs of many priests lie behind their peculiar and idiosyncratic changes in the liturgy, it is time for these unprepossessing and non-theological factors to be more widely recognized in Catholic seminaries and in the Catholic community at large. We will let Cardinal Arinze have the last word on this issue when he says the liturgy “is not the property of one individual, therefore an individual does not tinker with it.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Paul Vitz & Daniel C. Vitz. “Messing with the Mass: The problem of priestly narcissism today.” Homiletic and Pastoral Review (November 2007).

Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, V&A, review
The V&A’s show offers a unique chance to see the originals and the tapestries that they inspired.

By Richard Dorment

Whether used to describe a painting, sculpture, or piece of music, the word “classical” means “of the highest class” – the most perfect embodiment of the medium’s formal and expressive potential. In Western art there are no purer examples of the classical style than the 10 cartoons (preparatory designs) painted by Raphael and his assistants between 1516 and 1521 for Pope Leo X and then woven into tapestries which hung on the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel.

Acquired by King Charles I in 1623, these supreme manifestations of the High Renaissance ideal have been on continuous public display in this country since 1699 – first at Hampton Court Palace, and then, from 1865, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. For the next three weeks four of the original tapestries will be on loan from the Vatican to mark the visit to Britain of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. It is a one-off event. Nothing like this has happened before. Not even Raphael saw his cartoons hanging alongside the tapestries (and it is safe to say that if he had done so, he’d have been furious – but I’ll come to that in a minute.)

First, what’s so great about the cartoons? Why all the fuss? After all, they inspired 400 years of academic painting, both good and bad, and this has rendered Raphael’s inventions so familiar to most of us that the nobility of his original conceptions and the classical principles they embody have been reduced to clichés.

Standing before one of the cartoons it may take a moment to rediscover the visual genius of Raphael’s designs – how seamlessly he fuses form and content, how in each composition dramatic meaning is inherent in the design, and how every note of visual emphasis (a gesture, a pose, a colour) is used to drive the narrative forward.

In the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, for example, after marvelling at the beauty of the draughtsmanship and the unity, balance and rhythm of the composition the viewer needs to study each face and gesture separately to understand how each of the apostles responds to the miracle – St Peter with adoration, St Andrew with amazement, and the others, fishing from a second barque and unaware that their submerged nets are heavy with their catch – indifference. For all its solemnity and austerity, the composition is enlivened with wonderfully naturalistic herons, birds in flight, seashells, crustaceans and wet, slithery fish.

In Christ’s Charge to St Peter, Raphael is like a film or stage director who choreographs the movements of actors in a crowd scene so that each is integrated into the whole and yet each retains his individual personality.

Without a wasted movement or extraneous detail the viewer understands exactly what is happening. Order, clarity, economy, and discipline – a comparison in the theatre would not be to Shakespeare but to Racine.

Raphael’s figures are conceived on a monumental scale. The muscular apostles are perfect specimens of heroic, idealised humanity at each stage of life, from youth to old age. In both compositions Raphael isolates the figure of Christ to convey the idea that His power comes not from physical strength but from the spirit within. In both designs the figures move like a gentle wave from right to left where, near the edge of the canvas, the swell is stopped by the still figure of Christ.

Knowing that his composition would be woven into tapestry, Raphael avoids dramatic spatial recession and one point perspective, instead placing all of his figures close to the foreground plane, as in a classical relief sculpture. I’ve concentrated on these two earliest and best known of the cartoons because Raphael himself was largely responsible for their execution. Art historians happily argue over how much of Raphael’s “hand” is discernable in the other cartoons and how much of the actual drawing and painting he left to his two principal studio assistants, Giulio Romano and Perino del Vaga.

Turning from the cartoons to the tapestries is like switching from black and white to colour. For centuries the tapestries were only unrolled for display in the Sistine Chapel on special occasions. So although some of the colours have altered (the original lilac of Christ’s robe in Christ’s Charge to Peter is now white) the reds and blues are almost as fresh today as they were 500 years ago.

