A Matter of Interactions—Religion and Architectural Modernism, 1945–70: Introduction

In a particularly apt formulation, the French Dominican friar and famed designer of stained glass windows Marie-Alain Couturier (1857–1954) described his own reflections as moving in “zigzags.”¹ This sense of instability or oscillation may be attributed to the confrontation between two basic predispositions that shaped his life: his religious and even mystical thinking and his distinctly modernist aesthetics. Couturier was closely involved in some of the greatest experiments in modern religious architecture. He collaborated, for instance, with Henry Matisse on the Chapel du Rosaire in Vence, and with Le Corbusier on the Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. What is more, Couturier was the founding editor of the influential journal L’Art Sacré, serving together with Pie-Raymond Régamey as its chief editor from 1936 to 1954. He thus embodies the ideal of reconciling the modern movement of renewal within the Catholic Church with the innovations of modernist architecture.²

This Special Issue is devoted to modern architects and theorists who share Marie-Alain Couturier’s zigzagging reflections in view of the fact that the convergence of Catholicism and modernism has remained under the radar for far too long. To be sure, by now a general consensus exists that modernist architecture cannot be understood by looking only at developments in formal style.³ In general, the academic interest in modernist architecture has successfully emancipated itself from the study of common stylistic tropes like glass window-walls, reinforced concrete, metal buildings, and tough-edged angles. Its multifarious richness is now explored in new ways. Consequentially, the focus of interest has shifted to issues like domesticity,⁴ migrancy,⁵ collective spaces,⁶ and historical consciousness,⁷ all of which have undermined the earlier style-based paradigm of modernism. The recourse to concepts that are indispensable for the study of a modernizing society, such as gender, the rise of the welfare state, the tensions between mass and highbrow culture, and so forth, has likewise exposed modernist architecture as a complex and multilayered way for positioning ourselves in a rapidly changing world.⁸ Surprisingly, however, only very limited attention has been paid to the influence of religion, of Catholicism in particular, and of the complex phenomenon of secularization, on modernist architecture. This Special Issue seeks to fill in, if only partially, this lacuna.

At least two reasons may explain why the question of the relationship of Catholicism and architectural modernism has not yet received the academic attention it deserves. The first is that the canon of modernist art history has mainly been driven by a secular agenda, resulting in what David Martin has called a “repressed heterogeneity”—the sanitization of the link between the religious imagination and modernist architecture.⁹ These developments explain why most historians of art and architecture have either disregarded or have tended to drastically minimize the formative role of traditional religious denominations in modernist, artistic processes.¹⁰

One of the consequences of this state of affairs was that even in those cases where religion was indeed recognized as an important factor in the modernization of architecture, it was usually relegated to very specific or marginal contexts. Scholars were often mesmerized by the impact of non-traditional forms of belief on modernist architects: Le Corbusier has been linked with diverse occult movements,¹¹ Louis Kahn’s interest in Jewish mysticism has been studied,¹² as has the connection between Frank Lloyd Wright and Unitarianism.¹³ Yet, as recent studies have rightly argued, these kind of studies did not shed much light on the integration of rituals or on the monumentality and building techniques that established denominations sought in modern church buildings. For, as distinct from the more prosaic architectural projects of schools and housing, church buildings entail the possible but easily forgotten fusion of poetry and technology.¹⁴

The second reason for the lacuna is that the study of the relationship of Catholicism and modernist architecture seems to have suffered from a rather narrow perspective, namely an intra-ecclesial one.¹⁵ Similarly, the studies that addressed the impact of the major Western religions on the thoughts and practices of modernist artists were mostly carried out by historians of religion who often focused on detailed analyses of new forms of liturgical art.¹⁶ This explains, for instance, why so many books and articles remained fixated on the impact of The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) on European culture.¹⁷

Interactions

The aim of this Special Issue, as noted earlier, is to redress this imbalance by concentrating on cases where there was a productive interaction between religion and modernist architecture. Apart from examining the influence of Catholic thought on modernist architecture, it focuses on the influence of modernist concepts on forms of Catholic religiosity. It thus seeks to shed light on a distinctly modernist, religious architecture (most notably churches and abbeys) and to examine the theoretical constructs or concepts that were developed and mobilized in furthering and legitimating—intellectually, philosophically, and theologically—this innovative architecture. What, in other words, were the “key concepts” and how did they trigger or obstruct a “conceptual change” simultaneously in both religious and architectural theory and practice?¹⁸

The analysis of the impact of Catholicism on the theory and practice of architectural modernism and, vice versa, the impact of modernist aesthetics on Catholic church architecture inevitably leads to issues of a more general nature. The idea that religion and architectural modernism have interacted and continue to interact in many different ways cannot but mitigate the claims about the secularization of Western societies according to which the power of established religion, from the 1960s onward, has drastically diminished and, in some cases, has almost disappeared.¹⁹ However, the manner in which religious beliefs and practices were integrated and assimilated in modern society, as argued in the four articles that follow, suggests a more complex and nuanced understanding: that established religious traditions were neither neglected nor repressed by a modernizing society but rather gained in importance in constantly shifting cultural contexts.²⁰

The articles that follow propose a third way between the secularization thesis and the critical response to it: they do not reduce the impact of religious belief to a regressive element within modernity, and precisely for this reason they can tackle the multiple zigzags at work within the interaction of architectural modernism and religion during the postwar era. They do so by focusing on different aspects of this interaction and on the way ideas, concepts, and practices were launched, adapted, contested and realized. Thus these articles address an array of aspects of the general theme, from design methodology, editorial policy of architectural journals, (modern) art theories, the arrangement and ornamentation of churches, to theological treatises and liturgical renewal.

