[pictures of most of the art]
Corpus
Christi Church, known for its music, is
less familiar from the viewpoint of architecture and art. Not that a church should
be, primarily, any more of a museum than it should a concert hall or, for that
matter, a theater for the conjuring up of theatrical illusions. The church is
a special setting for the celebration of divine worship, in Word and Sacrament,
in the here and now Such worship properly makes its own, most direct, reference
beyond the here and now, a kind of reference that needs no artificial aids, although
positively bad art puts real obstacles in the way of spirituality (Savonarola
warned about church art bad enough to make sophisticated people laugh). Whatever
transcendental possibilities of their own they offer outside the context of worship,
the arts have supporting functions in the specifically religious setting.
Music has an advantage here, not for its potential to lend a mystifying aura to liturgy (which is not an enshrouding but an unveiling) but because it can reinforce attention, or lend expressive emphasis, to the liturgical celebration. Attention to sacred words and actions is rarely undistracted; so if our thoughts wander into the realm of the specifically musical, at least they are likely to return from there, by way of our consciousness of rendering--where form and content, composition and performance, coincide. By comparison, painting, sculpture and architecture may be elevating--they may even occasion thoughts about the difference between true and false embodiments of the divine--but they are not as immediately liturgical. Paintings of small artistic importance can function respectably as church decoration, while, at the other extreme, virtually all convincingly spiritual contemporary art stands outside the church altogether, whether made by believers or not.
Moreover, it is of the very nature of music to reveal processes of transformation: we can follow just how one thing becomes another, which is not unlike the way Scripture and the Sacraments serve to transform us in the world, even evoking the possibility of the world's transformation, through grace, in justice. Such meaning is hardly foreign to painting; indeed, it has been an urgent aspiration of painters since the earliest moves toward an abstract, or 'pure,' art. Often abstract artists have worked with a sense of the high significance of art as an exercise in the resolution, rectification or justification of parts and wholes. And this kind of meaning is, furthermore, in addition to the more obviously 'spiritual' tradition of artistic expressiveness as a definite affirmation of life.Even in our generation the church has tended to pass over matters such as these, in well-intentioned but impractical vague pronouncements on liturgical art. There is, as well, the simpler problem of just how many crucifixes, sets of Stations of the Cross or, for that matter, abstract paintings, one church can accommodate. Unlike music, art takes up space (even when it no longer depicts space), and a church full of advanced non-liturgical art, however spiritually worthy the art, might uncannily resemble an old-fashioned church full of plaster saints from the wholesalers that used to line Barclay Street, downtown.
All this is by way of introduction to the fabric of Corpus Christi Church and its remarkable artistic furnishings. Wilfred Edwards Anthony's Corpus Christi, begun in 1935 and dedicated in the following year, may not be a textbook architectural masterpiece, but it is quite interesting as a project, not least for its inventive solution to the problem of a church as only one component of a multipurpose, multi-story urban structure. The program finds some historical precedent in, for instance, churches built in Ireland around the time of Catholic Emancipation (1829) which combined church and parish school, but with the church over an awkwardly enlarged basement for the school. Actually, Anthony's 'cab-over-engine' idea is by no means anomalous. In Manhattan alone one finds Calvary (Baptist) Church, on West 57th Street, with an apartment house on top and a religious bookstore to one side; and Hugh Stubbins and Associates' Saint Peter's (Lutheran) Church, of 1977, the major venture of its day in modern American religious art and architecture, is stuck under a corner of the (freestanding) Citicorp Center on Lexington Avenue. Combinations like these are hardly ever perfect marriages: at Calvary the church is like an afterthought smoothed over on the facade with Gothic wallpaper; Saint Peter's, a semi-precious gem of modernist church-building, may suffer symbolically from being so literally under the wing, if not the heel, of Capital. Anthony's handling of Corpus Christi, however, is clever, especially his employment of a large limestone 'frontispiece' with Doric pilasters, punctuated by a rose window (and the arms of Pius XI and Cardinal Hayes) to claim as church facade most of what extends between the entrance steps and the (mock) attic story and (real) belfry above.
