When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the Evangelical Mind

233 Pages·2017·5.75 MB·English

by  Philip S. Francis

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When Art Disrupts Religion
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When Art Disrupts
Religion
Aesthetic Experience and the
Evangelical Mind
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PHILIP SALIM FRANCIS
Foreword by
RANDALL BALMER
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© Oxford University Press 2017
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CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 027976– 9
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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Every thing teaches transition, transference, metamorphosis:
therein is human power, in transference … We dive and
reappear in new places.
— Ralph Waldo EmERson
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Contents
List of Illustrations  ix
Foreword  xi
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction: Supple Mediums  1
1. The Field Sites  17
Part I: The Oregon Extension 17
Part II: The Bob Jones University School of Fine Arts
and Communication 24
Note on Self- Accounts 31
2. A Dusty Answer Gets the Soul: Overcoming the Need
for Absolute Certainty  32
Part I: Practices of Certainty 35
Part II: Practices of Uncertainty 51
Part III: Aesthetic Practices of Uncertainty 62
3. A Hand Outstretched in Darkness: Overcoming the Divide
Between Insiders and Outsiders  76
4. A Momentary Fulcrum: Overcoming the Demand for
an All- or-N othing Commitment  97
Part I: Generative Passivity 100
Part II: Creation Without Preconception 105
Part III: A War of Selves 108
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5. Hymns to the God I No Longer Believe in: Overcoming
an Overvaluation of the Past  118
Part I: Losing God 120
Part II: Art and Loss 128
Conclusion: Displaced Transcendence  136
Afterword: Transitional Surfaces  146
Notes  151
Bibliography  185
Index  195
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Illustrations
1 Bob Jones Jr. as Hamlet and Katherine Stenholm as
Ophelia in the Classic Players production of Hamlet, 1948.
Copyright 2008 Bob Jones University, all rights reserved
2 Jon Jones as Launcelot Gobbo and Bob Jones Jr. as
Shylock in the 1960 production of The Merchant of Venice.
Copyright 2008 Bob Jones University, all rights reserved
3 Scan of photo of Emery Bopp, Carl Blair, and Darrell
Koons hanging a painting in hallway of the Art
Department, 1961. Copyright 2008 Bob Jones University,
all rights reserved
4 Scan of photo of Art faculty: Emery Bopp, Carl Blair,
Darrell Koons, and Lance Schade, 1962. Copyright 2008
Bob Jones University, all rights reserved
5 Scan of Vint Candid—Emery Bopp teaching—1962.
Copyright 2008 Bob Jones University, all rights reserved
6 Scan of Vint Candid—Emery Bopp and Carl Blair
hanging paintings—1966. Copyright 2008 Bob Jones
University, all rights reserved
7 Photo of the Gustafson Fine Arts building exterior, 2011.
Copyright 2008 Bob Jones University, all rights reserved
8 Art faculty works directly with students in Advanced
Painting 2. Photo by Hal Cook, 2013. Copyright 2008 Bob
Jones University, all rights reserved
9 Student works with clay in ceramics class. Photo by
Derek Eckenroth, 2015. Copyright 2008 Bob Jones
University, all rights reserved
10 Map by Mark Cook, originally created for Anna J.
Cook’s Master of Arts thesis (2011), “How to Live? The