Art: The Salon & the Industry

A longtime bane of French Catholic churches, known as industrie de St.-Sulpice, is on the way out. The industry: mass production of plaster images of the saints, which look like refugees from a candy factory. For decades, they have been sold in great quantities by the supply stores that ring the church of St.-Sulpice in Paris' Latin Quarter. The figures invariably have red and blue garments with gold and silver borders, and piously uptilted blue or brown eyes. As decoration they may be innocuous, but as objects of veneration they are absurd.

Now, under the pressure of an aroused clergy, French churches are being stripped of such junk, and the St.-Sulpice stores are desperately looking for better wares. To help fill the gap, an earnest group of young painters and sculptors was staging a "Salon of Sacred Art" in Paris last week.

On display were photos and models of recently built churches (more than 800 French churches were destroyed or damaged in World War II), stained glass, chalices, monstrances and vestments, and paintings and statues which ranged from the representational to the altogether abstract. Perhaps the most impressive of the lot was an austere Crucifix by Ponomarew Szekely, in which Christ was symbolized by no more than an abstract pattern carved into, and subtly complementing, the face of the Cross. But the majority of the works on exhibition proved to be as dour as St.-Sulpice was sweet. In struggling to be different, the contributing artists succeeded mainly in seeming strange.