Modern Missionary

In Philadelphia last week, the Pennsylvania Academy welcomed the city to its 148th annual art exhibition and handed out kudos for the best work in the show. The prize for the top painting went to an old & familiar name, Abstract Muralist Rico Lebrun, for a panel from his dark and angry Crucifixion (TIME, March 19, 1951). But the top sculpture winner was a surprise: a Roman Catholic priest who teaches art at Notre Dame.

Father Anthony J. Lauck, 43, presented a statue as simple and serene as Painter Lebrun's canvas was noisy. It was a semi-abstract study of a Monk at Prayer, showing hands clasped and face upraised, chiseled out of rough grey limestone. Sculptor Lauck took several months to turn it out; his other duties keep him from working full-time with hammer & chisel. But he has been chipping away, off & on, for 20 years, and he has studied with such famed sculptors as Ivan Mestrovic and Carl Milles. Today Lauck exhibits his peaceful religious statues from time to time, but mostly he contents himself with teaching Notre Dame students.

One of his personal convictions: the best modern art is just about as good as any the world has known. And he wishes U.S. artists would discard their inferiority complexes. "If an artist is from Europe." he says, "we in America immediately think he is superior. I have visited Rome, Brussels and Paris, and I think our American modern art has more vigor and fire and life to it." How would he go about helping U.S. painters and sculptors? "Ah,." says Father Lauck, with a missionary gleam, "It's a pity not more American artists are doing religious subjects. The sponsor of so much great art in past centuries has been the Church. It could be again."

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