LATEST BOOK: FAITH IN ART
Metaphysical thought has been excluded from much of the discourse on modern art, notably abstract painting. By connecting ideas about faith with the initiators of abstract painting, Joseph Masheck reveals how an underlying religiosity informed some of our most important abstract painters.
Covering Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and El Lissitzky, Masheck shows how “revealed religion” has been an underlying but fundamental determinant of the thinking and practice of abstract painting from its very originators. He contextualizes their art within some of the historical moments of the early 20th century, including the Russian revolution and its aftermath, and explores the appeal of certain themes, such as the Russian icon, the theological import of “justification,” and the building up of a better world as a Judeo-Christian theological prospect.
A radical new theorization of the influence of religion over visual art, Faith in Art asks why metaphysics has been eliminated from the discussion where it might have something to say. This is a new way of thinking about a hundred years of abstract painting.
About JOSEPH
American art historian and critic Joseph Masheck holds three degrees from Columbia--where he belonged to the Society of Fellows in the Humanities--and an M .Litt from Trinity College Dublin. He has taught at Columbia, Barnard, Harvard and Hofstra, and lectured at Edinburgh College of Art, Cambridge University and elsewhere. Author of a dozen books and many articles on art and architecture, he was editor-in-chief of Artforum in the late ‘seventies; then a contributing editor at Art in America; and is now a consulting editor at The Brooklyn Rail. A Guggenheim fellow as well as, twice, a National Endowment fellow, he received the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art, of the College Art Association, in 2018.