A Living Church Art

In England, and in most English-speaking countries, we are still bound fast by convention to styles of ecclesiastical art which have long since ceased to live. We are struggling to be free, but we can only think in terms of Classic or Gothic. If we only dared, some of us might build a church in the style of an Egyptian temple; but that also would be a revival. Rather than be deprived of our Gothic arch we prefer to sling it from the ferro-concrete roof. There is nothing new, no development from the past into the terms of the modern. It must all be copied. We can build beautiful factories and cinemas, but we can hardly produce one pleasing statue of a religious character.In this state of decrepitude it is of great assistance to look to our contemporary ecclesiastical artists abroad. In Italy, Germany and Holland a modern style has developed since the War. It has not broken with the past, but in the true living tradition it is not interested in copying. An English visitor in Holland, for example, will be amazed at the modern architecture which he there finds flourishing. He has become accustomed to entering a new church and finding a Perpendicular, Romanesque or Gothic building in stone or brick covered with plaster. He expects to see lifelike statues in gaudy colours, and windows trying to look as though they were not windows at all, but sentimental pictures in stone frames. In Holland it is different. The material, being the material of the country, is nearly always the same beautiful Dutch brick in its various shades of warm brown

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