Epiphany: Telling an Alternative History of Modern Art

My latest article is for Epiphany, the magazine of Epiphanyart, an ecumenical society of Christian artists in Britain formed over 70 years ago and affiliated to the international movement Société Internationale des Artistes Chrétiens (SIAC) which supports national Christian arts events in many countries.

Epiphanyart aims: 1.To bring the work of Christian artists to the notice of churches and the public; 2. To provide opportunities for mutual support and encouragement to its members; 3. To provide a resource for exhibition organisers and others to contact and commission artists via its website; and 4. To serve as a focus for all forms of creativity.

This edition of Epiphany features: a review and reflections on the 'Disparate Threads' exhibition; Helen Armstrong on commissions at St Peter's Hove; poetry by Janet Wilkes; Vision for a National Christian Arts Festival; John Armstrong on Joy; and an obituary for Rosemary Roberts.

In my article I give an overview of the history of modern art flagging up the religious influences in order to counter the traditional narrative of modern art as a secular enterprise:

"... this story is not yet consistently or thoroughly told in the standard art histories of modern art, and that matters. From an art historical point of view, it matters because significant strands within the
story of modern art are absent from it and the story, as a whole, is diminished and incomplete.

From the perspective of emerging artists, it matters because, for those wishing to explore spirituality, their range of reference and role models is lessened. For practising artists, it has mattered because, for those wishing to explore spirituality, opportunities to exhibit and sell work have been constrained. For the Church and other faith communities, it matters because the traditional telling of the story, which excludes spirituality, privileges and promotes secularism.

The telling of stories matters because stories are what we live by or within. To see a change maintained in the way this story is told, we all need to be involved in its telling and to be those who tell the story in as great a breadth and depth as we each can manage."

In my first article for Epiphany, I gave an account of two war-time artists who made their way to Britain and ended up making an important contribution to the cultural life of the country through their art.

Join Epiphanyart to receive Epiphany magazine regularly.

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Ed Kowalczyk - Angels On A Razor.

Roots of the Catholic Literary Revival

Joseph Pearce writes that the gestation period for the Catholic Literary Revival lasted from 1798 to 1845 and: ‘saw the rise of neo-medievalism, beginning with Coleridge’s Mariner and Scott’s chivalrous heroes, and ending with Pugin’s Gothic Revival and Newman’s Oxford Movement. After its 47 years in the womb of neo-mediaeval culture, the Catholic Literary Revival could be said to have been born, in 1845, amid the controversial pangs of Newman’s conversion. This heralded what may be termed the Newman Period in the Revival, dating from 1845 until the great man’s death in 1890. Apart from Newman himself, this period was graced with the presence of other eminent convert literati, including the poets, Coventry Patmore and Gerard Manley Hopkins, the latter of whom is perhaps the finest and most important poet of the whole Victorian period.’ (https://www.ncregister.com/blog/whatever-happened-to-the-catholic-literary-revival)

In his writings on the Catholic Literary Revival Pearce usually claims Anglo-Catholics, such as T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, for the movement. Unusually, here he overlooks Christina Rossetti in his list of eminent literati. As Elizabeth Huddleston notes: ‘Rossetti spent her life in London, where she attended Christ Church, Albany Street, which was known as the leading Oxford Movement church in London. Along with her sister, Maria, Rossetti supported many Anglican sisterhoods, including The Society of All Saints, of which Maria would become a fully professed sister in 1876. Rossetti’s regular religious, devotional practices were encouraged by members of the Oxford Movement (such as confession and receiving Holy Communion) and would play a major role in her life and writings.’

Huddleston also helpfully summarises the Tractarian influences on Rossetti’s work: ‘Noted in the introduction to the 1925 edition of Rossetti’s Verses is that “Her [i.e., Christina Rossetti’s] religious views were Tractarian, that is to say, Anglo-Catholic without any leaning toward Roman Catholicism and strongly Puritan.” Seen in her private library is that she carefully illustrated her own copies of Keble’s Christian Year, as well as Isaac Williams’s The Altar. According to Diane D’Amico and David A. Kent, Rossetti held the writings of Isaac Williams in special esteem during the last years of her life, and in 1892 as she convalesced from cancer surgery, she enjoyed having her brother read from the Autobiography of Isaac Williams.

Elizabeth Ludlow demonstrates how “Tractarianism informed the early Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic and how Rossetti took this aesthetic forward and, in turn, used it to inform and disseminate Anglo-Catholic theology, contributing to the maturing of the Movement’s theology rather than being simply an [and I quote from Tennyson] ‘inheritor of the Tractarian devotional mode in poetry.’” This dissemination is demonstrated when, as Ludlow explains, “a number of her poems appeared in seminal Anglo-Catholic anthologies,” particularly, Orby Shipley’s Lyrica Mystica: Hymns and Verses on Sacred Subjects (published in 1865) and Lyrica Eucharistica: Hymns and Verse on the Holy Communion (1864). Ludlow argues that “the fact that Rossetti’s first volume of devotional prose was authorized by Burrows, a key Tractarian figure in mid-nineteenth-century London, strengthens the association between her writing and the Movement’s teaching still further.”

Much of Rossetti’s religious poetry can be seen as a typological depiction of “the church as a space prepared for an experience of divine revelation.” This is seen prevalently in the final lines of Rossetti’s unpublished poem “Yet a Little While”:

“We have clear call of daily bells, 

A dimness where the anthems are, 

A chancel vault of sky and star, 

A thunder if the organ swells: 

Alas our daily life—what else?— 

Is not in tune with daily bells 

You have deep pause betwixt the chimes 

Of earth and heaven, a patient pause 

Yet glad with rest by certain laws: 

You look and long: while oftentimes 

Precursive flush of morning chimes 

And air vibrates with coming chimes.”

According to James Pereiro, much of the ethos of the Oxford Movement “considered religion and poetry closely related, for God has used poetical language to communicate himself to man, employing symbolical associations—whether poetical, moral, or mystical—to reveal a world beyond sense perception.” This interplay between the earthly and the mystical can be seen in these lines of Rossetti’s poem.’ (https://www.newmanreview.org/rethinking-newman-s-influence/)

Claire Masurel-Murray has set out how in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites - of which Christina Rossetti was part - in particular the early paintings and poems of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘religious references convey a desire to escape the fluctuations of Victorian scepticism and to hark back to the spiritual certainties and unmitigated fervour of mediaeval times.’ 

