"Restorer" in Spain Destroys Priceless Madonna

Edit: this strikes me as a kind of metaphor for the destruction of the West. Did the immigrant day laborer who executed the restoration expect to be paid? This could easily be classed along with other kinds of vandalism by barbarians now ongoing in the West. Has everyone seen Bergoglio's new invocation to the Blessed Mother of the Migrant, or whatever they try to call her? The first attempt looks like Cher and the second one looks like an attempt at a family portrait by one of Dick Masterson's cousins in Los Angeles. 

An art professor calls for laws to regulate art preservation, but the thought of Spain's Marxist government presiding over Spains cultural heritage more than it already does, doesn't sound like a solution, either.

A UK tabloid discovered the story:

[The Sun] A private art collector is said to have been charged €1,200 (£1,084) by a furniture restorer to have Bartolome Esteban Murillo’s painting of the Immaculate Conception cleaned and repaired.

However, things did not go as planned and the face of the Virgin Mary was left unrecognisable even though two attempts to restore it to its original condition were made.

The botched restoration job has echoes of the “Monkey Christ” eight years ago when a devout parishioner attempted to restore a painting of Christ on the wall of a church in the north-eastern Spanish town of Borja.

The Ecce Homo Jesus fresco was 'restored' by the untrained artist Cecilia Gimenez in 2012.

Initially painted around 1930 by the Spanish painter Elias Garcia Martinez, the altered fresco was widely slammed for making Jesus look like a monkey.

AMDG

No SSPX Priests Allowed in Vienna's Cathedral Book Store

The New Book About "Hetzendorf" by Publisher 'Facultas'

Today a book was ordered in Vienna, that didn't just bring the local Archdiocese to snort.  The first drops of sweat are flowing.

(kreuz.net, Wien) This evening Heidemarie Seblatnig presented her new book "Hetzendorf and the Iconoclasim of the Second Half of the 20th Century" in Vienna according to neo-Conservative videosite 'gloria.tv'.

Mrs Seblating has been a university lecturer at the Institute for Architectural Science at Technischen Universität Wien.

 Her book contains selections from nine authors.  Within the most recent iconoclastic attack on the Catholic Church is dealt with, which has raged since the 50s.

 The seminarian Michael Wimmer addressed the Iconoclasm as the rejection of ecclesiastical identity.

The Italian architect Ciro Lomonte asserted in his selection that the forms of expression in modern architecture do not work with Catholic Liturgy.

The aesthetic and institutional back ground of the late historical church building has been dealt with by Viennese Art Historian Inge Scheidl.

Under the provocative title "Altar Lights on the Firewood Crate" the Art Historian Mario Schwarz is also included in the volume.

The German Historian, Publisher and Luther researcher Gerhard Scuder writes about Martin Luther and his one of the causes of modern Iconoclasm.

Other authors are from the German Oratorian Father Uwe Michael Lang of the Congregation for Liturgy and the new Bavarian Cardinal Walter Brandmüller.

I Had to Wait Outside

Already the pre-history of this relevant and captivating book shows its explosive force.

The books should have been introduced in the Viennese Cathedral book store -- in the immediate vicinity of the Cathedral of St. Stephen.

Mrs. Seblatnig had won the Dogmatic Theologian of the Society of Pius X., Father Matthias Gaudron, as a consultant  for the book's presentation
.
Actually, then the Cathedral book store scrubbed the entire book presentation. Because of the Christmas business it basically can't give any more book presentations.

According to 'gloria.tv' the old Liberal Viennese Auxiliary Bishiop Helmut Krätzl is presenting his new hate book against the Church in the Cathedral bookstore.

Mrs Seblating was forced then to give the book presentation in the Schottenstift in the City Center.

Note: Hetzendorf was once the hunting lodge of the Hapsburgs.  It's now being used by a fashion school.

Does Your Parish Waste $$$ on Disposable Missalettes Every Year

It's not too hard to see the relationship between anti-Catholic causes and the ubiquitous and cheaply manufactured missal which parishes often purchase at the expense of thousands of dollars a year, but take a look at the people who also publish from these houses, and it's almost as offensive as the crummy artwork.



