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Putting Art (Back) in Its Place
Putting Art (Back) in Its Place takes readers on an astounding journey through the world of Christian art in medieval and Renaissance Italy.
Today’s Christian artists work with the museum and the gallery in mind, and our art is trapped behind signs commanding do not touch. Christian discussions of contemporary art focus attention on artists as lone geniuses, disconnected from our churches and our daily lives. It wasn’t always this way. For centuries, works of art were commissioned and created to tell stories, inspire faith, and unify communities in their daily rhythms of work and worship.
In medieval and Renaissance Italy art filled the streets, the churches, the businesses, and the halls of government. The whole body of Christ played a part in the creation and use of art that proclaimed the work of Jesus and his people in the world through powerful illustration of the stories that mean the most to the life of the church. Italian art brought communities together in rich and joyful celebrations of the Christian life.
In order for Christians today to foster a vibrant culture of the arts, we must restore and cultivate active and respectful relationships among artists, patrons, scholars, communities, and the art they create. Using the masterworks of Italian art as a map for the return to a flourishing of the arts, Putting Art (Back) in Its Place allows us to think historically about the vibrant role that the visual arts have played—and can play again—in the life and mission of the church.
Today’s Christian artists work with the museum and the gallery in mind, and our art is trapped behind signs commanding do not touch. Christian discussions of contemporary art focus attention on artists as lone geniuses, disconnected from our churches and our daily lives. It wasn’t always this way. For centuries, works of art were commissioned and created to tell stories, inspire faith, and unify communities in their daily rhythms of work and worship.
In medieval and Renaissance Italy art filled the streets, the churches, the businesses, and the halls of government. The whole body of Christ played a part in the creation and use of art that proclaimed the work of Jesus and his people in the world through powerful illustration of the stories that mean the most to the life of the church. Italian art brought communities together in rich and joyful celebrations of the Christian life.
In order for Christians today to foster a vibrant culture of the arts, we must restore and cultivate active and respectful relationships among artists, patrons, scholars, communities, and the art they create. Using the masterworks of Italian art as a map for the return to a flourishing of the arts, Putting Art (Back) in Its Place allows us to think historically about the vibrant role that the visual arts have played—and can play again—in the life and mission of the church.
- GenresArt
223 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2016
About the author
John E. Skillen
2 booksJohn Skillen is a specialist in medieval and Renaissance literature. He taught at Gordon College for 15 years before launching an arts-oriented semester program in Orvieto, Italy, in 1998. Since then, Dr. Skillen has been teaching courses in Orvieto on the cultural context of medieval and Renaissance Italian art, on Renaissance storytelling in literature and visual art, and on Dante’s Divine Comedy. With students of all ages, he has lead dozens of seminars and retreats that study Italian masterpieces in their original locations. Dr. Skillen directs the Studio for Art, Faith & History in Orvieto, Italy, which he founded in 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 18, 2018
If you are a journalist, never (ever!) ask a writer what inspires her or what are his 'creative plans.' Because, well, everybody asks that anyway (argh!). And what is more important, no one will tell you the truth. You see, creativity is not a process you can orchestrate or somehow generate. You can buy a canvas (or a notebook), but you'll need the actual, true-life experience to set your mind in motion. Life is being lived, love is being loved, the person inside you is being forged or molded (depending on the period, I guess), with creativity being just an afterthought, a side effect, a random product on the periphery. Valuable as it might turn out to be later on, yet still never the universal core of your life.
That said, I wanted to share why I like this book so much: though the author clearly states who is his target audience - and I fall into neither category, alas! - he is trying to get the medieval and Renaissance Christian art out of periphery, out of its museum ghetto, and put back it into its context, back to the place it was meant to be at, enhancing our reality, augmenting our souls, enriching our perspective of God's beauty around us - and within us as well.
I've just started reading it, but it feels so very OK.
That said, I wanted to share why I like this book so much: though the author clearly states who is his target audience - and I fall into neither category, alas! - he is trying to get the medieval and Renaissance Christian art out of periphery, out of its museum ghetto, and put back it into its context, back to the place it was meant to be at, enhancing our reality, augmenting our souls, enriching our perspective of God's beauty around us - and within us as well.
I've just started reading it, but it feels so very OK.
September 27, 2016
I edited this book over the summer of 2016.
As a specialist in medieval and Renaissance Italian culture, John Skillen explores the ways that art worked in the daily life of medieval and Renaissance Italy. With a focus on church settings, the book approaches this history through questions about what communities today are missing in thinking about, and interacting with, the visual arts, and what we could recover from a culture that gave us some of western art’s masterworks.
