Art + Religion in the 21st Century Aaron Rosen.

Hamilton-Arnold, Jeremy W.

Art + Religion in the 21st Century

Aaron Rosen

London: Thames & Hudson, 2015

ISBN 978 0500239315, 236 pp, h/b, 32 [pounds sterling]

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Contemporary art (in the west) is devoid of religious themes and strictly antagonistic toward religion as religion continues in its long-held tradition of antagonism to art. Such are the widespread and contestable propositions that Rosen confronts. But most academics in the fields of religious studies and art history already know this. They are not his audience. Instead, this is a text for undergraduates first encountering the scholarly territory. It is for them and their professors that I highly recommend this text, a brilliant entry into the 'intersection' of art and religion today.

As the title suggests, the book is neither about religious art or artful religion, but instead about instances where artists address and at times work within religious realms. To catch the reader's attention and to address those presumptions of two opposing or, invoking Bruno Latour, 'icono-clashing' realms, Rosen introduces his work with the ever-titillating subjects of blasphemy and iconoclasm. While he addresses (albeit a bit too briefly) the social interest in the 'newsworthiness' of instances like Rudolph Giuliani's diatribe against Chris Ofili and his work The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996, and the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, he does not satisfactorily address their complexities. This is a recurring issue for Rosen. He confines the context of works to a few sentences or relegates it solely to image captions; adequate analysis is rare when it exists at all. Rosen also refrains from direct critique of the artists themselves (e.g. his reference of Joseph Beuy's 1974 pantomime performance of religious ritual, p.161), perhaps anxious of following in Giuliani's footsteps.

Rosen will make visual culture scholars bristle when stating his 'surprisingly difficult decision' to 'favor works that [he] believe[s] are more aesthetically and intellectually challenging' than works from the likes of Thomas Kinkade (p.20). Despite this reviewer's own frustration at the elitist exemption, the resulting scope does yield a focused and cohesive book on contemporary 'high art'. Strangely, some of Rosen's choices seem far too removed from religion: Byron Kim's plywood work on race titled Synecdoche, 1991-present, (p.214) or Jitka Hanzlova's untitled photograph of a forest tree (p.100). Such inclusions, however, force the reader to think critically about what makes a work of art 'religious' or 'about religion.' Successful or not, Rosen's occasionally beguiling inclusions push the definition of 'religion' itself, a frustration for undergraduates and likely delight for their professors.

Rosen's work is generally inclusive of a diversity of religions along with artists and their media. The multiple methodologies he names, justifies, and employs from section to section also benefit the novice scholar, consequentially taught the need to shift method according to the demands of subject matter. Disappointingly, there remains a magnetic pull for Rosen to return to western themes, seen most clearly in chapters 'Sweet Jesus!' and 'The Sublime', leaving an imbalance in the 'religion' he addresses.

At times Rosen lacks critical distance, personally imploring readers to 'seal ... with the simple act of faith' Noah's covenant to maintain the earth (p.97). Other unfortunate choices of rhetoric make the text too casual, from a forced pun on female bodies in Ofili's work ('like faithful cherubim, albeit with chubby cheeks of another sort'), anachronistic conjecture (imagining the 19th-century art critic John Ruskin pondering 21st-century works), or moralistic ('... to make environmental art in the twenty-first century is not only religiously significant, it is ethically imperative.') (pp.16, 75, 93).

Rosen's success is perhaps best seen in the relatively equal emphasis he gives to both text and image. Chapters are brief, but they brim with alluring examples that invite a deeper inquiry and engagement. The resulting text/ image-book serves as a delectable entree into 'contemporary art and religion.' Rosen may leave much on the table to be further analyzed; there are no notes--merely a bibliography. But more curator than author, leaving the weight of critical analysis to others, Rosen provides a captivating image-rich survey. This reviewer only wished for an eBook version, which would allow better reproduction of sound, moving images, environmental art, and (of course) digital art. Rosen's reference of Yoav Weiss's website on the Separation Wall between Israel and Palestine exemplifies this need (p.152). Regardless, most interested readers will delve further into the works and the artists' oeuvres on their own anyway. The represented artworks are far too intriguing not to.

Jeremy W Hamilton-Arnold is a student at Yale University