Six Artists For Six Decades of Growing In Christ

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

My 60s

At Eastern Michigan University, I found my path to college graduation with a major in art management, and I found the Roman Catholic faith. Now, at the beginning of my 60th year, I began combing through the blog what I share with my husband, Gregory Disney-Britton, and looking for images that reflect each decade of my life. At our home in Indianapolis, we display some 60 works by artists including many we discovered them through our daily blog research, such a Nicollo Cosme. Others we acquired following our annual reader's poll, the Alpha Omega Prize such as winners Kelvin Burzon (2017), and Kehinde Wiley (2008).

RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Kehinde Wiley's "Saint Jerome Hearing the Trumpet of the Last Judgment" (2018) inspired by Jusepe de Ribera in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum. Oil on linden, 96 x 72 in

Who is the greatest artist of our age? It’s Kehinde Wiley, and the monumental evidence is currently on dramatic display at the Saint Louis Art Museum. What better way to make underserved audiences feel part of their museum than to commission eleven original portraits of community members for display inside the museum? Wiley's "Saint Jerome Hearing the Trumpet of the Last Judgment" is inspired by a 1621 etching by Jusepe de Ribera. See them both through February 10, and that’s why “Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis” is our art news of week.

In New Film, James Baldwin's Art Makes Love a Revolutionary Act

TRUTHOUT
By Nicholas Powers

Director Barry Jenkins discusses his romantic drama film If Beale Street Could Talk at the Build Studio in New York City on November 28, 2018.

How does love survive separation and injustice? The question drives Barry Jenkins’s new film, If Beale Street Could Talk, an adaptation of the 1974 James Baldwin novel, where young Black lovers are nearly destroyed by racism. Everywhere they go, bigots prey on them — whether a carping boss, predatory landlord or racist cop. Baldwin’s answer is that love lets us see (if not touch) a future beyond suffering. Prophetic art is a tradition in Black culture, present in slave narratives, gospel, rap and films like If Beale Street Could Talk. A key feature is that love becomes a vision that transcends cotton fields, ghettoes and prisons. It shimmers like a dream in the brutal world. The implicit prophecy is that for Black life to be honored, the US must be radically transformed or cease to exist. [More]