Then too, the tapestries are woven with gold and silver metallic thread to create a brighter, more sparkling surface than the cartoons. One of the surprises of the show for me is how very different the tapestries are from the cartoons. Visually, the cartoons are more sculptural in effect, the tapestries more painterly (in the sense of being like a flat painting). Instead of the depth and volume you find in the cartoons, the metallic threads used in the tapestries create a surface brilliance, which in turn reminds the viewer of the flatness of the picture plane.

When the tapestries were returned from Brussels, Raphael must have been horrified when he realised that the Flemish weavers had not slavishly copied his designs. Some of the aesthetic decisions made by the weavers feel capricious. Throughout, they changed St Peter’s blue and yellow robes into red and blue. In the cartoon for Christ’s Charge to Peter Christ wears a simple white robe; in the tapestry it’s been changed into a starburst pattern far more appropriate for the iconography of the Virgin Mary. Clearly, the weavers didn’t think it was necessary to write for permission from Rome before making these alterations, and once they’d sent the completed tapestries to the Pope he could hardly have sent them back.

The Raphael cartoons are among the most important works of art in this country, yet for as long as I’ve known them they’ve been very hard to see properly. I’d hoped that this exhibition would at least spur the curators to improve the lighting and display. But no. The installation of the cartoons remains as it was — they are poorly lit, shown behind reflective glass, and hung high on the wall. Because the tapestries reflect light in a way the cartoons don’t, the colours in the cartoons look so dull you want to shine a torch on them. What’s more, Raphael made the cartoons for tapestries he knew would hang almost at floor level, so why aren’t the cartoons shown at the same level? I know that all this takes money, but there is no gallery at the V&A that needs renovation more desperately. If I were a millionaire I’d write the cheque today.

Some photographs of St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork from the Royal Cork Yacht Club:

Some more information on George Saumarez-Smith:

http://www.adamarchitecture.com/georgesaumarezsmith/index.html

Some information on Ben Penteath and his work:

http://www.working-group.co.uk/profile/ben-pentreath/

Some words of wisdom by Quinlan Terry:

http://www.qftarchitects.com/essays/sevenmisunderstandings.php

From the City Journal, Summer 2010:

David Watkin
Something to Love Among the Ruins
Three young architects offer a beautiful alternative to modernism’s ravages.
This May, the Royal Institute of British Architects mounted a remarkable exhibition, Three Classicists. It would have been unthinkable only a decade ago for several reasons: it showed designs that were exclusively classical; the designs were not pipe dreams, but had either been built or were under construction; and the projects were not just country houses for the superrich but a wide range of buildings, including a theater, an infirmary, cottages, row houses, and offices for a London art dealer.

The British architectural establishment either ignores or ridicules traditional and classical architecture of this kind. The establishment’s leaders are afraid, or they should be afraid, of classical architecture’s popularity with the general public, whose preference for it over modernist design comes through in every poll. Their fear is justified: they would be unable to satisfy public taste by designing in the classical language themselves, for they have abolished the teaching of classicism in every school of architecture in Britain over the last 50 years.

Thus Ben Pentreath, George Saumarez Smith, and Francis Terry, the three classical architects featured in the exhibition, could not have acquired their skills in an architecture school. They had to make personal discoveries, by observing older buildings and by learning from the practice of the few architects today who have fought the forces of modernism by designing in the classical tradition. One can hope that the publicity that they are now receiving will encourage other young architects to follow them in challenging the received orthodoxy.

Work by Quinlan Terr and Francis Terry: A London Infirmary

In the introduction to the exhibition catalog, Ruth Guilding, a scholar best known for her writing on eighteenth-century neoclassical sculpture, describes the backgrounds of the three architects, all close friends with one another. Francis Terry is the son of the classical architect Quinlan Terry, himself influenced by the classical architect Raymond Erith (1904–73). The elder Terry began working for Erith’s architectural firm in 1962 and joined him in partnership four years later. From 1969 to 1971, the two men built Kings Walden Bury, Hertfordshire, then wrongly regarded as the last traditional country house of its kind that would ever rise in England.

The younger Terry worked in the United States with the Washington architect Allan Greenberg before joining his father’s firm, still called Erith and Terry, in 1994. The next year, George Saumarez Smith, a maternal grandson of Erith’s, joined the firm as well. (Since resonance and memory are deeply part of the language of classicism, it is pleasing to see these links among three generations of architects.) Working under Quinlan Terry, Saumarez Smith learned to draw beautifully, but he left the firm in 2003 and joined the larger practice of ADAM Architecture, where he is now a director. In 2004, Erith and Terry changed its name to Quinlan and Francis Terry.