The present church is the second Corpus Christi on this site. The earlier one, built in 1906, also combined church and school, plus rectory, in one building, although, one gathers, less successfully. Of course, there have been some changes in the disposition of the church interior since 1936, such as the installation of the main altarpiece and, later, the removal of a Communion rail that originally drew a clear line between the sanctuary of the priests and the nave of the people. Also, windows originally of clear glass were replaced in the 1940s by colored ones, yellow, painted, for those along the flanks, and decorative violet stained glass in the apse. Otherwise, what we see is as Anthony originally designed it, down to the fittings chosen in consultation with Father George B. Ford, for whom the church was built; these include a polychrome wooden processional cross also designed by Anthony, the architect. (1)
It deserves to be asked why Father Ford, famous for his progressivism in many other respects, did not embrace the orthodox modernist 'Functionalism' that just around 1935 had reached one of its high points of international repute. Whatever the politics of the situation, he may have known a genuine modern problem, sometimes exaggerated by those hostile to modern culture within the church (Evelyn Waugh is a notorious example): namely, the real ideological ambiguities of architectural Functionalism in religious circumstances. One contemporary Catholic apologist for the Functional style wound up fabricating a mistaken theological rationale, while failing to acknowledge significant examples and overlooking altogether the best modern religious art of the Catholic Church. (2)
Yet
Corpus Christi is obviously not of standard 'ecclesiastical Gothic' or even
Roman Baroque ilk Father Ford was to recall, "I wanted a Colonial American looking
church, the style of which would be English in origin, but with a beauty added
by American adaptations." (3) Why this should have seemed
so right in 1935 is part of the social history of artistic style. Significantly,
though Wilfred Anthony was evidently at home in this mode here, he had already
built a sophisticated neo-Gothic Catholic church of proto-modern 'Arts and Crafts'
sort in New York: Saint Catherine of Siena, on the Upper East Side (1931). Mainly,
modern 'Georgianism' like this was a hallmark of cultural assimilation: the
idea was to manifest a cordial Americanization, if necessary with an underlying
British, instead of 'foreign,' accent. One should consider that at the time
Columbia University, let alone America at large, was not exactly accustomed
to evidence of Catholicism on the highest levels, while Charles Follen McKim's
Columbia campus stood close by as one of the grandest monuments of Renaissance
revival classicism in the country, with a strong Italianate flavor of its own
that the cult of the British Colonial generally edited out (except for guaranteed-tasteful
della Robbia madonnas and the like). Neither were Catholics alone in seeking
their slice of the 'Colonial' apple pie: Corpus Christi already had behind it,
on the next block, the equally assimilationist Georgianism of Gehron, Ross and
Alley's Jewish Theological Seminary, of 1930, on West 122nd Street.
This particular style also had a positively Jeffersonian aspect of democratic civility. As an architect, Jefferson had practiced an eighteenth-century neo-Palladianism that is at the heart of the 1930s mode. Countless Public works projects of all kinds were built in the decade according to just such a modified or modernized, more or less neo-Neo-Palladian, classicism. Arguably, its definitive canonization as 'all-American' came about in the same years with the so called 'restoration'--actually, the almost total rebuilding, to the point of mythic fabrication--of 'Colonial Williamsburg,' in Virginia, which was undertaken by the Rockefellers and which advanced the national cultural morale, along with all the new W.P.A. Colonial edifices, during the Great Depression.
