Papers by Jewell Homad Johnson
ANU Online conference, 2021
Abstract: Irony in Art History and the Art World’s Categorical Gender Games
am dokumentshi "Google t’argmna" konp’erents’iis delegatebi "mkhatvari da sazogadoeba" saert’asho... more am dokumentshi "Google t’argmna" konp’erents’iis delegatebi "mkhatvari da sazogadoeba" saert’ashoriso konp’erents’ia ivane javakhishvilis sakhelobis t’bilisis sakhelmtsip’o universiteti khelovnebis istoriisa da t’eoriis, 18-19 noembers 2016 gt’khovt’ apatiebs shets’domebi shedegad. gmadlobt’.
This paper has been 'google translated' for conference delegates of 'Artist and Society' International Conference, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University Institute of Art History and Theory, 18-19 November 2016. Please forgive errors as a result. Thank you.
¿La Historia del Arte y la Arqueología Islámicas en Crisis? Retos y Nuevas Perspectivas - Madrid ... more ¿La Historia del Arte y la Arqueología Islámicas en Crisis? Retos y Nuevas Perspectivas - Madrid January 2017
Volver a Compartir El Espacio Histórico: Al Muqaddema De Ibni Jaldún Como Guia (1)
Paris, guided by its 17 th -18 th century armature of ideology and material frame of contemporary... more Paris, guided by its 17 th -18 th century armature of ideology and material frame of contemporary life, is home to the the famous playwright's Troupe de Molière, renamed La Comédie Française. Performing continuously on the Louvre's Salle Richelieu stage since 1680, actors and audience experience the 17 th century's living presence within and outside this theatre. Mnunchkine's Thèátre du Soleil (outside Paris in Vincennes) adapted the historical activity of Macbeth to the events of 21 st century war in a transformed munitions factory, the company's home. These two spaces uniquely provide the experience of co-adapting and preserving historical life.
Islamische Kunst und Archäologie in der Krise? Herausforderungen und neue Perspektiven
RE-SHARING THE HISTORICAL SPACE: IBN KHALDUN'S MUQADDIMAH AS GUIDE i
Art Lies, Vol 17, Winter 1997-98, Nov 1997
Art Lies, Volume 14, Spring 1997
Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica (AUASH), 19, II (2015)
Places of Memory. Cemeteries and Funerary Practices throughout the Time Abstract for Annales Univ... more Places of Memory. Cemeteries and Funerary Practices throughout the Time Abstract for Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica (AUASH), 19, II (2015)
Across the mountains and valleys of Bosnia and Herzegovina (and parts of Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia) Medieval tombstones, unique to the region and known as Stecci, have cast shadows and caught the light for nearly a millenium. These monuments preserve a wealth of symbolism from the 11th to the 16th century “through 80 primary and 320 secondary motifs ... ” Mak Dizdar (1917–1971) a “ ... true Bosnian poet whose literary career began before WWII ... and in 1966 with the publication of Kameni spavac (Stone Sleeper) ... thematizes medieval Bosnian tombstones known as stedak.” With Dizdar’s poetry as a guide, the powerful symbolism and mythology of the Bosnian Stecci will be explored. TO REQUEST PAPER please send contact message.
1. Amila Buturovic, Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombs, Landscape, and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdari (June 2002) Palgrave Macmillan.
2. UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Stećci - Medieval Tombstones http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5617/ (accessed 20 June 2015)
Edited Books by Jewell Homad Johnson
Paris, guided by its 17 th –18 th century armature of ideology and material frame of contemporary... more Paris, guided by its 17 th –18 th century armature of ideology and material frame of contemporary life, is home to the the famous playwright's Troupe de Molière, renamed La Comédie Française. Performing continuously on the Louvre's Salle Richelieu stage since 1680, actors and audience experience the 17 th century's living presence within and outside this theatre. Mnunchkine's Thèátre du Soleil (outside Paris in Vincennes) adapted the historical activity of Macbeth to the events of 21 st century war in a transformed munitions factory, the company's home. These two spaces uniquely provide the experience of co-adapting and preserving historical life.
