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Can contemporary art say anything about spirituality? John Updike calls modern art "a religion assembled from the fragments of our daily life," but does that mean that contemporary art is spiritual? What might it mean to say that the art you make expresses your spiritual belief? On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art explores the curious disconnection between spirituality and current art. This book will enable you to walk into a museum and talk about the spirituality that is or is not visible in the art you see.
From a world-renowned painter, an exploration of creativity’s quintessential—and often overlooked—role in the spiritual life “Makoto Fujimura’s art and writings have been a true inspiration to me. In this luminous book, he addresses the question of art and faith and their reconciliation with a quiet and moving eloquence.”—Martin Scorsese “[An] elegant treatise . . . Fujimura’s sensitive, evocative theology will appeal to believers interested in the role religion can play in the creation of art.”—Publishers Weekly Conceived over thirty years of painting and creating in his studio, this book is Makoto Fujimura’s broad and deep exploration of creativity and the spiritual aspects of “making.” What he does in the studio is theological work as much as it is aesthetic work. In between pouring precious, pulverized minerals onto handmade paper to create the prismatic, refractive surfaces of his art, he comes into the quiet space in the studio, in a discipline of awareness, waiting, prayer, and praise. Ranging from the Bible to T. S. Eliot, and from Mark Rothko to Japanese Kintsugi technique, he shows how unless we are making something, we cannot know the depth of God’s being and God’s grace permeating our lives. This poignant and beautiful book offers the perspective of, in Christian Wiman’s words, “an accidental theologian,” one who comes to spiritual questions always through the prism of art.
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.
Is contemporary art a friend or foe of Christianity? Art historian, critic, and curator Daniel Siedell, addresses this question and presents a framework for interpreting art from a Christian worldview in God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art. As such, it is an excellent companion to Francis Schaeffer's classic Art and the Bible. Divided into three parts--"Theology," "History," and "Practice"--God in the Gallery demonstrates that art is in conversation with and not opposed to the Christian faith. In addition, this book is beautifully enhanced with images from such artists as Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Enrique Martínez Celaya, and others. Readers of this book will include professors, students, artists, and anyone interested in Christianity and culture.
In today's world we want everything to be clear, effective and instantaneous, a useless desire that, in addition, locks the human being into only appearance. Contemporary art, as a reflection of the concerns and needs of today's humanity demands attention, silence, reflection and a discerning eye. For this reason, it becoems a privileged platform for the encounter with Mystery, with a God who escapes all configurations or concepts. This function is what makes the work of the Dominican, Kim En Joong OP, an internationally recognised artist, so remarkbale. These pages deepen, from a novel theologhical perspewctive, the different elements that nmake up his work: colour, shape, light, composition ... a persoewctrive that guides us towards the contemplation of the Mystery that the painter shows us. A fascinating book, which is one and the same time accesible and a gift for all, believer or not, who feels the thirst for depth.
This book explores how four contemporary artists—Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Robert Gober, and Damien Hirst—pursue the question of death through their fraught appropriations of Christian imagery. Each artist is shown to not only pose provocative theological questions, but also to question the abilities of theological speech to adequately address current attitudes to death. When set within a broader theological context around the thought of death, Bacon’s works invite fresh readings of the New Testament’s narration of the betrayal of Christ, and Beuys’ works can be appreciated for the ways they evoke Resurrection to envision possible futures for Germany in the aftermath of war. Gober’s immaculate sculptures and installations serve to create alternative religious environments, and these places are both evocative of his Roman Catholic upbringing and virtually haunted by the ghosts of his excommunication from that past. Lastly and perhaps most problematically, Hirst has built his brand as an artist from making jokes about death. By opening fresh arenas of dialogue and meaning-making in our society and culture today, the rich humanity of these artworks promises both renewed depths of meaning regarding our exit from this world as well as how we might live well within it for the time that we have. As such, it will be a vital resource for all scholars in Theology, the Visual Arts, Material Religion and Religious Studies.
The first in the new Power Polemics series, Thomas Crow's No Idols: The Missing Theology of Art turns away from contemporary cultural theories to face a pervading blindspot in today's art-historical inquiry: religion. Crow pursues a perhaps unpopular notion of Christianity's continued presence in modern abstract art and in the process makes a case for art's own terrain of theology: one that eschews idolatry by means of abstraction. Tracking the original anti-idolatry controversy of the Jansenists, anchored in a humble still life by Chardin, No Idols sets the scene for the development of an art of reflection rather than representation, and divinity without doctrine. Crow's reinstatement of the metaphysical is made through the work of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon and American artists Mark Rothko, Robert Smithson, James Turrell, and Sister Mary Corita Kent. While a tightly selected group of artists, in their collective statute the author explores the proposal that spiritual art, as opposed to "a simulacrum of one," is conceivable for our own time.
Religion and spirituality are key aspects of the contemporary art scene. Following Ronald Barthes' 'death of the author' - which argued for the dissociation of work from creator - works of art have withdrawn as independent objects, giving way to a growing religious awareness or practice. 'Art and Theology' examines the connection between art and religion in ancient Jewish drama, Greek tragedy, the Renaissance, the Byzantine icon and the medieval cathedral. The book explores how art lost its sacred character in the late Middle Ages and how the current withdrawal or 'death' of art and the fusion of the limits of art and life are consistent with the medieval view of the religious icon.
Visual Art as Theology is a post-critical aesthetics for theology based on the epistemology of Michael Polanyi. This aesthetics is employed in examining Paul Tillich's philosophy of art. Polanyi's epistemology is extended into an aesthetics which moves beyond the impasse left by Tillich's work in art and theology. This book demonstrates an appreciation of the possibilities and problems of Tillich's thought, and moves beyond Tillich towards a more integrative program.
In 1970, Hans Rookmaaker published Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, a groundbreaking work that considered the role of the Christian artist in society. This volume responds to his work by bringing together a practicing artist and a theologian, who argue that modernist art is underwritten by deeply religious concerns.