Masurel-Murray explains how: “Rossetti’s Italian origins, his Tractarian upbringing, his love for Dante, his passion for the poets of the early Italian Renaissance and his mediaevalism all seem to have contributed to shaping his interest in Pre-Protestant Christianity. In 1847, he sent to William Bell Scott a series of poems that he entitled Songs of the Art Catholic. The title of this first collection is extremely significant. It does not reveal so much a sense of religious belonging as a form of aesthetic attraction, a cultivated nostalgia for gone-by days … The phrase “Art Catholic” refers to an aesthetic discipline, to the study of the religious imagery of the Middle Ages and of the works of Raphael’s predecessors, and to the contemplation of religious painting as an artistic model. For Rossetti indeed, both painting and poetry aspire to the condition of sacred art. He frequently uses Christian images in his visual and literary works, but ornamentally rather than functionally, as in the Marian paintings The Girlhood of the Virgin Mary (1849), which is full of Catholic elements (the stone altar, the embroidered ecclesiastic ornaments, and other liturgical objects such as the lamp and the organ to the right of the picture) with its two accompanying poems entitled “Mary’s Girlhood,” written two decades apart in 1849 and 1870, and Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), a representation of the Annunciation. Generally speaking, Rossetti’s work, particularly his poetry, is permeated with Catholic motifs—Marian images in particular—inherited from the Italian Primitives, and filtered through the mythical vision of the Middle Ages, seen as an age of unanimous fervour and faith. This is apparent in such poems as “The Blessed Damozel,” in the sonnets he wrote to comment on pictures such as “A Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmeling,” “Our Lady of the Rocks, by Leonardo da Vinci,” or “For An Annunciation, Early German,” and in his translations of Italian religious poems from the Middle Ages such as “To the Blessed Virgin Mary” (from a poem by Fra Guittone d’Arezzo). The artistic use of Catholicism by Pre-Raphaelites had a lasting influence on fin de siècle writers, as was noted by David G. Riede, still writing about Rossetti: “His Art-Catholicism shows the temptation, which became increasingly powerful toward the end of the century, to embrace Christianity, particularly Catholicism, for the sake of its aesthetic tradition.”’ (https://journals.openedition.org/cve/528#:)

It is worth noting at this point that, as Whitney Robert Mundt has explained: ‘At Oxford University [Gerard Manley Hopkins] developed an interest in the [Pre-Raphaelite] Brotherhood and in Christina Rossetti. He met her and Holman Hunt and was encouraged to work seriously in both poetry and painting. His artwork reveals the specific influence of John Ruskin, a close associate of the Pre-Raphaelites, as well as the influence of John Everett Millais, a member of the original Brotherhood. Hopkins transcribed a number of poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a founding member of the Brotherhood, and also by his sister, Christina Rossetti. Hopkins' letters and diaries reveal admiration for other Pre-Raphaelite associates, notably William Morris, who founded the Oxford Brotherhood after the model of the original group.’ (https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3484&context=gradschool_disstheses) 

Masurel-Murray also notes that another main source of inspiration came from across the Channel, the second half of the 19th century being ‘a period of intense exchanges between the French and English literary worlds.’ This included ‘the Catholic works of Verlaine, such as Sagesse (1881), a collection which has as its central theme the poet’s conversion during his time in jail in 1873–1874, and Liturgies Intimes (1892), a series of variations on the different moments of the Mass.’ Also included was ‘Baudelaire, whose poetic work is haunted by Catholic motifs, liturgical metaphors.’ Additionally, ‘One last name that has to be mentioned is that of J.-K. Huysmans, whose influence on English writers has been the subject of several studies.’

Masurel-Murray explains that: ‘His novel À rebours (1884), which is indirectly referred to in Chapters X and XI of The Picture of Dorian Gray, was called by Arthur Symons “the breviary of the Decadence”. The prayer that concludes the book (“Seigneur, prenez pitié du chrétien qui doute, de l’incrédule qui voudrait croire, du forçat de la vie qui s’embarque seul, dans la nuit, sous un firmament que n’éclairent plus les consolants fanaux du vieil espoir!”) was full of foreboding, as the year following the publication of his satanic novel Là-bas (1891), Huysmans converted to Catholicism. Là-bas, a novel characterised by its extreme and disoriented mysticism, focuses on the spiritual quest of Durtal, who is torn between his carnal obsessions and his search for what lies beyond the visible world. Huysmans’s next novel En route (1895) was a clearly Catholic work, chronicling the spiritual progress of a man obsessed with Christian art, with Romanesque and Gothic architecture, with the great religious writers of the Middle Ages and with Gregorian plain-chant. Both novels share a number of characteristics with the works of Huysmans’s English counterparts, in particular a taste for religious art and for the liturgy, a ruthless critique of modernity, a regressive and nostalgic movement toward mediaeval supernaturalism, an inner tension between the weight of the flesh and the temptation of mysticism.’

Pearce notes that: ‘Following Newman’s death there was the Decadent interlude of the fin de siècle in which a host of Catholic converts, such as Wilde, Beardsley, Dowson and Lionel Johnson, came to the Church via the dark and dangerous path of sin. In doing so, they were following in the footsteps of a previous generation of French converts, such as Baudelaire, Verlaine and Huysmans, each of whom had also taken the same dark path to conversion.’ Masurel-Murray notes that: ‘These writers all inherited from Walter Pater a taste for the splendours of religious rite. They were also influenced by their Pre-Raphaelite predecessors’ interest in the Catholic Middle Ages as well as by their emphasis on the aesthetic dimension of religious experience, and claimed their kinship with the art for art’s sake creed of French Parnassians and Symbolists.’

She also helpfully summarises the main members of the group:

‘In the last decade of the 19th century, a significant number of English writers chose to become members of the Roman Catholic Church. What is called the “Decadent” movement probably counts in its ranks more converts than any other school in the history of British literature. Among them (in the order of their conversions) Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913), also known as “Baron Corvo,” who wrote novels, short stories and poems, and converted in 1886; the poets John Gray (1866–1934), who was received into the Church in 1890 and ordained into the priesthood in 1901, Lionel Johnson (1867–1902, converted in 1891), and Ernest Dowson (1867–1900, converted in 1891); Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie (1867–1906), who wrote novels under the pseudonym “John Oliver Hobbes” and converted in 1892; Wilde’s friend Robert Ross (1869–1918), an art critic and essay writer who converted in 1894; André Raffalovich (1864–1934), a friend of John Gray and Aubrey Beardsley, a minor poet and theoretician of homosexuality, who became a Catholic in 1896; the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898, converted in 1897); Henry Harland (1861–1905), the literary editor of The Yellow Book, who converted in 1898; Oscar Wilde (1856–1900), who received the sacraments of the Church on his deathbed in 1900; Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Cooper (1862–1913), who wrote poetry under the shared pseudonym “Michael Field” and converted in 1907; and finally Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945, converted in 1911).’