Abstract:
Bob Colacello realized, after accompanying Andy to a Shrine of the Virgin Guadalupe in... more Abstract:
Bob Colacello realized, after accompanying Andy to a Shrine of the Virgin Guadalupe in Mexico, that “Andy’s religion “was not an act.” 1 Encounters with the abundant works of Warhol’s overtly religious art herald the semiotics behind this artist’s total body of work, POPular in appearance while thoroughly Medieval in meaning and practice. All of Warhol’s work focused on American post-war materialist culture through a religious lens, placing him comfortably amongst his nearest peers: the radical and opinionated modernists. Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) declared: “In a secret, enigmatic, mystic way the true work of art is born out of the artist.”2 New York Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) spoke at Mount Holyoke in 1944 declaring: “artists were the last spiritual guides in a world of property” and would need to form a “spiritual underground.”3 The artist’s innermost beliefs direct their perception and experience of the shared world. As a devout Byzantine Catholic in America, Warhol’s Last Supper Camouflage (1986)4 is a self-portrait of a quiet and confounding man whose faith was private while his art held a medieval mirror up to American culture. Warhol’s iconography for secular religion was aesthetically of his time while Byzantine in its tendency to remove shadows and symbolize through 20th century technology (the high contrast photograph) and processes (the silk screen). Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans objectify transformation through new ‘ritual’ objects of the cult of modern ‘Convenience,’ and his Brillo Boxes still confront capitalism with an esoteric truth behind secular existentialism. Illustrating the public’s deification of: Marilyn Monroe as idol and saint; Che Gevarra as martyr; rock stars and athletes, Hollywood stars, the ‘famous,’ and elected leaders as pagan gods replacing prophets, priests, royalty, and popes; and finally the salvation of the cross with the retribution of the electric chair. All of Warhol’s images document the co-opting of religion, her church, objects and rituals for secular individualism, seeking not redemption but “the pursuit of happiness” and the ‘American Dream.’

1 Jane Daggett Dillenberger, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1998), 35.
2 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, trans. M.T.H. Sadler (New York: Dover, 1977), Kindle edition, Loc 131. Note: This text also appears titled as On the Spiritual in Art. “The first complete English translation was published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for the Museum of Non- Objective painting, New York City, 1946, Hilla Rebay, Editor.” https://archive.org/details/onspiritualinart00kand (accessed 10 August 2013).
3 Motherwell’s 10 August 1944 lecture, originally titled “The Place of the Spiritual in a World of Property” delivered at the «Pontigny en Amerique» conference at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was re-titled for publication: The Modern Painter’s World, Dyn I no 6. Apud
4 http://www.warholfoundation.org
Location: Oxford, UK
Event Date: Jan 8, 2016
Organization: Mystical Theology Network ; Oxford University (St. Hilda's College)
Conference End Date: Jan 9, 2016
Research Interests: Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Pop Art, Andy Warhol, Religious Iconography, and Religious studies and Art history in religion
Location: Oxford, UK (St Hilda's College)
Organization: Mystical Theology Network ; Oxford University (St. Hilda's College)
Conference End Date: Jan 9, 2016
Conference Start Date: Jan 8, 2016
Research Interests: History of Religion, Popular Culture, Pop Art, Religious Studies, Andy Warhol, and Religious art and iconography
Art and Money, Jul 2015
Art and Money: What's Really Being Bought and Sold (Chapter 8)
Conference Presentations by Jewell Homad Johnson
