Jesus Christ in Christian Art and Culture 14th to 20th Centuries

Jesus Christ in Christian Art and Culture 14th to 20th Centuries
Author: Gosudarstvennyĭ russkiĭ muzeĭ (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 538
Release: 2000
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Includes brief yet comprehensive biographies of the artists featured, such as Kazimir Malevich, David Buliuk, Grigory Gagarin, Pavel Filonov and Alexei Yegorov Despite its later acceptance of Christianity in 988, and the many decades of religious repression under the Communist Regime, Russian artists have over the centuries produced images of Christ renowned for their spiritual clarity and beauty. Gorgeously and abundantly illustrated, this book presents paintings, iconography and liturgical objects as well as biographies of the artists and informative essays that trace Christian art and culture in Russia over the past six hundred years.

The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion

The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion
Author: Leo Steinberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2014-12-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 022622631X

Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation. After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation. This revised and greatly expanded edition not only adduces new visual evidence, but deepens the theological argument and engages the controversy aroused by the book's first publication.

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art
Author: Robin M. Jensen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2018-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317514173

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art surveys a broad spectrum of Christian art produced from the late second to the sixth centuries. The first part of the book opens with a general survey of the subject and then presents fifteen essays that discuss specific media of visual art—catacomb paintings, sculpture, mosaics, gold glass, gems, reliquaries, ceramics, icons, ivories, textiles, silver, and illuminated manuscripts. Each is written by a noted expert in the field. The second part of the book takes up themes relevant to the study of early Christian art. These seven chapters consider the ritual practices in decorated spaces, the emergence of images of Christ’s Passion and miracles, the functions of Christian secular portraits, the exemplary mosaics of Ravenna, the early modern history of Christian art and archaeology studies, and further reflection on this field called “early Christian art.” Each of the volume’s chapters includes photographs of many of the objects discussed, plus bibliographic notes and recommendations for further reading. The result is an invaluable introduction to and appraisal of the art that developed out of the spread of Christianity through the late antique world. Undergraduate and graduate students of late classical, early Christian, and Byzantine culture, religion, or art will find it an accessible and insightful orientation to the field. Additionally, professional academics, archivists, and curators working in these areas will also find it valuable as a resource for their own research, as well as a textbook or reference work for their students.

Religion and the Arts: History and Method

Religion and the Arts: History and Method
Author: Diane Apostolos-Cappadona
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2017-11-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9004361561

In Religion and the Arts: History and Method, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona presents an overview of the 19th century origins of this discrete field of study and its methodological journey to the present-day through issues of repatriation, museum exhibitions, and globalization. Apostolos-Cappadona suggests that the fluidity and flexibility of the study of religion and the arts has expanded like an umbrella since the 1970s - and the understanding that art was simply a visual exegesis of texts - to now support the study of material, popular, and visual culture, as well as gender. She also delivers a careful analysis of the evolution of thought from traditional iconographies to the transformations once scholars were influenced by response theory and challenged by globalization and technology. Religion and the Arts: History and Method offers an indispensable introduction to the questions and perspectives essential to the study of this field.

The Christ Child in Medieval Culture

The Christ Child in Medieval Culture
Author: Theresa M. Kenney
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0802098940

The cult of the Christ Child flourished in late medieval Europe across lay and religious, as well as geographic and cultural boundaries. Depictions of Christ's boyhood are found throughout popular culture, visual art, and literature. The Christ Child in Medieval Culture is the first interdisciplinary investigation of how representations of the Christ Child were conceptualized and employed in this period. The contributors to this unique volume analyse depictions of the Christ Child through a variety of frameworks, including the interplay of mortality and divinity, the medieval conceit of a suffering Christ Child, and the interrelationships between Christ and other figures, including saints and ordinary children. The Christ Child in Medieval Culture synthesizes various approaches to interpreting the cultural meaning of medieval religious imagery and illuminates the significance of its most central figure.

The Image of Christ in Modern Art

The Image of Christ in Modern Art
Author: Richard Harries
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317027906

The Image of Christ in Modern Art explores the challenges presented by the radical and rapid changes of artistic style in the 20th century to artists who wished to relate to traditional Christian imagery. In the 1930s David Jones said that he and his contemporaries were acutely conscious of ’the break’, by which he meant the fragmentation and loss of a once widely shared Christian narrative and set of images. In this highly illustrated book, Richard Harries looks at some of the artists associated with the birth of modernism such as Epstein and Rouault as well as those with a highly distinctive understanding of religion such as Chagall and Stanley Spencer. He discusses the revival of confidence associated with the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral after World War II and the commissioning of work by artists like Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and John Piper before looking at the very testing last quarter of the 20th century. He shows how here, and even more in our own time, fresh and important visual interpretations of Christ have been created both by well known and less well known artists. In conclusion he suggests that the modern movement in art has turned out to be a friend, not a foe of Christian art.Through a wide and beautiful range of images and insightful text, Harries explores the continuing challenge, present from the beginning of Christian art, as to how that which is visual can in some way indicate the transcendent.