Pearce concludes his summary of the main features of the Catholic Literary Revival as follows: ‘The period from 1900 to 1936 could be called the Chesterbelloc Period, in which the giant figures of G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc presided over a golden age of literary converts, including R.H. Benson, Ronald Knox, Maurice Baring, Christopher Dawson, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot. (Although Eliot was technically an Anglo-Catholic who never crossed the Tiber his work is, to all intents and purposes, as Catholic as anything written by his Roman contemporaries.) From 1936 to 1973 we enter the Inklings Period, in which the formidable presence of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis dominate. (Lewis, like Eliot, was an Anglican and not a Catholic, but his work, which is overwhelmingly orthodox, sits very comfortably alongside the work of his Catholic contemporaries.) Eminent literary converts during this period include Roy Campbell, Edith Sitwell, Siegfried Sassoon, Muriel Spark, Dunstan Thompson and George Mackay Brown. In America, this period also saw the emergence of those two fine writers, Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy.’

Summing up developments in France, Theodore P. Fraser writes, in The Modern Catholic Novel In Europe, that:

"The Catholic novel in Europe as we know it today originated in French literature of the nineteenth century. Originally part of the neo-romantic reaction against Enlightenment philosophy and the anti-religious doctrines of the Revolution, the Catholic novel attained fruition and became an accomplished literary form spearheading the renouveau catholique, or Catholic literary revival. This literary movement contained in its ranks a number of brilliant writers (Bloy, Péguy, Huysmans, Bernanos, Mauriac, Claudel, Jacques Maritain, and Jacques Rivière, to name the most important) who reached maturity at the century's end or during the decade of World War I, and it essentially took the form of a strong, even violent, reaction of these French Catholic writers against the doctrine of positivism that had gained preeminence in French political and cultural circles in the last third at least of the nineteenth century."

For more on the Catholic Literary Revival and the French Catholic Revival with its influence across the Arts, see https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2020/04/airbrushed-from-art-history-update.html and https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/search/label/art%20and%20faith.  

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Francis Poulenc - O Magnum Mysterium.

Artlyst: Religion and Spirituality in Post Impressionism - National Gallery

My latest review for Artlyst is on 'After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art' at the National Gallery:

"The paintings and sculptures included illustrate the main themes in the development of the visual arts in Europe in this time period: the break with conventional representation of the external world and the forging of non-naturalist visual languages with an emphasis on the materiality of the art object expressed through line, colour, surface, texture and pattern. The move was principally towards simplification of form, patterned surfaces and an increasingly fractured, mosaic-like application of colour, while non-naturalism also alerted the spectator to the new subject matter of art, ideas and emotions.

What is under-appreciated generally, as also within this exhibition, is the extent to which the spirituality of the artists involved played a significant role in bringing about these developments. On the surface, these movements seem to be primarily about the materiality of the art objects themselves, but often below the surface of these developments are a complex of spiritual motivations and understandings ...

After Impressionism includes many of the most influential artworks and artists from this period; as such, it is a must-see blockbuster exhibition which, while highlighting many of the key strands in the story of how modern art was invented, nevertheless continues the critical downplaying of other strands, particularly the influence of religion and spirituality, without which the story of modern art cannot be fully understood."

See also my 'Airbrushed from Art History' series of posts - https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2012/09/airbrushed-from-art-history-update.html.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

• Winslow Homer: American Passage An Interview With Biographer Bill Cross
• Grayson Perry Tapestries On Show At Salisbury Cathedral
• Sidney Nolan’s Africa: Interview With Andrew Turley
• Ilona Bossanyi: Tate’s Ervin Bossanyi Stained Glass Window Mothballed After 2011 Redevelopment
• Louis Carreon: Sampling Art History
• Modus Operandi - What Makes Successful Public Art: Vivien Lovell InterviewedGenesis Tramaine: A Queer Devotional Painter
• Lakwena Maciver: Review-Interview Hastings Contemporary
• Nicola Ravenscroft - Sculpture With A Peaceful Stillness
• Artist Hannah Rose Thomas – Tears of Gold – Interview
• Marcus Lyon: Human Atlas Explorations
• Elizabeth Kwant Interview
• Helaine Blumenfeld: Undulating Structures
• National Gallery Explores ‘Sin’ In New Exhibition – Interview Dr Joost Joustra Curator
• Betty Spackman: Posthumanism Debates
• Christopher Clack: Connecting The Material And Immaterial
• Peter Howson Artlyst Interview
• Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker On The Legacy Of ArtWay
• Alastair Gordon A Testament To His Faith
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar

Monthly diary articles -

• The Art Diary March 2023
• The Art Diary February 2023
• Surveying New Exhibitions With A Spiritual Twist January 2023 Art Diary
• Christmas: The Art Of Faith December 2022 Diary
• Soulages And Strange Clay November 2022 Art Diary
• Alexander de Cadenet And Michael Forbes October 2022 Diary
• Spiritual Joseph Beuys Plus More: September Diary
• Holiday Snaps – End Of Summer Art Diary
• Art Search: August 2022 Diary
• Re-imagining Essex July 2022 Diary
• Art Illuminating spirituality June 2022 Diary
• Venice To London May 2022 Diary
• Jacob Epstein, Louis Carreon, Titus Kaphar, Betty Spackman – April 2022 Diary
• Audrey Flack Carlo Crivelli And Robert Indiana – March Diary
• My Art Diary And Other Thoughts February 2022
• And On An Art Note: End Of Year Diary 2021
• International Autumn Art Exhibition Reviews
• And On An Art Note: End Of Year Diary 2021

