Jonathan Pageau: What Modern Art Got Wrong
Video from Theopolis
Jonathan Pageau: What Modern Art Got Wrong
"In this first Theopolis podcast, Jonathan Pageau joins I.J. Makan for a conversation on the Christian imagination, modern art, beauty, AI, liturgy, and the deeper purpose of human creativity. Pageau challenges the modern tendency to reduce art to entertainment or cultural production, and asks what it would mean to recover art as something ordered toward purpose, participation, and the good.
This conversation was recorded ahead of the inaugural Gaudí Lecture in Toronto.
Jonathan Pageau on The Christian Imagination and the Question of Autonomous Art
October 24, 2026 · 2–4 PM · University of Toronto" from the videop introduction
Timestamps
00:30 - Theopolis and the purpose of the Gaudi Lecture
01:46 - Introducing Jonathan Pageau and the Christian imagination
02:09 - What the Christian imagination is and how it shapes values
04:07 - Why AI is the defining question for imagination today
06:20 - Mechanical reproduction, liturgical art, and handmade value
08:37 - How Pageau actually uses AI in editing, not creation
11:17 - Why AI cannot have insight or lived experience
13:17 - What is lost when Christians abandon aesthetic tradition
17:06 - How modern art contributed to social breakdown and fragmentation
20:20 - When critique and irony belong in art, and when they do not
23:04 - Whether a Christian artistic renewal is already underway
24:42 - Why this recovery is a revolution in what art is for
27:03 - Participation, celebration, and the social foundation of art
29:29 - Why most recent Christian movies miss the mark
30:39 - A broad definition of art and where Christian art begins
32:02 - Liturgical art as the top of the cultural hierarchy
33:57 - Why artists, clergy, and intellectuals all matter
35:18 - The loss of sacred space in Protestant and Catholic contexts
36:43 - Avoiding nostalgia and pastiche in traditional art
38:05 - Why liturgical art must serve its place and function
40:02 - Harmony, proportion, and the limits of shock
41:00 - Why beauty is not wasted money compared with charity
43:37 - Christian charity, local responsibility, and the poor
45:27 - Practical steps for beautifying church, home, and artistic formation
47:06 - Closing remarks and the upcoming Toronto lecture
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