Tomie and the Saints

By |2024-03-15T16:35:32-05:00March 15th, 2024|Categories: Art, Beauty, Books, Catholicism, Christianity, David Deavel, Sainthood, Senior Contributors|

Tomie DePaola may not have been a saint himself, but he recognized them, venerated the love of God in their lives, and drew them in such a way that we can see that love shining through his friendly folk art icons. Through the Year with Tomie DePaola, text by Catherine Harmon and John Herreid, illustrations [...]

Dante’s Transformed Love: Musings on the Poet’s Love for Beatrice

By |2024-02-10T20:18:07-06:00February 10th, 2024|Categories: Art, Books, Christianity, Dante, Love, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

If the "Vita Nuova" had been the only major work Dante had made, this work alone would have earned him the reputation as a great poet of Western Civilization. It is well-known that Dante is one of the greatest poets in Western Civilization. His magnum opus, The Divine Comedy, is considered one of the crowning [...]

The Romantic Reaction

By |2024-01-19T18:09:42-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: Art, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Philosophy, Romanticism, Senior Contributors|

C.S. Lewis thought that "Romanticism" had acquired so many different meanings that, as a word, it had become meaningless "and should be banished from our vocabulary.” But is Lewis right? In the “Afterword” to the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress C.S. Lewis complained that “Romanticism” had acquired so many different meanings that, as a [...]

Realism in Modern Art

By |2024-01-07T19:26:28-06:00January 7th, 2024|Categories: Art, Beauty, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors|

One common criticism of realism is that it is merely mimicking what can now be done as well or better with a camera. This is simply not the case. With few exceptions, photographs only show the surface, not the personhood of the subject. "The Resurrection of Realism" by Igor Babailov During the time [...]

A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity

By |2023-12-20T07:39:28-06:00December 19th, 2023|Categories: Art, Beauty, Books, Christianity, Louis Markos|

If orthodox believers in churches and schools do not take upon themselves the responsibility of passing down the deposit of Christian art that has been entrusted to us, the next generation will grow up with little to no knowledge of, or gratitude for, the images by which the Christian worldview captivated the heart, soul, and [...]

The Arts as Sources of Epiphany

By |2023-10-17T17:28:33-05:00October 17th, 2023|Categories: Art, Beauty, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors|

Art achieves a kind of double reflection. It returns thanks to God, using his creation to fashion something new; at the same time, it reflects the glory and order of creation back to man, providing moments of epiphany. Art when properly made restores a proper awe before creation; although manmade, it directs our gaze back [...]

Should Beauty Have a Purpose?

By |2023-09-15T19:49:21-05:00September 14th, 2023|Categories: Art, Books, Culture, Featured, Literature, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

The love of beauty as such is one of the things that can attract men to the God who is infinitely beautiful. But is it the case that we ought to pursue beauty only to the extent that it is joined to some function? A previous essay of mine published in this journal made passing reference [...]

The Dilemma of the Conservative Artist

By |2023-08-17T17:54:16-05:00August 17th, 2023|Categories: Art, Beauty, Conservatism, Featured, Literature, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

Unless we conservatives make an effort to engage in a sustained and regular way with all legitimate developments of the artistic tradition, we will contribute not to the preservation of the tradition but to its ossification into a relic of the past, admired by an increasingly marginalized subculture. Ask a conservative why conservatives tend to [...]

On Seeking a Cultural Model in the Past

By |2023-08-15T18:03:26-05:00August 15th, 2023|Categories: Art, Culture, History, Literature, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors|

As we think about the problems of modernity, let us recognize what the great mid-20th-century artists and thinkers achieved and immerse ourselves in their works. While it is a good thing to react against modern times with the conscience of a conservative, let us do so fully aware of our roots in this most modern [...]

The Speechless Image

By |2023-08-14T14:39:03-05:00August 14th, 2023|Categories: Art, Culture, Modernity, Philosophy, Timeless Essays, Worldview|

What can be said of the way that the abstract work speaks to us—despite the fact that its “content” is untranslatable into words and concepts—is that in its very inability to speak, the work expresses the sense of alienation from a once-familiar and shared artistic life-world. Is the avant-garde then a tragedy or a happy [...]

John Dryden: The Politics of Style

By |2023-07-18T14:17:32-05:00July 18th, 2023|Categories: Art, Conservatism, Culture, Order, Poetry, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|Tags: , |

John Dryden was, for the most part, a man of quiet temperament; yet he presided over a literary revolution. As a poet and critic he destroyed the principal seventeenth-century literary modes and created the style and the methods that would characterize the eighteenth. The rise in John Dryden’s reputation, commencing a generation or so ago, [...]

Michelangelo’s Last “Pieta”

By |2023-06-25T18:00:48-05:00June 25th, 2023|Categories: Art, Beauty, Christianity, Culture, Dwight Longenecker, Religion, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

The Florentine Pieta was not commissioned. Instead, Michelangelo intended it for his own tomb. He worked on the sculpture in his spare time, late into the night with a candle fixed to his hat for light. The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo is an unmissable new sight in a visit to Florence. Designed by American art [...]

The Birthplace of the American Artistic Imagination

By |2023-06-06T15:39:19-05:00June 6th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Art, Culture, Literature, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors|

At a time when intellectual Europeans scoffed at the very possibility of America producing art or beauty, the Hudson School created an outpouring of beauty worthy of any country. It was an aesthetic uniquely American, based on hope in a bountiful land blessed by Providence but also aware that our world below is dark without [...]

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