The visual culture of American religions / edited by David Morgan & Sally M. Promey.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Morgan, David, 1957-

Promey, Sally M., 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art and religion--United States.

Art and religion.

United States.

Physical Description:

xiv, 427 pages, 16 pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2001]

Summary:

Contemporary artists have often clashed with conservative American evangelicals in recent years, giving the impression that art and religion are fundamentally at odds. Yet historically, artistic images have played a profound role in American religious life. This superb collection of essays, with its unique collection of images, challenges the growing tension between religion and the arts by illustrating and investigating their long-standing and intriguing relationship from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

The essays explore such varied topics as Sioux Sun Dance artifacts and paintings, American Jewish New Year postcards, the New Mexican santo tradition, roadside shrines, images of journey in African American pictorial traditions, the public display of religion, and the religious use of nineteenth-century technologies of mass reproduction.

Contents:

Part 1 Religious Visual Culture and Public Identity

1. The Public Display of Religion / Sally M. Promey 27

2. For Christ and the Republic: Protestant Illustration and the History of Literacy in Nineteenth-Century America / David Morgan 49

3. America's Church: Roman Catholicism and Civic Space in the Nation's Capital / Thomas A. Tweed 68

4. Architecture as Community Service: West Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware / Gretchen T. Buggeln 87

Part 2 Religious Visual Culture and the Construction of Meaning

5. Catholic Envy: The Visual Culture of Protestant Desire / John Davis 105

6. Robert Gober's "Virgin" Installation: Issues of Spirituality in Contemporary American Art / Erika Doss 129

7. Visual Religion in Media Culture / Stewart M. Hoover 146

8. From Presentation to Representation in Sioux Sun Dance Painting / Harvey Markowitz 160

9. William Sidney Mount and the Hermetic Tradition in American Art / David Bjelajac 176

10. Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos between Theory and History / Claire Farago 191

Part 3 Religious Visual Culture and American Modernity

11. Visualizing God's Silence: Oracles, the Enlightenment, and Elihu Vedder's Questioner of the Sphinx / Leigh E. Schmidt 211

12. Greetings from Faith: Early-Twentieth-Century American Jewish New Year Postcards / Ellen Smith 229

13. "When Jesus Handed Me a Ticket": Images of Railroad Travel and Spiritual Transformations among African Americans, 1865-1917 / John M. Giggie 249

14. American Protestant Bible Illustration from Copper Plates to Computers / Paul Gutjahr 267.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 367-382) and index.

ISBN:

0520225201

0520225228

OCLC:

44132928