When discussing art, architecture, and really any beautiful thing made by man, the frame of the conversation is always tainted by a thoroughly modern lens. How people today conceptualize ‘art’, especially ‘fine art’ is altogether different than when people thought of art in the past. The most clear proof of this difference is through semantics. It is obvious, not only by their writing, but also by the words used that the Ancient Greeks and Romans did not think of art in the

The state of liturgical design has reached such an abyssal point that it would seem that one can only hope for a church building to not be horrid. The fight for generations now has been fraught with so many small obvious design issues (such as a venerable location for the tabernacle) that the sophistication of higher level issues have been entirely put off if not forgotten. Most Catholics are completely unaware that there are several conflicts and open questions in traditio

Did you know that before the 1800's there were few very bright pigments available, and the ones we did have were either very expensive, toxic, or were light-sensitive vegetable dyes? Let's look at some of the best pigments the modern world has afforded us and see why God has provided us with everything to have beautiful things: very easily and inexpensively Ultramarine Blue : Ultramarine Pigment In the Middle Ages lapis lazuli was imported at great expense from Afghanista

From the 40's till approximately the mid 90's churches clearly went from bad to worse, often 'renovated' only in the worst possible ways. This was done for reasons to stripe the buildings of their antiquated meanings and usage and install new meanings and usages often foreign or at least novel to the church. The church was sick throughout the 20th century, and it did what sick things do. In some ways the errors have been predictable, merely repeating and magnifying the pro