Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts


Book Description

Re-working the Bible beyond symbolic expression -- Re-shaping institutional and historical cross-currents -- Re-discovering the church space in liturgy, performance, and installation.




Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts


Book Description

This volume explores how the visual arts are presenting and responding to Christian theology and demonstrates how modern and contemporary artists and artworks have actively engaged in conversation with Christianity. Modern intellectual enquiry has often been reluctant to engage theology as an enriching or useful form of visual analysis, but critics are increasingly revisiting religious narratives and Christian thought in pursuit of understanding our present-day visual culture. In this book an international group of contributors demonstrate how theology is often implicit within artworks and how, regardless of a viewer’s personal faith, it can become implicit in a viewer’s visual encounter. Their observations include deliberate juxtaposition of Christian symbols, imaginative play with theologies, the validation of non-confessional or secular public engagement, and inversions of biblical interpretation. Case studies such as an interactive Easter, glow-sticks as sacrament, and visualisation of the Bible’s polyphonic voices enrich this discussion. Together, they call for a greater interpretative generosity and more nuance around theology’s cultural contexts in the modern era. By engaging with theology, culture, and the visual art, this collection offers a fresh lens through which to see the interaction of religion and art. As such, it will be of great use to those working in Religion and the Arts, Visual Art, Material Religion, Theology, Aesthetics, and Cultural Studies.




Visual Theology


Book Description

At least since the time of Paul (see Acts 18), Christians have wrestled with the power and danger of religious imagery in the visual arts. It was not until the middle of the twentieth century that there emerged in Western Christianity an integrated, academic study of theology and the arts. Here, one of the pioneers of that movement, H. Wilson Yates, along with fourteen theologians, examine how visual culture reflects or addresses pressing contemporary religious questions. The aim throughout is to engage the reader in theological reflection, mediated and enhanced by the arts. This beautifully illustrated book includes more than fifty images in full color.




John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination


Book Description

This volume presents a collection of essays by leading experts which examine nineteenth century ideas about Christian theology, art, architecture, restoration, and curatorial practice. The volume unveils the importance of John Ruskin’s writing for today’s audience, and allies it with the dynamism of the Pre-Raphaelite religious imagination. Ruskin’s drawings and daguerreotypes, as well as Pre-Raphaelite paintings, stained glass, and engravings, are shown to be alive with visual theology: artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and Evelyn de Morgan illuminate aspects of faith and aesthetics. The interdisciplinary nature of this volume encourages reflection upon praise, truth, and beauty. The aesthetic conversations between Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites themselves become a form of ‘sacra conversazione’.




A Theology of Artistic Sensibilities


Book Description

For most of history, argues John Dillenberger, the visual arts were, for better or worse, part of the very fabric of the life and thought of the church. But with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation a major change took place. Protestant rejection of the visual was matched in Roman Catholicism by the reduction of its formative power. While the visual arts dropped out of the lives of Protestant churches, they became a memory rather than a source of ennoblement or power in the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, in different but allied ways, Protestants and Catholics lost the power of the visual. Part art history, part historical theology, and part theological reflection, this book is both an argument and a program for the recovery of the visual arts in the life of the church, for reclaiming seeing as part of religious perception. It offers a theological understanding of the visual and provides a basis upon which the visual arts may again be incorporated into Protestantism and reinvigorated in Roman Catholicism. The first part is devoted to historical reconstruction, exploring those moments in Western history in which the relation between religion and the arts was in ferment. Part 2 is given to contemporary delineation and analysis: of spiritual perceptions in modern American painting and sculpture, of modern church art and architecture, and of the changing views of contemporary theologians toward the visual arts. Citing David Tracy, Karl Rahner, Langdon Gilkey, and others as examples, Dillenberger argues that contemporary theology is moving away from the modern rationalistic understanding of theological analogy to one far closer to the arts. Part 3 is constructive, developing a theological perspective that demands and includes the visual arts, and suggesting ways in which this can be accomplished in pastoral and theological education. The world of art, says Professor Dillenberger, is more aware of the role of religion in the arts than the world of religion is of art. Thus it is time for the church to resume its historic association with the visual arts, albeit in analogous rather than repristinating ways.




