Art : Religious

This fascinating study explores how our prehistoric ancestors developed rituals from everyday life and domestic activities. This book examines farming, craft production and the occupation of houses, which were all ritualized in prehistoric Europe. more...

Price: $39.95

Early Christians and Animals presents a colourful and comprehensive overview and analysis of the significance of animals in early Christian thought, tradition, text and art. more...

Price: $125.00

King of the Confessors is Thomas Hoving's gripping account of the extraordinary events surrounding the Metropolitan Museum of Art's purchase, in 1963, of the magnificent medieval carved walrus ivory cross which the Museum calls 'The Cloisters Cross', but Hoving calls 'The Bury St Edmunds Cross'. This new edition contains revelations that render the events even more extraordinary, and explains why Hoving thinks the Museum has got it wrong. more...

Price: $17.95

This is the first volume to examine the urgent and important issues facing new religions in their political, legal, and religious contexts covering Western Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, Russia and Eastern Europe, and North and South America. more...

Price: $39.95

The Spirit of Secular Art: A History of the Sacramental Roots of Contemporary Artistic Values explains the spiritual prestige of art. Various theorists have discussed how art has an aura or indefinable magic. This book explains how, when and why it gained its spiritual properties. The idea that all art is somehow spiritual (even though not religious) is often assumed; this book, while narrating the historical trajectory of art in the most accessible language, reveals how the mysteries of religious practice are abstracted and saved through all stages of secularisation in European culture. The Spirit of Secular Art presents a coherent theory defining the sacred basis of Western aesthetics. It evocatively describes the afterlife of the holy from Ancient Greece to the present, and outlines how the mysterious institution of art can be explained in material terms. Unlike other books in the genre, The Spirit of Secular Art radically deconstructs traditional art history in terms of 'prestige' and the value of the non-material. The book functions as: * an alternative critical history of art, integrated with the histories of literature and belief * a philosophical essay on the fundamental values of art and religion * a critique of the spiritual conceits of contemporary aesthetics and art appreciation more...

Price: $37.95