Father Ford's choice of style was perspicacious. The result may not have been radical, but it was hardly a compromise. If Corpus Christi would harmonize with the best implications of the Renaissance Humanism of the Columbia of Nicholas Murray Butler, yet without implying that its own stance was doctrinally groundless, this was only by understatedly advancing a broad and modern Catholicity with evocations, specifically, of Cardinal Newman. Clearly, it would have been easy to get something simplemindedly 'Catholic' in its look, conforming to sentimental stereotype (though at the possible risk of losing the respect of some by suggesting historical regression). But despite the Oxford-Movement tone set by Father Ford--distinguished liturgy and preaching, a university ministry, social concern, even a Newman cult of sorts--this was not going to be a temple of medievalizing nostalgia. Actually, Newman himself had criticized the revived Gothic of the nineteenth century as "the emblem and advocate of a past ceremonial and an extinct nationalism"; (4) quite unlike the Gothicists of the day, he even had something of a sweet tooth for the Italianate in architecture, notably for his own Oratory. Thomas Merton, who had grown up in a real Colonial church (in Queens) picked up on just this subtle but dominant key in Corpus Christi, writing in The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), when the church was still new, "It had a kind of seventeenth-century Oratorian character to it, though with a sort of American colonial tinge of Simplicity." (5)
Whatever Father Ford may have meant by his "beauty added by American adaptations," it covers a richly harmonious stylistic pluralism that does seem somehow markedly American in its positive inclusiveness, its stylistic catholicity. We gain a sense of this in practice from the various major fittings selected for the Corpus Christi interior, including exuberant Belgian silver candlesticks, three hanging altar lamps (the middle one old Russian, the others from Italy) and two splendid Bohemian crystal chandeliers, as well as more than merely tasteful Italian paintings. Needless to say, it took more artistic aplomb for priest and architect to work out this unique (and beloved) ensemble than any precast historicizing formula would have allowed.
Two architectural items of historical, more than visual, interest in the church are small fragments from two of the most venerable of European church buildings. Set into the righthand wall of the narthex or vestibule is a brick from Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the great basilicas of Rome, this covered by a plaque explaining (in Latin) that it is a souvenir of the 1900 jubilee Year. Fragmentary architectural relics thus set into another building can be meaningful in a way that need have little to do with fetishism. Like relics of saints, they can evidence the wider reverence in which a remote but distinguished place is held, reminding us, even, of the farflung presence of the Body of Christ (Corpus Christi), that single Body of all the generations. Actually, the bodily 'members' in Saint Paul's extended literary image of the Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12) long held significance for European architectural theory. Besides, some of our separated brethren too, here on Morningside Heights, have their own relics of the same kind: witness the stone block from the agora at Corinth, "Where Many Hearing Paul Believed," set as a cornerstone in the Interchurch Center, at Riverside Drive and Reinhold Niebuhr Place (West 120th Street), and the little chunk of Saint Hilda's abbey at Whitby, in Yorkshire, "Where This Abbess Presided and Taught in the Seventh Century A.D.," set into the side of Saint Hilda's and Saint Hugh's (Episcopal) School, on West 114th Street.
Corpus
Christi also has some tiny fragments of the original stained glass of the great
Rheims cathedral, severely damaged by bombing in the First World War. These
are set into two of Valentine d'Ogries' modern windows in the apse, those at
the right, which have the benefit of morning light; the one at the extreme right,
appropriately enough, was installed in 1944, when many communicants of Corpus
Christi were in the Navy program at Columbia, as a naval and military memorial.
Work on all the other d'Ogries windows, also painted, continued until 1946.
Those of the nave carry images; those above, in the gallery, symbols of various
sacred personages, together with dedications. All are painted simply in black
and show, as regards the monochrome pane of glass, an appropriately subordinating
flatness of design, which is to say a fundamentally modem respect for the integrity
of the surface as a plane. It is always interesting to look at some
of these windows and to discover special features, whether the names of great
composers of liturgical music, from Buxtehude to Gounod, in the choir's window,
or, in another, upstairs on the right side, the names of more of the holy angels
than one usually has heard of. Also visible from the same (apse) end of the
gallery as this angels window is the only neo-Gothic feature of the church,
one well hidden, as though for ecumenical and diplomatic, as well as stylistic,
reasons: a stained glass window commemorating English Catholic martyrs from
the time of Elizabeth I to Cromwell.
