Creepy!

A “masterpiece” of new Catholic figurative art – the official “iconic image” for the 2015 World Meeting of Families blessed by Archbishop Chaput on September 7. I very much doubt this kind of art will raise the image of the “Conciliar Church” as a patron of art or attract anyone outside the ranks of the true believers (for whom aesthetic concerns are irrelevant anyway). But despite the ineptitude, is there not a weird quality about this painting? Is it because these very sad, immobile and unhappy figures don’t seem to be interacting or even looking at each other? Or is it because the adults, at least, are literal reproductions of some wildly incongruous models? This disconcerting, almost “surrealistic” atmosphere is found in other works by the master, Neilson Carlin – for example, the altarpieces at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse,Wisconsin.