“The opposite of the self-defining subject of the postmodern era is one whose existence is conditioned entirely by realities outside the self. ”

M. G. Scott on the existential comforts of Greek tragedy.

Elie pushes us to reconsider and expand our idea of what counts as religious and/or sacred art, but we should be careful not to collapse the transcendent sphere into the natural world.

Aaron James Weisel reviews Paul Elie’s latest book.

The posters on my wall are meant to evoke a vintage style, but they are really artistic echoes of centuries of attempts to catalog the world, from book lists to agricultural pictures to Sears’s grandiosity.

Carl Friesenhahn on trade catalogs as maps of modernity

I wanted to capture a certain impression of everyday life, where thoughts arise and disappear, and many ideas blend together in a way that can be confusing and chaotic.

Donato Loia discusses his new book, 1095 Short Sentences

"Yet the human person, standing at the crux of reality, calls the artist to the limit of his creative powers."

Daniel Fitzpatrick on "seeing" as a theological enterprise

“Our times have fallen out of tune with simplicity.”

Michael Golec on typographical modernity

Much ink has been spilled on whether Amrita Sher-Gil’s work was “modernist” or “realist,” Eastern or Western, modern or traditional.

Vaishnavi Patil offers a fresh reading of Amrita Sher-Gil

I’m fascinated by the grid’s role in casta paintings in part because grid systems are so closely identified with twentieth century art as to be the hallmark of the modern art movement.

Elise Lonich Ryan responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

What was once an instrument of colonial dominance has become, centuries later, a source of identity for a racial diaspora throughout Latin America and even a source of familial identity.

Nayeli Riano responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

[Poetry is] the closest thing—alongside music and dance and visual art—to a transhistorical technology of human expression and contemplation.

Anthony Shoplik interviews Philip Metres

Everyday life—that boring and mundane, trivial and profane measure of our existence—assumed tremendous significance when modern artists like Vermeer gave depth perception to our daily doings.

Joshua Hren on ordinary time in art and the Gospels

Manjot Kaur’s work creates new stories for a new world and to animate humans to interact with non-humans in ways we have never imagined.

Vaishnavi Patil on artistic genealogies of mythology in South Asia and new tales for the modern world

Kher promotes more fluid conceptions of genealogy, encouraging viewers to consider that ancestry goes beyond the markers of culture, race, and ethnicity.

Vaishnavi Patil on Bharti Kher’s Ancestor and imaging motherhood

Something, outside of human reason, outside of human meaning and of human feeling, has reached him. “The bird sings.” And the speaker hears it.

Tom Break on hearing goodness in being

If the loss of value is the affliction of our time, and if the recovery of value is going to be this serious and this painful, we will need to dig deep into the heart of the artistic enterprise to find the thing that has gone missing.

Tom Break on Simone Weil and the loss of value

Christopher Nygren’s aim is to recast Titian’s oeuvre by focusing on a series of deeply religious paintings and to make the reader consider the artist’s career and legacy anew.

Catherine Powell-Warren reviews Titian’s Icons

Presentism is an obsession with the present that forgets its relationship with the past, that covers history and humanity with a blanket of generic sameness that muffles difference and dulls memory.

Donato Loia reviews Charles Saumarez Smith’s The Art Museum in Modern Times

The notion that the people suffering from mass incarceration could testify truthfully about the system’s horrors was, and still often is, contentious. . . . Even more controversial: the idea that incarcerated people can critically analyze their position.

Luke Fidler on complaint and justice in prison

It is no longer possible to ignore or undersell the impact that racialized and overtly white supremacist ideas have had on art history.

Christopher Nygren reviews Éric Michaud’s Barbarian Invasions

Like 15th Century portrait painters, we find ourselves amid an experimental period. It is unclear what the future will hold, whether it is standardized virtual bookshelves or targeted ads that suggest lipstick shades based on wall color.

Chloé Pelletier on the background to our Zoom backgrounds