Religion and Contemporary Art sets the theoretical frameworks and interpretive strategies for exploring the re-emergence of religion in the making, exhibiting, and discussion of contemporary art. Featuring essays from both established and emerging scholars, critics, and artists, the book reflects on what might be termed an "accord" between contemporary art and religion.

It explores the common strategies contemporary artists employ in the interface between religion and contemporary art practice. It also includes case studies to provide more in-depth treatments of specific artists grappling with themes such as ritual, abstraction, mythology, the body, popular culture, science, liturgy, and social justice, among other themes.

It is a must-read resource for working artists, critics, and scholars in this field, and an invitation to new voices "curious" about its promises and possibilities.

About the Author

Ronald R. Bernier is Professor of Humanities at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA. His books include The Unspeakable Art of Bill Viola (2014), Beyond Belief (2010), and Monument, Moment, and Memory: Monet's Cathedral in Fin-de-Siecle France (2007). His research interests are modern and contemporary art and religious studies.

Rachel Hostetter Smith is Gilkison Distinguished Professor of Art History at Taylor University. She publishes widely on aspects of religion and the arts, including two edited volumes of Religion and the Arts and several exhibition catalogues, and has developed numerous international, intercultural art projects and traveling exhibitions, most recently Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition.

Reviews

"This remarkable volume invites into conversation an impressive assembly of interlocutors and an impressively diverse set of approaches to a still-mystifyingly understudied subject. Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord represents a signal contribution that brings into creative relation its two key terms to demonstrate how they are not simply manifest in adjacency but often also inextricably fused. Highly recommended to scholars in art and/or religion as to artists in all media!"

Sally M. Promey, Yale University, USA

Book Information
ISBN 9781032354187
Author Ronald R. Bernier
Format Hardback
Page Count 464
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 940g