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"Art and religion Exhibitions."
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Breaking Resemblance
In recent decades curators and artists have shown a distinct interest in religion, its different traditions, manifestations in public life, gestures and images. Breaking Resemblance explores the complex relationship between contemporary art and religion by focusing on the ways artists re-work religious motifs as a means to reflect critically on our desire to believe in images, on the history of seeing them, and on their double power— iconic and political. It discusses a number of exhibitions that take religion as their central theme, and a selection of works by Bill Viola, Lawrence Malstaf, Victoria Reynolds, and Berlinde de Bruyckere—all of whom, in their respective ways and media, recycle religious motifs and iconography and whose works resonate with, or problematize the motif of, the true image.
eBook
The Other Laocoön: How Artworks Become Canonical or Fail to Do So?
The classical Laocoön and His Son (ca. 50 CE), rediscovered in 1506 in Rome, is arguably the most illustrious artwork anchoring the entire canon of art history. Less is known about the eighth-century Chinese Laocoön that predates the Italian rediscovery of the classical prototype by seven centuries. The tale of the two Laocoöns is a story of canon formation: the Italian work becomes one of the best-known artworks in the world; the Chinese one is hardly known. Why should that be the case? How do artworks become canonical? How does art acquire its canon? Does canon necessarily mean a collection of exemplary artworks? Or is canonization largely a process of ranking artists and corralling object-centered narratives? Is the Western concept of canon universally applicable or are there other ways of canonization that lead to a canon without particular objects? For these questions, the long history of Chinese art provides answers.
Journal Article
Pushing the Boundaries
Lu Yang’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany took place at Kunstpalais in Erlangen in 2022. Lu Yang is undoubtedly a global artist, yet at the same time, his art is testimony of his embeddedness into an Asian/Chinese background. In his works, he draws heavily from a mixture of religious tradition, pop and subcultural influences from Asian countries, and global postinternet art trends. The presentation and mediation of his works in a German art institution needs to consider preconceived ideas that the local audience might have about art with Asian aesthetics. To avoid the pitfalls of Othering and the reproduction of stereotypes, a deeper understanding of underlying topics, such as religious tropes, is necessary. Therefore, a collaborative, interdisciplinary curatorial approach is the curator’s means of choice.
Journal Article
The Oil Paintings in the Department Store: The Robe and Racialized Tastemaking in 1950s Detroit
This essay examines the promotion of Twentieth Century–Fox’s production of The Robe (1953)—which exhibited Dean Cornwell’s oil paintings in local department stores in Detroit—in relation to the city’s sociocultural context and racial tensions. It argues that ongoing issues in the city such as property ownership, racialized topographical boundaries, and class aspiration can be traced across Detroit’s film culture in the postwar period, particularly in the burgeoning middlebrow culture of materialistic consumption. The promotional campaign’s use of art exhibitions in department stores represented a significant moment for new ideas about class, culture, and racial identity in the city, contributing to the formation of the white suburban middle class and functioning as an example of racialized tastemaking. Accounts of this postwar cultural shift, particularly as it pertained to film culture, have underemphasized the importance of racial identity and exclusion to such formations. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates film history, material culture studies, and cultural history, this essay uses the Cornwell exhibition as a case study for understanding the impact of racial tensions on class identity in 1950s Detroit.
Journal Article
My Soul Looks IBeyond/I in Wonder: Curating Faith, Freedom, and Futurity at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
This article offers a description and critical reflection upon two recent exhibits on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC): Spirit in the Dark: Religion in Black Music, Activism, and Popular Culture and Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures. The article explores the interplay of mutually reinforcing themes of faith, freedom, and futurity that emerge when examining the exhibits together. This article also demonstrates the public significance of the curation of religion and culture in museums and other cultural spaces beyond the academy and religious institutions. It further shows how religion becomes a site of critical meditation upon and creative manifestation or materialization of Black futures. As such, this article contributes to more expansive discourses on the interplay between Black studies and the study of religion.
Journal Article
My Soul Looks Beyond in Wonder: Curating Faith, Freedom, and Futurity at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
This article offers a description and critical reflection upon two recent exhibits on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC): Spirit in the Dark: Religion in Black Music, Activism, and Popular Culture and Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures. The article explores the interplay of mutually reinforcing themes of faith, freedom, and futurity that emerge when examining the exhibits together. This article also demonstrates the public significance of the curation of religion and culture in museums and other cultural spaces beyond the academy and religious institutions. It further shows how religion becomes a site of critical meditation upon and creative manifestation or materialization of Black futures. As such, this article contributes to more expansive discourses on the interplay between Black studies and the study of religion.
Journal Article
HAROLD COHEN’S AARON
Harold Cohen: AARON, the show recently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art is perhaps the first posthumous show of new work. It featured the artist's famous drawing robot AARON working tirelessly and creating new work in front of a live audience. With the present explosion of AI technology, the Whitney's show had both contemporary relevance as well as historical significance. Harold Cohen (1928 -2016), the British-born artist, built AARON'S hardware and wrote its software in the late 1960s at the University of California, San Diego. The Whitney's exhibit brings AARON to New York about sixty years after its debut and eight years after its creator's death. The show includes AARON'S output from its first attempts at abstract expressionism, wiggly lines on paper, to the complexities of representational art, figures in landscapes. The show gives viewers a glimpse not only of the machine's output throughout the years but of the changing nature of the relationship between the artist and his creation.
Journal Article
A Room of Quiet Contemplation: Seeing and Identification in the National Museum of Korea
Contemplation is a unique way of seeing that enables us to perceive the truth of the invisible beyond what is visible. Through contemplation, one can become deeply connected with, and possibly even identify with, what they have observed. This study analyzes the spatial arrangement of “A Room of Quiet Contemplation” at the National Museum of Korea and explores its interaction with visitors. Although the room prominently features two Buddhist pensive bodhisattva statues, giving it a Buddhist appearance, it must meet certain necessary conditions due to its location in a national museum. Respect for religious diversity and the neutralization of religious bias are crucial. We examine how the statues are de-contextualized from their original temporal and local contexts, allowing them to function as universal (non-religious) signs in the museum. Furthermore, the room must be accessible to foreign visitors from various cultural and religious backgrounds. Thus, this research investigates the universality and singularity of the tradition of contemplation. Additionally, we explore how the experience of contemplation can be enhanced through various forms of the spatial expansion of “A Room of Quiet Contemplation”.
Journal Article
Provenance Research as a Method of Religious Studies: A Plea for the Necessity of Expanding Methods Using the Example of Dolls
Museum collections around the world contain millions of objects related to religion that can be considered classic sources for religious studies. To date, however, there is no method in religious studies for systematically critiquing such objects from museum collections as sources. Religious studies must therefore expand their methods in order to be able to systematically use such objects as sources for their own research. Various examples show that museum objects can only be made accessible for religious studies research with the help of provenance research. The main focus of the selected examples is on dolls with a religious background—or, rather, on museum objects that have been classified as dolls in collections. Using such objects as examples, this article provides insight into the problems of provenance and the resulting consequences. The aim is to use the examples to show how objects find their way into museum collections, what intentions may lie behind the acquisition of such objects, and how and in what context such objects may be presented to the public. The background to such a scientific approach lies in the analysis of the changing perspective on such objects, since the meaning and attribution of an object are never static. Rather, these objects are subject to a permanent change in perspective due to changing social processes. Or they are presented as something they never really were. And all this can be revealed by systematic provenance research. The article is therefore intended as a plea for the expansion of religious studies methods to include provenance research.
Journal Article