Angels Demons And Savages

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet, co-organized by The Phillips Collection and the Parrish Art Museum.

The untold story of Hitler’s war on “degenerate” artists and the mentally ill that served as a model for the “Final Solution.” “A penetrating chronicle . . . deftly links art history, psychiatry, and Hitler’s ideology to devastating effect.”—The Wall Street Journal As a veteran of the First World War, and an expert in art history and medicine, Hans Prinzhorn was uniquely placed to explore the connection between art and madness. The work he collected—ranging from expressive paintings to life-size rag dolls and fragile sculptures made from chewed bread—contained a raw, emotional power, and the book he published about the material inspired a new generation of modern artists, Max Ernst, André Breton, and Salvador Dalí among them. By the mid-1930s, however, Prinzhorn’s collection had begun to attract the attention of a far more sinister group. Modernism was in full swing when Adolf Hitler arrived in Vienna in 1907, hoping to forge a career as a painter. Rejected from art school, this troubled young man became convinced that modern art was degrading the Aryan soul, and once he had risen to power he ordered that modern works be seized and publicly shamed in “degenerate art” exhibitions, which became wildly popular. But this culture war was a mere curtain-raiser for Hitler’s next campaign, against allegedly “degenerate” humans, and Prinzhorn’s artist-patients were caught up in both. By 1941, the Nazis had murdered 70,000 psychiatric patients in killing centers that would serve as prototypes for the death camps of the Final Solution. Dozens of Prinzhorn artists were among the victims. The Gallery of Miracles and Madness is a spellbinding, emotionally resonant tale of this complex and troubling history that uncovers Hitler’s wars on modern art and the mentally ill and how they paved the way for the Holocaust. Charlie English tells an eerie story of genius, madness, and dehumanization that offers readers a fresh perspective on the brutal ideology of the Nazi regime.

Angels, demons, and the devil have fascinated humankind from the dawn of time. Contemporary interest in angels is especially keen, as best seen in the mass-marketing of angel books and angel art. The world is awash with wings! But is this romantic view of angels a biblically accurate depiction of these heavenly creatures? What can we know about the angels? How, if at all, do they touch our lives? Despite a bizarre mixture of comedic references to a red-suited bogeyman and, by contrast, frightening images of a cunning Satan relentlessly tempting each of us to do evil, far less serious attention has been paid to demons and the devil. Most likely it's because the pertinent scriptures are not always easy to discern. Just when we think we have demons safely within a well-defined box, suddenly they come swooping at us from another direction. Just when we think everything about the devil is well within our grasp, suddenly that fiendish figure becomes far more elusive. This challenging biblical landscape explains the unusual format of presenting what the Bible has to say about these intriguing celestial beings as if you, the reader, were having a one-on-one conversation with Michael the archangel. If anyone should know everything there is to know about the subject, surely it would be Michael!

What does it mean to be Catholic in America? Catholicism and the American Experience highlights the proceedings of the fifth annual Portsmouth Institute conference on the unique elements of American Catholicism. This book features essays from Robert George, Peter Steinfels, George Weigel, E. J. Dionne, and many more.

This first-ever biography of American painter Grace Hartigan traces her rise from virtually self-taught painter to art-world fame, her plunge into obscurity after leaving New York to marry a scientist in Baltimore, and her constant efforts to reinvent her style and subject matter. Along the way, there were multiple affairs, four troubled marriages, a long battle with alcoholism, and a chilly relationship with her only child. Attempting to channel her vague ambitions after an early marriage, Grace struggled to master the basics of drawing in night-school classes. She moved to New York in her early twenties and befriended Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and other artists who were pioneering Abstract Expressionism. Although praised for the coloristic brio of her abstract paintings, she began working figuratively, a move that was much criticized but ultimately vindicated when the Museum of Modern Art purchased her painting The Persian Jacket in 1953. By the mid-fifties, she freely combined abstract and representational elements. Grace-who signed her paintings "Hartigan"- was a full-fledged member of the "men's club" that was the 1950s art scene. Featured in Time, Newsweek, Life, and Look, she was the only woman in MoMA's groundbreaking 12 Americans exhibition in 1956, and the youngest artist-and again, only woman-in The New American Painting, which toured Europe in 1958-1959. Two years later she moved to Baltimore, where she became legendary for her signature tough-love counsel to her art school students. Grace continued to paint throughout her life, seeking-for better or worse-something truer and fiercer than beauty.

The Historical Dictionary of Contemporary Art details the history of contemporary art through a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 cross-referenced entries on important artists, styles, terms, and movements.

Maki Kaneko reexamines the iconic male figures created, performed, and/or consumed by several male artists of yōga (Western-style painting) between 1930 and 1950 through the lenses of the politics of gender, race, and the body in late Imperial Japan.

This volume depicts the intricate cultural, religious and intellectual kaleidoscope of interactions between angels, demons and the heterogeneous populations of Spanish America including New Spain (Mexico), New Granada (Colombia) and Peru. Essential reading for students of religion, anthropology of religion, history of ideas, Latin American colonial history and church history.