The main altarpiece, also by Valentine d'Ogries, shows Christ the King. The
feast of Christ the King was a new observance, having been instituted by Plus
XI in 1925 as a stress on Christ's kingship in the face of rising fascism. The
painting itself is an earnest if dated example of 'Liturgical Revival' art of
the time. One beholds the powerfully frontal, hieratic image of ancient kingship
(even if the inescapable potency of such imagery is here more indicated than
elicited) flanked, on either side, by roundels illustrating scenes from Salvation
history. 
Only
in Holy Week, once the wings of this triptych are shut, is it possible to see
the beautiful gilt lettering of the donor inscription on the outside of the
doors-a nice touch, this gift of a beauty of pure form at a time when, traditionally,
the beauty of even the holiest images is withdrawn. Otherwise, everybody seems
to like the way the black-and-white checkered paving of the floor beneath Christ's
throne, in the principal panel, extends the actual paving of the aisle of the
church itself, indicating a relation of this specific liturgical space to the
Kingdom of God (this is even more appropriate in view of the dedication of the
church on the Feast of Christ the King in 1936).
Unlike the main altarpiece, the Stations of the Cross, by the same d'Ogries, have
a perhaps unexpected modern interest. True, they too evidence some of the uninspired
restraint of standard 'Liturgical Revival' art; nevertheless, they show inventive
variations in the placement and rotation of the Cross silhouetted against a gold
ground. Only certain developments in modern art outside the church, ironically,
reveal these lovely stations as rather more than mere illustration. Paintings
more simply a matter of church decoration include the bulgy, folksy Holy Family
relief, against the rear wall, and a (pretty tame) Baptism of Christ, by Frances
Railton, in the baptistry.
Certain
other paintings have distinct importance, notably the early fifteenth-century
Florentine pulpit crucifix. If the considerable repainting of its surface disqualifies
this Cross for historical purposes, it is still a wonderful piece. Consider
the articulation of the overall silhouette, with recessions and protrusions
that respond to one another, up-and-down and left-and-right, but also to the
'represented' Cross painted on this wooden ground. Only this handling of the
shaped field and its framing rim permits the coincidence of two otherwise different
cross types, a 'Greek' cross (with four equal arms) and a 'Latin' one (with
longer vertical axis). Likewise, all four arms carry subsidiary figures in the
enlarged (in three cases, terminal) zones, although there are really five such
images in all, four of them human figures and one a symbolic image. A pair of
saints interrupting the stem of the cross (there is some disagreement about
their identities) is countered above by a symbolic Christological pelican (from
the legendary idea that the pelican nourishes its young on its own blood). There
is a well-tuned relation of the superscription above the head of Christ; to
the meandering framing band of the whole crucifix at adjacent points; to the
ends of the arms of the painted, represented Cross within the already cruciform
field; and finally, to the slightly tilted (or, in its flat projection, rhomboidal)
footrest, further down on the long stem of the crucifix. (6)
One could go on and on about this fine painting--whenever what we see now was
done. Suffice it to mention one more feature, the lyrical relation of the 'S'-curves
of the two airborne angels at either side of Christ's torso to one another,
left and right (like the sound-holes of a violin) but also, at the same time,
to the more rigid, yet complementary, forms of Christ's arms diagonally bisecting
the arms of His (represented) Cross above.
A
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints, in the manner of Lorenzo
Monaco (active 1388-1422), comes next in time, after the Florentine crucifix,
because it is really not old at all. This is the altarpiece of what before Vatican
II was the Lady Chapel and is now the location of the tabernacle.
(7) It is, apparently, a fairly modern pastiche based on two paintings by
Lorenzo and executed with substantial skill. The painting may not be authentic
in the sense of 'period,' but it has genuine attractions anyway, including vividly
citrous patches of color and, at the bottom, a decorative strip of pseudo-Kufic
script (Kufic script, used for ornamental, calligraphic quotations from the
Koran in Islamic art, was often copied or parodied for its appeal as a play
of forms in early Italian painting).
