Plate, S. Brent, ed. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 240 + xv pp., $24.95 (USD). ISBN: 0-312-24029-5.
[1] Any text that starts with a discussion of dung has to be given merit for its audacity and its relevance. In Religion, Art, and Visual Culture: A Cross Cultural Reader, S. Brent Plate begins with a discussion of Chris Ofili's infamous The Holy Virgin Mary to illustrate the intersection of art, religion, and visual culture and the importance of each of these subjects. He examines Ofili's work from a variety of perspectives to discover why this rendition of the Virgin Mary caused controversy. Plate notes that images are powerful—especially religious images, which explains the volatile nature of the Ofili controversy. Thus, images and their connections to religion need to be studied. This volume seeks to raise two questions: “What kind of ‘artistic' encounter is possible outside of established artistic institutions—in mosques and gardens, city parks and churches? And what kind of ‘religious' interactions take place inside the supposedly secular artistic institutions” (16). Plate's two questions revolve around the ideas of the sacred and profane and their malleability in religious visual culture.
[2] The essays included in this volume directly or indirectly address these questions. Beginning with Ofili and moving to theoretical conceptions of visual culture, to Renaissance art, to Islamic calligraphy, to Zen gardens, to a Hindu goddess in film, to Jewish memorials that represent a religion and a people, Plate's work covers much ground as it seeks to provide the religious visual-culture novice with an understanding of the field. This introduction to visual culture and the act of seeing makes the purchase of this volume worthwhile, and the additional essays add to its value. What we learn is that seeing is a culturally constructed process, and religion is one of many contexts that guide how we see and interpret the world around us. To understand the process of seeing, Plate provides essays in the first section that focus on vision in biological and psychological terms. In this section, in an excerpt from James Elkins, the reader is exposed to the power that an object has on a viewer. After this introductory chapter, Plate demonstrates the interaction between religion and visual culture in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism.
[3] Each religious tradition discussed represents an aspect of visuality: image/icon, word/image, body/mind, performance/interactivity, and memory. For Christianity, the concept of images and icons are explored to demonstrate how Christians use images/icons to represent their worldview. Images do not tell a story but connect the viewer to a transcendent world. These images reinforce and reinvigorate Christian belief. For Islam, Plate selects readings that show the art of calligraphy and how the word becomes image that is studied. Plate writes, “We are left, then, with a tradition that pays homage to the word, even as it oftentimes simultaneously twists the word into an image” which produces new meanings that “straddle the line between representation and decoration” (99). The gardens of Zen Buddhism connect the participant to the world, and according to Shigenori Nagatomo, the method to cultivating the garden can also be applied to the cultivation of self. The cultivation of the gardens symbolizes the interactions between the microcosm and the macrocosm of “the internal cosmos (body-mind) and the external cosmos (nature)” (132).
[4] In the section on Hinduism, it is clear that India has a highly visual culture that is aided by mass reproduction. Mass-produced images have the same power and aura for devotees that temples and shrines do, and devotees interact with these images. Plate ends the volume with a discussion of Judaism, memory, and architecture. In this section, the various scholars explore the relationship between Judaism and memory and the memorials for the Holocaust that display a constructed memory of the past. Participants interact with the memorials and “re-actualize” history. Interestingly, the last reading in the volume, written by Plate, examines the museum. Plate's discussion of the museum as a way to present history in which participants have a collective memory is compelling and haunting. Museums mold their viewers much in the same way that religions mold their devotees and followers.
[5] Religion, Art, and Visual Culture is a book that raises more questions than it answers, and it is demonstrative of new ways to study and understand religious traditions. Plate compiled the readings for an undergraduate audience though it seems that anyone interested in religious visual culture would benefit from this volume. I would recommend purchase of this work for its sheer usefulness in defining “visual culture” and its engaging style and structure. Religion, Art, and Visual Culture provides an excellent introduction to the interaction between religion and visual culture and the importance of this interaction.
Kelly J. Baker
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
Kelly_baker77@hotmail.com
