Dorothea Johnson Blom

Blom lays out an understanding and explanation of art as a language of truth that can give us a vivid encounter bringing renewal, transformation, and meaning. And stunningly she argues that the best art foretells and expresses the radical changes in our human relationship to reality, in a language of "seeing feelingly" that we can learn to read. As we do, these images can inform us, change our attitudes, heal us, reconcile us, free up our assumptions and imaginations, and energize us. They show more in fact help bring us into new relationship with the world.
She explains the radical changes from post-Renaissance art to what she calls modern art, beginning with Goya and Blake in the early 19th century, through Giacometti and Henry Moore and many others, even Op Art, up to 1966 when she wrote this. She remarks that never in human history has art been as inwardly focused as in the 20th century, and rarely has energy been as pronounced and characteristic. Her conclusions for our cultural revolution in the 21st century are intriguing and suggestive. It is all argued with specific references to specific painters, sculptors, movements, and art objects.
Blom concludes that we desperately need our best art to help us feel at home in our own time and to greet the future with creative initiative. In our present time when so many fear the way forward and cling to an old culture that will destroy us, her insights about art and about change seem stunning and profoundly helpful.
While all this may already be clear to some or even obvious, I feel sure there are many of us who will find it revelatory and energizing. Blom lectured on art at Pendle Hill, among other places, and wrote six PHPs on art (#128, 148, 183, 197, 215, and 232). show less

This essay is a tour-de-force review of the development of the intense Western cultural focus on reality as the outer world of objects, as expressed in art, from about 1000 CE to the 20th century. Blom then describes the artistic expression of the 20th century development of a new vision of reality that emphasizes both the human inner world and an appreciation of reality of both inner and outer as process, energy, relatedness, and transformation, rather than thingness. She notes the costs of show more the older exclusive view of reality, and also the dangers of wholesale rejection of it, as she calls for an integration of these two opposite visions.
Blom focuses on art as the expression and communication of a culture's view of reality, but the connections to religious sensibility are explicit. This is about social and religious change as much as abouit art and psychology. All of Blom's six Pendle Hill pamphlets address art and inner and outer reality, renewal, religion, myth, and healing, with this one and #148 focusing on art and the changes in our understanding and awareness of ourselves and the world in the 20th century. I think they can give a wonderful context for our 21st century forging of meaning. They are all insightful, provocative, and wise. They are #128, 148, 183, 197, 215, and 232. show less

This is one of the six wonderful pamphlets by Blom on art as handmaiden to religion, on how art testifies, verifies, and lends concreteness in terms credible to a particular time and culture. Here she explains many of her favorite art works responding to the Bible, including some perceptive art history along with her insights on the pieces and the artists. And her insights are wonderful spiritual insights.
She asserts that it is not subject matter that creates religious art; it is a show more generative way of seeing, a way of relating to life. A work of art can give concrete form to spiritual reality. Blom offers her own discoveries of art that, for her, communicate a living religious response to Bible themes. Interestingly, she believes that the 20th century was producing more experiential religious art than any century of the post-Renaissance West. Her PHPs are #128, 148, 183, 197, 218, and 232. show less

This is a fascinating essay on how great art can be life-changing, healing, and transformative. Art and religion belong to the same world, she says, both manifestations of the Spirit. It can show us a relationship between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human Self. Art can educate us in the use of the senses, intuition, and emotion, so all these participate together in the process of our whole person. And she includes a 10-small-page review of Western art from the show more Sumerians and Egyptians to the 1960s, a tour de force. She sees the richest periods in the intervals between the extremes of the pendulum swing between portraying the inner or outer world, with the art bridging the abyss that separates the two worlds, proving them both part of reality.
Blom, who lectured on art at Pendle Hill, wrote six wonderful PHPs on art and religion and social change: #128, 148, 183, 197, 215, and 232. show less