Tethered to their origin, adaptations can travel only so far away to leap forms: from book to scr... more Tethered to their origin, adaptations can travel only so far away to leap forms: from book to screen, or overlay contemporary life with the fascinations of past eras refashioning the narrative of human existence that remains, apart from literal appearances, remains relatively unchanged. We travel through literature, film and television, and objects and rituals of material culture to project onto them and them us onto us. This subjugation of the self identity creates distance from a predictable life. However briefly, foreign cultures provide an encounter with life where we are more receptive to change, and consciously more adaptable, as a result. This paper explores the adaptation of life in and around Paris by her most influential theatre companies, and how they merge historical eras into contemporaneous life. This is in the face of global franchises increasing presence at the street level, an especially noticeable example can be seen in the Marais. Language may be an obstacle in Paris, but French should be spoken in France, so the visitor must shift to other dimensions of language, such as musicality to perceive what is being expressed. Unlike film and television, during a theatrical performance done in that nation's language, surtitles are not an audience necessity or option. This shift to embodied language allows us to discover new facial expressions as a result of pronunciation and culturally calibrated body language. Nuances overlooked in our native tongue becoming obvious and in this absence of familiarity the larger frameworks of life become apparent. Foreign culture is where discourse on the play's narrative plot becomes driven by imaginative conjecture to extend the performance space outside of the theatre, because without literacy we don't know exactly what happened. In the actual streets of Paris, this post-performance epilogue suggests how we might reshape historical adaptations for non-European theatres, through what is unnecessary here.
Infants define the world through images: A 'bottle' is an amalgam of potent nameless images throu... more Infants define the world through images: A 'bottle' is an amalgam of potent nameless images through perspectives of its' shape in use. Its' bottle-ness is experienced and defined before words begin to limit and control the infant's world of imagery. The 'illustrated world' is the first language we learn both first-hand and throughout our human history. (1.) Illustration in all its' forms has the innate capacity to retain mystery even after words cause a search for meaning to begin. This 'mystery' is keenly suited to reveal invisible landscapes. Artists and thinkers have always illustrated 'invisible' worlds: In the imagery of 16 th – 18 th century Alchemy, court masques and rituals; Dante (words) and Durer (images) of Biblical Paradise, Purgatory and Hell; and composers (Lully) concerned with the 'Music of the Spheres' served as visual, audio, and performative symbolism, just as Cervantes asks us to contemplate madness that in fact may well be extraordinary vision instead. 'Veiled' or 'apparent', and 'As above, so below' both produced aspirational viewpoints culminating in activities and artefacts taken to be earthly 'empirical proof' of other realms by illustrating attributes and entities of invisible worlds. Artists from amongst Dada (Arp), Surrealism (De Chirico) and Abstract (Kandinsky) movements were personally invested in higher abstract representational processes offering alternatives
Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art was published just over a cent... more Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art was published just over a century ago in 1911 and remains the seminal text by which the spiritual in art is historically considered. Both a representational and abstract painter, Bauhaus teacher and artist's artist 'prophet,' Kandinsky's theories were elucidated in numerous private and published texts and realised by his paintings. New art was resonating as a result of Impressionism throughout Europe, Russia, their Scandinavian neighbours, and the 'New World.' Paul Cezanne's statement: 'An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all' 1 reflected artists and intellectuals of Modernism were confronting 'feeling' and its ability to express traditional, new and folk religions through abstract symbolism. These works were avant-garde, non-traditional, and non-representational per se in appearance. Then as now, without research as a result of Habermas' address of the post-secular, much religious and spiritual works of art remain incognito in both art history and the history of religious art, which remains predominantly categorised by denominational orientations of representation.