Articles/Reviews -

• Black Artists From The American South Royal Academy
• Donatello: The Divine Fused With The Human V&A
• Lucian Freud And His Circle Surveyed In Two London Exhibitions
• A Question Of Clay: Strange Clay – Hayward Gallery
• William Kentridge: Merging Politics With Aesthetics – RA
• Winslow Homer: Beyond The Sea – National Gallery
• Hidden Depths: The Woman in the Window – Dulwich Picture Gallery
• Heavenly Visions: Churches As Spaces For Contemporary Art
• In The Black Fantastic London’s Best Summer Exhibition
• Hew Locke And The Christian Roots Of Carnival – Tate BritainLes Lalanne, Schütte And Gursky London Spring Exhibition Highlights
• Sensuous Sickert and Philpot Two Major UK Solo Exhibitions
• Raphael The Human And Divine – National Gallery
• Damien Hirst The Visceral Reality Of Death
• Ali Cherri: Artist in Residence National Gallery
• Surrealism Outside The Usual Story – Tate Modern
• Marcus Lyon Creates Fields of Vision At St Martin-in-the-Fields London
• Van Gogh Self Portraits The Infinite And The Ordinary
• Marvellous Icons: The London Jesuit Centre
• Albrecht Dürer Travels Of A Renaissance Artist – National Gallery London
• Diasporan Identities: Life Between Islands Caribbean British Art – Tate Britain
• Isamu Noguchi: Socially Engaged Art – Barbican Centre
• Pablo Bronstein: A This-World Vision Of Hell
• Bosco Sodi: In The Beginning Of Wisdom
• George Condo Lockdown Works Hauser & Wirth
• Theaster Gates Clay As A Profound Metaphor
• Mark Rothko: Mesmerising And Intimate Works On Paper
• Roger Cecil: A Once In A Generation Welsh Painter
• Tino Sehgal: Location, Nature And Pandemic – Blenheim Palace
• Michael Armitage And The Power Of Art – Royal Academy
• Marie Raymond And Post-War Avant Garde Painting In Paris
• Rachel Kneebone: A Complex Tableau Of Organic And Geometric Forms
• Rodin: Suffering And Conflict – Tate Modern
• Barbara Hepworth: Symbols Of Art & Life – Hepworth Wakefield
• 20th Century Women Artists Challenging Conventions In Britain
• Chaiya Art Awards 2021 Gallery OXO
• Marc Chagall’s Exquisite Stained Glass Window Commissions
• George Gittoes Equal parts artist and warrior
• Keith Haring: Personal Spiritual Imagery
• Sean Scully: Philosophical Poetic Pastoral The 12 / Dark Windows
• Arthur Jafa: The Art Of Cutting And Pasting
• Blackpentecostal Breath: Spirit-Led Movement Jumps From Music To Visual Art
• Made in USA Ed Ruscha An American Perspective
• Robert Smithson: The Archetypal Nature Of Things
• If Jesus Is A Man Of Colour Why Did We Make Him Aryan?
• Cosmic Patches And Quilts Five Exhibitions
• Everyday Heroes: Southbank Exhibition Celebrates Low-paid Key Workers
• Entwining Spiritualism And Art – Three Shows
• Of Church And The Visual Arts
• Has The Word Master Reached Its Sell-By Date?
• The People Behind Community Is Kindness Billboard Campaign
• André Daughtry: Art, Rebellion And Racial Justice
• Salisbury Cathedral 800 Years Of Art And Spirit
• Home Alone Together Twenty Five Artists
• Botanical Mind Online: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree
• Salvador Dalí The Enigma of Faith
• Art And Faith A Time For Seeing
• Andy Warhol: Catholicism His Work, Faith And Legacy
• Kiki Smith: Embodied Art
• Art and Christianity Awards A Positive New Millennium Legacy
• Arnulf Rainer: 90th Birthday Exhibition Celebrated At Albertina Museum
• A Belonging Project And Exiles Loss and Displacement
• Robert Polidori: Fra Angelico Opus Operantis
• Art, Faith, Church Patronage and Modernity
• Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art
• Mat Collishaw Challenges Faith Perspectives With Ushaw Installation
• Waterloo Festival Launches At St. John’s Waterloo
• John Bellany Alan Davie Spiritual Joy and Magic
• RIFT Unites 17 Art and Science MA Graduates At Central St Martins
• Visionary Cities: Michael Takeo Magruder – British Library
• Van Gogh’s Religious Journey Around London
• William Congdon Holy Sites And The Kettle’s Yard Connection
• Mark Dean Premieres Pastiche Mass At Banqueting Hall Chelsea College of Arts
• John Kirby: The Torment
• Underlying The Civilised Facade
• Curating Spiritual Sensibilities In Changing Times
• Homeless Highlighted: New Beau Exhibition At St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Ken Currie: Protest Defeat And Victory
• Bosco Sodi: A Moment Of Genesis
• Bill Viola And The Art Of Contemplation
• Art In Churches 2018: Spiritual Combinations Explored
• Sister Wendy Beckett – A Reminiscence
• Guido Guidi: Per Strada Flowers Gallery London
• Peter Howson: The play is over – Flowers Gallery
• Camille Henrot: Scientific History And Creation Story Mash Up
• Nicola Green Explores Recent And Contemporary Religious Leaders – St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Art And The Consequences Of War Explored In Two Exhibitions
• Helaine Blumenfeld Translating Her Vision
• Sam Ivin: Physically Scratched Portraits Of Asylum Seekers Exhibited
• Sacred Noise: Explores Religion, Faith And Divinity
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• Michael Takeo Magruder: De / coding the Apocalypse – Panacea Museum
• Giorgio Griffa: The Golden Ratio And Inexplicable Knowledge
• Arabella Dorman Unveils New Installation At St James Church Piccadilly
• Can Art Transform Society?
• Art Awakening Humanity Conference Report
• Central St Martins in the Fields Design Then And Now
• The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art
• Polish Art In Britain: Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• Refugee Artists: Learning from The Lives Of Others
• The Religious Impulses Of Robert Rauschenberg
• The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement
• Artists Rebranding The Christmas Tree Tradition
• Art Impacted - A Radical Response To Radicalisation
• The Art of St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Airbrushed from Art History: An update

This weekend ArtWay have republished an article exploring Andy Warhol's engagement with Catholicism and the impact on his art and legacy. Similarly, Artlyst have published an article exploring the enigma of Salvador's Dali's engagement with faith, while I have posted a piece on this blog about the Catholic wellsprings and work of Dali's friend, the Viennese Visionary Realism Ernst Fuchs. Each of these adds to the argument I have been making over several years that the level and extent of the engagement between the Christianity and the Arts has been more significant than is generally acknowledged.

In particular my ‘Airbrushed from art history’ series on this blog surveyed the Christian contribution to the Visual Arts which is broad and significant but is far from having been comprehensively documented. See below for the Index, links and other related writings for this series.

To explore the contribution made by Christianity to the Arts is important because the story of modern and contemporary Arts is often told primarily as a secular story. To redress this imbalance has significance in: encouraging support for those who explore aspects of Christianity in and through the Arts; providing role models for emerging artists who are Christians; and enabling appreciation of the nourishment and haunting which can be had by acknowledging the contribution which Christianity has made to the Arts.

My co-authored book The Secret Chord explored aspects of a similar interplay between faith and music (and the Arts, more broadly). Posts related to the themes of The Secret Chord can be found here. I have also posted an outline summary of the Christian contribution to rock and pop music. Pieces on contemporary choral and classical music are here and here.

