What's wrong with most Catholic statuary

We've recently gotten a new family altar, which in turn has prompted me to look around for some new statuary that would be a better size for the new altar.  My impression from this search, alas, has been of a sea of crap with very few stand-out good items and nothing that I really want to buy.

So I thought that I would analyze and describe what it is about all the Catholic statuary that I don't like.  Maybe someone who reads this can then point me in the direction of truly good items?

My dislike of what I'm seeing on the marketplace can be boiled down to a few distinct kinds of problems:

Cheapness

I'm lumping several defects together into this category that might not seem related at first.  In my mind, what they all have in common is that they offend the primary status that sacred objects should have.  Holiness is how we are related to our first end: that which is, or should be, of primary and utmost importance in our lives.  To be satisfied with that which is badly done or second rate is incongruous with this fact.

I'd like to identify three separate types of "cheapness" here that all offend me:

Cheapness of Craft, aka poor quality art:

This is the most obvious kind and easy to find.  Here's an example:

Made with all the care and attention of a G.I. Joe action figure!  Comes with bonus pious superstition!  Crappy crayola paint job sold separately.

It's just a really cheap, plasticky . . . thing.  Granted, it's meant to be buried head-down, but still, it's not unrepresentative of so much that's out there.

Also very common to find are very sloppy coloring jobs.  I think I can say that *most* sacred statuary looks like it just stepped out of a child's coloring book.

Cheapness of Color

I put this in a separate category because it afflicts even expensive or very carefully made items.  What do I mean here by "cheapness" with respect to color?  Objectively, what I mean is colors that do not convey a sense of solidity, reverence, transcendence, royalty, or divinity.  Subjectively, for me this means mostly pastels.  I love blood reds, deep midnight blues, solid mahogany browns, and so forth.  Most of the "antique" statues I run into, unfortunately, as well as pretty much all of the old holy cards I see run into the "pastel" problem.

Cheapness of Emotion

All statues are supposed to raise our hearts and mind to God.  So many of them, though, try to do so via the cheapest of emotions: evoking sentimentality, not serenity or solemnity.

When I will need the emotional aid of Catholic art on my family altar the most is in the difficult times.  When my wife dies, or if I lose my job, or for whatever reason my life is falling apart and I'm on my knees and begging for help, I don't want to look up into the face of an image of Our Lady with some Pollyanna, sweet, girlish smile.  I will want the face of the Woman who fought alongside her Son against Satan at the foot of the Cross, who crushed his head beneath her feet when she held her broken and bloodied Son in her arms on Calvary and then laid Him in His tomb, and who now beholds the face of God in unsullied glory for all eternity.  That is the woman for whom no burden I might now or ever bring to her would be too much.  Not . . . whatever this is:

"Poor sweetie . . . here, have an Immaculate Heart-shaped lollipop, it will cheer you up!"

Excessive Humanism

Now we come to a different type of criticism, because what I'm criticizing here isn't something I dislike per se; it's something I dislike in the specific context of an altar piece.  There are different ways to portray saints that are along an axis (call it the historical/theological axis), where one end of the axis emphasizes the humanity of the saint as a real historical person and the other end of the axis emphasizes the royalty and divinity of the internal grace within the saint.  The books of the Bible themselves can also be categorized along this axis.

For an altar piece, I think a theological image is more appropriate.  I don't have anything against more humanistic pieces, such as this:

Actually not the best thing Fontanini has done, but you get the idea.  The poses are what really convey the sense of ordinary reality and the "precious moments" of daily life. Nice.  Not sacred.

In fact I like the Fontanini stuff and I think it's very appropriate for a Nativity set, which is why in fact we have a Fontanini Nativity.  It is, however, not my idea of sacred statuary, whereas many statues of this style are being sold as such.

In contrast, I would ask of my statuary that they portray the saints as being otherworldly.  On a fundamental level, grace is not natural to human beings, and receiving grace elevates us beyond the level of this world.  Something about a statue that portrays a saint as an individual in whom the Blessed Trinity dwells should reflect that; it should evoke the supernatural or at least the heroic.

Excess Wealth

Here I am going to depart from many of my Catholic contemporaries.  I think a lot of other Catholics could read the above criticisms and nod their heads in agreement.  And I think a lot of them might say something like, "Icons!  You're describing icons as what you like.  Rich colors, gold trim, faces intentionally imbued with profundity, and aimed at deep theological contemplation."

Yeah, but . . . unfortunately, I dislike pretty much all Eastern iconography.

Why?  Well, partially this is just a preference thing that may not completely explainable. But I do have some reasons as well that I think are objective and that I can articulate.

First of all, I dislike what I consider to be an objective lack of skill in Eastern iconography.  I know that the flat, two-dimensional style in Eastern icons is defended as having an intrinsic theological meaning of some sort, deeply steeped in tradition, etc.  The problem is that I think what is really the truth is that Byzantine icons retain a painting method from a particular time period (secular paintings from that period, after all, have basically the same style of human portrayal, thus disproving the idea that this style was somehow intentionally theological originally).  Furthermore, this style of painting is objectively less skilled at portraying humans than the levels to which Baroque and Renaissance artists attained in the West.  So I cannot see these styles of paintings as anything other than second rate in some sense, thus subjecting them all to my first criticism.

But I think a reason that impacts me even more than this is what I perceive of as the fussiness of the Byzantine style.  You can get icons that have only a face or a scene, but they are rare to find.  Instead, what you frequently get is a face, plus text, plus some corner scenes, plus a very elaborate gold gild of some sort, etc.  I feel that aesthetically, most Byzantine art falls into the opposite error compared to the "cheap" art I complained about above.  It's not at all cheap, but it is wealthy.  It overflows with bits and bobs intending to convey value and status.  Pretty much every collection of icons I've ever seen with more than, say, two icons in it has deserved to be called "sacred bling".

This sort of thing culminates in such scenes as this, the iconostasis of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem:

Also known as the "Basilica of Holy Sensory Overload", I believe.

which some people think is wonderful, but I find hideous.  I can't help but look at that image and think of Mr. T--but of the two, I find Mr. T more tasteful.

"Be attentive to THIS, fool!"

Conclusion

So there you go: those are my problems with Catholic sacred art that's available for the home.  Have I found anything good, given all these problems?  Well, really not much at all.  What good I have found has been bedeviled by other problems, such as sizes not matching my needs or the style of a Mary not matching that of a Joseph.  I want to include at least one statue that does meet my criteria, at least to a certain extent.  Here's a statue of St. Michael I think is quite nice actually: not perfect, but good.  If I could find a whole set of statues in that style, I would get it:

"But what about the cartoonish Satan?"  "Yeah, maybe not the best, but it's being *stabbed by a sword*, so it's symbolic of my frustration with bad art. Win, win."