No “-scope,” either “micro-“ or “tele-,” was needed last week for us to sight an article written “as if” for Sightings, so bold was its headline, so appropriate to be appropriated by this column on “religion in public life,” given our focus on art and religion in that sector. It reads: “Reports of the Death of Religious Art Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.” Author S. Brent Plate (Hamilton College) ranged widely as he offered and commented on examples illustrating his thesis. This week, dear readers, do not overlook his piece in our “Resources” section. It is impossible for us to give even one-line mentions of the many artists on whom he comments, or to do justice to his perceptions.
To the point: Plate is not interested in art that expresses what he calls “a nebulous personal ‘spirituality,'” or, further, which only “work[s] against religion,” or proselytizes for Thomas Kinkade-type kitsch. He leaves aside those historians and theorists who have filled libraries with writing on pre-modernist art. His concern is with those who choose not to comment on modern “art that sets out to convey spiritual values” because, they believe, it “goes against the grain of the history of modernism” (Jim Elkins's phrase). Plate refers positively to the work of former fellow Chicagoan Sally Promey, who noted “the lack of attention to religious motifs and themes” in the literature on American art history.
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