In certain periods of art history in the various Eastern and Western traditions, the Divinity or ... more In certain periods of art history in the various Eastern and Western traditions, the Divinity or God-head was regarded as the source of the artist's inspiration, work and abilities. The artist had, then, a responsibility to communicate their perception of the sacred reflection in the world they surveyed. It was an integral part of their artistic endeavours. The artist did not make art for art's sake, nor seek fame as an individual, in the dynamic process of the divinely inspired connection with the 'sacred' or Divine. This connection directly shaped the illiterate society through narrative visual texts as frescoes and icons. This was an expression of worship through the symbolic depiction of sacred realms interacting with our own. The artist created these iconographic images to provide believers the religion's portal for connection to an overarching 'Truth.' While much of the artist's work was visually dictated by the church, (most artists could not read or write Greek or Latin though even Michelangelo tried and failed), their perceived role was in creating divinely inspired transmissions in a time when " As above so below " was typical. This is understood to have reached its height throughout the Medieval period when artists were valued by kings, popes and aristocrats. Yet, almost as quickly as the revolution gave way to the Enlightenment, and gathered secular momentum, the Symbolist artists, for example, with manifesto in one hand, grabbed the sleeve of the Industrial Age with the other to battle Materialism. Initiated by the theories and art of Kandinsky, i key individuals emerged from throughout Abstract Expressionism, Jan Arp via Swiss Dada, and De Stijl, where Mondrian " radically simplified the elements of his paintings to reflect what he saw as the spiritual order underlying the visible world, creating a clear, universal aesthetic language within his canvases. " ii This to name but a few. The psychic automatism of Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists like Roberto Matta and Robert Motherwell joined with members both outside and within the
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Papers by Jewell Homad Johnson
This paper has been 'google translated' for conference delegates of 'Artist and Society' International Conference, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University Institute of Art History and Theory, 18-19 November 2016. Please forgive errors as a result. Thank you.
Volver a Compartir El Espacio Histórico: Al Muqaddema De Ibni Jaldún Como Guia (1)
Across the mountains and valleys of Bosnia and Herzegovina (and parts of Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia) Medieval tombstones, unique to the region and known as Stecci, have cast shadows and caught the light for nearly a millenium. These monuments preserve a wealth of symbolism from the 11th to the 16th century “through 80 primary and 320 secondary motifs ... ” Mak Dizdar (1917–1971) a “ ... true Bosnian poet whose literary career began before WWII ... and in 1966 with the publication of Kameni spavac (Stone Sleeper) ... thematizes medieval Bosnian tombstones known as stedak.” With Dizdar’s poetry as a guide, the powerful symbolism and mythology of the Bosnian Stecci will be explored. TO REQUEST PAPER please send contact message.
1. Amila Buturovic, Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombs, Landscape, and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdari (June 2002) Palgrave Macmillan.
2. UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Stećci - Medieval Tombstones http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5617/ (accessed 20 June 2015)
Edited Books by Jewell Homad Johnson
Bob Colacello realized, after accompanying Andy to a Shrine of the Virgin Guadalupe in Mexico, that “Andy’s religion “was not an act.” 1 Encounters with the abundant works of Warhol’s overtly religious art herald the semiotics behind this artist’s total body of work, POPular in appearance while thoroughly Medieval in meaning and practice. All of Warhol’s work focused on American post-war materialist culture through a religious lens, placing him comfortably amongst his nearest peers: the radical and opinionated modernists. Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) declared: “In a secret, enigmatic, mystic way the true work of art is born out of the artist.”2 New York Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) spoke at Mount Holyoke in 1944 declaring: “artists were the last spiritual guides in a world of property” and would need to form a “spiritual underground.”3 The artist’s innermost beliefs direct their perception and experience of the shared world. As a devout Byzantine Catholic in America, Warhol’s Last Supper Camouflage (1986)4 is a self-portrait of a quiet and confounding man whose faith was private while his art held a medieval mirror up to American culture. Warhol’s iconography for secular religion was aesthetically of his time while Byzantine in its tendency to remove shadows and symbolize through 20th century technology (the high contrast photograph) and processes (the silk screen). Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans objectify transformation through new ‘ritual’ objects of the cult of modern ‘Convenience,’ and his Brillo Boxes still confront capitalism with an esoteric truth behind secular existentialism. Illustrating the public’s deification of: Marilyn Monroe as idol and saint; Che Gevarra as martyr; rock stars and athletes, Hollywood stars, the ‘famous,’ and elected leaders as pagan gods replacing prophets, priests, royalty, and popes; and finally the salvation of the cross with the retribution of the electric chair. All of Warhol’s images document the co-opting of religion, her church, objects and rituals for secular individualism, seeking not redemption but “the pursuit of happiness” and the ‘American Dream.’