Like Francis Terry, Ben Pentreath also worked for a traditional architect in America—the New York office of Fairfax and Sammons, from 1999 to 2003. But in 1998, he had studied at the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture (now closed), which then taught the practice of classical and traditional architecture. So it was natural that he, too, should come into the orbit of Quinlan Terry, whose work Prince Charles passionately admired. Appropriately, His Royal Highness wrote the foreword to the exhibition’s catalog.

The idea for Three Classicists was born when the Royal Academy’s hanging committee rejected two beautiful drawings for its 2008 Summer Exhibition: Francis Terry’s design for the Corinthian capital of a column at Hanover Lodge, a building virtually completed; and Saumarez Smith’s for an art gallery on New Bond Street. So Terry and Saumarez Smith, joined by Pentreath, decided to create a salon des refusés in which to exhibit their work. Having been rejected by one pillar of the establishment, the Royal Academy, they approached another, the Royal Institute of British Architects, similarly regarded as hostile to classical and traditional design. Here, their request to stage an exhibition proved happily successful—if surprisingly so, since the Royal Institute’s last president attacked the Prince of Wales in 2009 for his interventions in favor of classical designs for new buildings.

A drawing of a rinceau panel for a chimneypiece

The exhibition introduces us to the buildings that Pentreath has designed at Poundbury, Dorset, the new town begun in 1993 by the Duchy of Cornwall based on a master plan commissioned by the Prince of Wales from Léon Krier (see “Cities for Living,” Spring 2008). Poundbury overthrows the zoning practices popular since at least World War II, which separate private from public housing and workplaces from residences. In addition, the growth of out-of-town shopping centers and business parks, all heightening dependence on the car, has destroyed the sense of living in a community as well as the commercial viability of historical towns. By countering these tendencies, Poundbury has grown rapidly and is already a small town rather than a large village.

Pentreath’s contributions to Poundbury include Woodlands Crescent—41 houses built around a garden square, an idea with Regency origins. He has created a similar urban development at Port Talbot, Wales, while on a smaller scale he has provided a new village green with cottages at Tisbury, Wiltshire. Raymond Erith led the way in showing how to build in old towns or villages in the countryside without wrecking them, notably at Dedham, Essex, where the ancient building housing the office of Quinlan and Francis Terry can be found on High Street.

George Saumarez Smith has also contributed to Poundbury with the Buttermarket building, a dignified, three-bay composition with a Palladian facade featuring four pilasters below a pediment. But his most spectacular design so far is for the Richard Green Gallery for the display of twentieth-century art on New Bond Street, London, next door to the celebrated auctioneer Sotheby’s. Construction of the gallery, which began recently, has required the demolition of two buildings within the historic Mayfair area of London (though the buildings were not historic themselves). This is virtually the first time that a substantial building of classical character has been proposed for such a site since before the war.

The Green Gallery’s sophisticated facade in Portland stone over a ground floor of bronze-framed windows will be entirely in keeping with the grain of New Bond Street, which has a Georgian core but is mainly composed of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century classical buildings, often enriched with sculpture. Saumarez Smith’s design incorporates three large bas-reliefs commissioned from the distinguished sculptor Alexander Stoddart; inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, they form an allegory on the development of modern art from 1900 to the present. Running across the first and second floors of the front elevation, the bas-reliefs will be divided by pilasters with incised lines and a fret, a form that Sir John Soane, the great neoclassical architect, invented in the late eighteenth century. The design is a masterpiece in the handling of the classical orders; it repays detailed study.

The exhibition also shows how Saumarez Smith has skillfully enlarged Langton House, built in the eighteenth century on the edge of a beautiful small town in Hampshire and later much altered in an unfortunate way. Saumarez Smith carried out extensive historical research to enable his additions, completed in 2005, to restore balance as well as echo the original composition. The principal window of his library commands a view of the new summer house and swimming pool, which he has built on the site of an eighteenth-century orangery that was demolished in the 1930s. The new building is a subtle composition in which Saumarez Smith cleverly adapts in brick the Doric order of Palladio and also contrives to deploy every bond of brickwork. The frieze contains metopes in headers alternating with simplified triglyphs inspired by Michele Sanmicheli, the leading architect in sixteenth-century northern Italy. “The spacing of the triglyphs,” Saumarez Smith explains, “is the key to the whole design.”

