Steven Pinker’s Sense of Style
In a recent interview, “‘Literally,’ Emojis, and Other Trends That Aren’t Destroying English“, Steven Pinker directs his usual optimism to writing style. I’ve been guilty too often of reckless...
View ArticleIñaki Ábalos and Renata Sentkiewicz on Dualism in Architecture
Much historic architecture takes its compositive tension from two theoretically incompatible morphological organizations that correspond to different universes or languages. This technique leads to a...
View ArticleCamille Paglia on the Truly Subversive in Art
Although I’m an atheist who believes only in great nature, I recognize the spiritual richness and grandeur of the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised. And I despise anyone who insults the...
View ArticleGary Kamiya on the Avante Garde
Again and again, the authors of these manifestos open with a mighty trumpet blast, issuing the most lofty and passionate denunciations of the imbecilic, stale, decadent, safe, bourgeois, vile,...
View ArticleThe Creative Call
Perhaps you’re a “closet writer” who’s been scribbling in journals for years. Maybe you once had a passion for playing the piano or violin — a passion that is still flickering somewhere deep inside...
View ArticleEric Metaxas on Art and Evil
What Christian films — and Christian “art” in general — have lacked is a willingness to portray evil convincingly. It was Milton’s Satan and Dante’s Inferno that made them two of the most powerful...
View ArticleA Dictionary of Christian Art
The Dictionary of Christian Art, now rebranded in the best-selling Oxford Paperback Reference series, is a unique and fascinating exploration of the art and architecture that has been influenced and...
View ArticleThe Gospel According to America
Readers of Dark’s book Everyday Apocalypse know that this high school English teacher is a passionate, articulate, absurdly well-read interpreter of popular culture. But even the forewarned may be...
View ArticleThe Sacred Gaze
"Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its object–an image, a person, a time, a place–with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key...
View ArticleStorytelling in Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello
Recounting the biblical stories through visual images was the most prestigious form of commission for a Renaissance artist. In this book, Jules Lubbock examines some of the most famous of these...
View ArticleMen Without Chests
In this essay, Lewis takes as his subject the thesis presented by two unnamed schoolmasters in what he calls “The Green Book”: that our value judgments refer only to our own sentiments and never to any...
View ArticleCulture Making
It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just consume culture. But the only way to change culture is to create...
View ArticleC.S. Lewis on Appreciation
Pleasures of Appreciation are very different. They make us feel that something has not merely gratified our senses in fact but claimed our appreciation by right. The connoisseur does not merely enjoy...
View ArticleWassily Kandinsky on Swimming to Survive
Sienkiewicz … compares the spiritual life to swimming; for the man who does not strive tirelessly, who does not fight continually against sinking, will mentally and morally go under. In this strait a...
View ArticleMTH Saddler on Conveying Ideas in Art
It is no common thing to find an artist who, even if he be willing to try, is capable of expressing his aims and ideals with any clearness and moderation. Some people will say that any such capacity is...
View ArticleWriting Rhythm
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it...
View ArticleGene Edward Veith, Jr. on Art
This does not mean that Christianity can be successfully expressed in every style. Some styles are wholly interwoven with aberrant philosophies (indeed, such styles are often nothing more than...
View ArticleThe Power of Images
Analyzing images and aesthetic treatises, Freedberg (art history, Columbia) sets out historical and anthropological evidence for human responses, ranging from religious to sexual ones, that recur...
View ArticleThe Rock That Is Higher
We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange,...
View ArticleCamille Paglia on Art and Ideology
Issues of quality and standards have been foolishly abandoned by liberals, who now interpret aesthetics as nothing but a mask for ideology. As a result the far right has gained enormously. What madness...
View ArticleKathleen Powers Erickson on Van Gogh’s in the End
[On Van Gogh] He could not have made it more clear: to the end, he was wrestling with the profound themes of faith, even to the point of revisiting classic paintings with biblical themes and giving new...
View ArticleThe Art of God
Renowned landscape photographer Ric Ergenbright here turns his attention to the holiness reflected in the beauty of the natural world. Combining scriptural passages with photographic and scientific...
View ArticleJesus Through the Centuries
Ask anyone to name the most influential person in history, and chances are the reply will be, simply, “Jesus.” Here, Yale historian Pelikan ably explores the universe of power and influence embedded in...
View ArticleImage Journal’s Top 100 Books of the Century
In selecting books for this list, Image Journal decided to list an author only once to end up with 100 different writers. Moreover, only creative writing was considered: fiction, poetry, drama, and...
View ArticleThe Image of Christ
The Image of Christ by Gabriele Finaldi is a beautifully illustrated, colorful history of how Christ has been portrayed by artists from the early church to the present. It is not, however, a life of...
View ArticleIt Was Good
The goal of this book is to provide a deeper discussion of what a believer practicing their discipline for God’s glory would (or should) look like. Rather than a defense of the believer’s place in the...
View ArticleLiv Ullmann on Art
What are the most authentic moments in movie history? For me, it was to see Miracle in Milan by Vittorio De Sica, when a whole, very poor village was saved, and there was redemption and food and...
View ArticleVisual Faith
How can art enhance and enrich the Christian faith? What is the basis for a relationship between the church and visual imagery? Can the art world and the Protestant church be reconciled? Is art...
View ArticleArt and the Bible: Two Essays
"The lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts," writes Francis Schaeffer. "A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty...
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