1 Jane Daggett Dillenberger, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1998), 35.
2 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, trans. M.T.H. Sadler (New York: Dover, 1977), Kindle edition, Loc 131. Note: This text also appears titled as On the Spiritual in Art. “The first complete English translation was published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for the Museum of Non- Objective painting, New York City, 1946, Hilla Rebay, Editor.” https://archive.org/details/onspiritualinart00kand (accessed 10 August 2013).
3 Motherwell’s 10 August 1944 lecture, originally titled “The Place of the Spiritual in a World of Property” delivered at the «Pontigny en Amerique» conference at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was re-titled for publication: The Modern Painter’s World, Dyn I no 6. Apud
4 http://www.warholfoundation.org
Location: Oxford, UK
Event Date: Jan 8, 2016
Organization: Mystical Theology Network ; Oxford University (St. Hilda's College)
Conference End Date: Jan 9, 2016
Research Interests: Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Pop Art, Andy Warhol, Religious Iconography, and Religious studies and Art history in religion
Location: Oxford, UK (St Hilda's College)
Organization: Mystical Theology Network ; Oxford University (St. Hilda's College)
Conference End Date: Jan 9, 2016
Conference Start Date: Jan 8, 2016
Research Interests: History of Religion, Popular Culture, Pop Art, Religious Studies, Andy Warhol, and Religious art and iconography
Conference Presentations by Jewell Homad Johnson
This paper has been 'google translated' for conference delegates of 'Artist and Society' International Conference, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University Institute of Art History and Theory, 18-19 November 2016. Please forgive errors as a result. Thank you.
Volver a Compartir El Espacio Histórico: Al Muqaddema De Ibni Jaldún Como Guia (1)
Across the mountains and valleys of Bosnia and Herzegovina (and parts of Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia) Medieval tombstones, unique to the region and known as Stecci, have cast shadows and caught the light for nearly a millenium. These monuments preserve a wealth of symbolism from the 11th to the 16th century “through 80 primary and 320 secondary motifs ... ” Mak Dizdar (1917–1971) a “ ... true Bosnian poet whose literary career began before WWII ... and in 1966 with the publication of Kameni spavac (Stone Sleeper) ... thematizes medieval Bosnian tombstones known as stedak.” With Dizdar’s poetry as a guide, the powerful symbolism and mythology of the Bosnian Stecci will be explored. TO REQUEST PAPER please send contact message.
1. Amila Buturovic, Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombs, Landscape, and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdari (June 2002) Palgrave Macmillan.
2. UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Stećci - Medieval Tombstones http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5617/ (accessed 20 June 2015)
Bob Colacello realized, after accompanying Andy to a Shrine of the Virgin Guadalupe in Mexico, that “Andy’s religion “was not an act.” 1 Encounters with the abundant works of Warhol’s overtly religious art herald the semiotics behind this artist’s total body of work, POPular in appearance while thoroughly Medieval in meaning and practice. All of Warhol’s work focused on American post-war materialist culture through a religious lens, placing him comfortably amongst his nearest peers: the radical and opinionated modernists. Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) declared: “In a secret, enigmatic, mystic way the true work of art is born out of the artist.”2 New York Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) spoke at Mount Holyoke in 1944 declaring: “artists were the last spiritual guides in a world of property” and would need to form a “spiritual underground.”3 The artist’s innermost beliefs direct their perception and experience of the shared world. As a devout Byzantine Catholic in America, Warhol’s Last Supper Camouflage (1986)4 is a self-portrait of a quiet and confounding man whose faith was private while his art held a medieval mirror up to American culture. Warhol’s iconography for secular religion was aesthetically of his time while Byzantine in its tendency to remove shadows and symbolize through 20th century technology (the high contrast photograph) and processes (the silk screen). Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans objectify transformation through new ‘ritual’ objects of the cult of modern ‘Convenience,’ and his Brillo Boxes still confront capitalism with an esoteric truth behind secular existentialism. Illustrating the public’s deification of: Marilyn Monroe as idol and saint; Che Gevarra as martyr; rock stars and athletes, Hollywood stars, the ‘famous,’ and elected leaders as pagan gods replacing prophets, priests, royalty, and popes; and finally the salvation of the cross with the retribution of the electric chair. All of Warhol’s images document the co-opting of religion, her church, objects and rituals for secular individualism, seeking not redemption but “the pursuit of happiness” and the ‘American Dream.’

1 Jane Daggett Dillenberger, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1998), 35.
2 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, trans. M.T.H. Sadler (New York: Dover, 1977), Kindle edition, Loc 131. Note: This text also appears titled as On the Spiritual in Art. “The first complete English translation was published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for the Museum of Non- Objective painting, New York City, 1946, Hilla Rebay, Editor.” https://archive.org/details/onspiritualinart00kand (accessed 10 August 2013).
3 Motherwell’s 10 August 1944 lecture, originally titled “The Place of the Spiritual in a World of Property” delivered at the «Pontigny en Amerique» conference at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was re-titled for publication: The Modern Painter’s World, Dyn I no 6. Apud
4 http://www.warholfoundation.org
Location: Oxford, UK
Event Date: Jan 8, 2016
Organization: Mystical Theology Network ; Oxford University (St. Hilda's College)
Conference End Date: Jan 9, 2016
Research Interests: Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Pop Art, Andy Warhol, Religious Iconography, and Religious studies and Art history in religion
Location: Oxford, UK (St Hilda's College)
Organization: Mystical Theology Network ; Oxford University (St. Hilda's College)
Conference End Date: Jan 9, 2016
Conference Start Date: Jan 8, 2016
Research Interests: History of Religion, Popular Culture, Pop Art, Religious Studies, Andy Warhol, and Religious art and iconography
Presented by Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, The Australian Sociological Association, and University of Wollongong Australia.
The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF), set the 2012 global art market at €46.1 billion. But what is really being purchased? No amount of money creates an artist in any genre, it is a birthright beyond control or influence, and precisely why people buy ‘Art’. ‘Art’ comes into being outside of social conventions. The ‘artist’ [as opposed to the ‘craftsman’ or ‘designer’] is a perennial rebel against Capitalism’s mass merchandising in a marketplace where there’s more Photoshop than photo, and while facing the extinction of the traditional, the artist raises their voice of ‘authenticity’ from the midst of the Hi-Def lie. A brush stroke of oil paint is higher definition than any amount of pixels can ever be, and aims us in the direction of why Paul Cezanne’s "The Card Players", 1892/93 would be sold for $250 million in 2011. Unlike new technology- it is patently unique, rather than patented for mass production.
‘Global Power Players’ want what money can’t buy, and other than more power, ‘objects of art’ are the personal ‘holy grails’ of desire and acquisition. ‘Fine Art’ is the ultimate ‘symbolic object’: of a talent that exerts its’ mysterious presence, which can only be developed by those so endowed at birth. Art is elusive, ethereal, and manifests an intangible ‘je ne sais quoi’ beyond money’s grasp. Only this could draw more than 7 million annually, year after year, to the Mona Lisa, speaking to us from within a bulletproof cage across a sea of camera flash. If she didn’t live up to the hype the crowds would have disappeared long ago, but just try to explain why, and if she were for sale you would probably see the billion dollar mark broken at the sale.