Francis Terry’s share of the exhibition includes drawings for several major projects in London and one in Cambridge, all designed in partnership with his father. One of these—a design for the infirmary adjacent to a much-loved masterpiece, Sir Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital—received planning consent in 2005 from the relevant authorities; yet even at that stage, leading modernist architects asked the Secretary of State for the Environment to have Terry’s plans called in for a public inquiry. Such is the intensity of the architectural establishment’s fear that a new public building might be built in the classical style.

The entrance front of the infirmary sports a giant portico of Tuscan columns, the simplest of the orders—which Quinlan and Francis Terry chose out of deference to Wren, whose principal building at the Royal Hospital was in the nobler Doric. Similarly, instead of using Wren’s red brick, they selected the less demonstrative London stock brick, which is a pale whitish-yellow. If one had to spend time in an infirmary, here is where one would choose to be, enjoying the garden courtyard with its colonnaded loggia, the traditionally designed chapel, and the harmony and calmness provided by the symmetry that modernism so despises.

The Terry partnership has made a breakthrough in another building type: the commercial office block. Like some late designs by the nineteenth-century German neoclassical architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, their handsome building at 264–267 Tottenham Court Road shows that a commercial building, if properly articulated with the classical orders and with glazing bars in the windows, need not have the cold and inhuman character of modern glass office blocks. Its deeply modeled facade keeps the street line and relates well to the adjacent interwar, classical buildings.

An office building on Tottenham Court Road

Also on display at the exhibition are pictures of Hanover Lodge, a large new house in London by the Terrys. Their handsome pair of entrance lodges to the house are in the Doric order, which is appropriate for the traditional role of a lodge as guardhouse (the Doric supposedly originated as a representation of the masculine strength of warriors and heroes). On all four sides of each lodge are pedimented porticoes with Doric columns.

The entrance front of Hanover Lodge itself is dominated by a full-height portico with freestanding columns in the Greek Ionic order of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens. With the stylized honeysuckle pattern of the band below its capital, this is the loveliest and richest of all the Greek orders. It is also used for the columns of the curved bow of Hanover Lodge’s formal drawing room. For the tympanum of the crowning pediment on the entrance front, Francis Terry designed a rich scheme of decorative plasterwork with acanthus leaves and shoots swirling around a central circular panel. This scrolling pattern of plant forms, known as rinceaux, recalls one of the greatest monuments of Augustan classicism, the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome.

The central space of the house is the hall, with its balustraded gallery at first-floor level, above which is a cove with an elliptical oculus and a glazed lantern. The interior is fabulously rich in plasterwork ornament designed by Francis Terry, whose drawings for it introduce a vibrancy and sensitivity to plant form and associated classical ornament on a scale unparalleled in modern British architecture. The majority of this decoration is on the hall’s cove and ceiling, which abound in rinceaux, shells, and arabesques, while the underside of the gallery is also ornamented with fret patterns, framed rosettes, and rich consoles. The result is one of the most imposing and lavishly ornamented interiors created in 100 years.

Finally, we see pictures of the Howard Theatre at Downing College in Cambridge, designed by the Terrys in 2008 and completed in 2010. Its enchanting interior is made intimate and sociable by the galleries around it, which are inspired by the seating arrangements in Georgian theaters like the one at Richmond, Yorkshire. From the proscenium arch hangs Francis Terry’s panoramic painted backdrop, which is raised for performances. It’s a ravishing capriccio inspired by the Acropolis yet incorporating work by the architect of the earliest buildings at Downing College, William Wilkins, himself a classical archaeologist. Like everything in this remarkable exhibition of the work of three young classicists, it is at once captivatingly beautiful, traditional, and inventive.

And the new Howard Theatre in Downing College, Cambridge, featuring a panoramic background.

