Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts

Ben Quash, Chloë Reddaway (eds)

Pages: 330 p.
Size:225 x 300 mm
Illustrations:78 col.

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2024

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ISBN: 978-2-503-60712-2
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From Pablo Picasso to Kent Monkman and Paul Cézanne to Cornelia Parker, how does modern and contemporary visual art coexist with, counter, illuminate, and serve Christianity?

Subject(s)

BIO

Ben Quash is Professor of Christianity and the Arts, and Director of the Centre for Arts & the Sacred at King's College London, and The Visual Commentary on Scripture.

Dr Chloë Reddaway is McDonald Agape Research Fellow in Theology and the Visual Arts, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Arts & the Sacred at King's College London.

Summary

In an increasingly visual age, images are the new lingua franca and Christian theology must ask how it can be 'spoken' with nuance and integrity. This book brings together theologians, biblical scholars, art historians, and curators to consider what questions about Christ and modernity might be posed by the visual arts, and what truths about Christ and modernity they might ask us to face. Its authors explore modern and contemporary artists from Pablo Picasso to Kent Monkman and Paul Cézanne to Cornelia Parker, addressing questions of theory, practice, and interpretation. Their contributions are orientated by an enquiring and critical focus on how modern and contemporary visual art coexists with, counters, illuminates, and serves Christianity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Art with Christianity

Thinking with Christianity: A Grammar of Doubt and Belief in Contemporary Art (Jonathan Anderson)
The Right Eyes: Curating a Theology of Modernist Painting (Daniel A. Siedell)
Making Pain Incarnate: An Iconophilic Interpretation of Pablo Picasso's Guernica (Christina Carnes Ananias)
Secularization as Realization? (Johann H. Claussen)

Art instead of Christianity

Missionary Position: Kent Monkman and Christianity (Matthew J. Milliner)
Monochromes and Monotheisms: An Apophatic Dialogue with Ad Reinhardt (Aaron Rosen)
Lines of the Sacred: Toward a Heterology of Drawing (Jeremy Biles)
Squinting at the Invisible: Spiritual Seeing and the Art of Michael Simpson (Jennifer Sliwka)
Inheriting the Mantle: Modern and Contemporary Art as the Inheritor of the Prophetic and Apocalyptic Tradition (C.A. Strine)

Art about Christianity

How About...? R.G. Collingwood, T.J. Clark, and the Conditions of a Haveable World (Ben Quash)
Scandalous Particularity: Visual Depictions of Jesus in Modern Art (Rebekah Eklund)
Optical Allusions? Exploring the Ambiguity of Biblical Texts in Modern and Contemporary Art (Christine E. Joynes)
A Search for Symbols and Images Adequate to Our Predicament (Neil MacGregor)
Strange Flesh: The Body of the Risen Jesus in the Art of Edward Knippers (W. David O. Taylor)

Art for Christianity

Showing People Jesus: Sight and the Visual Arts at Canterbury (Felicity Harley-McGowan)
Vision and Mission: Making Art for a World in Danger (Frances Spalding)
Re-Visiting Creation (Chloë Reddaway)

Bibliography

Index