UGLINESS IN CHURCHES

Evening Star, Issue 20538, 17 July 1930, Page 2

UGLINESS IN CHURCHES

SINS AGAINST BEAUTY Although the movement that began with Ruskin, vyiliiam Morris and others in creatine a conscience in matters of art still grew in strength, the mixes which made for ugliness were still powerful, the Bishop of Southwark Ur Garnett said in an address last mouth. Commercialism was de stroying the countryside with jerry-built bungalows, with blatantly vulgar petrol stations, with monstrous advertisements, 'the demand for swift traffic had ruined hundreds of wooded lanes and turned them into broad and featureless roadways. Local aumorities still felt it quite natural • that one of the fairest stretches of the Thames bank should bo suggested as a ' suitable site for a sewage farm. The church had an unrivalled opportunity of taking the, lead in setting a high standard of artistic excellence. Zealous but ill-instructed restorers had sometimes worked more fatal havoc than tho deliberate iconoclast. The interim’s of some of the best of their churches were damaged, sometimes halfruined. by tasteless colour and inartistic ornament® and furniture. Clumsy and heavy reredoses, garish tiles and carpets, pretentious pulpits and ridiculous lecterns, hangings and curtains drab in colour, stamped by machine-made ecclesiastical designs, windows with insipid and unreal_ figures, colours on tho walls and floors which were in violent discord, cheap and conventional vases and lamps were found in many churches and made persistent progress aga-nst the worship of God in beauty as well as in holiness. For their sins against beauty they should sometimes have litanies of penitence.