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This book demonstrates that numerous prominent artists in every period of the modern era were expressing spiritual interests when they created celebrated works of art. This magisterial overview insightfully reveals the centrality of an often denied and misunderstood element in the cultural history of modern art.
Charlene Spretnak is the author of several books on cultural history, religion and spirituality, and social criticism, including States of Grace, The Resurgence of the Real, Missing Mary, and Relational Reality. A professor emerita in religion and philosophy, she lives with her husband in Ojai, California, USA.
This book demonstrates that numerous prominent artists in every period of the modern era were expressing spiritual interests when they created celebrated works of art. This magisterial overview insightfully reveals the centrality of an often denied and misunderstood element in the cultural history of modern art.
Charlene Spretnak is the author of several books on cultural history, religion and spirituality, and social criticism, including States of Grace, The Resurgence of the Real, Missing Mary, and Relational Reality. A professor emerita in religion and philosophy, she lives with her husband in Ojai, California, USA.
Introduction: The Great Underground River That Flows Through Modern Art 1. The 19th Century: Expressing Christian Themes in a Newly Secular World 2. Mid-1880s through 1918: The Quest to Save Civilization from 'Materialism' Through a New Art Informed by Esoteric Spirituality 3. 1919-1939: The Reaction against Prewar Esoteric Spirituality 4. 1945 to the Present: Allusive Spirituality 5. 1945 to the Present: Spirituality of Immanence 6. 1945 to the Present: Rocked in the Bosom of Abraham Afterword: When Form Follows Spirit Appendix: Making the Case Index
Springer Book Archives
Charlene Spretnak is the author of several books on cultural history, religion and spirituality, and social criticism, including States of Grace, The Resurgence of the Real, Missing Mary, and Relational Reality. A professor emerita in religion and philosophy, she lives with her husband in Ojai, California, USA.
“Spretnak's scholarly ambition challenges deep-seated assumptions
about the genesis of modernism. … She offers a parallel narrative
to the standard account of rationalistic faith in progress, with
canonical artists embracing a dizzying variety of institutional
faiths and other antimaterialistic beliefs. … Reading against the
grain and including original interviews, Spretnak offers
provocative reinterpretations of the work of artists like Sean
Scully, Anselm Kiefer, Ed Ruscha, Antony Gormley and Ursula von
Rydingsvard, especially in light of their childhood faiths.”
(Eleanor Heartney, Art in America, February, 2016)
“The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art: Art History Reconsidered,
1800 to the Present, is a much needed counter punch to the
predominant narrative about modern art that has squelched this
particular story line. … This isn’t a book for just browsing. There
is so much of value on every single page. … I can’t imagine a
single reader of Slow Muse [or The Awakened Eye] who wouldn’t love
this book.” (Miriam Louisa Simons, the awakened eye,
theawakenedeye.com, December, 2015)"While the role of spirituality
in art has been discussed for certain specific artists and
movements, Spretnak's work offers a rich and comprehensive
narrative of the networks of artists and artistic movements
influenced by spirituality that would be valuable for any
institution with a focus on modern art and perhaps even as the
basis of a course on the subject." - Art Libraries Society of North
America Reviews "This clear-eyed and passionate book bravely
contends with the omnipresent American assumption that the
narrative of modern art can only be told in terms laid out by MoMA
in the early 1930s. In the recent iteration by MoMA on the history
of Abstract Art one finds only the same story told 75 years ago,
with arrogant disdain for fresh scholarship by Sixten Ringbom and
Robert Rosenblum and others written decades ago. I hope that
students of modern art history may take heart and inspiration in
this serious new book, the result of several decades of research
and interviews, especially with artists today." - Maurice Tuchman,
Senior Curator Emeritus, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA
"Charlene Spretnak's book is an urgently needed reminder that a
good deal of modern art is informed by a 'spiritual dynamic,'
initially conveyed through traditional Christian iconography, later
through purely aesthetic and abstract means, that is, form and
color alone. For her 'spiritual' means 'numinous,' a sense of awe
and mystery (the so-called 'mysterium tremendum'), and she
convincingly demonstrates, with breathtaking comprehensiveness,
that a good many modern artists, however stylistically different,
viewed their work as the embodiment of a numinous experience, and a
means of evoking it in the spectator. Perhaps most tellingly, she
argues that the 'esoteric spirituality' of pre-World War I
abstraction and the 'allusive spirituality' of post-World War II
abstraction are a sort of revolutionary call to spiritual arms
against increasingly materialistic modern society. Her survey is in
effect a plea for a critical new spiritual art in a society which
has lost its spiritual bearings." - Donald Kuspit, Distinguished
Professor Emeritus, Art History, Philosophy, State University of
New York, USA "A welcome and proficiently documented critique of
the hermetic formalism by art critics, Charlene Spretnak has given
us an exploration of the spiritual dimension of modern and
contemporary art with insight and passion." - Peter Selz, Professor
Emeritus, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley USA
"This book makes a tremendous case for a long overdue unearthing of
the 'great underground river that flows through modern art' a move
that might just give us a formidable font of wisdom in some
desperately arid terrain." - Taney Roniger, The Brooklyn Rail
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