Overview

Contemporary artists are engaging more deeply than ever with religious imagery, themes, practices, and audiences. With a bracing, jargon-free style, Aaron Rosen--a leading scholar, art critic, and curator--takes readers into studios, galleries, and worship spaces as he paints a compelling picture of art and religion today. Focusing on individual artists, from eminent names to emerging stars, Rosen's essays and interviews tackle key questions, from how art might sustain communities to how it might offer new approaches to conflict resolution. Drawing on years spent developing relationships with artists around the globe--from Algeria to India to the United States--Rosen gets artists to talk, often for the first time, about how religion impacts their practice. Whether inspiring or unsettling, these brushes with faith challenge and invigorate the artists in question, and those who ponder the results. Replete with more than seventy color images of works ranging from video art to outdoor installations, this volume is indispensable reading for those looking to see contemporary art in a new light.

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9781532649318

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Reviews

There is plenty in this engaging book to pique the imagination of curators and art critics as well as students and scholars. The artists are well chosen and offer an intriguing cross-section of the contemporary art world, from emerging artists to established practitioners working across almost every medium. It is particularly welcome to see Jewish artists drawn into conversations with artists from different religious and cultural backgrounds. --Samantha Baskind, Cleveland State University, author of Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America Imagine a gallery staging a remarkable exhibit, gathering a global array of artists whose work intersects with, is informed by, and often unsettles Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And then imagine you could sit down and have a conversation with a number of the artists. Well, you're holding that exhibit in your hands. In this marvelous little book, critic and curator Aaron Rosen deconstructs tired assumptions about both contemporary art and religious faith, inviting us to reconsider both. --James K. A. Smith, Calvin College, editor-in-chief, Image Journal Rosen's engagingly fluent prose comes across like an everyday conversation, easy and topical, until passages of sudden insight and real beauty tip the reader into unexpected depths of thought. Not often do you find a book that offers such easy companionship yet leaves you profoundly altered, for Rosen conjures up a sense of intimacy and reciprocity with art and artists, while now and then alerting us to the weighty business of being human. --Frances Spalding, CBE, FRSL, University of Cambridge

There is plenty in this engaging book to pique the imagination of curators and art critics as well as students and scholars. The artists are well chosen and offer an intriguing cross-section of the contemporary art world, from emerging artists to established practitioners working across almost every medium. It is particularly welcome to see Jewish artists drawn into conversations with artists from different religious and cultural backgrounds. --Samantha Baskind, Cleveland State University, author of Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America Imagine a gallery staging a remarkable exhibit, gathering a global array of artists whose work intersects with, is informed by, and often unsettles Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And then imagine you could sit down and have a conversation with a number of the artists. Well, you're holding that exhibit in your hands. In this marvelous little book, critic and curator Aaron Rosen deconstructs tired assumptions about both contemporary art and religious faith, inviting us to reconsider both. --James K. A. Smith, Calvin College, editor-in-chief, Image Journal Rosen's engagingly fluent prose comes across like an everyday conversation, easy and topical, until passages of sudden insight and real beauty tip the reader into unexpected depths of thought. Not often do you find a book that offers such easy companionship yet leaves you profoundly altered, for Rosen conjures up a sense of intimacy and reciprocity with art and artists, while now and then alerting us to the weighty business of being human. --Frances Spalding, CBE, FRSL, University of Cambridge

"""There is plenty in this engaging book to pique the imagination of curators and art critics as well as students and scholars. The artists are well chosen and offer an intriguing cross-section of the contemporary art world, from emerging artists to established practitioners working across almost every medium. It is particularly welcome to see Jewish artists drawn into conversations with artists from different religious and cultural backgrounds."" --Samantha Baskind, Cleveland State University, author of Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America ""Imagine a gallery staging a remarkable exhibit, gathering a global array of artists whose work intersects with, is informed by, and often unsettles Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And then imagine you could sit down and have a conversation with a number of the artists. Well, you're holding that exhibit in your hands. In this marvelous little book, critic and curator Aaron Rosen deconstructs tired assumptions about both contemporary art and religious faith, inviting us to reconsider both."" --James K. A. Smith, Calvin College, editor-in-chief, Image Journal ""Rosen's engagingly fluent prose comes across like an everyday conversation, easy and topical, until passages of sudden insight and real beauty tip the reader into unexpected depths of thought. Not often do you find a book that offers such easy companionship yet leaves you profoundly altered, for Rosen conjures up a sense of intimacy and reciprocity with art and artists, while now and then alerting us to the weighty business of being human."" --Frances Spalding, CBE, FRSL, University of Cambridge"

Author Information

Aaron Rosen is professor of religion and visual culture, director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, and visiting professor at King's College London, where he taught previously. He began his career at Yale, Oxford, and Columbia, after receiving his PhD from Cambridge. He has curated exhibitions around the world and written widely for scholarly and popular publications. He is the author and editor of many books, including Art and Religion in the 21st Century and Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue.

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