The three architects are articulate in words as well as in design. The exhibition catalog includes nine essays, three by each architect, on the subjects of classicism, modernism, patience, repetition, measuring, drawing, taste, economy, and (surprisingly) cooking. Though the authors don’t mention John Ruskin, their format perhaps recalls his 1849 essay “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”—which were sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and obedience.

Ruskin stressed the value of time and weathering in architecture and its materials, and Saumarez Smith echoes this concern in “Patience” when he writes that photographs of newly built classical buildings look too harsh and new, for the buildings need to mellow before attaining their full beauty. He is kind enough not to point out that, unlike classical buildings, modernist ones—notably those that make the mistake of exposing concrete—don’t improve with age. In “Measuring,” he explains that classical orders are intentionally presented in textbooks without any definite scale, for they are applicable to everything from table lamps to temples. Again, they are different in this respect from modernist buildings, which are not easily adapted to the human scale and tend to provide too much space or too little. In “Economy,” he stresses that architecture must be built to last and to inspire affection. Anything built too cheaply, he warns, can never be loved.

Pentreath demonstrates, in “Repetition,” the failure of mass housing in the twentieth century compared with the success of buildings in Regency England, which followed a simple, traditional pattern and type, making much use of the fact that houses or villas look attractive in pairs. He shows in “Taste” that a well-proportioned terrace house, even if largely free of ornament, is made architecturally convincing by tiny details like door handles, fanlights, the width of a glazing bar, or the architrave around a window. In this, he recalls Raymond Erith, who venerated small things like cottages and simple moldings. Erith believed that architecture began here—that what people came to love in the buildings they used and occupied were windows, door frames, moldings, and railings. Similarly, Sir John Soane claimed that moldings were as important to an architect as colors were to a painter—indeed, that the mind of a great architect “is never more visible than in the practice of this part of his profession.” Modern architecture has significantly failed us in this area: no modernist architect today uses moldings or is even capable of designing them.

George Sumarez Smith’s design for the Richard Green Gallery, incorporating sculptor Alexande Stoddard’s Odyssey inspired bas relief.

“To make a flat piece of paper appear to have three dimensions is a conjuring trick,” writes Francis Terry about drawing—a skill that the architect must learn, but one no longer taught in architecture schools. Terry laments that society at large also does not value drawing, which is generally seen as having little more use than as “therapy for the deranged.” (All three architects in this exhibition are, of course, superb draftsmen.) In “Cooking,” Terry suggests provocatively that architecture might be better compared with preparing food than with painting or sculpture. Both the cook and the architect should deal with personal, handmade things, formed with attention to detail and made of the best local ingredients, he writes; further, both architecture and food are key aspects of the domestic life essential for our survival.

Addressing the style of architecture in which he works so proficiently, Terry points out in “Classicism” that the primary role of classical features like cornices, imposts, pilasters, and swags is not function but beauty. One of their purposes is to create shadowy depths, changing as light moves around during the day, so that architecture should perhaps be seen as a branch of sculpture after all. Indeed, Terry points out that almost all Renaissance and baroque architects began their careers as sculptors or painters. He could have pointed out that in the first English theoretical work on architecture, Sir Henry Wotton’s The Elements of Architecture (1624), we are told that architecture is the mistress art, with painting and sculpture serving as handmaidens “to dress and trim their mistress”—a view that would later appeal to Soane. Finally, because buildings should be a joy for the architect as well as for the viewer, Terry writes that “architecture is like music” as well: “not to be enjoyed in theory but with the heart.”

David Watkin is a professor emeritus of the history of architecture at the University of Cambridge. His many books include Radical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry and The Roman Forum.

St Mel’s Cathedral, Longford:

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WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL CENTENARY EXHIBITION

by Fr. Anthony Symondson, SJ

Westminster Cathedral has accumulated many treasures that chart the development of English Catholic applied art for the last 100 years and some of the best are displayed in an exhibition commemorating the centenary of the cathedral’s consecration in 1910. The show is not confined to c20 work because, like all great churches, the sacristy contains a cumulative collection that goes back to the year of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and from there, via recusancy, to Pre-Reformation times. The objects present a unique record of the cathedral’s liturgical history.

