Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts: Theology, Aesthetics, and Practice
Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele, eds.
‘The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images captive within you’: Rainer Maria Rilke (1914)
This edited volume of ten essays, selected from the programme at our 2018 conference, aims to explore how modern and contemporary artists and artworks are presenting and responding to Christian theology. Writing as artists, historians, theologians, and church leaders, our contributors demonstrate reciprocal and mutually enriching relationships between theological expression and artistic practice. In the understanding of Christian ideas, imaginative engagement in particular becomes the touchstone for new kinds of conversation: conversations involving juxtapositions of Christian symbols, inversions of biblical interpretation, and the validation of public and non-confessional (even secular) engagement, particularly in the liturgical. Transformation as our contributors find it is inscribed in these specific encounters with artworks, and also challenges traditional intellectual expectations for theology and aesthetics. The characteristic of relational (rather than transactional) exchange with the fluidity of Christian meaning is held up as vital for refreshing conversations about religion and the arts.
Featuring collaborative chapters, praxis sections focussing on individual artworks, and over ninety illustrations, the volume is representative of leading interdisciplinary scholarship and of the artist’s voice in the burgeoning dialogue between art and theology. The visual arts receive wide-ranging attention across sound, photography, installations, online media, and various church contexts: subjects include art works by Maciej Urbanek and Sara Mark, the Visual Commentary on Scripture, and the Bible as visualised sound.
ABOUT THE SERIES ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN THEOLOGY, IMAGINATION AND THE ARTS
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION AND ABSTRACTS (DOWNLOAD)
CONTENTS:
| Introduction: Transforming Christian thought in the visual arts Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele |
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| Part 1: Re-working the Bible beyond symbolic expression | |
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| 1 | John Harvey: ‘The hearing ear and the seeing eye’: Transformative listening to the biblical image |
| 2 | Sheona Beaumont: Photography as the Bible’s new illumination |
| 3 | Ben Quash: The Visual Commentary on Scripture: Principles and possibilities |
| 4 | Ewan King:The Virgin and the visual artist as theologian: Examining two Marian images by David Jones |
| PRAXIS I: LAVANT 2018 Sara Mark |
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| Part 2: Re-shaping institutional and historical cross-currents | |
| 5 | Jonathan Koestlé-Cate: ‘A sacred art of the state’: Public commissions for French churches, abbeys, and cathedrals |
| 6 | John Dickson and Harriet O’Neill: The Chapel at Royal Holloway: Visual theology and women’s education |
| 7 | Marjorie Coughlan: The ‘sacred pastoral’ as the manifestation of spirituality in the work of Bishop William Giles |
| PRAXIS II: HS Maciej Urbanek |
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| Part 3: Re-discovering church space in liturgy, performance, and installation | |
| 8 | Jonathan Anderson: Bin bag visions: Theological horizons in Maciej Urbanek’s HS |
| 9 | Martin Poole and Stephen B. Roberts: Public liturgical theology through community and public art |
| 10 | Lucy Newman Cleeve: ‘Stations of the Cross’ and ‘Stations of the Resurrection’: Interdisciplinary art practice and its implications for visual theology |
| Envoi Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele |
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Banner image: Maciej Urbanek, HS (detail), 2014; digital print, St Michael’s Church, Parish of Old St. Pancras, London. As featured in PRAXIS II and Chapter 8 of Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts.