Off-Modern Catholic Aesthetics

Rethinking the Role of Religion in Twentieth-Century Art and Architecture

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Copyright Year:
2025
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978-90-04-71052-8
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24 Feb 2025
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978-90-04-69995-3
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06 Mar 2025
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Samuel O'Connor Perks, Ph.D. (2021), is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. He has published articles on Catholic thought and aesthetics in journals such as the Journal of Art Historiography and Architectural Theory Review.
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations

Introduction
 1 Off-Modern Profiles
 2 Unpacking the Dynamics of Catholic Modernisation
 3 ‘The Eclipse of God’: Transplanted Artists
 4 ‘Background Metaphorics’: Exchanges between Art and Religion
 5 Structure of the Book

1 Antinomies of Art and Theology. Marie-Alain Couturier and the Contradictions of Modern Sacred Culture
 Introduction: Couturier’s Conceptual Zig Zags
 Prelude. Paris, 1953. the Contradictoires Text
Sacred Art between the Mechanical and Natural Attitudes
 1 Le Saulchoir/Paris, 1918–1930. Catholic Endgame, or the Narrative of Decline
  1.1 ‘Down with the Republic, Long Live the King!’: Couturier’s Romantic Anti-Capitalism and the Return to Order (Paris, 1919–1925)
  1.2 Couturier’s Neo-Thomist Aesthetics (Le Saulchoir, 1925–1930)
 2 Rome/Paris, 1930–1940. the Gospels and Fraternal Catholic Modernism
  2.1 The Human Truth of the Gospel (Rome, 1930–1932)
  2.2 The Art of the Incarnation (Paris, 1935–1937)
 3 1940–1953. the Secular Prophet. Couturier on Modern Sacred Architecture
  3.1 The Politics of French Artistic Modernity
  3.2 Artistic Abstraction and Catholic Humanism
  3.3 Conflicted Temporalities of Aesthetic Categories in Couturier’s Late Writings
  3.4 Modesty: a Critical Counter-Concept to Modernity
  3.5 On the Autonomy of Modern Art and Artists
  3.6 On the Uses and Abuses of Poverty in the Modern Era

2 Between Mysticism and Industry: the Bauhaus Diaspora, the Benedictines and the Ambiguities of Architectural Symbolism
 Introduction: Mechanics, Symbols and History
 1 Navigating the Divide. Breuer and the Benedictines on Architectural Symbolism
  1.1 Breuer’s Pre-Modern Imaginary
  1.2 Breuer’s Architectural Symbolism: Tension-Structures
  1.3 Liturgy and Labour
  1.4 Benedictine Symbolism, Form, and Function
 2 Form and Symbolism: the Language of Religious Experience
  2.1 1959: a Divided Committee
  2.2 Albers on Form and Tradition
  2.3 Albers: Spirituality Contra Science
  2.4 The Public Dimension of Symbols
Coda. Unpacking the Semantics of the “Sacred” in Modern Architecture

3 Catholic Metaphorology. Dominique de Menil and the Role of Conversion in Aesthetic Education
 Introduction
 1 ???
  1.1 Dominique de Menil’s Rothko Chapel Speech, 1971
  1.2 An Intellectual Apprenticeship: Typologies of Engagement
  1.3 Conceptual Ramifications: from Religion to Aesthetics
 2 Catholicisme Ondoyant
  2.1 The Intellectual Context of Congar’s Montmartre Lectures in 1936
  2.2 A Source of Congar’s Pluralism: Thomas Cajetan on the Image
  2.3 Organic and Embodied Metaphors
  2.4 The Social Dimension of Catholicism: Yves Congar on Unbelief in 1930s France
 3 Putting Conversion to Work After World War II
  3.1 Art Education and Social Justice in the 1960s
  3.2 From Heritage to Tradition in Dominique de Menil’s Notebooks
  3.3 The Soil Metaphor
  3.4 The Fire Metaphor
  3.5 Dominique de Menil’s Art Historiography
Coda: A Note on Dominique de Menil’s Catholicism and Mark Rothko’s Abstract Art

4 Recast Eyes. Jean Labatut and the Concept of Crisis in Post-World War II Architectural Education
 Introduction: Unpacking Labatut’s Intellectual Framework
 1 The Language of Experience. Phenomenology, Visuality and Religion in Jean Labatut’s Intellectual Universe
  1.1 “Architectural Humanism” in the United States after World War II
  1.2 Labatut’s Visual-Industrial Complex: the Princeton Architectural Laboratory
  1.3 Historical Consumption
  1.4 Catholic Conversations: Eidetic Visualisation and Cultural Hylomorphism
 2 Learning from Labatut. the Divergent Paths of Labatut’s Architectural Programme
 3 Diversity with Unity. Francis Prokes’s Theological Dimension of Architecture
  3.1 Choice: Christian Existentialism as a Framework
  3.2 Involvement: the Theological Grounds of Interdisciplinarity
  3.3 Purpose: Theology and Architectural History
 4 Visual Historiography: Robert Venturi’s Context in Architectural Composition
  4.1 Venturi’s Princeton Formation
  4.2 Venturi’s Theory of Perception: Gestalt
  4.3 Appropriated Contexts
 Coda: A Forgotten Path to Postmodernism

Epilogue: Disentangling the Semantic Knot Between a Secular Infinite and a Catholic Eternal

Bibliography
Index
This book will be of interest to specialists and students in art history, religious history and intellectual history. Keywords: Aesthetic modernism; secularisation; nouvelle théologie; Bauhaus diaspora; phenomenology; Neo-Thomism; sublime; architectural theory; epistemic transfer; global intellectual history; metaphor history; conceptual history.
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