Transformations in Persons and Paint


Book Description

How can pictures help people to relate to God, and what can historical Christian images offer the viewer today? A compelling theological encounter between Renaissance frescoes and the modern viewer. Transformations in Persons and Paint looks at images from the viewer's position, standing in a series of Florentine chapels, surrounded by frescoes, and discovering their powerful capacity to communicate what it means to live in a post-Resurrection world. Proving that there is still plenty to say about works by Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, Masolino, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, and Ghirlandaio, this book uncovers previously overlooked theological content, and demonstrates the rewards of attentive interaction between a modern viewer and historical images. Within the growing body of work on theology and the arts, this is a rare example of what can happen when a theological gaze is turned towards some of the classics in the canon of Christian art, while speaking directly to the modern viewer. Chloe Reddaway offers a new model of theological viewing, inhabiting both period and modern perspectives, and reinvigorating our understanding of the incarnational nature of Christian art by taking account of the particular physicality of images, especially as it is experienced through sacred space within and around them. Through close and imaginative encounters with images, a series of critical-devotional interpretations transforms beautiful artefacts into living explorations of the Incarnation and its consequences, the transformation and transfiguration that it enables, the particularity and interconnectedness of the created world, the generative capacity of liminal and (apparently) empty spaces, and the nature of vocation and conformity to Christ.




Contemplative Vision


Book Description

Docent Juliet Benner began showing people how to meditate on Christian art treasures, which led to her much-beloved "O Taste and See" columns from the spiritual formation journal Conversations, now expanded into this book. In each chapter you'll encounter a passage of Scripture and a corresponding piece of art to lead you in a new experience of prayer in God's presence.




Discovering God Through the Arts


Book Description

What does art have to do with faith? For many Christians, paintings, films, music, and other forms of art are simply used for wall decoration, entertaining distraction, or worshipful devotion. But what if the arts played a more prominent role in the Christian life? In Discovering God through the Arts, discover how the arts can be tools for faith-building, life-changing spiritual formation for all Christians. Terry Glaspey, author of 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know, examines: How the arts assist us in prayer and contemplation How the arts help us rediscover a sense of wonder How the arts help us deal with emotions How the arts aid theological reflection and so much more. Let your faith be enriched, and discover how beauty and creativity can draw you nearer to the ultimate Creator.




Judaism and Christian Art


Book Description

Christian cultures across the centuries have invoked Judaism in order to debate, represent, and contain the dangers presented by the sensual nature of art. By engaging Judaism, both real and imagined, they explored and expanded the perils and possibilities for Christian representation of the material world. The thirteen essays in Judaism and Christian Art reveal that Christian art has always defined itself through the figures of Judaism that it produces. From its beginnings, Christianity confronted a host of questions about visual representation. Should Christians make art, or does attention to the beautiful works of human hands constitute a misplaced emphasis on the things of this world or, worse, a form of idolatry ("Thou shalt make no graven image")? And if art is allowed, upon what styles, motifs, and symbols should it draw? Christian artists, theologians, and philosophers answered these questions and many others by thinking about and representing the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. This volume is the first dedicated to the long history, from the catacombs to colonialism but with special emphasis on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, of the ways in which Christian art deployed cohorts of "Jews"—more figurative than real—in order to conquer, defend, and explore its own territory.




Understanding Early Christian Art


Book Description

Understanding Early Christian Art is designed for students of both religion and of art history. It makes the critical tools of art historians accessible to students of religion, to help them understand better the visual representations of Christianity. It will also aid art historians in comprehending the complex theology, history and context of Christian art. This interdisciplinary and boundary-breaking approach will enable students in several fields to further their understanding and knowledge of the art of the early Christian era. Understanding Early Christian Art contains over fifty images with parallel text.