Some parish priests are literally shoveling money into a sewer when they give money to gay-friendly organizations like Oregon Catholic Press, or Liturgical Press. The publications feature weird illustrations and musical arrangements. Imagine how much money could be saved if you just cancelled those worthless subscriptions and used the money to purchase beautiful veils for your tabernacle, or perhaps even a new gold ciborium for the Eucharistic Lord?

Original link here...

Glasgow's Archbishop criticizes Modern Art

Modern art is paganised and increasingly reflects a culture of death, Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow has said.

He was speaking a day after the Pope met more than 250 artists at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, urging them to embark on a "quest for beauty".

Archbishop Conti said in his homily at a Mass for artists in Glasgow that a lot of modern art was "incoherent and dispiriting".

He said: "If we can legitimately speak of a culture of death, much art reflects it: the body is defaced; the marital act prostituted; gender dissembled."

In particular he cited a play portraying Jesus as a transsexual, called Jesus, Queen of Heaven, and an exhibition displaying a Bible with abuse written on it. He has said it was "disgraceful" that both events received public funding.

He compared the offence they caused to Christians to the apparent offence given to a Finnish woman by the display of crucifixes in Italian classrooms - a complaint upheld by the European Court of Human Rights.

Archbishop Conti said the image of the crucified Christ was deemed offensive because it had become a challenge to secular society.

He quoted an editorial in L'Osservatore Romano which predicted a time when public places were stripped of religious symbols "for fear of offending others' sensibilities".

In Europe, he said, "the very foundations of our Christian civilisation are being disturbed", and modern art, as an expression of culture, reflected that.

The archbishop concluded his homily by urging Christian artists to use their work to bear witness to Christ, "and so countering all that obscures his beauty".

His appeal closely echoed that of Pope Benedict XVI in his meeting with 262 leading arts figures in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday.

Guests, who included artist Anish Kapoor, composer Ennio Morricone and Gomorra director Matteo Garrone - though not U2 singer Bono, who was invited but could not attend - sat underneath Michelangelo's Last Judgment and heard a choir sing music by Palestrina.

Pope Benedict told them that they had a "great responsibility to communicate beauty".

True beauty, he said, forced people to encounter reality and pointed them to the mystery of existence and, ultimately, to God.

The Pope appropriated the language of modern art criticism, saying beauty "gives man a healthy 'shock', it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum". He said it may even make the onlooker suffer, "piercing him like a dart".

He then distinguished between superficial beauty, which "rekindles desire, the will to power, to possess", and true beauty, which "unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the other, to reach for the beyond". He said: "If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the mystery of which we are part."

The Pope said that beauty, whether in nature or in art, by pointing beyond ourselves, and "bringing us face to face with the abyss of infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate mystery, towards God".

The Pope urged artists to "enter into dialogue with believers". He said that faith "takes nothing from your genius or your art. On the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them".

Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-born architect, said afterwards that the audience "was quite an emotional experience". The American architect Daniel Libeskind described it as an "amazing step". Bill Viola, an American video artist, told the New York Times that artists had struggled for centuries "walking that fine line between creative freedom, between bending the rules" and breaking them. But he said the audience had "real potential for something interesting".

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, director of the Pontifical Council for Culture, organised the event. He has suggested that the Vatican should have its own pavilion at the next Venice Biennale art exhibition in 2011 as well as at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Link to article...

Holy Father Meets with Artists in the Vatican: You are the Custodians of Beauty

Holy Father met with hundreds of artists in the Vatican today in the Sistine Chapel. Here is his address in full.

Link here..

Sandro Magister's article here...

The Church reaches out to modern Art

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Once made in heaven, the marriage between art and the church has long been on the skids. "We are a bit like estranged relatives; there has been a divorce," said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Much of contemporary art walked away from art's traditional vocation of representing the intangible and the mysterious, as well as pointing the way toward the greater meaning of life and what is good and beautiful, he said during a Vatican press conference Nov. 5. And the church has spent the past century "very often contenting itself with imitating models from the past," rarely asking itself whether there were religious "styles that could be an expression of modern times," he added. In an effort to "renew friendship and dialogue between the church and artists and to spark new opportunities for collaboration," he said, Pope Benedict XVI will be meeting more than 250 artists from around the world Nov. 21 inside one of the world's most stunning artistic treasures: the Sistine Chapel. Latest news briefs from Catholic News Service Posted: 11/13/2009