The Sounding Cosmos Revisited

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Introvigne
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Wassily Kandinsky ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Academic Events

Starting with the 2013 conference Enchanted Modernities in Amsterdam, a number of academic events, exhibitions, and publications (including a 2016 special issue of Nova Religio) documented the growing interest of both art historians and scholars of new religious movements in the influence of the Theosophical Society and other esoteric groups on the birth and development of modern art. At the center of this renewed interest is the controversial work of Finnish art historian Sixten Ringbom (1935–1992), who in the late 1960s “discovered” the Theosophical connections of Russian pioneer of abstract art Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), discussed in his book The Sounding Cosmos. In this paper, I discuss Ringbom’s background, his almost coincidental discovery of Theosophy, the ostracism his work received from those who did not want modern art to be associated with irrationalist and disreputable “cults,” and his posthumous influence on the birth of a new subfield within the study of new religious movements, devoted to their relationships with the visual arts.

New Religious Movements in Brazil

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Selka
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Late Modern

This article provides an overview of the Brazilian religious landscape and an introduction to this special issue on new religious movements in Brazil. I stress how the Brazilian religious landscape, although often imagined as a place of religious syncretism and cultural mixture, is crosscut by an array of boundaries, tensions and antagonisms, including ones grounded in race and class. The article outlines the major topics and problems taken up by the contributors to this issue, including appropriation across lines of race, ethnicity and class; the growing influence of evangelical Christianity in Latin America and beyond; esoteric religious practice in the late modern era; and questions of purity and authenticity, syncretism and anti-syncretism. Through their engagement with these themes, the articles in this issue contribute to a number of important discussions that relate not only to the study of religion in Brazil but to the study of new religious movements in general.

The Study of Hindu New Religious Movements

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-19
Author(s):  
Gene R. Thursby
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Meditation ◽  
Social World ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Arya Samaj

The category of Hindu new religious movements is conventional and useful, but has imprecise boundaries. Scholars tend to include within it some groups that have claimed they are not Hindu (Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission) or not religious (Transcendental Meditation). Within its wide range are world-affirming groups dedicated to transforming the physical and social world as well as world-transcending groups that find the status of the world doubtful and their purpose at another level or in another realm. The four articles in this special issue of Nova Religio on Hindu new religious movements represent several aspects of this category, and the potential for accommodation of basic differences, social harmony, and even world-transcendence.

Era Modenisme dan Pascamodenisme: Suatu Transformasi Seni Visual dalam Konteks Sosio-Budaya

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Mohamad Kamal Abd Aziz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Secondary Research ◽  
Changing Trends ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Postmodern Art ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Art Critics

This paperwork discusses some theories between modernist and post-modernist thinking that have been evolved in society. The presence of post-modernist thought is said to be anti-modernist. Thus, the question is whether it emerges as anticipation or the occurrence of a transformation shift at its pace in driving the development of art and culture. The objective of this study is to discuss the changing trends of art practitioners in the context of visual art and culture phenomenon today since the era of modernism. However. to what extent is the presence of post-modernist thinking that is said to be anti-modernism put into practice or is modernist thinking dead? The statement also dissects various notions or is it true that there is no precise and clear interpretation or understanding between "modern art" and "postmodern art"? This is also marked by the emergence of various interpretations and the existence of polemics or discussions among scholars, especially in the discourse of art and culture. This study is using secondary research based on various theories of disciplines and conducting an interview with art critics and art historians in resolving this question. Although there are various doubts in the separation between "modernism" and "postmodernism" but it provides an interesting input that is often associated with the emergence of some characteristics of the postmodern era thought and style that differs in terms of ideas, concepts, approaches, materials, appearance, presentation, ideas, interpretation and it is meaning that leads to the transformation of visual arts in the current socio-cultural context.

New Religious Movements and Science

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin E. Zeller
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Scientific Systems

The notion or idea of science, quite aside from actual scientific enterprises, has achieved tremendous cultural power and prestige in modern society. The four studies in this special issue of Nova Religio on science and new religious movements indicate not only this newfound power, but also the contentious nature of its definition as well as its limits. The four articles reveal how founders, leaders and practitioners of new religious movements seek the authoritative mantle of science, and with it a perceived legitimacy, as well as challenge normative (Western) approaches to science assumed in much of modern society. In fact, these new religions generally seek to supplant normative Western science with the alternative religious-scientific systems they champion.

