Stopping off at Willie Joe’s Processing for some ribeye steaks, I couldn’t help but return to St. Mary’s Catholic Church for the fifth time.
It was only after repeated viewing did I see the repeated form, peppered throughout the church: the lancet. The eye is constantly taken up from the ground, heavenwards.
Aesthetically, structure gives form to content. This is true of all the arts. But meaningfulness is required, because form shapes the content, imparting emphasis to the meaningfulness contained therein.
Without structure, or when structure is feeble, there is no meaning. The modern “aesthetic” over the past century in the arts has thrown meaningless content, formlessly, into the world. This is because its creators have discovered nothing of value, disdaining truth and spreading ugliness. I am done with that and I hope you are, too.
To the contrary, this humble church in a tiny village at the start of the Hill Country in Texas is a tremendous aesthetic success with its strong structure, marvelously repeated in beautiful proportions, positing the truth of the ideal to which its attendees were encouraged to hope to attain.
Share this post