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Born March 8, 1945, less than two months before the suicide of Adolf Hitler, German artist Anselm Kiefer is far too young to remember firsthand the Führer and his "1,000-year Reich.’’ Nonetheless, the Nazi catastrophe is Kiefer’s all-consuming subject. Hitler’s perversion of the German nation and culture is the deep shadow that sometimes merely lurks …
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Around 3:00 A. M. on November 10, 1938,. gaping darkness began to spew the flames that were to burn unabated for the next seven years. On this night Nazi mobs executed a well-planned "spontaneous outrage" throughout the precincts of German Jewry. Synagogues were burned, their sacred objects profaned and destroyed; Jewish dwellings were ransacked, their …
Continue reading “Broken Continuities: “Night” and “White Crucifixion””
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Throughout the history of Christian art, portrayals of the face of Jesus have been as varied and revealing as the various theologies interpreting his person produced throughout the history of Christian thought. It is curious that none of the evangelists, and certainly none of the great theologians of the church, ever met and conversed with …
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He has sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, declared Vincent van Gogh to his brother, Theo, in a letter dated 1876. For the next three years van Gogh singlemindedly pursued his calling to the ministry, first as a student of theology and then as a missionary to the coal miners in the …
Continue reading “From Preaching to Painting: Van Gogh’s Religious Zeal”
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The themes of religion have provided the content of painting in the West. If you have visited the great museums of Europe or of North America, you have been impressed with this fact. In gallery after gallery, the great themes of religion are the subject matter of the paintings. The Louvre in Paris, the Prado …
Continue reading “On Being Alive to the Arts and Religion: Painting”
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Edvard Munch’s art has an insistent quality that requires viewers to take account of their private worlds. His artistic and spiritual journey covered a lifetime. While many artists of that period are now assigned to comfortable niches, this strange Norwegian continues to speak to us in startling ways. That is why the exhibit of his …
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"Art is the daughter of the divine," contended philosopher Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s. Most art 1overs today would assume that Steiner was referring to a pre-20th-century past. True, art was once the daughter of the divine, they might say. But in the 20th century the once-dutiful daughter has struck out on her own, ignoring …
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Book Review: The Visual Arts and Christianity in America: From the Colonial Period to the Present. Expanded Edition. By John Dillenberger. Crossroad, 290 pp., $39.50. Dillenberger argues convincingly that art has been a secondary matter in American culture. One reason is that from the colonial period through the 19th century the Protestant majority in America …
Continue reading “Stalking the Spiritual in the Visual Arts”
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The appealing works of the contemporary Japanese printmaker Sadao Watanabe have in recent years become quite popular in this country. Watanabe, a Christian, deals exclusively with biblical themes, and Western Christians are initially attracted to his art by the familiarity of the stories he illustrates. But the strong appeal of his prints is not due …
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Among protestants the visual arts and Christian worship have often had very little to do with one another. Though most Protestant church interiors include a banner or a cross, perhaps even a sculpture or a painting, in most instances the art serves little more than an ornamental purpose. As a result, such works only reinforce …
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What do we mean when we speak of religious art? Do we mean that religious themes are depicted in the art? Do we mean that religious persons were the artists? Do we mean that some special religious group or church has decided that the art is orthodox and therefore official? All of these definitions have …
