cogito ergo imago
Switzerland Ste Gallens
Switzerland's churches are very much under-rated in my opinion. The pleasure of entering one of these superb interiors - and it was this that the designers clearly intended - can't be conveyed by words or even pictures (*), it can only be communicated by experience. I'm not a christian, I'm not here advocating anything other than the appreciation of some of the finest interiors anywhere.
But I have wondered, as I look at some of these, why they are almost unknown. Here's a list:
1. They're too perfect.
And they're sparklingly pristine. And cared for. Perhaps they lack the patina of age and neglect that we sometimes insensibly require before we accord old world architecture classic status
2. They're in Switzerland.
This country has suffered a fairly relentless and thorough and fairly successful negative PR campaign over the last few years.
3. They're Baroque.
Almost Rococo. The over-the-top persona of this degree of decoration is out of synch with the grunge / Saatchi mode of so-last-week culkture. Similar to the first thought, but regarding unacceptably skilled art-form rather than unacceptably skilled maintenance.
4. I'm wrong, they're really not very good.
No, impossible. It must be one of the other explanations.
(*) Especially because photography is verboten in many of them.
Switzerland Ste Gallens
Switzerland's churches are very much under-rated in my opinion. The pleasure of entering one of these superb interiors - and it was this that the designers clearly intended - can't be conveyed by words or even pictures (*), it can only be communicated by experience. I'm not a christian, I'm not here advocating anything other than the appreciation of some of the finest interiors anywhere.
But I have wondered, as I look at some of these, why they are almost unknown. Here's a list:
1. They're too perfect.
And they're sparklingly pristine. And cared for. Perhaps they lack the patina of age and neglect that we sometimes insensibly require before we accord old world architecture classic status
2. They're in Switzerland.
This country has suffered a fairly relentless and thorough and fairly successful negative PR campaign over the last few years.
3. They're Baroque.
Almost Rococo. The over-the-top persona of this degree of decoration is out of synch with the grunge / Saatchi mode of so-last-week culkture. Similar to the first thought, but regarding unacceptably skilled art-form rather than unacceptably skilled maintenance.
4. I'm wrong, they're really not very good.
No, impossible. It must be one of the other explanations.
(*) Especially because photography is verboten in many of them.