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and in the dazzling apotheosis offhhe Sun King. That which is reborn must die in a more fearful way than that which is only born. Consider the Rococo decorations in a Hussite Church in Seldes, Austria, where thousands of skulls and bones are festooned over the altar. Another such amazing effect also occurs under the Church of S. Maria of the Conception in the subterranean cemetery of the Capuchin monks in Rome. Says Nathaniel Hawthorne about the cemetery in The Marble Farm, "There is no disagreeable scent, such as might have been expected from the decay of so many holy persons, in whatever odor of sanctity they may have taken their departure. The same number of living monks would not smell half so unexceptionably." This kind of sly moralism is at the heart of much American art both "abstract" and "realistic". There's nothing more invincible than an American Protestant in Rome. Said the Holy Origen, "Only sinners celebrate birthdays."
All dimensions must be exorcized by a visual mortification of the eyes before iconographic vision can be experienced. The Fourth Dimension is simply the ruins of the Third Dimension. Until these ruins are viewed with detachment, the artist will wander from his art on the currents of duration among boring worldly sins which are then cultivated into existential ideas, rather than exorcized. Dehumanized voices put off intensity while claiming humanity. Paradox reverberates against paradox, till the Ghost is given up. Contradiction presents no problems after the Iconographic Annunciation, yet this makes the burden that comes of the worldling's chatter about this object and that non-object. Art was never objectified during the Ages of Faith; art was an "act" of worship. Icons should never be "looked" at like