Dealing with the "Art" of Father Marco Rupnik

By Joe Tevington

02/18/2024 • View profile

Dealing with the "Art" of Father Marco Rupnik

Dr. Elizabeth Lev has authored two wonderful books, to aid our understanding and appreciation of sacred art:

Dr Lev was a guest on Raymond Arroyo's 2/15/24 The World Over to discuss the situation of Father Marco Rupnik and his "art." While Dr Lev cautioned against the removal of the art, Raymond Arroyo suggested that the art was inferior and should never have been so celebrated:

I drew crap like this....When I was like eight years old....I mean, they're stick figures

Hillary White would agree with Raymond Arroyo and go much further in criticizing Rupnik's work:

To understand the transgressive, subversive nature of Fr. Rupnik’s work, it’s necessary to understand the style he is parodying. Most people with normal minds look at these mosaics and have a vague sense of wrongness and unease. They are clearly intended to look like ancient Byzantine art, but it’s off, anti-true, somehow....[Rupnik's art] takes the extreme precision and rationality of Byzantine Christian art and creates chaos with it, visual gibberish. Its style, by imitating children’s scribbles, implies that the Christian things it depicts are silly, imprecise and ultimately irrelevant nonsense, stories fit only for children. Rupnik’s art is deliberately subversive of its source material, anti-rational and anti-mathematical (Hillary White, 8/9/23)

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About the Author

Joe Tevington

Joe Tevington is a proudly orthodox Catholic, a husband since 1986, a dad to two adult children, a grandpa to two, and a civil service retiree. He is a sign language fluent certified rehabilitation counselor with graduate degrees in deafness rehabilitation, religious studies/moral theology, & Christian counseling psychology, as well as a catechetical diploma and certificates in benefits planning and Catholic social ministry. He deeply appreciates Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life, as well as how they are to inform us in our apostolates and ministries.

On much lighter notes, he fancies himself to be the foremost authority on his native Brooklyn, when it comes to architecture, cinema, geography, history, Italian food, stick ball, stoop ball, or wiffle ball.

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