New Religious Movements and the Visual Arts

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Massimo Introvigne
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Modern Artists

Contrary to popular conceptions, modern artists are often religious. Some of them are part of mainstream religions including Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam. Others try to establish new religions and forms of spirituality based on art itself. A significant number of artists, while alienated from traditional religions, were either part of, or deeply influenced by, new religious movements and esoteric groups. Scholars have particularly focused on the influence of the Theosophical Society on the visual arts, but other movements have also been significant.

scholarly journals Reframing the History of New Religious Movements

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Michael Driedger ◽  
Johannes C. Wolfart
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Disciplinary Practice ◽  
History Of

In this special issue of Nova Religio four historians of medieval and early modern Christianities offer perspectives on basic conceptual frameworks widely employed in new religions studies, including modernization and secularization, radicalism/violent radicalization, and diversity/diversification. Together with a response essay by J. Gordon Melton, these articles suggest strong possibilities for renewed and ongoing conversation between scholars of “old” and “new” religions. Unlike some early discussions, ours is not aimed simply at questioning the distinction between old and new religions itself. Rather, we think such conversation between scholarly fields holds the prospect of productive scholarly surprise and perspectival shifts, especially via the disciplinary practice of historiographical criticism.

New Religious Movements in the Long Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Lydia Willsky-Ciollo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
New Religions ◽  
The Impact

This introduction provides a brief overview of the period known as the “long nineteenth century,” which played host to and helped to shape numerous new religious movements. Highlighting the impact and occasional convergence of various political, social, and religious movements and events in both the United States and globally, this essay seeks to show that the examination of new religious movements in the nineteenth century offers a means of applying scholarship in new religious movements to religions that may be defined as “old,” while simultaneously opening new ways of understanding new religions more broadly. In the process, this overview provides background for the articles included in this special issue of Nova Religio, which explore subjects including religious utopianism; gender, politics, and Pentecostalism; Mormonism and foreign missions; and the relationships of new religious movements to visual art.

Russia's Itinerant Painters

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Pipes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Western Influence

AbstractVisual arts in Russia languished through most of her history, partly because the Orthodox Church frowned on pictorial representation, partly because there was virtually no middle class to purchase paintings. In the mid-eighteenth century Russia acquired an Academy of Arts which produced works largely in classical style and content. This changed in the 1870's when, under western influence, a group of Russian artists formed a society of "Itinerants" committed to painting in the realistic mode and to exhibit their works in various cities of the Empire rather than solely in the capital cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as had been the custom until then. Their canvasses depicted everyday life in Russia as well as historical scenes; they also painted portraits of contemporaries. This special issue deals with the lives and work of nine leading Itinerant painters. The movement gradually lost popularity toward the beginning of the twentieth century as Impressionism and Abstract art replaced it, but it revived in the Soviet period. Today it is greatly favored by the Russian public which swarms the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the largest collection of Itinerant art.

Introduction: New Religions in Eastern Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-12
Author(s):  
Milda Ališauskienė
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Guest Editor ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Branding Strategies

The introduction to this special issue on new religions in Eastern Europe provides a historical background on the place of new religious movements in the region during the Soviet and post-Soviet era. This includes the varieties of new and alternative religions active in these societies and how this changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The guest editor notes several main directions of scholarly research focusing on these new religions and summarizes the four articles included in this special issue, which focus on the Lithuanian neoshamanic community, the pyramid of Merkinė in Lithuania, marketing and branding strategies of contemporary spirituality movements in Estonia, and the Last Testament Church in Siberia, Russia.

Archaeology and New Religious Movements

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Jeb J. Card
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Archaeological Artifacts ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Cultural Structures

The practice of archaeology—the study of material evidence of past human activities—is not in alignment with the human drive to understand relics of the material past as touchstones of mythic origins and evidence of the sacred. New and alternative religious movements, political movements, and popular culture use archaeological artifacts and monuments as slates on which to inscribe stories of supernatural ancestors, advanced civilizations and races, and lost ancient wisdom that justify critiquing or displacing existing religious and cultural structures and knowledge. The rhetorical power of these metaphorical (and sometimes literal) texts derives from the symbolic capital of the practice and profession of archaeology even as the content and form of these texts is in conflict with archaeology. The articles in this special issue of Nova Religio examine how archaeology is used to create new sacred meanings and narratives, and how archaeologists need to engage with persons attributing these alternative meanings to archaeological artifacts.

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