You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
When God died, art was born. With Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, the human imagination began to be remade. In Bezalel’s Body: The Death of God and the Birth of Art, Harvard-trained art historian Katie Kresser locates the historical roots of the thing we call art. She weaves together centuries of art history, philosophy, theology, psychology, and art theory to uncover the deep spiritual foundations of this cultural form. Why do some people pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a single painting? Why are art museums almost like modern temples? The answer lies in Christian theology and the earliest forms of Christian image making. By examining how cutting-edge art trends reveal age-old spiritual dynamics, Kresser helps recover an ancient tradition with vital relevance for today.
When God died, art was born. With Christ's crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, the human imagination began to be remade. In Bezalel's Body: The Death of God and the Birth of Art, Harvard-trained art historian Katie Kresser locates the historical roots of the thing we call art. She weaves together centuries of art history, philosophy, theology, psychology, and art theory to uncover the deep spiritual foundations of this cultural form. Why do some people pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a single painting? Why are art museums almost like modern temples? The answer lies in Christian theology and the earliest forms of Christian image making. By examining how cutting-edge art trends reveal age-old spiritual dynamics, Kresser helps recover an ancient tradition with vital relevance for today.
The Art and Thought of John La Farge: Picturing Authenticity in Gilded Age America offers an unprecedented portrait of one of the most celebrated artists of the Gilded Age and opens a window onto nineteenth-century American culture. The book reveals how the work of John La Farge contributed to a rich philosophical dialogue concerning the trustworthiness of human perception. In his struggle against a 'common truth' of iconic symbols presented by a new mass visual culture, La Farge developed a subversive approach to visual representation that focused attention not on the artwork itself, but on the complex, real encounter of artist, subject and medium from which the artwork came. Katie Kresser ...
Religion and Contemporary Art sets the theoretical frameworks and interpretive strategies for exploring the re-emergence of religion in the making, exhibiting, and discussion of contemporary art. Featuring essays from both established and emerging scholars, critics, and artists, the book reflects on what might be termed an "accord" between contemporary art and religion. It explores the common strategies contemporary artists employ in the interface between religion and contemporary art practice. It also includes case studies to provide more in-depth treatments of specific artists grappling with themes such as ritual, abstraction, mythology, the body, popular culture, science, liturgy, and social justice, among other themes. It is a must-read resource for working artists, critics, and scholars in this field, and an invitation to new voices "curious" about its promises and possibilities.
The church and the contemporary art world often find themselves in an uneasy relationship in which misunderstanding and mistrust abound. Drawn from the 2015 biennial CIVA conference, these reflections from theologians, pastors, and practicing artists imagine the possibility of a renewed and mutually fruitful relationship between contemporary art and the church.
Late Victorian Orientalism is a work of scholarly research pushing forward disciplines into new areas of enquiry. This collection of essays tries to redefine the task of interpreting the East in the nineteenth century taking as a starting point Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) in order to investigate the visual, fantasised, and imperialist representations of the East as well as the most exemplary translations of Oriental texts. The Victorians envisioned the East in many different modes or Orientalisms since as Said suggested ‘[t]here were, perhaps, as many Orientalisms as Orientalists’. By combining together Western and Oriental modes of art, this study is not only aimed at filling a gap in Victorian and Oriental studies but also at broadening the audiences it is intended for.
What role does place play in the Christian life? In this STA volume, Jennifer Allen Craft gives a practical theology of the arts, contending that the arts place us in time, space, and community in ways that encourage us to be fully and imaginatively present in a variety of contexts: the natural world, our homes, our worshiping communities, and society.
Discover anew the life and influence of Henry James, part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies series. In The Life of Henry James: A Critical Biography, Peter Collister, an established critic and authority on Henry James, offers an original and fully documented account of one of America’s finest writers, who was both a creative practitioner and theorist of the novel. In this volume, James’s life in all its personal and cultural richness is examined alongside a detailed scrutiny of his fiction, essays, biographies, autobiographies, travel writing, plays and reviews. James was a dedicated and brilliant letter-writer and his biographer make judicious use of this material, s...
The Other Journal's first print edition focuses on the role of celebrity in North American culture--its phenomena, its significance, its utility. The articles illuminate different facets of celebrity culture through multiple vantage points and methodologies.Ê This issue features articles, art exhibits, and interviews by such prominent thinkers as Graham Ward, Carl Raschke, James K. A. Smith, James Davison Hunter, Brian McLaren, Luci Shaw, Gary Dorrien, and many others. Essays and reviews by Ruth Adams, Paul Jaussen, Katie Kresser, James K. A. Smith, Brad Elliott Stone, Gary David Stratton, Kj Swanson, John Totten, and Graham Ward Interviews by Allison Backous, David Horstkoetter, Chris Keller, Tom Ryan, James K. A. Smith, and Heather Smith Stringer with Gary Dorrien, Ron Hansen, James Davison Hunter, Brian McLaren, Carl Raschke, and the Opiate Mass Creative writing and poetry by Daniel Bowman, Jr., Joel Heng Hartse, Luci Shaw, and Schuy R. Weishaar
An intimate, authoritative history of the first black soldiers to fight in the Union Army during the Civil War Soon after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, abolitionists began to call for the creation of black regiments. At first, the South and most of the North responded with outrage-southerners promised to execute any black soldiers captured in battle, while many northerners claimed that blacks lacked the necessary courage. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, long the center of abolitionist fervor, launched one of the greatest experiments in American history. In Thunder at the Gates, Douglas Egerton chronicles the formation and battlefield triumphs of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry and the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry-regiments led by whites but composed of black men born free or into slavery. He argues that the most important battles of all were won on the field of public opinion, for in fighting with distinction the regiments realized the long-derided idea of full and equal citizenship for blacks. A stirring evocation of this transformative episode, Thunder at the Gates offers a riveting new perspective on the Civil War and its legacy.