The
church also has two authentically contemporary works, both by Kieth Milow, an
English abstract artist. These are cross-shaped object-paintings belonging to
a series of 'Crosses Between Painting and Sculpture,' of which the church has
Number 54 (1976), executed with iron powder as pigment, hanging in
the sacristy doorway and visible from the nave when the doors to the hall are
open, and Number 63 (1977), made with copper powder, in the narthex
beside the outside entrance to the baptistry. Two other crosses from the same
series belong to All Saints (Church of England) Church, Margaret Street, London.
Now in one sense, these 'crosses' are secular works, punning on their own ambivalence
as painting and/or sculpture (though even in this they are not so very unlike
the many ecclesial puns, especially with respect to architecture, on 'Peter'
as the 'rock' (8)). In another sense, they are quite inescapably
Christian crosses in their own right, apart from the problem of artistic intent;
and in this sense the possible question of the artist's own religiosity is likewise
irrelevant (one could recall, if necessary, the employment of famous gentile
artisans, in order to have the best for God's house, in the building of Solomon's
Temple, not to mention the remarks of great modern artists who have worked for
the church in Europe). (9)
As T. S. Eliot, himself a devout (Anglican) believer, maintained, it is to modern culture that we must be grateful for vivifying whatever is traditional and deserving of lasting regard. If what Father Ford built was hardly a museum to begin with, whatever artistic changes have been made at Corpus Christi have managed to do better than merely conform to the changed letter of church law or rubrics, where such apply, having managed--which demands more finesse--to sustain Father Ford's rather creative-eclectic spirit. (10)
© Joseph Masheck
1. For early views of the interior of Corpus Christi, see Desider Holisher, The House of God (New York, 1946), 68-7 1.
2. G. Arnaud d'Agnel, LArt religieux moderne (Grenoble, 1936); reviewed by Meyer Schapiro in The Review of Religion, III/4 (May 1939), 468-73. According to Schapiro, "In architecture ... the recent innovations, the new international or functionalist styles, spring from wholly secular, sometimes reformist, ideas of human and technical efficiency; the architects conceive of man as essentially a biological and economic creature capable of attaining happiness through adjustments in his physical environment. These new styles have been regarded in a neutral sense as the conventions of a time and place, like a language which can be applied to any content, practical or religious. But the interest in art today plays a part in the formation of general attitudes and constitutes an important ideological field, especially in educated circles. The adoption of a still problematic and disputed style by the Church may help to strengthen the forces from which the style arose" (468-69; with n. 1, discussing contemporary totalitarian responses, for and against architectural Functionalism).
3. George Barry Ford, A Degree of Difference (New York, 1969), 70.notes of Daphne Mebane Hoffman, in the Corpus Christi archives.notes of Daphne Mebane Hoffman, in the Corpus Christi archives.
4. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (1873) (Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 113.
5. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York, 1948), 207.
6. I have discussed the Corpus Christi crucifix in relation to abstract art in one of a series of articles intended one day to comprise a book: Joseph Masheck, 'Cruciformality,' Artforum, XV/10 (Summer 1977), 56-63, with illus. on p. 56.
7. For the original deposition of the chapel, see the illus. in Liturgical Arts, VIII (January 1940), 32.
8. For instance, Clement XIV, in his (paracanonical) encyclical 'Cum summi apostolatus' (1768): "Unique ... is the universal Church, whose foundation was established in this See by the blessed Peter. Many stones were united in its construction, but all rest upon and are based on a single foundation-stone"; Papal Teachings: The Church, ed. the Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, trans. E. O'Gorman (Boston, 1962), 43.
9. The Corpus Christi cross paintings of Milow are mentioned in a discussion of these
issues: Stephen Games, 'Faith-Saving Exercise,' The Independent (London), 5 May1987, Arts section,
p. 13.
10. I have relied for basic historical information on the notes of Daphne Mebane Hoffman,
in the Corpus Christi archives, and I am grateful to Denise McColgan, my former student at
Barnard and a doctoral candidate at Yale, for research assistance at the Frick Art Reference
Library.