The Project has revealed the motif to be an extraordinary and ancient archetype, stretching across diverse religions and cultures, many centuries and many thousands of miles. It is part of the shared medieval heritage of Europe and Asia (Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism) yet still inspires creative work among contemporary artists.

Props to the Hermitage.

“For Reconstructionists, Judaism is more than Jewish religion; Judaism is the entire cultural legacy of the Jewish people. Religion is central; Jewish spiritual insights and religious teachings give meaning and purpose to our lives. Yet our creativity as expressed through art, music and drama, languages and literature, and our relationship with the land of Israel itself are also integral parts of Jewish culture. Each of these aspects provides a gateway into the Jewish experience that can enrich and inspire us.”

Is there an “entire cultural legacy” of Christians or is Christianity so imbedded in so many different cultures as to make that line meaningless? Does the idea mean incarnating the church in many cultures or does such a topic risk drawing us into phyletism?

When I think of Holy Images, I can limit myself to the gold-leafed versions of Mediterranean funerary paintings that are found in ER churches, or, alternatively, I can expand my sense and meaning to include western art, paintings and carvings in the styles of cultures from around the world. When I think of Christian texts, I can include everything from the Shepherd of Hermas right to the Inklings and Harry Potter. Christian Music runs the gamut from Byzantine Chant to something (religious or not) composed yesterday. Liturgical art stretches from Roman peasant clothing to African dashikis and hippie tye-dyes and victorian flocked wall paper and heavy wools woven in Aztec patterns.

Is there a “cultural legacy” that we can speak of? Is there a coherence that makes sense, that we can celebrate at our big table in ways that will include parties that, normally, don’t get to feast together? And – assuming a positive answer – can we begin to see that cultural legacy, as varied and growing as it is, as part of our human response to God’s work in our lives? Perhaps we can see it as the larger part when compared to our doctrinal differences.

And so, within that cultural legacy there seems to be a wide space for us to begin our Rabbinic-style conversations.

Speaking of which: Art Crawl is THIS FRIDAY! Come to James Street! Eat at Mex-I-Can! Shop at Mixed Media and White Elephant! Oggle at H&H and Loose Canon. And that’s just one corner. Theres a bazzilon other things to do there.

And it’s going to be a beautiful weekend to do them… well, OK. It might rain Friday Morning, but it’s not snow!

Click inside for the Video

Electroluminescent — New Harbours Music Series Vol. 2 from Quintin Hewlett on Vimeo.

It might very well surprise you to learn that I enjoy sitting in a large, echoing space listening to such Ambient Sounds, but I do! I find it to be a meditative experience riding along on the artist’s acoustic sculptures.

ORMALLY, Yer Host is bothered by the rather spooky and romantic style of late 19th Century Russian Icons. I have no theological issue, as do some: I just don’t like ‘em.

The Shrine of the Holy Whapping introduces us to the work of the Russian artist and iconographer, Viktor Vasnetsov. His style is somewhere between the spooky Russian style and the Beuron Art School which combines “elements of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and early Christian art”. Some if this German style is in the Abbey of St Hildegard.

Viktor Vasnetsov seems to have found an interesting combo of Russian style and “traditional” iconography that looks very much like some period illustrations for fairytales.

Pretty deep for a bunch of illiterate clods waiting on the printing press to give them their humanity, eh?

For more than five hundred years, the middle ages have been slandered as dark, stupid and barbaric. Art historians disdained mediaeval artists for not developing linear perspective. But there is a good reason why they did not develop linear perspective; they had no need for it. The two most important purposes of their art, symbolism and narrative, were more easily fulfilled without it. It simply was not a very smart way to paint.

The condescending notion that mediaeval artists saw the world in linear perspective but were too crude to learn how to paint it is extremely silly. Mediaeval artists painted the world exactly as they saw it. And no accusation of crudity can be fairly leveled at them. These men built the cathedrals at Rheims and Amiens and Chartres. They designed and built them without any notion of trigonometry or calculus; without so much as graph paper. These were not men who had difficulty imagining three-dimensional spaces abstractly; they were far better at it than modern men who need AutoCAD to design a rectangular prism of steel and glass.

We need new purposes for our art.

Cardboard, Ink, Tape and Detritus. Aprox .6 x .91 meters