Overview

How has religion affected the creation and patronage of American art? This is the question explored in 'The Visual Arts and Christianity in America', the most comprehensive treatment of this subject to date. With its 184 illustrations, the volume is a visual and textual survey of both the religious paintings, statuary, and architecture produced in America since colonial times and the attitudes toward such art expressed by the artists, the clergy, and the religious press. By means of a multifaceted approach that includes investigation of biographical, journalistic, art historical, as well as religious literature, a broad range of art objects and buildings are carefully placed in their social and intellectual context. Part One presents the colonial backdrop, both English and Spanish, against which and out of which the ensuing developments in American art and religious life took shape. Part Two treats nineteenth-century views of art and architecture, focusing on the views held by the clergy and conveyed in religious journals as well as the religious views of the artists and architects themselves. In Part Three, devoted to art in private and public life, major issues emerge that will remain as such into the twentieth century: the relation between nature and history, the place of art in civil religion, and the presence or absence of explicit biblical themes. The fourth and entirely new portion of the book, devoted to the twentieth century, examines the continuities and discontinuities in style and content between nineteenth- and twentieth-century art in relation to spiritual and religious perceptions.

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9781592448593

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John Dillenberger is Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, which he headed during its formative first decade. He has also been President of Hartford Seminary and taught previously at Drew, Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton Universities as well as at San Francisco Theological Seminary. His works in historical theology were followed by publications in theology and the natural sciences and, during the last decade, in theology and art history. Among these are 'Benjamin West' and 'Perceptions of the Spirit in Twentieth-Century American Art' (with Jane Dillenberger). Active in encouraging quality in art and architecture for the church, Professor Dillenberger has been involved in commissioning artists and architects, including Richard Meier's Hartford Seminary.

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