Visual piety : a history and theory of popular religious images / David Morgan.

ISBN:

9780520923133

9780585266817

Title:

Visual piety : a history and theory of popular religious images / David Morgan.

Author:

Morgan, David, 1957-

Personal Author:

Morgan, David, 1957-

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 265 pages) : illustrations

Contents:

Introduction: Constructivism and the History of Visual Culture -- Material Things and the Social Construction of Reality -- The Aesthetics of Everyday Life -- Images and Their Worlds -- The Practice of Visual Piety -- High and Low -- The Aesthetic of Disinterestedness -- Toward an Aesthetic of Popular Religious Art -- The Psychology of Recognition -- Interactivity in the Reception of Popular Religious Images -- Empathy and Sympathy in the History of Visual Piety -- Catholic Visual Piety from the Late Middle Ages to the Modern Period -- Jonathan Edwards and the Aesthetic of Piety -- Sympathy and Benevolence in Nineteenth-Century American Protestantism -- "Home-Sympathy" and Christian Nurture -- The Masculinity of Christ -- The Image of Male Friendship: Jonathan and David -- The Christology of Friendship and Twentieth-Century Visual Piety -- Reading the Face of Jesus -- The Head of Christ in Catholic and Lutheran Response -- The Discourse of Hidden Images -- Avant-Garde and Popular -- Domestic Devotion and Ritual -- The Christian Home: A Domestic Description of the Sacred -- Domestic Ritual and Images -- Memory and the Sacred -- Space and Time -- Memory and the Sacred -- Modes of Remembrance: Narrative and Anecdotal Memory -- Conclusion: Religious Images and the Social Construction of Everyday Life -- Letters and Demographics.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Spirituality -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Spirituality -- United States -- History -- 19th century.

Spirituality -- History.

Christian art and symbolism -- United States.

Christian art and symbolism -- Modern period, 1500-

Christian art and symbolism.

Popular culture -- United States.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Religious life and customs.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

1998

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
246 21	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

This fascinating study of devotional images traces their historical links to important strains of American culture. David Morgan demonstrates how popular visual images--from Warner Sallman's "Head of Christ" to velvet renditions of DaVinci's "Last Supper" to illustrations on prayer cards--have assumed central roles in contemporary American lives and communities.

Morgan's history of popular religious images ranges from the late Middle Ages to the present day and analyzes what he calls "visual piety," or the belief that images convey. Rather than isolating popular icons from their social contexts or regarding them as merely illustrative of theological ideas, Morgan situates both Protestant and Catholic art within the domain of devotional practice, ritual, personal narrative, and the sacred space of the home. In addition, he examines how popular icons have been rooted in social concerns ranging from control of human passions to notions of gender, creedal orthodoxy, and friendship. Also discussed is the coupling of images with texts in the attempt to control meanings and to establish markers for one's community and belief. Drawing from the fields of music, sociology, theology, philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics, Visual Piety is the first book to bring to specialist and lay reader alike an understanding of religious imagery's place in the social formation and maintenance of everyday American life.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

"The point behind the visual culture of popular piety is not principally an admiration of skill, which pertains to the manipulation of a medium, but admiration for the object of representation.... We can therefore speak of beauty in visual piety as consisting... in the reassuring harmony of the believer's disposition toward the sacred with its visualization." So writes Morgan, associate professor of art history at Valparaiso University in Indiana, as he attempts to explain how modern American Christianity views popular religious art. Using a variety of cultural, theological and aesthetic theories, Warner focuses especially on the popular artistic representations of Jesus, most notably Warner Sallman's Jesus, as an indicator of ways that art expresses popular piety. Sallman's portrait, which depicts Jesus with flowing locks and intense blue eyes staring heavenward, adorns thousands of homes and churches in the United States and has become the primary face that believers associate with Jesus. In order to uncover popular attitudes to Sallman's painting and other popular religious artworks, Morgan solicited responses from readers of numerous religious periodicals. He uses these responses, as well as theoretical arguments, to examine the ways in which popular religious art and popular piety intersect. Morgan has collected a lot of information, but his argument is often hard to find and his prose is tedious and often sloppy. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Choice Review

Morgan (Valparaiso Univ.) expands on ideas that first appeared in a volume that he edited in 1996, Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman (CH, Sep'96). In this thought-provoking book, he is primarily concerned with showing how important popular religious imagery has been in everyday life in Europe and America since the Middle Ages. But, along the way, Morgan makes a number of other contributions that make his book worthy of note. His apologia for the study of visual culture, included in the introduction, should be required reading for all college students taking the "visual culture" courses that are springing up in many universities. He also proves, convincingly, that American Protestantism has not been so iconoclastic as was once thought to be the case. And he applies historical methods, for the first time, to a subject that until now has been the province only of sociologists: how popular religious imagery functions in a home setting. Highly recommended. General; undergraduate; graduate; faculty. M. W. Sullivan Villanova University