In particular, the book looks at the ways that art helped communities to form, and how art was able to express the values of those communities, while at the same time modeling behavior and bringing color to the Italian world. In order to make the Italian world come to life, the book focuses on three “places” of art, starting with the way that art and architecture were inseparable in medieval and Renaissance Italy (“the place of architecture”). Then, the book looks at the relationship between art and “liturgy,” i.e. how art was woven into the daily rhythms of people’s life, work, and worship. Finally, to wrap things up, the book explores the ways that Italian art was focused on telling stories (“the place of narrative”), and how these stories were the structure that organized both the liturgy and the architecture. In some ways, this is an exploration of the medieval Italian worldview through the art that the culture produced, and it offers today’s communities a chance to consider what we might want to change if we want to rebuild our sense of narrative, liturgy, and architecture in the Italian mode.
I like projects that look at the ways history and historical thinking can be valuable for today, so this is in my wheelhouse. Sometimes there’s more info about decorating a chapel than I particularly feel attached to, but then I don’t have to decorate chapels, so when we hit those bits I’m not exactly the main audience. In any case, I think this is a book that I’ll be coming back to in the future, to reference the various ways that medieval people thought about and used art. I study medieval Europe, so I have a bit of background, but I learned some new stuff that I’m really grateful for.
There's a companion website that includes photographs of about half of the art discussed in the book, so if you're interested to see what's covered, I'd say take a look over there!
http://www.artinitsplace.com/
As a specialist in medieval and Renaissance Italian culture, John Skillen explores the ways that art worked in the daily life of medieval and Renaissance Italy. With a focus on church settings, the book approaches this history through questions about what communities today are missing in thinking about, and interacting with, the visual arts, and what we could recover from a culture that gave us some of western art’s masterworks.
In particular, the book looks at the ways that art helped communities to form, and how art was able to express the values of those communities, while at the same time modeling behavior and bringing color to the Italian world. In order to make the Italian world come to life, the book focuses on three “places” of art, starting with the way that art and architecture were inseparable in medieval and Renaissance Italy (“the place of architecture”). Then, the book looks at the relationship between art and “liturgy,” i.e. how art was woven into the daily rhythms of people’s life, work, and worship. Finally, to wrap things up, the book explores the ways that Italian art was focused on telling stories (“the place of narrative”), and how these stories were the structure that organized both the liturgy and the architecture. In some ways, this is an exploration of the medieval Italian worldview through the art that the culture produced, and it offers today’s communities a chance to consider what we might want to change if we want to rebuild our sense of narrative, liturgy, and architecture in the Italian mode.
I like projects that look at the ways history and historical thinking can be valuable for today, so this is in my wheelhouse. Sometimes there’s more info about decorating a chapel than I particularly feel attached to, but then I don’t have to decorate chapels, so when we hit those bits I’m not exactly the main audience. In any case, I think this is a book that I’ll be coming back to in the future, to reference the various ways that medieval people thought about and used art. I study medieval Europe, so I have a bit of background, but I learned some new stuff that I’m really grateful for.
There's a companion website that includes photographs of about half of the art discussed in the book, so if you're interested to see what's covered, I'd say take a look over there!
http://www.artinitsplace.com/
September 17, 2018
This summer, I had the opportunity to meet Professor John Skillen and attend several lectures as part of a program based at his college’s studio and convent in Orvieto, Italy. It was a glorious experience. His scholarship and enthusiasm for art provides a unique take on medieval and Renaissance art. Looking at a religious piece of art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or even the Uffici, places it is miles away from its original home. When these works are viewed in the churches, chapels, and cathedrals where they were intended, we get a full view of the stories they imparted and the role they played in worship.
July 7, 2017
An academic book; I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Putting the art of the Renaissance masters in context helped me appreciate their work more.
March 24, 2017
Skillen reminds readers of where art (mostly) began, or at least had its first unveiling: in churches. A protestants himself, Skillen is quick to point out that for all the good the Reformation did, it went too far in removing from churches any semblance of what might be construed as art, leaving us instead with 'bare ruin'd choirs' so to say. Having spent six weeks in Italy looking at art in connection with Dante's work, I know whereof he speaks. I have always thought that the barrenness of our churches contributed greatly to the lack of interest young people show in church today. If church ot only does not provide an outlet but all but squash it, where else will young people find to vent their creative aspirations? That answers proves anywhere else but church.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews