1 comments about In the Beginning Was the Word: The Power and Glory of Illuminated Bibles.

1. This is a wonderful survey of illuminated bibles that is so reasonably priced that I would gladly recommend it to *anyone* interested in illuminated manuscripts. For artists working in the medieval style, I strongly recommend adding this to your reference collection.
   
   The book starts with an introductory chapter on book production in medieval monasteries and then quickly moves on to its stated purpose: a primarily visual survey of a variety of hand-made bibles from their beginnings to the mid-17th century. Each book featured is accompanied by a short text and at least one exploded view of the illumination details. The majority of bibles surveyed fall squarely between 1200-1500, but there are several earlier and later manuscripts. The preponderance of manuscripts come from central and eastern European libraries, so in addition to the usual Franco-Flemish and Italian examples, there are also a number of Greek, Armenian, German, Spanish, Ethiopian, Slavonic, and other under-represented areas included in this book.
   
   The exploded details of the illumination are one of the best things about this book. They are so greatly enlarged that one can often identify the brush strokes. Added to the greater-than-usual breadth of the survey-in styles and in quality--and the reasonable price, it's a book you shouldn't skip.

1 comments about Luminous Art: Hanukkah Menorahs of The Jewish Museum.

1. The rich collection of New York's Jewish Museum houses wonderful historical menorahs.I treasure this beautiful work and have found it invaluable in writing my own book Lighting the Way to Freedom: Treasured Hanukkah Menorahs of Early Israelthat provides an intense focus on Israel's early days and the 'golden age' of hanukkiot.

No comments about The Holy Land I Love.

No comments about Santos and Saints: The Religious Folk Art of Hispanic New Mexico.

1 comments about The Gualenghi d'Este Hours: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Ferrara (Getty Museum Monographs on Illuminated Manuscripts).

1. This is a wonderful book that blends the visual and historical elements of illuminated manuscripts in a highly accessible way. The realm of scholarship involving Renaissance illuminated manuscripts is one typically reserved for those few who have the extensive academic background often assumed necessary to appreciate this form. Barstow's book opens wide the door to a much broader audience of interested lay people and invites them in. He is a wonderful host in addition to being an exceptional art historian. He offers a combintation of qualities often lacking from such scholarship, but Barstow is not a typical scholar. This book will be a treasure to anyone with the interest and the foresight to purchase it.

5 comments about The Mission of Art.

1. The book is well written. I have been enjoying reading it. However, I can't give it 5 stars because the author takes drugs and writes about it. How about a kid reads this book? So, the kid will think is cool or ok? I don't think the author has the right to inspire people to do what he chooses to do with his body. The body is a temple to take care of not to abuse it and exploited in actions, words, thoughts or writing.
   He also mentions the dark side of his nature that it's too personal and too dark. Almost evil to the point, that I felt he should have left it out. Nobody needs to know about this of his past. Only God should judge, and he knows all our sides including the dark ones.
   If you are spiritually sensitive, you will feel the darkness of his spirit in the past while reading his words. Words are powerful and words can manifest.
   Some parts of the book with these are repulsive!
   The rest is excellent! He has great thoughts and ways to present his visions of art. The author can also inspired other artists.
   To the Author, I would suggest asw a friend reader for him to see "The Secret." Hopefully, he won't repeat writing events of his inner demons. Sorry, but nobody cares...besides this should be in a personal journal or talked with a theraphist.
   The author uses his writtings to heal and confess himself. The bible says, to confess to God only. If you don't want criticism like this don't exploit your past weakneses by writting to the world!
   This book should not be given to kids under 25 yrs old. When you are 25 yrs old. your thoughts patterns are mature to make the best judgement before then your brain is still developing and is highly impressionable. This is a fact and one can google it too.



