Thoughts on Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists David R. Marshall Alain de Botton’s new book is of interest because it directly addresses an issue important for atheistic art historians: if religion is bad, why was the art it produced so good? The usual answer is either (a) that religion is irrelevant to what really matters in such art—it embodies the individuals that created it, rather than the institutions that sponsored it— or (b) it is all a matter of history and so the question is beside the point. The…
Tag Archive for Religious Architecture
Call for Papers: Revisiting the Cloister
by MelbourneArtNetwork • • 0 Comments
Revisiting the Cloister: Monastery and Convent Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Britain London, October 6, 2020 Deadline: Feb 29, 2021 Victorian convent and monastic buildings embodied diverse theological, social, cultural and gender discourses within nineteenth-century Britain, yet these structures have received limited academic attention. On Saturday 6 October 2020 in London, The Victorian Society will host a wide-ranging symposium to explore these multi-functional sites – spaces not only of devotion, contemplation and leisure but also of artistic production, education, industry and social care – from an ecumenical perspective. Too often, scholarship in nineteenth-century religious architecture has been divided across denominational lines.…