Wall or no wall? View the US-Mexico borderland saga through the eyes of artists who've lived it, including some of the children held in detention camps. More than 100 artworks represent a variety of mediums, from large paintings to mixed-media collage, neon, photography, and sculpture. Based on a traveling exhibit by members of the El Paso-based Juntos Art Association, the images explore the region's animal and plant ecosystems, food and religious culture, and history. The artists reflect deep roots both north and south of the border and the inherent mestizaje, a blend of indigenous, Mexican, and American heritage across the length of the bicultural, binational landscape. Their work makes vibrant personal and political statements that speak constructively about how to move forward in this fraught region. Combined with accompanying essays, this book shares a rare, close-up view of the US-Mexico crossroads at a critical point in US history.

"from the collection of the Moscow State Integrated Museum-Reserve at Kolomenskoye."

An exploration of the collections found at the Indonesian National Museum, one of the oldest museums in Asia

Staking out new territory in the history of art, this book presents a compelling argument for a lost link between the panel-painting tradition of Greek antiquity and Christian paintings of Byzantium and the Renaissance. While art historians place the origin of icons in the seventh century, Thomas F. Mathews finds strong evidence as early as the second century in the texts of Irenaeus and the Acts of John that describe private Christian worship. In closely studying an obscure set of sixty neglected panel paintings from Egypt in Roman times, the author explains how these paintings of the Egyptian gods offer the missing link in the long history of religious painting. Christian panel paintings and icons are for the first time placed in a continuum with the pagan paintings that preceded them, sharing elements of iconography, technology, and religious usages as votive offerings. Exciting discoveries punctuate the narrative: the technology of the triptych, enormously popular in Europe, traced by the authors to the construction of Egyptian portable shrines, such as the Isis and Serapis of the J. Paul Getty Museum; the discovery that the egg tempera painting medium, usually credited to Renaissance artist Cimabue, has been identified in Egyptian panels a millennium earlier; and the reconstruction of a ring of icons on the chancel of Saint Sophia in Istanbul. This book will be a vital addition to the fields of Egyptian, Graeco-Roman, and late-antique art history and, more generally, to the history of painting.

Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity presents a critical, interdisciplinary examination of contemporary theological and philosophical studies of the Christian image and redefines this within the Orthodox tradition by exploring the ontological and aesthetic implications of Orthodox ascetic and mystical theology. It finds Modernist interest in the aesthetic peculiarity of icons significant, and essential for re-evaluating their relationship to non-representational art. Drawing on classical Greek art criticism, Byzantine ekphraseis and hymnography, and the theologies of St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas, the author argues that the ancient Greek concept of enargeia best conveys the expression of theophany and theosis in art. The qualities that define enargeia - inherent liveliness, expressive autonomy and self-subsisting form - are identified in exemplary Greek and Russian icons and considered in the context of the hesychastic theology that lies at the heart of Orthodox Christianity. An Orthodox aesthetics is thus outlined that recognizes the transcendent being of art and is open to dialogue with diverse pictorial and iconographic traditions. An examination of Ch’an (Zen) art theory and a comparison of icons with paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Marc Chagall, and by Japanese artists influenced by Zen Buddhism, reveal intriguing points of convergence and difference. The reader will find in these pages reasons to reconcile Modernism with the Christian image and Orthodox tradition with creative form in art.

This title examines the parallel phenomena of portraits and icons, and spans from late antiquity through the end of the Byzantine period. Engaging a wide range of material, it addresses prevalent and persistent themes in the creation of a distinctly Christianized portraiture while analyzing the cultural and theological perceptions in place that guided its reception. Christian Rome inherited its traditions and beliefs regarding portraiture from antiquity, especially in terms of its ritual and religious functions. Though certainly altered for its new Christian context, these perceptions did not disappear altogether. Various texts and images survive that allow us to imagine a world where sacred and secular art intermingled, and portraits of Christ and the saints, emperors, bishops, and holy men existed side by side in visual messages of power and hierarchal authority