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Object Narratives explicate religious images, objects, monuments, buildings, or spaces in 1500 words or less.

Conversations

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.

  • A dark-skinned man wearing a white t-shirt holds a large, broken mortar transformed into an art object. It is painted orange with a large eye depicted at center. Other smaller eyes cover the object's surface. Neat, white text also covers the piece.
    Object Narratives
    Kwame "Almighty" Akoto, The Supernatural Eyes of God
    Birgit Meyer
    During a trip to Ghana in May 2010, I visited the roadside shop and atelier of painter Kwame Akoto, alias “Almighty,” a name he adopted so as to praise the power of God.
  • A grayscale chart consists of a series of different size ovals set in a horizontal line. Each oval contains more circles with illustrations inside them. Text labels the spheres and thin lines make connections between events.
    Object Narratives
    Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth
    A.T. Coates
    Clarence Larkin’s dispensationalist chart “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth” (1920) offers a detailed schematic of biblical history. The artistic product of an individual with experience in mechanical draftsmanship, Larkin’s chart shows how events and epochs fit together like parts in a salvation machine.
  • A painting of a light-skinned Mary with a large, oblong disk of gold leaf light behind her head is painted on a red background. She has large stylized eyes, red lips, and wears a burgundy cloak.
    Object Narratives
    Icon of Mary
    Elena Kravchenko
    Icons move. They cross national borders and traditional boundaries. They show up in the least expected places.
  • In a mural on a cave wall, robed figures gather around a painted tablet. Two larger figures kneel while their attendants hold offerrings. Much of the colorful paint has chipped off the figures.
    Object Narratives
    Ancestor portraits at Mogao Cave 231
    Winston Kyan
    The integration of “secular” figures into a Buddhist cave complicates the separation established by both medieval Chinese authors and modern scholars of Buddhist art between practices of familial commemoration and religious devotion.
  • Object Narratives
    Hans Holbein the Younger, Dead Christ Entombed
    Mia Mochizuki
    “Why, some people may lose their faith looking at that picture!” Dostoyevsky famously had his fictional character Prince Myshkin exclaim over Hans Holbein the Younger’s Dead Christ Entombed.
  • Three shelves of small gable-roofed and house-shaped boxes are displayed behind bars. Each box is black and white with a cross affixed to the top. All have text inscribed on the front.
    Object Narratives
    Skull boxes
    Maura Coughlin
    Skull boxes that both memorialized a dead individual and displayed the deceased person’s skull were made in Brittany from the eighteenth century to about 1900.
  • Object Narratives
    External Eyes on Jain Temple Icons
    John E. Cort
    These glass eyes seem to look intently at the viewer, seizing the viewer’s attention. This is precisely what they are intended to do by the Shvetambar Murtipujak Jains of western India; it is also precisely why the Digambar Jains of western India strenuously object to them.
  • Object Narratives
    The Virgin of Guadalupe, Extremadura, Spain
    Jeanette Favrot Peterson
    This Marian icon cannot be characterized as a single object as the perception of her authenticity, from which she gains her numinous power, draws on two distinct representations, one nested inside the other.
  • Object Narratives
    The Dolgellau Chalice and Paten
    Allison Stielau
    In 1890 two men working in the area around Dolgellau in North Wales discovered this pair of objects in a crevice between rocks. Encrusted with soil and plant matter, the objects were not at first identifiable.
  • Object Narratives
    The Cross of Motupe
    Emily C. Floyd
    Credited with saving the town from sure disaster, the Cross of Motupe became the centerpiece of a devotion that drew pilgrims from throughout the region, and eventually from throughout Peru.
  • A painting provides a view into a forest clearing with a green canopy of trees over a muddy, watery expanse.
    Object Narratives
    Asher Durand, In the Woods
    Rebecca Bedell
    In June 1840, Asher Durand wrote in his journal: “Today again is Sunday. I have declined attendance on church service, the better to indulge reflection unrestrained under the high canopy of heaven, amidst the expanse of waters—fit place to worship God and contemplate the wonders of his power.”
  • A pale stone slab is covered with low relief carvings. A central niche holds an ethroned figure carved in higher relief among his attendants. A variety of figures and processional scenes surround him as well as abstract vining and floral motifs.
    Object Narratives
    Buddhist votive stele with carved Buddhist figures and inscriptions
    Kate Lingley
    This is a Buddhist votive stele made in the sixth century in north central China. It probably stood either in the courtyard of a Buddhist monastery, or in a public place such as a market square, or at a major crossroads.

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