Defining the sacred in fine art and devotional imagery
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2017-10-02
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© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Beginning with a definition of the sacred as a two-fold process of making things special, which consists of accentuation and affiliation, this essay proceeds to argue that things are made sacred in devotional piety and in fine art in parallel ways that configure images within webs of agents. The two kinds of imagery perform in practices of sacralization that move toward different ends. The production of aura is at work in each case, but operates with distinct aims. The essay then presents a historical account of fine art as a modern development tied to the rise of the nation-state, in which secularization extended to making art independent of religious institutions and patrons, allowing it to develop in a way that should be distinguished from devotional imagery. This does not mean that religion withers in the modern era, but that art developed its own mode of sacralization.
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Morgan, D (2017). Defining the sacred in fine art and devotional imagery. Religion, 47(4). pp. 641–662. 10.1080/0048721X.2017.1361587 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17383.
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David Morgan
David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies with a secondary appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke. He chaired the Department of Religious Studies from 2013 to 2019 and has returned to chairing it from 2023 to 2025. Morgan received the Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1990. He has served twice as Director of Graduate Studies in Duke's PhD program in Religion. Morgan has published several books and dozens of essays on the history of religious visual culture, fine art, and art theory. Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment, was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity, based on the 2012 Cadbury Lectures delivered at the University of Birmingham, UK, appeared in 2015 from the University of California Press. Previous books include The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (California, 2012), The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America (Routledge, 2007) and two that he edited and contributed to: Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (Routledge, 2010) and Key Words in Religion, Media, and Culture (Routledge, 2008). Earlier works: The Sacred Gaze (California, 2005), Protestants and Pictures (Oxford, 1999), and Visual Piety (University of California Press, 1998). Morgan is co-founder and associate editor of the international scholarly journal, Material Religion, and co-editor of a book series entitled "Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion," published by Bloomsbury, London. His latest book appeared this year from the University of North Carolina Press, entitled "The Thing about Religion: An Introduction to the Material Study of Religions." He is currently at work on a new book project entitled "The Art of Seeing Things: A History of Revelation in Christian Visual Culture since the Middle Ages."
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