Catholic Church Conservation plays "What it is?" My first thought was a fancy tootsie pop. My second thought was that they were setting up the ball sport played in Battlestar Galactica.
What is it
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"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." GKC
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It is technically a tetragammadion turned inside out – that is, a swastika under a polar transform where r’=1/r. Here’s a bit of GKC on such matters:
…the Wheel of Buddha generally called the Swastika. The cross is a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions; but the Swastika is the same thing in the very act of returning to the recurrent curve. That crooked cross is in fact a cross turning into a wheel. Before we dismiss even these symbols as if they were arbitrary symbols, we must remember how intense was the imaginative instinct that produced them or selected them both in the East and the West. The cross has become something more than a historical memory; it does convey, almost as by a mathematical diagram, the truth about the real point at issue; the idea of a conflict stretching outwards into eternity. It is true, and even tautological, to say that the cross is the crux of the whole matter.
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:266]
Significantly, there’s no room on that “cross” for Christ.
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When will artists learn that weird art does not inspire? Can you even begin to compare this with an Irish Celtic Cross or the papal crucifix?
Ugly. Just plain ugly.
I hope the artist didn’t get paid out of the collection plate.
An illustration of DoctorThursday’s mathematical analysis: http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y173/Tolkien1138/Miscellaneous/compare.jpg
Maybe they’re trying to tell us the portal in the background leads to Shamballa? Or Vega maybe?
Wow, it really took me a minute to get that that was supposed to be a cross of any kind.
It seems to me that the trouble is that modern art as it is actually practiced by modern artists is all but worthless to sacred art. The esotericism that runs rampant in it makes it more suitable for gnosticism if anything.
You know the kind of artist who considers it an advantage that the masses don’t get his art? Of course there are these in every age, and even some great ones. But modern art seems to take this to an extreme. Often it is like if a stand-up comedian told a half-hour of inside jokes comprehensible only to his circle of friends and then congratulated himself on his superior sense of humor. Unfortunately, this is easy to do, so that virtually anyone can convince himself of his artistic superiority if he is determined enough.
You can tell that the designer of that piece put his own personal taste in color and line in the chief place over and above Christian symbolism. For non-sacred art, modern somewhat influenced by Christianity could be a good thing, but it is thin gruel for sacred art.
(A side thought – could the thinking behind this be to try to get the attention of people who are so conditioned by cultural anti-Christianity so as to take offense at unabashedly Christian symbols? I am not fond of that approach in sacred matters because it makes it look as though you find Christianity embarrassing or inconvenient.)
I propose that the best art, and that is most suitable for sacred art, has a level of meaning that is accessible to those with at least a modicum of familiarity with the community, and then more that are accessible to the more knowledgeable or initiated. The Bible is perhaps the greatest example of this.