2. Soul Expression Can Be Visionary Artistry
   Imagine, for a moment, the Creative Forces. How do you envision the Spirit of Life, as it expresses itself within you? When I suggest this meditation in my classes, people usually enjoy it. When I suggest to pick up a colored crayon or two and help the Creative Spirit express itself on paper, this second instruction creates more anxiety than pleasure. I hear the protest, "But I can't draw what I envisioned!" I might reply, "Just allow yourself to enjoy the process and don't be worrying so much about how you think it should look. Let it be easy, let the vision guide the drawing, let it do what it wants with itself."
   After we have made our drawings, people share a little of what was experienced during the meditation and we get to see how it came out on paper. The drawings are so different, yet group members usually recognize the mark of the Creative Spirit in them. Their sheets of paper contain precious revelations. People remark favorably, of course, about those that are more "artistic." Some may denigrate their own work when comparing it with those that win the group's "artistic" award. I try to draw their attention elsewhere. It's not about being "artistic," but about honoring one's experience as best one can.
   Alex Grey, author of The Mission of Art (Shambhala), writes that the purpose of making art should not be trivialized into a career path toward fame and fortune. The essential purpose of making art, he reminds us, is to honor Spirit, to make it visible, to make it real in this world. If we create also for the purpose that it might further awaken Spirit in others, then making art becomes a spiritual mission as well. If sufficient talent, dedication and hard work are present in the mix, then it can also be a profession. He calls the professional artist to a higher mission, explaining how to invite Spirit into the work. If the artist commits to bringing Spirit into the work, he claims, Spirit will collaborate with the artist.
   Creating is an essential part of the soul's activity and thus belongs to everyone as their natural birthright. So he aims his book also at the rest of us, just as he does his painting. He writes, "When people are profoundly moved by art, they recall from their depths their own intuition of spiritual truth." Like Edgar Cayce, he would have us all involved in some sort of creative activity and wants us to appreciate the spiritual importance of doing so.
   Even if you do not recognize the name of Alex Grey, very likely you have seen a reproduction of one of his visionary paintings. Best known are his stunning, anatomically correct renditions of a person with transparent skin, revealing the inner body as well as the spiritual energies flowing through that body. In his painting of the kissing couple, for example, you can see the spirit of the man and woman intertwine. His paintings show beautifully the truth of Spirit's activity in this world.
   The fact that his stuff is extraordinarily good--dazzlingly good--doesn't take away from the fact that he is sincere when he writes that each of us is an artist. He urges us to recognize that our soul yearns to find outward expression in creative acts. Echoing the understanding of Edgar Cayce, he writes, "Seeing with the eye of the heart, the mystic eye, is seeing with the soul." Responding to the creative itch, taking the time to express it, in poetry, in cooking, in painting, honors the source. Allowing the imagination to become involved in our activities invites the soul's involvement in what we do.
   I explain to my students that our doodling exercise is something of a sacred ritual. I note that we attuned ourselves to a very special inner reality, and then expressed it outwardly as honestly as we could. In other words, we gave testimony to our own experience of Spirit. By sharing our drawings, our spiritual intuitions made visible, we treated ourselves to witnessing several reflections of Spirit, expanding and sharpening our sensitivity to its qualities.
   But the exercise was not without struggle. It took something akin to what Grey calls "egocide." We had to let go of notions of what the drawing "should" look like, and allow the expression of something greater than our own willful abilities." It requires turning our focus away from the ego's perceived "artistic" outcome and focus instead upon the authenticity of having honored our experience. In the back of my mind is one of my favorite ideas from the Cayce material, that the one of highest service we can give to one another is to share our experience of the Creator. I am also aware of his teachings about art being an essential path of spiritual experience. The purpose of our exercise is not to see who can make commercial art, but to enhance our connection with Spirit. We can not all be commercial artists, but by honoring the muse and being willing to share, we can all serve as visionary artists. [...]



3. I bought this for my fiance and he ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. I really enjoyed it too. My fiance is a HUGE Alex Grey and TOOL fan and if you are too you will love it too!!!



4. Warp your mind and you just might see God. Haven't tried LSD. Have tried "Salvia Divinorum" (still legal as I write this in most areas) I don't smoke and rarely drink, and I've never even tried pot, something most who know me don't believe since my parents were hippies.
   
