On one end of the spectrum are those who could be called antiquarians who see tradition as static, as frozen, as a fly in amber. Somehow, getting back to an arbitrarily selected "golden age" would produce Utopia. This is not a Catholic perspective.

On the other end of the spectrum is what can be called modernism – an insatiable desire for novelty. That which is modern is given preferential option over the that which is traditional, not on an assessment of their respective values, but strictly out of prejudiced bias. Also not a Catholic perspective.

Neither of these are healthy perspectives. The modernist hunger for the new has given us “amoeba churches” without a single right angle in the building, abstract stained glass, and such varia as clear acrylic ambos and $18,000.00 statues of “Nothing” (true story and aptly titled – buy a “statue” of nothing and create a dedicated space in your art gallery for air? Space? There’s nothing there.)

Tradition is neither static nor erratic. It is neither a body frozen in death, nor is it wildly contorted in an epileptic seizure. It is living, growing, and developing in continuity with itself. There is a difference between dynamic development and novel change. Luther’s theological principle of Sola Fide has been acknowledged by Lutheran theologians to be entirely novel in the history of Christian thought. It was not a development in continuity with tradition, it was a change, a rupture with tradition… it was a severing of itself from the Vine. As in theology, so in art. The modernist art movement of abstraction and self-expression is a rupture with the living tradition of art. In art, one can also see the antiquarian sentiment in the artists of the Renaissance, whose incredible capabilities in their respective spheres does not change the fact that they made a conscious decision to turn their backs on a wealth of Christian symbolism developed over hundreds of years to adopt a radically different, pre-Christian pagan art and symbol as the ideal.

According to Durandus, art is one form of the liturgy itself. Ours is not a pagan liturgy that it should be decorated with ancient pagan symbols. Our is not a worship of the self and the abstract that it should be adorned with abstract or self-expressionist art. Ours is not a spasmodically changing liturgy that it should be ornamented with the newest fads and fashions every few years.

No, ours is a liturgy handed on in continuity from antiquity as it developed from that essential germ, entrusted by Christ Himself to His Apostles at the beginning. We have seen art develop along with the liturgy. We have seen the chapels in the catacombs with their Christian graffiti. We have seen the basilicas of Constantine put to use by the Church, even though their design and decoration were not intended for Catholic worship. We have seen a development of Byzantine architecture, art and symbolism in the East and in major governmental cities and commercial ports like Ravenna and Venice. We have seen the Carolingian revival of the Holy Roman Empire after the fall of Old Rome in the West to decay and barbarian invasion. This Carolingian architecture drew on the designs of the Roman basilicas but adapted them for better use as Catholic churches and incorporated the decorative motifs of the people who were building them in the far West and North of the new Empire, rather than imposing what Ruskin would call the “slavish” repetition of classical pagan ornament. Carolingian architecture quickly gave birth to Romanesque architecture which shares many of the same principles but develops them considerably. Decoration increases and proliferates, the windows get a bit bigger as do the floor plans, ceilings get taller, etc.

With the development from the round to the pointed arch in St. Denis under the auspices of Abbot Suger, we get what has come to be known as Gothic architecture. This development allowed for a dramatic increase in the heights of the buildings and the sizes of the windows. One look at St. Louis IX’s St. Chapelle shows to what extent this is true – the whole building appears to be glass at first glance (Gothic architecture has been aptly described as “light breathing through stone.”). When one looks at the examples of the late Romanesque and the earliest Gothic buildings, one sees the continuity of development. The architecture and symbolism in the Gothic style is absolutely infused with both books of revelation: Scripture and Creation. Survey’s like Male’s “Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century” are ample proof of this.

In the conflagration we know as the 16th century a revolution of art and architecture stands as a rupture in Christian tradition to that point. Here we see both the desire for novelty and self-expression, and the antiquarian principles in full force. While iconoclasts were literally burning down, tearing down and defacing some of the purest art and architecture Christendom had produced, proponents of the Renaissance were feverishly producing neo-pagan buildings and art on the model of ancient Greece and Rome.

In the 19th Century, brave and brilliant men like Augustus Pugin, Dom Prosper Gueranger, John Ruskin, and Viollet le Duc, began the work of the Gothic Revival – a sort of medievalism that was not nostalgic but was also not looking to make a “splash” in that eclectic period we call “Victorian.” They were looking to graft back onto the tradition of what Pugin simply called “Christian Architecture.” The term “Gothic” was actually a derogatory term applied to this “Christian Architecture” by men who were enthralled with old pagan architecture. Pugin and the others saw the medieval period as a time of integration of society, where “cult, culture, and cultivation” (to use Peter Maurin’s turn of phrase) were all part of an integrated whole, and where the life of the soul was not neglected or a marginalized part of human life.

The Gothic revival was not approached by these men (although there are always those mercenaries who get into any good movement out of desire for filthy lucre) as a means of making a name for themselves or of getting rich. They saw it as a source of revival, Pugin and Gueranger in particular, seeing it as a revival of Catholic life and culture. But all of them saw it as a work for the common good, for the restoration of society.

At Contrasts Woodcarving, our focus on the Gothic and the Romanesque is a conscious decision to work, like Pugin, Gueranger and the rest, for a revival of more than an architectural style, but of a truly Catholic culture. If art is one form of the liturgy, which is to say, it is integral to and a necessary part of the liturgy, then our decided preference is to adorn that liturgy with architectural language that is in continuity with the dynamic tradition of the Church. Hence our motto: Pulchritudine Reverentiam Reficere – Restoring Reverence through Beauty.