Friday Links
The Resurrection of Lazarus, oil on canvas painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1896, Musee d'Orsay, Paris
We have our winners! The 2022 Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction!
The Million Masks of God: Nathan Beacom on Henry Ossawa Tanner and the Art of Sympathy
Makoto Fujimura: Why Art? Why Write?
Davin Heckman on The Poetics of Family Life
Sarah Horgan in Ekstasis: Above Clay Land
UST Houston Summer Reading Series
We have our winners! The 2022 Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction!
Congratulations to our winners, Sarah Malone, Bonnie Lander Johnson, and Liz Charlotte Grant. Click on the above link to read more.
The Million Masks of God: Nathan Beacom on Henry Ossawa Tanner and the Art of Sympathy
In this excellent essay, Nathan Beacom writes about Henry Ossawa Tanner. Tanner was the only black student in his class at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine arts. His racist classmates tied him to his own easel and threw him into the street. Beacom tells us that racism, for Tanner, conflicted “with his certainty that, like anyone else, he was a son of God. Race hatred (as he called it) was not just a personal attack, but an affront to divine justice. In a quiet way, his art was subverting the impulse to dehumanize by proclaiming in paint the dignity of the human person.” The Annunciation, which hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is probably his most famous painting, but all of his work is memorable. I went to a Tanner exhibition several years ago at the Pennyslvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he was so badly treated by his fellow students, and I am still overwhelmed by the experience of seeing his paintings in person. Please do read the whole essay.
Makoto Fujimura: Why Art? Why Write?
“. . . today in our divided culture, where culture has become culture wars, what we do as artists, writers, or a pastor or a plumber may also be fragmented beyond repair. What if we continue to preach the good news, but the world is inundated with only bad news . . . ? What if our hearts are supposed to be full of the fruit of the Spirit, but in reality, our hearts are stricken with fear, envy, and the metastasizing cancerous works of the flesh? To such a predicament, our writings are tested for their worths. By learning to express what we truly see and pausing to listen, we discover, one experience at a time, that the darkness within us is no longer hidden, but revealed in the light of painted words.”
Davin Heckman on The Poetics of Family Life
“In addition to the dynamic relationship between the parent and the child, the home contains other relationships as well. It requires all manner of necessary work, most of which is unrecognized outside of the home, as it is inseparable from the relationships that it supports—cooking, cleaning, mending, fixing, healing, minding, caring, protecting, teaching, etc. Indeed it seems unending; more tasks emerge as soon as one is completed. But there is other, less practical “work”: playing, reading, gestation, eating, creating, chatting, arguing, laughing, singing, napping, etc. Millions of minute occupations present a constant stream of opportunities for growth. This web of being that fills the day forms the person in such a way that no effort is wasted.”
Sarah Horgan in Ekstasis: Above Clay Land
There’s a lovely new issue of Ekstasis out with lots of great writing, including this essay by Sarah Horgan in which she looks at “true myth and the Machine Perspective.”
UST Houston Summer Reading Series
If you’re in the Houston area, please join us at the UST Summer Reading Series hosted by the one and only James Matthew Wilson. There’s a fantastic line up of speakers, including Randy Boyagoda, Adam Kirsch, Sally Thomas, Haley Stewart, Ryan Wilson, Dana Gioia, Micah Mattix, and, tonight, Catherine Savage Brosman. Our own Katy Carl read last night (I’ll share that video once it goes up). Events can also be live-streamed.