Tracing the connections between artists that were either part of the Church and were engaged by the Church in the 20th century is an important element in the argument that the level and extent of the engagement between the Church and the Arts has been more significant than is generally acknowledged. Some of my posts tracing these connections include:

• http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2012/09/airbrushed-from-art-history-update.htmlhttp://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2011/08/beyond-airbrushed-from-art-history.html
• http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/search/label/sabbatical
• http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2016/06/christianity-and-literature.html
• http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2017/12/faith-mystery-poetry.htmlhttp://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2016/08/thomas-merton-and-latin-american-poets.html
• http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-rough-guide-to-christian-art.html
• http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2014/04/orthodoxy-and-music.html
• http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/2012/04/contemporary-choral-music.html

My key literature posts are:

• There were giants in those days (1)
• There were giants in those days (2)
• There were Giants in those days (3)
• There were giants in those days (4)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (1)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (2)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (3)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (4)
• The Modern & Contemporary Catholic Novel (5)
• The poetry of connection
• Debate: Has Fiction Lost It's Faith?
• Jesus is having a moment in literary fiction
• Endo & Scorsese: Approaching Silence
• Contemporary Fiction and Christianity
• Debate: Has Fiction Lost It's Faith? (2)
• Jack Clemo: The Invading Gospel
• Dealing with faith and with secularism is difficult but necessary now
• The poet’s eloquently passionate struggle at the junction of doubt and devotion
• Christian Arts renaissance: Major or minor?
• T.S. Eliot: Christianity, fragmentation and reconciliation
• Jesus Novels & Films: The Greatest Story Ever Told
• Acts of the Assassins and Jesus Novels
• Czeslaw Milosz, Oscar Milosz and Simone Weil
• Blogs: cryingforavision & Stride magazine
• Tasos Leviaditis: The Blind Man with the Lamp
• Religious concerns in Greek poetry
• Thomas Merton and Latin American poets
• American Catholic poets & writers
• Connections of Sister Corita Kent and Norman Nicholson
• Ernesto Cardenal RIP

The index to my 'Airbrushed from Art History' series of posts is as follows:

• 1 - Introduction I
• 2 - Introduction II
• 3 - Traces du Sacré
• 4 - Symbolism I
• 5 - Gauguin and Bernard
• 6 - Vincent Van Gogh
• 7 - Maurice Denis
• 8 - Symbolism II
• 9 - Jacques Maritain
• 10 - Albert Gleizes
• 11 - Sérusier, Severini and Gleizes
• 12 - Couturier, Régamey, Bell and Hussey
• 12a - Victor Kenna, Moelwyn Merchant and Bernard Walke
• 12b - Graham Sutherland and Jacques Maritain
• 13 - Expressionism I
• 14 - Expressionism II
• 15 - Reconciliatory art
• 16 - Australia and Poland
• 17 - Abstract art
• 18 - Ireland and Malta
• 19 - Divisionism and Futurism
• 20 - Contemporary artists
• 21 - Africa and Asia
• 22 - Icons
• 23 - Wallspace
• 24 - Albert Houthuesen
• 25 - Stained Glass
• 26 - Self-Taught artists
• 27 - Conclusion

Additions to the series and related posts are as follows:

• Airbrushed from Art History: Peter Fuller
• Airbrushed from Art History: Polish Painters in Post-War Britain
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 1 - Dean, Fujimura, Reinhardt and Emin
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 2 - Walter Navratil
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 3 - Caribbean and South African Art
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 4 - Daniel Siedell
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 5 - Marcus Reichert
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 6 - Lord Harries on Christian Faith and Modern Art
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 7 - Coptic Art and Mexican Retablos
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 8 - The Pilgrim Project
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 9 - Christof Schlingensief
• Beyond Airbrushed from Art History 10 - Indian Art
• Anselm Keifer: Il Mistero delle Cattedrali
• Anselm Kiefer: Il Mistero delle Cattedrali (2)
• ArtWay Meditation: Reto Scheiber
• Being in the World: Charles Lutyens
• British Design 1948 - 2012 and 1948 Olympians
• Commission: contemporary art in British Churches
• Clay as Earth and Flesh - Stephen de Staebler
• Emil Nolde: Inner religious feeling
• Forsaken: Marlene Dumas
• Howson does not shy away from the role that Christianity plays in his work
• Is the Art world anti-Christian?
• John Piper and the Church
• McCahon, Baxter and Hayman
• McCahon, Baxter and Hayman (2)
• Moreau, Rouault and Chagall in Paris
• On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art
• Reaching Beyond - Smith and Moore
• Seeing in new and different ways - John Dillenberger
• Spirituality in Contemporary Art
• When was the last time you saw an explicitly religious work of contemporary art?
• William Congdon - The Sabbath of History
• Cocteau Chapel: Notre Dame de Jerusalem
• Matisse Chapel: Chapelle du Rosaire Vence
• Musée National Marc Chagall
• Notre Dame de France and the murals of Jean Cocteau
• Airbrushed from Art History: Latin America

Additional posts are at https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/search/label/airbrushed%20from%20art%20history. 

On my sabbatical in 2014 I enjoyed the opportunity to visit churches in Belgium, England, France and Switzerland to see works of modern and contemporary art. I documented these visits at http://joninbetween.blogspot.com/search/label/sabbatical and they resulted in a series of Church of the Month reports for ArtWay: Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, and St Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

My visual meditations for ArtWay include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Giacomo Manzù, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton and Anna Sikorska.

Other of writings for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Church Times can be found here and those for Art+Christianity are here. My Artlyst pieces are:

Interviews:

• National Gallery Explores ‘Sin’ In New Exhibition – Interview Dr Joost Joustra Curator
• Betty Spackman: Posthumanism Debates
• Christopher Clack: Connecting The Material And Immaterial
• Peter Howson Artlyst Interview
• Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker On The Legacy Of ArtWay
• Alastair Gordon A Testament To His Faith
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar

Articles:

• Art And Faith A Time For Seeing
• Andy Warhol: Catholicism His Work, Faith And Legacy
• Kiki Smith: Embodied Art
• Art and Christianity Awards A Positive New Millennium Legacy
• Arnulf Rainer: 90th Birthday Exhibition Celebrated At Albertina Museum
• A Belonging Project And Exiles Loss and Displacement
• Robert Polidori: Fra Angelico Opus Operantis
• Art, Faith, Church Patronage and Modernity
• Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art
• Mat Collishaw Challenges Faith Perspectives With Ushaw Installation
• Waterloo Festival Launches At St. John’s Waterloo
• John Bellany Alan Davie Spiritual Joy and Magic
• RIFT Unites 17 Art and Science MA Graduates At Central St Martins
• Visionary Cities: Michael Takeo Magruder – British Library
• Van Gogh’s Religious Journey Around London
• William Congdon Holy Sites And The Kettle’s Yard Connection
• Mark Dean Premieres Pastiche Mass At Banqueting Hall Chelsea College of Arts
• John Kirby: The Torment Underlying The Civilised Facade
• Curating Spiritual Sensibilities In Changing Times
• Ken Currie: Protest Defeat And Victory
• Bosco Sodi: A Moment Of Genesis
• Bill Viola And The Art Of Contemplation
• Art In Churches 2018: Spiritual Combinations Explored
• Sister Wendy Beckett – A Reminiscence
• Guido Guidi: Per Strada Flowers Gallery London
• Peter Howson: The play is over – Flowers Gallery
• Camille Henrot: Scientific History And Creation Story Mash Up
• Nicola Green Explores Recent And Contemporary Religious Leaders – St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Art And The Consequences Of War Explored In Two Exhibitions
• Helaine Blumenfeld Translating Her Vision
• Sacred Noise: Explores Religion, Faith And Divinity
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• Michael Takeo Magruder: De / coding the Apocalypse – Panacea Museum
• Giorgio Griffa: The Golden Ratio And Inexplicable Knowledge
• Arabella Dorman Unveils New Installation At St James Church Piccadilly
• Can Art Transform Society?
• Art Awakening Humanity Conference Report
• Central St Martins in the Fields Design Then And Now
• The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art
• Polish Art In Britain Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• Refugee Artists Learning from The Lives Of Others
• The Religious Impulses Of Robert Rauschenberg
• The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement
• Artists Rebranding The Christmas Tree Tradition
• Art Impacted - A Radical Response To Radicalisation
• The Art of St Martin-in-the-Fields
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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Bill Fay - Be Not So Fearful.

Airbrushed from Art History

A special double-issue of Religion and the Arts published by The Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art in 2014 explored the multiple intersections between art and Christianity in Latin America arising from the varied and dynamic art of Latin America and the rich spiritual traditions of Christianity in Latin American identity. Religious themes, narratives, iconographies, and sensibilities in Latin American visual culture in a variety of media and from a range of historical periods and regions of Latin America reveal the interconnectivity of faith, race, ethnicity, and history, as well as the various methodological challenges that these works of art – and their artists – pose in the history of art. 

Such interconnections include reactions against and movements beyond religion, in addition to connections within and between faiths. Here are a small selection of such intersections prompted primarily by the surveys included in Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century:

“Enrique Alfèrez was born into a world of art, although his father might not have viewed it that way. His father, Longinos Alfèrez, studied Art in Europe and returned to Mexico where he established himself as a carver of religious statues for churches and hacienda chapels. Longinos considered himself a craftsman above an artist …

It was in 1929 that Alfèrez arrived in New Orleans for the first time on his way to Mexico. The local art life in the French Quarter was so attractive to him that he never made it to Mexico that time. His first commission was to carve statues of Mary and three saints on the facade of the Church of the Holy Name of Mary in Algiers. He befriended Franz Blom, the director of the Tulane University’s Middle America Research Institute and joined him on a trip to Mexico where they made a full-scale plaster cast of the facade of the Nunnery buildings of the Mayan ruins at Uxmal in Yucatan which was displayed at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. He returned to New Orleans as a permanent member of the City’s art community and during the next decade received numerous public art commissions, taught at the Arts and Crafts Club in the French Quarter and directed the Works Progress Administration’s sculpture program.”

In Ecuador, Enrique Alvarez “has gone on to receive widespread national recognition for his artistic merit. In 1998, he was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2000, was awarded first prize in the Second Latin American Exhibition of Religious Art in New York.

“Jaime Andrade, an artist from Quito, Ecuador created the sculpture in mahogany.” "In 1958 [Thomas] Merton commissioned Andrade to do a statue of the Virgin Mary and child Jesus in dark wood for the novitiate library. "A statue," as he explains, "that would tell the truth about God being 'born' Incarnate in the Indians of the Andes. Christ poor and despised among the disinherited of the earth."

“Flávio de Carvalho is regarded as one of the precursors of the 60’s ‘Happenings’ in the United States. In 1931, his studies of anthropology and psychoanalysis lead him to carry out the "Experiment n°2": wearing a hat he walks a Christi Corpus procession against the grain. This act is regarded as an insult and Flávio de Carvalho was almost lynched by a hysterical crowd of worshippers, finally owed his safety to the police force. His intention was to test the limits of tolerance and aggressiveness of a religious crowd.

In 1933, he founded the Modern Artists' Club (CAM). He stimulated the cultural life of of São Paulo and took part in the creation of a discussion space on different areas, bringing together artists, composers, writers and psychiatrists. Within this framework, he founded the Theatre of the Experience and directed the "Ball of the dead God", an experimental theatrical and dancing show for which he created everything : text, adornment, costumes and play of light. The actors, almost all black people, were wearing aluminum masks and executing dynamic and surrealist movements. Considered as subversive this play, very influenced by the Dadaist movement, was prohibited and the police force closes the theatre in spite of the mobilization of more than 300 intellectuals.”

“Christian Chicana feminist artists used their work to challenge the patriarchal society that they live in and even the patriarchal society of Biblical times. Through their work they promote a strong, prominent feminine figure, one who does not need a man to survive. They offer a role model to women of all ages and hopefully promote a new-found interest in young people’s religion by renewing faith in a traditional religious figure.

Not only that, but the Virgin of Guadalupe is depicted as a brown women, so these artists are challenging cultural and race barriers as well.”

“Antonia [Eirez] had an unshakable belief in the power of people to create. 

Everyone can draw, paint and create, she said. When we create from our core, we are like God. Even if the end result is a purple paper chicken, the creative process itself can transform your being. Antonia saw this transformation happen in people who never imagined they could create art.”

Julio Galán “is aware of the world around him and he adapts it for himself. Although his creations revolve around his personality and image, he never stops including references to the culture where he developed, particularly religious culture.

With these references that could be considered alien to the space he inhabited —the space of his dolls, disguises and make-up— he appears, and paints himself or adds symbols of his personality to appropriate some images …

The artist recreates the image of the Last Supper including himself in it, painting in a Christ child with his own face peeking out from the childish features, painting the adult Jesus Christ but dressing him in clothing like Galán’s. The artist’s face transformed in other images reveals his proximity to Catholicism and at the same time the distance he puts between that and his own doctrine.

Some of his works are inspired in ex-votos, or tin devotional folk paintings, done to thank the Virgin Mary or some saint for a miracle that saved the life of the painter or cured some disease as had been fervently prayed for, and that generally describe in a drawing or painting the scene of the miracle.”

Paul Giudicelli is a Dominican painter who “graduated from law school and taught in college. He served a public office stint as governor of his home state. In 1945, he was appointed coordinator of Humanities at Mexico's National Autonomous University and college ambassador to South America in 1946. Between 1964 and 1970, he acted as Secretary of Public Education. He launched the Dominican modern novel into a brand-new narrative method (inner monologue) and the alteration of temporary stages, as seen in his work At the Edge of Water (1947). The novel spins a yarn about the life of a hinterland rural town in the state of Jalisco, his home state. His characters, prisoners of their own religious beliefs and a sense of guilt, are shaken by the developments of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. He conveys his story using a taut and sumptuous prose and was also a member of the National College and Language Academy.”

