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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > General
Temples for a Modern God is one of the first major studies of
American religious architecture in the postwar period, and it
reveals the diverse and complicated set of issues that emerged just
as one of the nation's biggest building booms unfolded. Jay Price
tells the story of how a movement consisting of denominational
architectural bureaus, freelance consultants, architects,
professional and religious organizations, religious building
journals, professional conferences, artistic studios, and
specialized businesses came to have a profound influence on the
nature of sacred space. Debates over architectural style coincided
with equally significant changes in worship practice. Meanwhile,
suburbanization and the baby boom required a new type of worship
facility, one that had to attract members and serve a social role
as much as it had to to honor the Divine. Price uses religious
architecture to explore how Mainline Protestantism, Catholicism,
Judaism, and other traditions moved beyond their ethnic, regional,
and cultural enclaves to create a built environment that was
simultaneously intertwined with technology and social change, yet
rooted in fluid and shifting sense of tradition. Price argues that
these structures, as often mocked as loved, were physical
embodiments of a significant, if underappreciated, era in American
religious history.
In Faces of Charisma: Image, Text, Object in Byzantium and the
Medieval West, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars advances the
theory that charisma may be a quality of art as well as of person.
Beginning with the argument that Weberian charisma of person is
itself a matter of representation, this volume shows that to study
charismatic art is to experiment with a theory of representation
that allows for the possibility of nothing less than a breakdown
between art and viewer and between art and lived experience. The
volume examines charismatic works of literature, visual art, and
architecture from England, Northern Europe, Italy, Ancient Greece,
and Constantinople and from time periods ranging from antiquity to
the beginning of the early modern period. Contributors are Joseph
Salvatore Ackley, Paul Binski, Paroma Chatterjee, Andrey Egorov,
Erik Gustafson, Duncan Hardy, Stephen Jaeger, Jacqueline E. Jung,
Lynsey McCulloch, Martino Rossi Monti, Gavin Richardson, and Andrew
Romig.
Charlie's introduction to his blog put it best: "A lifetime in
marketing actually equips a man for very little... Now pushing 58,
I realise with some horror that it is a full half century since I
last took cycling remotely seriously. If this trip does not go
well, I might leave it as long until my next attempt. In September
2012, seven friends of varying fitness and circumference,
accompanied by an elderly camper-wagon and driver, are cycling from
France to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain." Despite
being well past their prime they cycled up the equivalent of Mount
Everest plus a bit as they crossed the Pyrenees, the Montes de Oca,
the Montes de Leon, and the Cantabrian Mountains, in the process
expending over 20,000 calories each (according to Susie's iPhone
App), most of which were put back on each evening. They cycled in
the footsteps of 1,000 years of history, marveled at the art and
architecture accumulated over the centuries, and at times crashed
into it. They visited the sites of miracles and pondered their
meaning, and crossed the 200 meter bridge at Hospital de Orbigo
which in 1434 was the site of a month long jousting tournament.
They experienced the highs and lows of triumph and disaster, and
felt compelled to test the efficiency of the Spanish medical
system. Comment on the blog from Barnaby: "God, troops...it is epic
reading and I am on the edge of my seat as I follow your progress
on my map." The De-Caff Camino is in turn amusing, informative,
easy reading and irreverent, and yet is imbued throughout with the
greatest respect for the history and traditions of the Camino and
those who have written their names into its lore. Improbably
arriving at their destination after two weeks and 500 miles on the
road, the author offers some forthright advice to the Vatican on
how to enhance the experience for pilgrims at last achieving their
goal after so much exertion, self-sacrifice and denial. The De-Caff
Camino is an essential and most entertaining addition to the body
of knowledge of The Way of St James.
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