Bentley’s magnificent, newly-restored model of the cathedral, made of Kauri pine to a 1:48 scale, forms an appetising prelude to what follows. In company with Wren’s for St Paul’s and Lutyens’s for Liverpool, it counts among the three best surviving architectural models in the country and provides an anchor for all that follows. It also explains the high quality of plate specially commissioned for the cathedral and the inspiration the building provided for the makers. The architectural impact of Bentley’s work at Westminster affected many branches of the applied arts, of which silver was conspicuous.

The opening in 1903 and consecration seven years later coincided with one of the most creative periods of the late Arts & Crafts Movement. The leading silversmiths of the period were Omar Ramsden, Alwyn Carr and Harold Stabler, all of whom continued working for the first half of the c20. There was a distinct quality about their design that combined a free interpretation of the historic styles, Gothic and Renaissance, while narrowly avoiding the sinuous attenuations of Art Nouveau.

Prominent among Ramsden and Carr’s work is the great Westminster monstrance, made in 1907, which forms a complement to their crucifix and candlesticks on the high altar. They engraved their work Omar Ramsden et Alwyn Carr me fecerunt (Omar Ramsden and Alwyn Carr made me) but that is not quite true. Carr was a working silversmith but Ramsden was a designer who came to employ a staff of twenty to actually execute his work. Their partnership of twenty years not only produced church but domestic silver, characterized by planished surfaces and embossed relief. It has an immediately recognizable character of its own and stylistically defined the taste of the period as no other. Of equal interest is the ‘Everyday Crown’ designed by Ramsden for the processional statue of Our Lady in 1929. This was sold by Cardinal Heenan in 1969 to raise funds for the relief of poverty but happily has found its way back to the cathedral. I remember the furore at the time of its disposal and its return comes as a welcome surprise.

Harold Stabler was a Classical rather than Gothic designer and re-established the Poole Pottery where his work moved into Art-Deco. His noble mace mounted on an ebony stem for the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament, made in 1911, is one of the finest pieces of silver of its time. He clearly had the scale of the cathedral in mind when he made it because it is meant to be read at a distance and be seen carried ceremonially in the cathedral’s shadowy spaces. These designers were responsible for most of the ceremonial plate that is used daily in the cathedral and has become inextricably associated with it.

The greater part of the exhibition consists of altar vessels and episcopal regalia, dating from the late Middle Ages to the present time. Much of it has associational interest, some of which is surprising. There is a French chalice and ciborium give to Cardinal Manning at the conclusion of the First Vatican Council in 1871; the altar plate of Cardinal Howard, Bishop of Frascati, (incongruously scattered between cases rather than shown together); a chalice presented by King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1905, another by Pope Leo XIII in 1896 in anticipation of the new cathedral; and an exquisite c15 Italian crucifix of copper-gilt, given by Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough. Glittering sombrely is the jewelled morse, set with sixty-one amethysts, given by Mrs Crawford in 1895, which made such an impact at Archbishop Nichols’s enthronement last year. There is a case of reliquaries.

Among the vestments is part of Pugin’s High Mass set of cloth of gold, made for Cardinal Wiseman and worn at the consecration of St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, in 1848. These comprise a precious mitre, maniple, burse and gloves. The last Archbishop of Westminster to wear the mitre was Cardinal Hume, presumably because it fitted. Other vestments are fine Latin ones, embroidered overall in arabesque patterns. But why are Cardinal Manning’s cope (made of a delicious Neapolitan violet silk) and Cardinal Howard’s chasuble displayed facing the visitor, instead of being shown back to front? These were how they were designed to be seen and their impact as works of art is lost with the best embroidery rendered invisible. The reason is, I suspect, the result of Mass being celebrated versus populum and I hope they will be redisplayed properly.

Well-designed, lit and presented by Design Map, the exhibition has enormous visual impact that is only spoilt by labels displayed at floor level which make them unreadable for the majority, and the unsuitably-shown vestments. Both could be rectified by the provision of a hand-list and an adjustment. You will see treasures that date from the days when morning Masses were celebrated daily in relays in the cathedral’s chapels and turned Westminster Cathedral into a spiritual power station. I recommend this exhibition unreservedly to all who are drawn to beauty, history and England’s Catholic patrimony. [originally published in the Catholic Herald]