   But, after being stuck in a 70 hour week overtime job for 3 years, I had an art block that made me feel almost suicidal. The flood of ideas trying to focus through that tiny speck of time I had burned me out.
   
   So, against everything I'd ever done in life, I got some Salvia Divinorum after a lot of net research on anything "Psychedelic". And after a few trys had a hallucination beyond comprehension. Literally seeing God and his infinite love and creativity and how bright that burns in all of us, even as tiny and insignifigant the universe is in the greater universe beyond.
   
   Reading this book I felt kinship. Someone who'd used a psychoactive and seen his true purpose.
   
   I reccomend to anyone who wants to do art (with or without earning a dime from it) but feels limited or blocked by stress interferring with creativity to do this. Try a hallucinogen ONCE (or a couple times) and check out visionary stuff like this.



5. In The Mission of Art, Alex Grey shows that his prodigious artistic gifts are moored in intellectual depth. Grey discusses art history, aesthetics, mysticism, religion, postmodernism, and processes of art reception with equal facility. This kind of writing is a rare treat. Only a small number of American artists have articulated their ideas in writing and fewer have done so with as much skill and alacrity. Grey's writing is reminiscent of G. Albert Aurier, the French Symbolist critic who shared Grey's mystical inclinations and his views about the spiritual and moral potential of art. Grey believes that mystically inspired art can in turn inspire its viewers to transcend today's oppressive consensual values of materialism, utilitarianism, and consumerism, and become aware of more authentic spiritual realities. There are a couple of factual inaccuracies, perhaps due to exaggeration or oversight, as where Grey states that mystical art was virtually absent in late nineteenth century Europe (p.37) and that Van Gogh labored in "complete obscurity" (p.90). Many prominent artists of the late nineteenth century French Symbolist movement were deeply inspired by neo-Platonic mysticism. Though Van Gogh never achieved material success, he was well known and respected by some major artists of his time. Aurier praised Van Gogh's art in a published review shortly before the latter's death. As the world seems to plummet ever deeper into eco-devastation and strife, to continue to hold out faith in general processes of human spiritual "evolution" which are aided by art, as Grey does, appears to demand ever more credulity. In my view, one can now realistically expect mystical art only to be a source of some personal inspiration and an exemplar of humanity's highest but tragically failed ideals. Its ideals of spiritual perfection might still be realizable, or approachable, by the minority of persons and minds which are receptive to it, but it has been virtually impotent as a means of producing a generalized social-spiritual transformation. Indeed, our society seems to appropriate such art as a means of a repressive desublimation of mystical idealism. Mystical art might tend to palliate and pacify idealistic urges, lulling some viewers into complacency by its pleasant presentations of images of spiritual self-actualization, images which, as wonderful as they may be, are only shadows of real conditions of actualization. Our society allows access to these images while doing its best to restrict access to the kinds of experiences which might truly facilitate such an actualization, such as the entheogenic experiences which largely inspired Grey, and competent shamanic guidance. Nevertheless, such mystical representations of what might be more realizable in a better world may for some others highlight the differences between what is and what ought to be, inspiring greater efforts to close the gap. Mystical imagery, as a means of Bildung or of the cultivation of consciousness, is capable of helping to "magnetize" the minds of receptive viewers, helping to keep some minds freed from Plato's cave and aimed toward the light.

No comments about Black Angels: The Art and Spirituality of Ethiopia (Art & Spirit).

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2 comments about The Sherborne Missal.

1. A wonderful collection or art and writing. A great addition to my research library. Such a unique style, too.



2. This book is a great value for the money, for those who enjoy beautiful illuminations and medieval art. The Sherborne Missal, though not well-known is a wonderful example of late medieval British art. There are many color illustrations included, as well as a description of the missal and its history, and this book is a great value for the price that I am glad I bought.

No comments about Raise the Banners High! Making and Using Processional Banners.