Robyn O’Neil, Hell (2009-2011) This time of year brings the remembrance of those whom we have lost during the last twelve months. In the aftermath of hurricane Sandy in late October, which flooded the neighborhoods that make up Chelsea on the lower west side of Manhattan and the center of the art world, many artists [...]

Claudia Alvarez, Flower Girl, ceramic, 2011 Art is like a magnet, attracting, collecting, and accumulating our thoughts and experiences over time. This process peels back new layers of the work, which those thoughts and experiences seem to reveal. A good work of art interprets us, works on us, forces itself on us and invades our [...]

  In my day job as curator of LIBERATE, the online resource ministry of Tullian Tchividjian and Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, I was searching for a suitable image to pair with a sermon by one of our contributors, Rev. Nick Lannon, on the Advent theme of waiting. And I happened upon a photograph by contemporary [...]

Gustave Courbet, The Source of the Loue, 1864. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The over-heated art market, driven by insecure and short-sighted collectors, who, churning through the season’s aesthetic fashions to use art to leverage their cultural power, have produced an impatient and distracted art world incapable of separating artistic quality from auction house [...]

Not too long ago I participated in a Patheos book club discussion of The Holy Nomad, by Matt Litton. In my reflection, I noted that Litton’s book, in which he jolts us to find a little more joy for the journey, reminded me of the quest approach to the Christian faith: To me, that’s a natural (or [...]

A recent article in Humanities has caused me to give some thought to the audience for a work of art. An abiding criticism of so-called “serious” or “fine” art, like poetry and painting, is its elitism—only a small coterie of followers, most of them professor-types and intellectuals, seem to care. The audience for a painting or [...]

What to do with all these worthless Ph.D.’s in the humanities? The Chronicle of Higher Ed relays a speech given by Michael F. Bérubé to the Council of Graduate School, called ”The Future of Graduate Education in the Humanities.” He offers up, in the words of the article’s title, a “sobering critique” of the state of the [...]

    I’ve been doing some work beyond my weekly posts here at CULTIVARE and so I thought I’d share them with you: Over at ThinkChristian I used the occasion of a new book on Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, to reflect on the continued importance of this painting. At Good Letters, the blog [...]

The market for artist Damien Hirst’s work seems to have bottomed out. And those who find his stuffed sharks, bejeweled skulls, and dot paintings overhyped and unjustifiable are delighted. The invisible hand of the art market has finally pulled back the curtain, they will say, revealing Hirst to be the sham they all thought he [...]