Religious American Art

Religious American Art

Books

(above: Marsden Hartley, El Santo, 1919, oil on canvas, New Mexico Museum of Art. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)

Art, Belief, Meaning: The Visual Arts and the Restored Gospel : Papers Presented at the First Annual Art, Belief, Meaning Seminar for Faculty and Students, November 20, December 4, and December 11, 1998, by Christian F. Sorenson. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, College of Fine Arts and Communications, 1998 - 76 pages

Art and Popular Religion in Evangelical America, 1915-1940, by Robert L. Gambone. Published in 1989 by University of Tennessee Press.

Benjamin West: The Context of His Life's Work with Particular Attention to Paintings with Religious Subject Matter, by John Dillenberger. Published in 1977 by Trinity University Press.

Crossroads: Art and Religion in American Life, Published in 2001 by The New Press. Amazon.com reviewer Michael Joseph Gross says "...Crossroads is a valuable contribution to America's ongoing project of navigating the complex relationship between its aesthetic and spiritual ideals..." with "... insightful anthology of seven essays by prominent artists, art historians, and religious scholars."

Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman, By David Morgan. Published 1996 by Yale University Press. 246 pages. ISBN:0300063423. Google Books says: "This fascinating book focuses on the production, marketing, and reception of one such set of religious illustrations, the art of Warner Sallman (1892-1968), whose '1940 Head Of Christ' has been reproduced an estimated five hundred million times." Note: Google Books offers a Limited Preview of this book. For more information on this and other digitizing initiatives from publishers please click here and here. (left: front cover, Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman, image courtesy Google Books)

Images of Faith: Art of the Latter-Day Saints, by Richard G. Oman and Robert O. Davis, Publisher: Deseret Book Co. (September 1995), 202 pages. Includes images of artworks in the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City, UT.

Jewish-American Artists and the Holocaust, by Mathew Baigell. Published by Rutgers University Press in 1997.

Jewish Art in America: An Introduction, By Matthew Baigell. Published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2007, 253 pages

Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America, By Samantha Baskind, Publish Date Expected 2/7/2014, Pennsylvania State University Press, 264 pages, Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-05983-9

The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture, by John Davis. Published by Princeton University Press in 1998. Google Books says: "This book tells of the nineteenth-century American painters who, along with photographers, archaeologists, writers, evangelists, and tourists, flocked to the biblical Holy Land, a world of striking landscape vistas that reflected, in their eyes, a powerful image of the United States..."

Painting Religion in Public: John Singer Sargent's Triumph of Religion at the Boston Public Library, by Sally M. Promey. Published by Princeton University Press in 2001.

The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, By Jane Dillenberger, Andy Warhol. Published 1998 by Continuum International Publishing Group.128 pages. ISBN:082641334X. Google Books says: "An examination of the spiritual side of Warhol looks at his art during his final years, which includes paintings based on Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," and Warhol's "Skull" and "Cross" paintings." Note: Google Books offers a Limited Preview of this book. For more information on this and other digitizing initiatives from publishers please click here and here. (right: front cover, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, image courtesy Google Books)

Religious Folk Art in America: Reflections of Faith, by C. Kurt Dewhurst, Betty MacDowell, Marsha MacDowell. Published by E.P. Dutton in association with the Museum of American Folk Art, in 1983.

Seeing the Unseen, by Marianne Lettieri, Founding Director of Arts of the Covenant in Menlo Park, CA, to be published by Christians in the Visual Arts. According to Fr. Jim Blaettler, SJ., Director of Manresa Gallery, Seeing the Unseen will provide a guide for those interested in launching and managing a church-based art gallery.

Seven Visions: The Spirit of Religion in Contemporary Regional Art, by Arnot Art Museum -1991

Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age, by Kristin Schwain. Published in 2007 by Cornell University Press. On the back cover, Leigh Eric Schmidt of Princeton University says: "Signs of Grace offers a revealing window on the way in which the visual arts were given a distinct religious bearing in late Victorian America-one that accentuated momentary experiences of spiritual and aesthetic illumination. In this rich and sumptuous book, Kristin Schwain has done an excellent job of analyzing these forms of spiritualized visuality through the works of Thomas Eakins, Henry Ossawa Tanner, F. Holland Day, and Abbott Handerson Thayer." (left: front cover, Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age, image courtesy Google Books)

Saved by Beauty: Sister Mary Charles McGough, OSB, published by St. Scholastica Monastery, 2014. 108 pages.

The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-century American Art, by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona. Published by Scholars Press, in 1995.

Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos In-between Worlds, by Claire J. Farago, Donna Pierce. Published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2006.

The Visual Arts and Christianity in America: From the Colonial Period to the Present, by John Dillenberger. Published in 1984 by Scholars Press (Chico, Calif). Book Review: "Stalking the Spiritual in the Visual Arts" by David Morgan.

The Visual Culture of American Religions, by David Morgan, Sally M. Promey. Published by University of California Press in 2001.

(above: Edward Hicks (American, Langhorne, Pennsylvania 1780-1849 Newton, Pennsylvania), Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1830-32, Oil on canvas, 17 7/8 x 23 7/8 in. (45.4 x 60.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1970)

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