Owning art brings us closest to what can’t be bought or sold: (mainly) the ability to do it. The non-artist’s thirst for victory over the artist is where money comes in: it’s the vehicle to obtain proximity to the ‘Masters’ of the past or present. This is what ‘art and money’ is all about: Either our encounter is brief, in the gallery or museum, or with enough filthy lucre we can live with what captured both eye and heart’s desire reminding us money is not humanity’s raison d’etre.
Yet it is the high stakes battles in the world’s auction houses that tend to form our perception of ‘Art and Money’ performing some exotic tango. It is a financial coup d’état to sequester a masterpiece all to oneself, and fashion pseudo-immortality by bequeathing these gems to the public upon one’s death. But for the super rich, money is the only sacrifice, if we can call it that when someone can continue to live so decadently in spite of splashing out tens, or even hundreds of millions for a single work of art, yet these mega achievers must forever carry a strange sort of guilt at possessing these creative trophies of real sacrifice beyond the taint of financial goals. Van Gogh, remains the legendary icon of artistic sacrifice par excellence and record art sales, not because he cut off his own ear [though this image of tortured artist surely stimulated the sale of his ‘Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear’ in 1998’s for $71.5 million], but the fact that, other than work his brother Theo purchased as a way to support him, Van Gogh sold only one painting while he was alive: ‘Red Vineyard At Arles’. The artist’s sacrifice- so total and pure- is indeed deemed beyond all price because the true cost of being an artist is never just money.

1 Jane Daggett Dillenberger, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1998), 35.
2 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, trans. M.T.H. Sadler (New York: Dover, 1977), Kindle edition, Loc 131. Note: This text also appears titled as On the Spiritual in Art. “The first complete English translation was published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for the Museum of Non- Objective painting, New York City, 1946, Hilla Rebay, Editor.” https://archive.org/details/onspiritualinart00kand (accessed 10 August 2013).
3 Motherwell’s 10 August 1944 lecture, originally titled “The Place of the Spiritual in a World of Property” delivered at the «Pontigny en Amerique» conference at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was re-titled for publication: The Modern Painter’s World, Dyn I no 6. Apud
4 http://www.warholfoundation.org
Location: Oxford, UK
Event Date: Jan 8, 2016
Organization: Mystical Theology Network ; Oxford University (St. Hilda's College)
Conference End Date: Jan 9, 2016
Research Interests: Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Pop Art, Andy Warhol, Religious Iconography, and Religious studies and Art history in religion
The personally apocalyptic dream‘ journey of Dorothy continues to lay a fundamental Hollywood foundation for generations of Americans. Since The Wizard of Oz
premiered in 1939, thismasterpiece introduction (for America) to the occult has became an annual viewing habit for theBaby Boomer -TV generation(s) and an expanding brand Oz‘, through sequels, prequels, and an planned apocalyptic television series continue to expand its audience.The early 20th century had been filled with trauma on all fronts, so it is not surprising Hollywoodgambled the American audience was ripe to believe in more than the power of prayer‘ alone, andgave them a master
piece of wizardry and red shoe magic‘while including the familiar values‘ of the time. But after decades of catastrophic financial annihilation, war, atomic fear, and a focus onscientific advances, those values are flipped in Oz the Great and Powerful
(2013) and new saviours‘ of cinema have emerged from the marriage of sci-fi and the wizardry of scientificadvances to inflate a global addiction to revelries of filmic technology to transform humans into themessiahs of secularised apocalyptic narratives so implausible the new Bond films are reduced tonaturalism in comparison as we arrive at the audacity of Elysium‘s trailer telling us amidst post apocalyptic setting that ―the apocalypse has been cancelled.How did we get here? What prepared the WWII / Great Depression generation and the ‗Duck andCover‘ Baby-Boomers as Hollywood lead in the manufacture of both fear and apathy in the face of the personal and global apocalyptics?