Ave Maria University announced on February 13th that they had hired Márton Váró, “a world renowned Hungarian sculptor” to carve a 35-foot tall, 50-ton Carrara marble sculpture of the Annunciation over the entry of the infamous and much criticized chapel which forms the center of the Town of Ave Maria, Florida. Váró is perhaps best known for his giant angel figures which adorn the Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas shown here.
The Fort Meyers newspaper News-Press reported on the sculpture, noting that the marble for the sculpture was taken from the same quarries used by Michelangelo. The Ave Maria University press release, showing no sign of timidity, opened by stating their hope that it would compare with Michelangelo’s Pieta and David . The cost: about $3,000,000. The University has cleverly set up a web came so that people can follow the progress of the sculpture. See it by clicking here (not much to see yet).
As for commentary… well, the general consensus about the chapel is that it is a well meaning but bizarre sort of disappointing farce of an architectural thing. See the video below that Ave Maria is showing on its web site: floating steel beams, etc. The new sculpture, however, will be another sort of a creature. Váró is indeed one of the best (and only) sculptors around these days who has a track record in monumental stone works like this. He’ll do something pretty good by today’s standards as the background of the image above hints.
But here is the larger question: Should the front of a church become a giant billboard for an over sized piece of devotional art? I think the answer is no. It shows a general lack of understanding of what a church facade is: the entry portal to the Heavenly Jerusalem. The great Gothic cathedrals of France show this beautifully: the arrangement of kings and saints above, with Christ the judge over the center door surrounded by the angels and saints. Isolating one point in sacred history and using the church as a sort of giant screen for a marble drive-in movie isn’t really the best approach. But perhaps the beautiful marble and the skill of the artist will (mercifully) draw the viewer’s attention away from the bizarro-world qualities of the church building itself.
February 15, 2009 at 2:32 am
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February 15, 2009 at 3:48 am
I will be visiting my grandparents Naples in a month or so, and I plan to check out the town of Ave Maria and go to Mass there.
I don’t like the exterior of the oratory, but maybe the interior will be better.
February 15, 2009 at 4:02 am
I appreciate the insight into traditional architecture, btu I don’t really understand the resistance to anything new. Does it have the same sense of form and meaning? Probably not. But we don’t speak the same way people did 100 years ago, let alone 500 or 1000. I think the Oratory is a beautiful building, and I think the sculpture will probably be magnificent. God gave us many languages and many talents, and I don’t think we have love the old to the exclusion of the new where it is tasteful and beautiful.
February 15, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Question: The ceiling is glass, right? And this is in Florida? What are they going to do about bird poop and hurricanes?
February 15, 2009 at 2:09 pm
“[P]erhaps the beautiful marble and the skill of the artist will (mercifully) draw the viewer’s attention away from the bizarro-world qualities of the church building itself.”
That’s probably the idea all along.
Nzie, universal principles may find new expression with time, but they are not thrown out the window. Such has been the case here. The changing seasons are no excuse for an ill-conceived design that does not harmonize even remotely with its surroundings.
Would love to hear this author’s thoughts on whether or not this is a “town” in the traditional sense, as opposed to a suburb. I’m looking at a site plan with completely separate residential sections with cul-de-sacs, wondering how far someone would have to walk to the corner grocer for a quart of milk. If it’s more than one-half mile from any one point….
February 15, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I’m really far removed from all of this. What is the REAL issue here? Is it that this Catholic town will not say the Tridentine mass? Is it modeling its version of Catholicism on a particularly wayward ideology? As someone who lived in California and had to avert my eyes from some REALLY hideous “religious” art (wanna talk Roj Mahal?) I don’t see anything particularly heretical or outstandingly tasteless in these models. Maybe I have just set my standards too low at this point.
On another topic, KUDOS for putting up the banner for the Shrine of Christ the King! It would be nice if the people designing Ave Maria would consult professionals such as these. But, well…
February 15, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I’ve never understood the nastiness surrounding Ave Maria especially since most of it seems to come from people who haven’t done much themselves for Catholic education or culture.
February 15, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Shoot. I just realized that the overall exterior shape of the oratory offers an obvious nickname: The Slice’o’Salmon.
February 15, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Dymphna:
I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but a number of students and faculty, formerly associated with Ave Maria College, have told remarkably similar stories to me. They are enough to raise concern among Catholics.
February 15, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Well, certainly preferable to Oakland’s Cathedral of Light atrocity.
February 15, 2009 at 9:37 pm
My husband and I recently toured the town with friends who live in the area. It’s beautiful – very family friendly and…….Catholic! Refreshingly so.The university library is a breath of fresh air. You can actually tell you’re in a Catholic college library – again, refreshing. I don’t get the negativism about a place we should all be celebrating as a model of Catholic community.
February 16, 2009 at 3:42 pm
A few things. First, criticism of incompetence is not criticism of “anything new.” There is ALWAYS a place for the new in culture, because as time passes, knowledge grows and the revelation of the Holy Spirit unfolds, we should be able to do better things than have been done before. The chapel at Ave Maria, simply put, is a creation looking like something “Catholic” and “Frank Lloyd Wright” without really understandings what each of those things means. Why on earth would a giant church in Florida be built to be modeled on the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright or his warmed-over desciple Fay Jones? And then…hiring architects who don’t specialize in traditional architecture and then expecting a traditional result? (Need a few examples? The walls of the chapel come straight to the ground on the outer edges of the sides. This makes them appear to be bowing inward as they come to the ground, which gives an appearance of a weak structure. This is the opposite of what architecture should do. Also, the curve of the pointed arch at the top follows a different curve from the pointed arch of the entry ways and the area where the sculpture will go. This leads to a certain architectural chaos. Furthermore, if you see the chapel in person, you see bent steel I-beams running down the sides in a supposed imitation of flying buttresses, but they look more like the legs of a caterpillar. The interior ceiling is composed of chaoitic steel beams which at the lowest level do not visually connect with the supporting piers… I could go on and on.)
So the issue here isn’t that it is new, the issue is that it is architectually incompetent. The great new chapel at the great new center of learning is a multi-million dollar piece of architectural error and ignorance. Not really a good herald for a renewal of Catholic learning. We may not speak the way we spoke 100 years ago, but we still have rules of grammar and syntax and so does architecture. And this building breaks them all for no good effect. It is the very definition of a sort of shallow “billboard” mentality of “Catholic.” It is skin deep and ill considered (ie: placing a giant sculpture on the outside like a picture). In this case, doing something so badly that no one has ever done it before is indeed “new” but decidely not worthy of imitation.
Second: criticism of the building is not criticism of the motives of the university’s founder. His intentions are wonderful! Having a new Catholic university loyal to the inherited teaching of the Church is a *great* idea. The problem is that what should have been a flagship for how to do things right architecturally has instead become a sort of farce. That is just a big, big shame. What could have inspired a great renaissance in Catholic art and architecture instead is the laughing stock of Modernists and Classicists alike. In fact, I would argue that this building is worse than the LA Cathedral precisely because the LA cathedral has a certain consistent (though flawed) logic from a very talented, world class architect. The Ave Maria chapel is a pastiche of badly understood ideas which do not hold together at all by a local architect.
February 16, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Yeah, as much as I love structural steel, it has its place, and that isn’t it.
September 5, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Did the architect get permission from Fay Jones' office to borrow the Cooper design concept?