The Art of Beuron

...Expression in liturgical details became more and more noteworthy, but no opportunity came to fashion a complete church in the Beuron style, although careful plans for such a church were drawn up by P. Lenz...

...In the spirit of this synthesis, P. Lenz and his "school of art" worked enthusiastically and indefatig-ably...

...But for our present purpose, Beuron is primarily the place to which an artist of unusual energy and inspiration came after he had begun to realize that the beauty he particularly admired had a religious meaning—a mystical truth, if that phrase be permissible...

...P. Lenz is now well beyond ninety years of age, and is said to have immersed himself more and more deeply into the Marian devotion which has always been one beautiful source of his energy...

...Their most elaborate task was the decoration of the crypt and torretta at Montecassino...

...This, formulated as the "canon" of order, became his firm rule and now designates more patently than anything else the character of Beuron art...

...These thoughts are brought to mind by the exposition of Beuron art now being staged at various places in the United States under the personal supervision of Dom Raphael Walzer, archabbot of the Beu-ronese Congregations...

...Native mysticism and a Benedictine mind were gifts which P. Lenz humbly attributed to grace...

...But he will, unavoidably, miss the ensemble and the glorious sug-gestiveness of this art as an endeavor to express the whole liturgical life of the Church in architecture and decoration...

...He had studied under various masters, had profited by a traveling scholarship, and had been led by the natural bent of his temperament to explore the secrets of Egyptian and early Grecian art...

...Grossness is removed, but the subject is not diluted into a thin symbol...

...Experiments like that now being incorporated in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine are interesting and commendable, but a distinct archaeological aroma—a sense that somebody has deliberately set out to achieve a thing which in another age happened naturally—hangs over the enterprise...

...Peter Lenz was forty-four years old when he joined the Benedictine Order in 1876 and received the name of Desiderius...

...I have no doubt that relations of an abidingly fruitful sort will soon connect the peaceful German abbey with the stress of the United States...

...Moreover, all truly "modern" art is subjective, for the simple reason that society is not organic...

...There are many reasons why this should be so, but one simple, affecting little reason may profitably be mentioned here...

...but it is true that the untrained observer is likely to stare at the picture a little uncom-prehendingly...

...It is an application to the human figure, and secondarily to other subjects, of a geometrical norm which eliminates excrescences and superfluities and realizes the ideal "type" to which, in accordance with Beuronese theory, all genuine art must conform...

...But one is struck with the prominence which this tiny structure maintains in the face of its tremendous environment of towering bluffs...

...The immaculate purity of this slender figure, from which every taint of earth has been removed by the artist's transcendently mystical inspiration, calls to mind so vividly the especial patronage under which our nation achieves its destiny that one longs to believe that it will be adopted by the United States as its particularly beloved image of the Virgin...

...But his first notable attempt at creative expression was made at Beuron, to which he had come as a layman...

...For instance, it is difficult to believe that the church can ever become a "community centre" in our modern cities, as it was a community centre in the mediaeval town...

...The artist has definitely solved that first great architectural problem which is site...

...Even the radiant colors, which are strong and secure, seem to belong to a world washed clear of mists and miasmas—a world as bright as a cool, full day...

...None the less, these reproductions are most interesting and so far superior to much that passes for "religious" lithographing that they are well worth examining for their own sake, quite apart from the light they throw on the art concepts of P. Lenz and his associates...

...Here are some fine and very typical frescoes, the mellow golds, indigoes and olive greens of which are a delight to the eye, even as the unearthly radiance of the figures is a solace to the soul...

...If therefore, said P. Lenz, one could combine the three things—the purpose of Egypt, the form of Greece, and the mystical certainty of Christian Europe—one would achieve that art which is best calculated to serve religion in the modern world by rendering homage to God and inculcating devotion...

...Nature is here transfigured as Christian belief divines that it shall be transfigured on the last day...

...Here the object was to realize a liturgical ensemble, and at the same time to portray, in blended legend and symbol, the story of Saint Benedict...

...It has been a great labor, which now seems ready to blossom into a second stage of creative activity...

...But form—that which is the reflection of the spirit in matter—was first realized by the Greeks, whose divination has awed every modern artist worthy of the name...

...and even if the community desired to express its corporate religious conviction and feeling, it might be difficult to find artists who would realize its purpose...

...It is curious to note, meanwhile, how little significance has been attached to the word "Beuron" in the United States...

...The spectator will see a variety of charming and characteristic bas-reliefs, executed in metals...

...On the other hand, it is impossible to escape the majestic serenity, the holy peace, which streams from these luminous images...

...An American wishing to test the appropriateness of Beuronese decoration to his own environment has an opportunity to do so by visiting the little-known priory of Saint Anselm, hidden away in a particularly chaotic part of the Bronx, New York City...

...Choral song is luminous there, because it early became one of the abbey's chief tasks to restore liturgical singing to the glory and purity of olden days...

