Theology, Modernity and the Visual Arts: A Book

This book is the fruit of a four-year project that I was privileged to participate in, titled, “Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts.”

The project consisted of a series of academic symposia hosted by major international art galleries in the UK, USA, and Europe: in 2018, at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; in 2019, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; in 2020, over Zoom instead of in Venice (because of the accursed pandemic); and in 2021, at the Akademie der Künste and Humboldt University in Berlin. 

Given the abiding power of Christian motifs, ideas, and styles in a host of modern works that superficially look un- or anti-Christian, the group questioned the presumption that visual art and the Christian tradition are complete strangers to each other.

The scholars involved in the project explored artists from Pablo Picasso to Kent Monkman, Paul Cézanne to Cornelia Parker, Robert Rauschenberg to Antony Gormley, Rosemarie Trockel to Shirazeh Houshiary, addressing questions of theory, practice, and interpretation.

In my case, I wrote about the work of the contemporary painter, Ed Knippers, who thankfully agreed to meet with me over Zoom to talk about the details of his work. 

In the chapter essay that I contributed to the book, I made the case to the reader that Knippers’ painting, “Doubting Thomas,” captures the strangeness of Christ’s risen body in ways that Caravaggio and the other visual artists do not, and as such performs an invaluable theological service to the viewer by showing something about Christianity that biblical and theological scholars struggle to tell about the “weirdness” of Jesus’ risen body. 

Knippers’ work, in short, does important theological work that could not be done through any other means.

It was a fabulous opportunity, for which I thank Ben Quash (who teaches theology at King’s College in London) for the invitation, and which allowed me to hang out with dear friends, such as Jonathan, Christina, Dan, Rebekah, Matt, and Chloë, among others.

The book, Theology, Modernity and the Visual Arts (Brepols, 2024), edited by Ben Quash and Chloë Reddaway, I should say, is stupendously expensive, on account of its gorgeous full-color, artbook quality, but you can always ask your local or university library to purchase a copy on your behalf!