Alfredo Guttero “displayed creative talent at an early age; starting with music but later turning to art. Following his family's wishes, he began a legal career, but left it to become a painter, under the encouragement of Ernesto de la Cárcova and Martín Malharro. In 1904, he received a grant from the Argentinian government to study in Europe and lived in Paris until 1916, where he studied with Maurice Denis and participated in the Salon. Following that, he lived in Segovia and Madrid, with brief stays in Germany, Austria and Italy and visits to virtually every other part of Western Europe, ending with a major exhibition in Genoa.

After more than two decades away from home, he returned in 1927, where he remained intensely active during the five years remaining until his death. He became the Director of the "Plastic Arts" division of the local Wagner Society and created the "Hall of Modern Painters", where he introduced the works of Miguel Carlos Victorica and Demetrio Urruchúa, among others. Together with Raquel Forner, Alfredo Bigatti and Pedro Domínguez Neira (1894-1970), he created the "Cursos Libres de Arte Plástico". In 1931, he exhibited at the "First Baltimore Pan-American Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings". Much of his time and energy was spent promoting Modern Art in opposition to the reactionary forces prevalent at that period.”

“Painting in colonial Brazil was scarce, and low quality, worth it for the iconography. Landscape was discouraged for fear that it could facilitate greed in enemy powers. With the economic progress of Bahia and Minas Gerais in the 18th century, a few painters appeared from the region, mostly in religious art, such as José Teófilo de Jesus and Mestre Ataíde.

His post-colonial vision shows the marks of slavery in modern Brazil, the contradictions and the added value. Violence is in the scenes of the Passion, because the flogged Christ of [Alberto da Veiga] Guignard is the slave on the pillory post. In a view of Ouro Preto, Guignard creates a fictional portrait of Aleijadinho, showing his work and imagining his personality to proclaim the Afrodescendent pillar of Brazilian culture. Guignard, like Lasar Segall, projected the work ethos of the black person in Brazil.” 

The work of Frida Kahlo “uses the tradition of votive art – part of her heritage was Catholic – and can be an open prayer for courage: "Tree of Hope, Keep Firm", she writes across a painting of a parched and treeless landscape. To write the past is to hold a memory. To write the present is to stand witness. To write the future is to cast a spell, and this was my prayer, to spell motherhood with three letters: a-r-t.”

The singer and composer Roberto Carlos was involved in the circulation of symbolic assets through the installation of Adoração (Worship) by the visual artist Nelson Leirner. The intersection between this universal musical icon, with strong mediatic and popular appeal and a piece of contemporary art, assigned to produce political effects, has given us the opportunity of understanding how and why the musician was chosen to signify, in the incipient symbolic assets market of the sixties, the contradictions of pop art, transplanted to the political reality of the Grupo Rex, in which Leirner was inserted. For this, the visual artist chooses, to resignify the young talented musician, a code belonging to popular Christian iconography, inserting him in a game of reference that surpassed the popular binomial current culture and erudite culture.

“Another feminist artist that creates unique and unconventional portraits of the Virgin of Guadalupe is Yolanda Lopez. Lopez is known for creating three distinct images of Mary, the most well-known called Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe or Virgin Running (Q&A). This image is quite different from both the conventional Virgin, as well as Alma Lopez’s portrayal of the Virgin. In this first painting, Yolanda Lopez portrays herself as a strong, active young woman ready for anything. The Virgin has some traditional aspects such as the blue cloak with gold stars and the halo around her body, but overall, this is not the traditional, submissive, down gazing Virgin of Guadalupe. She is shown running with white tennis shoes, crushing both the Satan-like snake in her hand, and the angel beneath her, the angel used to hold her up in traditional images. Lopez is demonstrating that women do not need anyone to hold them up; they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.”

Miguel Ángel Ruiz Matute “studied in the National School of Fine Arts, then transferring to Mexico where he studied at the San Carlos Academy till 1951.He was participated with the architectural group of Juan OGorman in the mural decoration of the library of the City University at UNAM. He then integrated with a group that worked with the muralist, Diego Rivera in the collaboration of the mural in the Teatro de los Insurgentes. In his return to Honduras, he was given the Pablo Zelaya Sierra award in 1954. He was director of the National School of Fine Arts. In 1955, he moved to Spain, England and Italy where he combined his artistic labor with the diplomatic.

He worked with a variety of themes including religion, the historical, portraits that mystified their characteristics. His works are done in an expressionist style. During his first stages as an artist, Miguel Angel was an objective colorist. Then through his Spanish experience, he manifested himself.

Osvaldo Mesa brings viewers to Africa via Cuba in his large installations, crowded with paintings and sculptures. “Richly painted backdrops define a space in which a multitude of objects rest--painted and twine-wrapped bottles, sticks and rocks that resemble the tools of healing and divination found in the sacred spaces of traditional African mystics.

Such fetishes made the journey to Cuba with people who were brought there as slaves and combined their spirituality with aspects of Christianity to create the Santeria religion. Mesa's work is a sophisticated reworking and rediscovery of this process. Aesthetic rather than religious, it retains some of the cosmic power of its source.”

“An artist, activist, educator, and scholar, [Amalia] Mesa-Bains, who is 74, creates large installation works comprising dozens, at times hundreds, of objects: photographs of friends and family, strings of beads, scientific instruments, perfume bottles, her personal medical equipment, holy cards, her wedding veil, Mexican flags, her father’s glasses and mother’s necklace, statuettes, fabric and clothing, sugar skulls, crucifixes, calendars, stamps, candles, shards of glass, dirt, scattered woodchips, plants. At the beginning of her career, she took inspiration from home altars and Day of the Dead ofrendas, adapting them for her own artistic aims. Her installations are sacred spaces imbued with memory: of the dead, of history and all its atrocities, of innocence lost, of the mystical and mythological.”

“He created a large impact on the Brazilian avant-garde movements, especially after he participated in the 1922 Semana da Arte Moderna in São Paulo which ignited new trends in the Brazilian Modernism movement. From 1922-1930 Vicente do Rego Monteiro was associated with Léonce Rosenberg's Galérie de l'effort Moderne, showing in a variety of solo exhibitions.

He illustrated two books depicting modern art centered on the regional culture of Brazilian natives and their traditions; one in 1923: Legendes, croyances et talismans des Indiens de l'Amazone and one in 1925: Quelques Visages de Paris. In Vittel, Rego Monteiro focused on religious themes, influenced by Fernand Léger.

During early 1920’s he started developing his “relief” style where is paintings looked like sculptures. They are two-dimensional and look like they are carved into the surface. A multitude of his relief paintings were of religious themes such as “A Crucifixão” (The Crucifixion), which is one of his most famous works. "A Crucifixão" and "A Descida Da Cruz" along with several of his other religious paintings feature figures that are forlorn, mourning, and crying, the color of the paintings also being very muted; which is very different from his brightly colored ceramics of indigenous. Because of their style, most of his religious-themed works are similar to Ivan Mestrović's "melancholic deco".”