Apocryphal/Apostolic

The four articles can be divided into two groups. The first two articles highlight the non-canonical or hidden, yet influential and substantial, presence of religious ideas in the discourse of architectural modernism. As such, they can be said to expose an “apocryphal modernism”: they reveal how the largely settled, uniform canon of modernist architecture has wrongly downplayed the constitutive role of religion in architectural modernism.

“Conceptual Debts: Modern Architecture and Neo-Thomism in Postwar America,” by Rajesh Heynickx, focuses on one such “secret, or non-canonical” dimension. He analyzes the formative role of medieval theology and aesthetics in the development of postwar American architecture by focusing on the architectural theory and practice of Mies van der Rohe and Jean Labatut. From the late 1940s, both architects became actively interested in Neo-Thomism. More specifically, a closer look at their reliance on the work of Jacques Maritain, the preeminent promotor of Neo-Thomism, sheds light on the transmission and circulation of old and new concepts within twentieth-century architectural theory. By revealing how Maritain’s ideas helped to codify the latter and thus exposed the premodern ideas at the heart of modern architecture, Heynicks argues that modernist aesthetics should be re-evaluated with regards to its defintion of “the new” and its emphasis on the breakdown or mutation of premodern frames of reference.

Following Heynickx’s uncovering of an apocryphal dimension in the works of two leading modern architects, Catherine R. Osborne discloses in “Anarchy in Our Churches? The American Architectural Press, 1944–65” a forgotten dimension in the mid-twentieth-century American architectural journals—Architectural Forum, Architectural Record, and Progressive Architecture. She examines the concerns and hopes of modernist editors in the 1940s–1960s, as they sought to stabilize a “direction” for church architecture. More specifically, she examines the role of the architectural press as the self-established gatekeepers for acceptable church design, and their relationship with theologians, liturgists, and building commissions within the Catholic Church. Questions of authority (who was competent to determine whether a church design was successful?) and expertise (whose theological knowledge should be weighted more heavily?) lay behind the stark assertions commonplace in these discussions. Editors, generally not themselves Catholic, used their professional positions to weigh in on hot debates within the Catholic Church over the purpose of a church building, the relationship of the Church to modernity (and modernism), and the appropriateness of new materials and engineering techniques.

The second group of articles discuss the relationship of Catholicism and modernist architecture by tracing dominant influences that often followed opposite directions. By looking at specific examples in which Catholic church architecture can only be properly understood with the aid of concepts and policies stemming from non-religious thought, the two articles disclose elements of an “apostolic modernism”: the mobilization of (non-religious) art theories to safeguard a ritualistic or sacred understanding of the built environment in an increasingly technocratic society. The drive to innovate architecture in light of new modernist techniques, such as abstract art, coincided with the mid-century theological drive towards “ressourcement” or “return to the sources.” This “Nouvelle Théologie” not only entailed a reaction to Scholasticism but also promoted an openness to the modern world and thus opened the path to the Second Vatican Council (1962–65).²¹ As the two articles demonstrate, the mutual influence of these two trends, which reconfigured existing epistemic frameworks, inspired several landmark modern architectural projects.²²

In “Dom Hans van der Laan’s Architectonic Space: A Peculiar Blend of Architectural Modernity and Religious Tradition,” Caroline Voet analyzes the design methodology of the Benedictine monk-architect Dom Hans van der Laan (1904–91), famous for his manifesto De Architectonische Ruimte (Architectonic Space, 1977), in which he proposed his ideal elementary architecture. In the past, this ideal achitecture was linked to van der Laan’s proportional system and to his general approach as an architect rather than to his Catholic background. Consequently, the changing conceptual landscape in which he developed his ideas on the relation between religion and design was neglected. Yet, as Voet shows, it is only by carefully exploring the relation between van der Laan’s attempts to define a fundamental architecture and his ambition to understand the religious traditions it may have sprung from that one can understand how his religion and design methodology influenced each other. By drawing on unedited primary sources (letters, notes, design sketches, lectures), Voet reveals forgotten interconnections between van der Laan’s religious and architectural thinking, and offers new insights on the interrelationships of religion and architecture that go beyond the traditionalist-modernist dichotomy.

