Faith in Art

Masheck brilliantly corrects two blind spots regarding ‘religion’ in the history of modern art—first, by illuminating how Jewish and Christian conceptualities shaped the work of four pivotal modernists and, second, by exploring these as theological rather than (mis)attributing them to occultist spiritualities. The resulting account opens the history of modernism into lines of inquiry that art scholars have not yet adequately accounted for. -- Jonathan A. Anderson * Artforum *
In this rich and beautifully written book Masheck argues for the serious place of religion as opposed to the vague term spirituality in four founding artists of abstraction. Against the complex background of European culture the central place of Christian and Jewish theology and liturgy from icon to the writings of Karl Barth is affirmed and luminously presented. An intellectual and aesthetic feast. * The Revd Canon David Jasper, Emeritus Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow, UK *
Rather than, as is commonly understood, supplanting the religious impuse with an avowedy atheist or agnostic position, the book argues that Kansinsky's Russian Orthodoxy, Mondrian's Calvinist Protestantism, Malevich's Catholicism and Lissitzky's Jewishness can be shown to be ongoing aspects of their thinking and development. Equally, the looser and more prevalent term in the vocabulary of modern and contemporary art, 'spirituality', is critically examined and found to be limited or unreliable as an account of what these individual practices were about. * Art + Christianity *