Rodolfo Morales’ “work has been described as dream-like, fertile and heavily based in folklore. It often depicts indigenous people, especially women set amongst rural buildings, churches, town squares and arcaded shops. His style is influenced by María Izquierdo (1902-1955) and French painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985).

By 1985, Morales had earned enough money to stop teaching and to return to Oaxaca where he was able to dedicate himself to both his art and to restoration. Using income from his art he founded the Rodolfo Morales Cultural Foundation devoted to restoration of buildings in his hometown of Ocotlán. In all, he funded the restoration of fifteen churches including the 16th century Convent of Santo Domingo and a 17th-century church in the town of Santa Ana Zegache, as well creating cultural spaces throughout Oaxaca's central valleys. His most important restoration project was the former convent of Ocotlan which was converted into a municipal complex.”

José Clemente Orozco "painted the theme, Cristo destruye su cruz, three times in his life, twice as murals — one of which still survives at Dartmouth College — and once on a 4’ x 3’ canvas." The image has been understood both as saying “It is finished!” to the violence that destroys and oppresses and as a denial of "the sacrificial destiny meant for him."

“Through his art, Roche Rabell showed the world our culture, the African roots, our religion as well as the relation between politics and culture in the American continent.

The painter explored aspects of the Puerto Rican identity and its environment with the same intensity that he did with himself. That is why he would also depict the most intimate aspects and vulnerabilities of human beings in multiple self-portraits. The human figure had a central position in his production.”

Diego Rivera "did not represent religious images unless they were useful as social observations ... The most that he came close to portray religious messages was at the murals in Chapingo, where his images functioned as a catechism exhorting a new generation of Mexican farm workers and agricultural planners to uphold a modern nationally, constructive, self-respecting way of life, based on the credo "exploitation of the land, not of man."" Nevertheless, it has been noted that his Detroit Industry Murals "are rife with Christian themes and utopian symbolism."

“Soledad Salamé, American, born in Santiago, Chile in 1954, currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

From 1973 to 1983 Salamé lived in Venezuela. At this time she was exposed to the rainforest, a pivotal experience in her artistic development which continues to be a source of inspiration. As an interdisciplinary artist Salamé creates work that originates from extensive research of specific topics. In pursuit of intensive research, Salamé has since travelled widely in the Americas, Europe and Antarctica.”

“The concern of this artist, born in Chile and educated in Chile and Venezuela, is the environment and the political and spiritual aspects of its preservation or destruction. “

"[David Alfaro] Siqueiros painted some fifteen portraits of Christ ... on August 2, 1963, he inscribed the following quote from the most devout of Italian painters, Fra Angelico, in the back of his painting Cristo del Pueblo: "May only he who believes in Christ paint Christ." And in another occasion, during his imprisonment, he declared: "Was Jesus Christ not, like me, a victim of social dissolution, a persecuted man?" On August 9, 1963, from his cell at a crime prevention facility, Siqueiros inscribed the following words regarding the Via Crucis on the back of his painting, Mutilated Christ: "First, his enemies crucified him 2000 years ago. Then, they mutilated him from the Middle Ages on, and today, their new and true friends restore him under the political pressure of communism post-Ecumenical Council. This small work is dedicated to the latter."

“The exhibition Mundus Admirabilis e Outras Pragas, which was shown at Galeria Brito Cimino in São Paulo in November 2008, on the other hand, is an example of the more poetic, less direct critique of [Regina] Silveira’s works, which also characterises Tropel (reversed). Here the artist installed a fully decked table with a white tablecloth and the finest porcelain ready for a luxurious, celebratory dinner. But both the tablecloth and porcelain were covered with large, black insects, projected onto the surface of the serving dishes, carafes, glasses and plates. The entire dinner service was on a tablecloth cross-stitched in the style of the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceara, where the women in many towns still master this traditional, local craft.

The insects range from abnormally large cockroaches, mosquitoes and flies to grasshoppers and scorpions. The variety of insects can be seen to represent a mix of references to the Biblical plagues that devastated Egypt (grasshoppers and mosquitoes) and the “bestarium” of the Middle Ages, to the presence of insects in absurd modernist literature by authors like Franz Kafka and the Argentinean authors Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar - not to mention everyday, contemporary ‘bugs’. It was the same Mundus Admirabilis with which Silveira ‘occupied’ Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil’s free-standing cubic glass building in Brasilia in 2007, transforming it into a gigantic insect cage with the domineering presence of giant insects representing a disturbing, universal image of global plagues of all ages. With this shift from Biblical mythology to the daily dinner table, and references to the absurd tradition in European as well as Latin American literature, Mundus Admirabilis symbolizes the plague as the universal phenomenon of classical mythology, but also the very present plagues of modern society, like corruption, war, AIDS or environmental catastrophes.

The Saints’s Paradox (1994) where an impossible situation is established: A small wooden figure of a saint has been given a large distorted shadow not belonging to himself but to the statue on the monument to the brutal General Duque de Caxias in São Paulo.”

Much of Nahum B. Zenil's “works use mixed media on paper or oil on canvas. He preferred to paint on canvas until the materials compromised his health. He quickly returned to collaging on paper. He often uses his image to relieve pressures he felt as a child growing up homosexual in a small town and to comment on contemporary Mexican society. His works illustrate a duality between himself as an "other" and his relationship with the Catholic Church. Within Zenil's mixed media pieces he uses mainly himself as the subject. He pictures himself in his images with many religious figures such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Within his images are many re-worked traditional Mexican forms like the retablo and ex-voto styles. Zenil was inspired by the works of artists such as Frida Kahlo and Jose Guadalupe Posada.

These influences can be seen in his works, Frida in My Heart and With All Respect, in which the artist actually used the image of Frida Kahlo in his paintings. According to the website glbtq archive, they state that "In a number of ways, Zenil has looked to the art of Frida Kahlo, with its strong dose of self-examination and criticism, as a beacon of inspiration. The portrait of Kahlo is sometimes incorporated into Zenil's works and he creates a lively dialogue between his own portrait and that of Kahlo, whose art has often been seen as representing the triumph of will over adversity." Zenil saw Frida art as a form of salvation, which he used to escape from his everyday life. Zenil's art allowed him to purge himself of the pressures he felt growing up gay, in a small town as a child. The pressures continued to follow him into his life in Mexico city, and as a teacher until he quit, to pursue his art full-time. Many of his works look at a variety of themes and relationships among race, religion, Mexican history, cultural designation, colonialism, male subjectivity and homosexuality."

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Scott Stapp - The Great Divide.