The Ethos of Liturgical Art
and the Aesthetics of Orthodox Bells
 |
This eucharistic use of the world certainly does not preclude technology; on the contrary, art always requires technical skill.
But what is said of Gothic architecture can also be said of Western-style bells: This paradigmatically Western style represents the subjugation of matter to the human intellect.
"In a Gothic building, the craftsman is not concerned with the inner principle of the building material; his aim is not to study this inner principle, to coordinate and reconcile it with the inner principle of his own creative will, bringing out the material's potentiality to embody, the personal activation of the principle in created things. On the contrary, he subjugates the material to given forms, squaring off the stone and doing violence to its static balance, so as to fulfil the ideological aim envisaged by the construction. This ideological aim is externally and arbitrarily set; it bears no relation to the study of the material and the struggle of construction. It is an objectified knowledge which the craftsman simply takes up in his work in order to analyse it into particular notions." (Yannaras)