Religious Art and the Artiste

My friend—well, maybe not friend, exactly, since we’ve never met, but, anyway, Mark Shea, a guy I’ve exchanged emails with, is invading Icons & Curiosities territory and (may harpies claw away his sandals and make a painful snack of toes) doing it better than I can.

Noting this church window in Paris:

he writes:

You are looking at what some Artiste says is the sacrament of reconciliation. Can’t see it? That’s because you’re stupid, of course, not because the Artiste is a bad Artiste. . . .

The idea is that the Artiste and a small coterie of self-congratulating elitists should be able to laugh at the stupidity of the masses for not understanding the impenetrable and ugly crap that they palm off as art. They have cast down the humble in their weakness and lifted up the proud and arrogant. They fill the rich with good things and the hungry they send away empty. They shall not lose their reward.