...Among the articles on display there is an exquisite ivory image of the Madonna with her feet upon the earth...

...The two great frescos in the chapel are a Crucifixion which serves as the altar-piece, and a Madonna which surmounts the entrance...

...Although a master of the stature of P. Lenz is not to be found in every decade, the Beuron environment has not, and will not, prove sterile...

...This universality is the first characteristic of the man's genius...

...a remarkable collection of plastic figures carved with infinite care in ivory...

...But as P. Lenz conceived of and applied it, the "canon" may be compared with those programmatic "exercises" which Ignatius Loyola proposed as the norm of religious life, without thereby destroying individuality or spiritual fervor...

...432 THE ART OF BEURON By GEORGE N. SHUSTER IN SO far as art is to serve religion in the United States, it must very likely reckon with circumstances which grow out of the fact that our time is essentially different from those historical epochs in which ecclesiastical building and painting flourished notably...

...It is to be regretted that the hazards incident to voyaging precluded bringing any work excepting such objects as can be supplied on a commercial basis...

...Although both are relatively softer in outline than most of P. Lenz's later works (owing, it is said, to the influence of a collaborator, P. Gabriel Wiiger) they establish what may be termed the genre of Beuron mural painting...

...Other undertakings were the decoration of the monastery of Emmaus in Prague, and of the abbey of Sao Paolo in Brazil...

...it must do them, if it is to be more than idle ornamentation...

...Meanwhile monastic artists had developed to a remarkable degree of proficiency the arts of casting in bronze and goldsmithing...

...not a Calvary, but an "unending mystical sac433 rifice...

...The untiring Benedictine had found in the art of ancient Egypt the reflection of a life intimately formed by religion, of a time when the balance between spirit and matter was still heavily in favor of the first...

...Christianity, finally, had been the mystical coronation of the antique world and had something to say which prior to the time of the Redeemer had remained unspoken...

...There are the well-tilled fields demanded by Saint Benedict's rule and by German thrift...

...A simple gabled roof, supported by two obelisk-like pillars and crowned with a turret that suggests rather directly certain California missions, does not immediately indicate that it shelters notable treasure...

...P. Desiderius Lenz had mastered all the arts—building, painting, plastic decoration...

...The search of the ages for the Greek law of proportion became his ceaseless personal quest, and after many years he felt that he had made the great discovery...

...To one who, like the present writer, knows the spot only through descriptions and photographs, it means a vast, quaintly gabled house of peace, built beside the upper Danube and frowned upon by precipitous chalky cliffs...

...How directly this artistic conception runs counter to notions introduced by the renaissance and now debased in the numberless versions of commercial art need not be stressed...

...A tall representation of Christ on the Cross is flanked on both sides with the figures of mystical saints, above whom there is a concordant row of adoring angels...

...We need not concern ourselves with the spirited controversy which has grown up round the "canon...

...Ecclesiastical art can do both of these things...

...Many of the most attractive Beuronese reproductions are patterned after this work and convey the strength and charm of the originals...

...Form was, however, a scientific problem which continued to baffle him...

...When they are thus isolated from their natural surroundings, they inevitably lose much of the power and appeal which belong to art when it is at home...

...This was also, in a manner not customary in the history of art, a synthesis of the work he was later to carry through as well as of work projected but never completed...

...And therefore, in a charming mystical way, this venerable master of art who delved so steadily into the giant secrets of the past without dissipating either his peace of heart or his autochthonous Germanic quality, may be said to have gained his citizenship among ourselves...

...Unity is achieved, not by recourse to dramatic effect, but by composition —that is, we see, not a group picture, but a synthetic thought...

...And upon closer inspection one sees that all other difficulties have been surmounted as well—that this chapel is a poetic and liturgical unit, in which every detail of frieze, fresco and decoration has been wedded, with a hand which for all its iron was nevertheless warm with love, to the central theme...

...We may hope that the present endeavor to advertise it a little will bring the whole subject to attention...

...a number of reverently fashioned chalices and other sacred vessels...

...The reproductions of these pictures and many others conceived in the same style are on display in the present Beuron exposition...

...and a considerable variety of reproductions from some of the more famous Beuronese paintings...

...Nor does our age, which reads and arrives at its own conclusions, seem to permit an educational synthesis in stone and decoration...

...Such a norm would, no doubt, be out of place in art which did not strive to be hieratic, spiritual, liturgical...

...The Saint Maurus Chapel at Beuron reminds one, at first sight, of those primitive Christian baptisteries the ruins of which modern archaeological research has restored to view...

...And so one may, perhaps, safely conclude that beauty in the service of religion now means (what, of course, it always meant fundamentally) simply an urge to honor God and a means to inculcate devotion...

...Remarkably enough, this norm combines the essence of Goethe's conclusions about antique sculpture with a lofty mystical symbolism...

...Beuron is one of the most interesting abbeys in Europe...