As 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 »
Political messaging can make for bad art—but also for masterpieces. Continue Reading »
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn joins the podcast to discuss her new book, Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living. Continue Reading »
Featuring Sunil Iyengar on current trends in Americans’ engagement with the arts. Continue Reading »
Christian discourse of “transcendence” via a sort of common grace is often inadvertently at odds with God’s self-revelation in Scripture. Continue Reading »
Abraham 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 »
In light of our upcoming poetry event on October 25, here's an introduction to Christian Wiman's verse.
Justin Kurzel’s new film adaptation of Macbeth benefits from gorgeous cinematography and a highly effective—even overpowering—soundtrack. The scenery and costumes are luscious without seeming showy, and the whole production moves along at a neat clip, clocking in at just over one hundred . . . . Continue Reading »
Jed 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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