Essays are narratives of varying lengths that engage in extended analysis of multiple images, objects, monuments, buildings, or spaces.
Essays
Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion
MAVCOR began publishing Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion in 2014. In 2017 we selected a new name, MAVCOR Journal. Articles published prior to 2017 are considered part of Conversations and are listed as such under Volumes in the MAVCOR Journal menu.
Art That Breathes: Lewis deSoto’s Paranirvana (self-portrait)
Unlike its solid stone predecessor, deSoto’s work, made from painted polyethylene cloth, is hollow, filled only by air from a fan that keeps the sculpture inflated. The resemblance to the reclining Buddha is nonetheless remarkable, from the curls of hair to the folds of the robe, the one exception being that deSoto superimposed his own facial features, complete with goatee, on this Buddha.
Repositioning Plautilla Nelli’s Lamentation
My favorite underrated work of art is the Lamentation by Suor Plautilla Nelli (1523-1588), the first woman artist in Renaissance Florence with an oeuvre to go with her name. This large altar painting was created for the Dominican convent of Saint Catherine of Siena, where it stood, nearly ten feet high, on a prominent altar in the convent’s public church.