David Wojnarowicz’s Christ: Symbols of Hope, Corruption, and Violence
Tag Archives: art
Rembrandt at 350: Light and Shadow in the Modern World
Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. Perhaps there was a sting of jealous amazement at work here, as Rembrandt notoriously bankrupted in the 1650s and thus worked in grinding poverty for his final decade. The winning and losing of fortune: this is the topsy-turvy, boom-and-bust world of global capital.
Christianity Meets State Shinto in Meiro Koizumi’s “Today My Empire Sings”
Jeremy Woolsey This story is a stark reminder of continuing taboos surrounding the emperor in contemporary Japan and the difficulties artists face in challenging them.
Getting Religion in the Museum
S. Brent Plate Situated within new globalized flows of commerce, politics, and culture, the relations between religion and museums in the United States become a productive starting point from which to pursue multiple research trajectories in political, social, and cultural life.
Theater as Religion: Luis Alfaro’s “Mojada” at The Getty
Luís León At a time when the bombastic politics of Donald Trump are dehumanizing and vilifying Mexican immigrants, Luis Alfaro’s new play gives audiences a much-needed human perspective on migrants in Los Angeles. Alfaro brings into sharp relief the tragedies undocumented workers face, and the sacrifices they make in order to work in the United States.
The Sacred and the Secular in the Vatican Museum
Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. There is more than one way to look at religion, and more than one place in which to find sacred energies alive and well today. These are neither surprising nor controversial contentions for readers of Sacred Matters. The central idea here is that the traditional notion of modern “secularization” does not capture the realities of the ever-shifting religious landscape in the contemporary United States (and in much of the modern world, for that matter).
Why Susan Sontag Matters
By Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. For anyone who is interested in religion and the arts, Susan Sontag’s (1933-2004) work remains essential. She burst upon the New York arts scene in 1966 with the publication of her collection of essays, Against Interpretation. The book was a tour de force examination of everything from second rate horror films to Critical Theory. Her primary interests were the performative arts, photography and film.
Seven Questions for Suzanne Glover Lindsay
What sparked the idea for writing this book? Like many researchers, I smelled a story in the gaps and disparities within even the newest work on a great topic: nineteenth-century French sculpture. Some of its most famous examples were funerary monuments that were hailed as artistic masterpieces or as key players in France’s political history without any significant reference to their intended purpose as parts of tombs.
Daily Sacred
“Shunyata” by Hoyt Oliver: Wholly Holey Holy, a cedar log sculpture in the Oxford College library. Images of quite a few