Modern Martyrs of Communism
by Salvatore J. CordileoneOur failure to remember our heroes and martyrs of communism is having a dangerous effect on what the next generation knows. Continue Reading »
The Vocation of the Catholic Artist
by Cindy Hernandez MathisWhat began as largely individual experiences of the performances ended in fellowship, a deepening of the bonds of community. Continue Reading »
The Greatest Catholic Opera
by Algis ValiunasOpera has traditionally had little interest in Christian orthodoxy. So when composer Francis Poulenc wrote his masterpiece, Dialogues des Carmélites, the work’s celebration of heroic piety defied the secular spirit of the art form. Continue Reading »
Existential Slapstick in The Banshees of Inisherin
by John WatersThe idiotic, self-devouring cultural dialectic of Ireland since independence has ensured that its own damaged iconographies have blocked access to certain elements of the past, and therefore stymied present artists. Continue Reading »
The Man Who Painted the Reformation
by Jane CoombsAs humanists sought the truth by mastering ancient languages, and reformers by printing the Gospels in vernacular ones, Holbein pursued the truth by recording his subjects—both Protestants and Catholics—in honest, startling detail. Continue Reading »
Great Art Can Be Propaganda
by Kyle SmithPolitical messaging can make for bad art—but also for masterpieces. Continue Reading »
Redeeming Transcendence
by John WilsonChristian discourse of “transcendence” via a sort of common grace is often inadvertently at odds with God’s self-revelation in Scripture. Continue Reading »
Calvin, Kuyper, and God's Aesthetic Purposes
by Richard J. MouwAbraham Kuyper was fond of appealing to John Calvin’s authority on various subjects, but when he turned to the subject of art in his 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary, he did so in a rather odd way. He said that he was going to look for insights from the Genevan Reformer on the subject . . . . Continue Reading »
Politics and the Arts
by Peter J. LeithartJed Perl warns in the August 25 issue of the New Republic of a new threat to the arts. Art for art’s sake has been displaced by a view of “art as a comrade-in-arms to some more supposedly stable or substantial or readily comprehensible aspect of our world.” Art is losing its “purposeful purposelessness” and is becoming a bondservant to “some more general system of social, political, and moral values.” It’s hardly news, Perl knows, when art is enlisted for some extra-artistic cause. The new danger is that many have drawn the conclusion that “art has no independent life.” Continue Reading »
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