The same insight undergirds Nicola Pezolet’s “Étienne Gaboury, Vatican II, and Catholic Liturgical Renewal in Postwar Canada.” Here, he critically examines the work of Étienne Joseph Gaboury, a prolific French Canadian architect who, in the 1960s, designed several modern parish churches and engaged head-on with liturgical documents issued by the Second Vatican Council. Pezolet sheds light on how the calls of priests and theologians advocating artistic and liturgical renewal were adapted in specific architectural landmarks by Gaboury. Furthermore, he shows how Gaboury’s description of religious experience in “Design for Worship” (1968) can be understood not simply as an aggiornamento, or bringing the Church “up to date” but also as echoes of key tenets of the New Theology, which were central to the changes put forth by the Second Vatican Council. Gadboury’s writings and buildings prove that Vatican II was not a unilateral, top-down paradigm shift, or a complete rupture with tradition, but rather a complex and ongoing negotiation between the architect, ecclesial authorities, and lay people.

What is at stake in all four articles is the possibility of what Jorge Otero-Pailos has called a “Eucharistic architecture”—a built environment that embodies in a complex, multilayered way, philosophical, theological, and phenomenological concepts.²³ As each of the “zigzags” of architectural modernism examined here shows, a thorough understanding of the convergence of changing conventions in art, theology, and philosophy requires that we give closer attention to the hidden, forgotten, neglected and, at times, repressed connections between them. Besides the more obvious parallels—a feeling for the absolute, a penchant for transparent and geometrical forms, the drive towards abstraction—the interrelationship between religious thought and modernist notions also entails surprising shifts and the creative translation or adaptation of concepts to altogether different contexts. Thus what these articles ultimately suggest is that rather than being at odds with each other, in many instances of modern architecture, the very presence of religious elements facilitated, rather than hindered, the rapid modernization of Western society.

Earlier versions of the essays by Rajesh Heynickx, Nicola Pezolet, and Caroline Voet, were originally presented in the panel “An Intellectual Hinterland: Religion and Modernist Art in the Postwar Period,” at the Annual Symposium of the International Society of Intellectual History (ISIH), “Intellectual Hinterlands,” The University of Toronto, Canada, June 22–25, 2014.​

Notes on Contributors

Rajesh Heynickx is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium. His work has been published in, among others, Modern Intellectual History, Modernist Cultures, and Environment and History. He is coeditor of Making a New World: Architecture and Communities in Interwar Europe (2012), Loci Sacri: Understanding Sacred Places (2012), and The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism (2010) (Leuven University Press).

Stéphane Symons is Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture at the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium. His research interests are continental philosophy, with a focus on German and French thought. He has published widely on Critical Theory and on the connection between religion and art. His book More than Life. Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin on Art is forthcoming with Northwestern University Press.

Notes

1. Couturier, “Boundaries,” 150.

2. Bischof, Marie-Alain Couturier; and Caussé, “La critique architecturale,” 27–36.

3. Goldhagen, “Something to Talk About,” 144–67; Goldhagen, “Coda: Reconceptualizing the Modern,” 301–23; and Lu, “Entangled Modernities in Architecture,” 231246.

4. Heynen and Baydar, eds., Negotiating Domesticity; and Schuldenfrei, ed., Atomic Dwelling

5. Avermaete, Another Modern.

6. Gosseye and Heynen, “Designing the Belgian Welfare State,” 557–85.

7. Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present.

8. Payne, From Ornament to Object; and Papapetros, Animation of the Inorganic.

9. Martin, Curious Visions of Modernity.

10. Riley, Saints of Modern Art; Albrecht, “Research Report,” 251–87; and Zock, ed., At the Crossroads.

11. Birksted, Le Corbusier and the Occult.

12. Solomon, Kahn’s Jewish Architecture.

13. Meyers, “Frank Lloyd Wright,” 24–40.

14. Proctor, “Churches for a Changing Liturgy,” 291–322; Proctor, Building the Modern Church; and Price, Temples for a Modern God.

15. Gräb, Herrman, and Kulbarsch, eds., Asthetik und Religion.

16. Debuyst, Le renouveau de l’art; and Mennekes, “Between Doubt and Rapture,” 165–83.

17. Schmied, ed., Zeichen des Glaubens; Mädler, “Direktiven – Perspektiven,” 18–34; and Schloeder, Architecture in Communion.

18. Ifversen, “About Key Concepts,” 65–88; and Kuukkanen, “Making Sense,” 351–72.

19. Brown, “The Secularisation Decade,” 29–47.

20. Tiryaakian, “Dialectics of Modernity,” 78–94; Besecke, “Speaking of Meaning,” 365–81; Therborn, “Entangled Modernities,” 293–306; and Saler, “Modernity and Enchantment,” 692–716.

21. Mettepenningen, “‘Nouvelle Théologie’,” 172–84.

22. Hejduk and Williamson, eds., The Religious Imagination; and Barth, “Religion und ästhetische Erfahrung,” 103–26.

23. Otero-Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn.