{"id":3997,"date":"2018-06-11T17:27:02","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T00:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=3997"},"modified":"2018-06-11T17:54:43","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T00:54:43","slug":"the-sacred-art-of-john-august-swanson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2018\/06\/the-sacred-art-of-john-august-swanson.html","title":{"rendered":"The Sacred Art of John August Swanson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar]<\/p>\n<p>EVEN as a lifetime religious skeptic, I&#8217;ve long been fascinated by artists, writers and other culture-makers who bring religion, spirituality, and related matters into their work. Most likely, the art impulse and the urge to worship and praise originated in tandem;\u00a0what we now call religion and culture were almost seamlessly joined for many centuries. (The agnostic or atheist or iconoclastic artist is, if we take the long view, a historical anomaly.)<\/p>\n<p>In a sense, then, the painter and print-maker John August Swanson is something of a throwback: Swanson, who I met a few weeks ago, has a wide range of interests, but his work is very heavily inspired by Christianity, especially the social-justice wing of Catholicism. He&#8217;s influenced by a wide ranger of artists, especially Renaissance painters, Diego Rivera and political printmaker Sister Corita, with whom he studied. He&#8217;s got a touch of the Outsider artist to him, though his roots and technique don&#8217;t quite fit with most of the others.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoyed meeting Swanson immensely and getting to know his work. <a href=\"https:\/\/magazine.lmu.edu\/articles\/sacred-art\/\">Here<\/a> is my story for the Loyola Marymount University magazine, just out.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ShepherdsWeb.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3998\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ShepherdsWeb-300x267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ShepherdsWeb-300x267.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ShepherdsWeb-768x684.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ShepherdsWeb-1024x911.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/ShepherdsWeb.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar] EVEN as a lifetime religious skeptic, I&#8217;ve long been fascinated by artists, writers and other culture-makers who bring religion, spirituality, and related matters into their work. Most likely, the art impulse and the urge to worship and praise originated in tandem;\u00a0what we now call religion and culture were almost seamlessly joined for many centuries. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39,30,29],"tags":[921,711],"class_list":{"0":"post-3997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-creative-class","8":"category-los-angeles","9":"category-west-coast","10":"tag-loyola-maruy","11":"tag-visual-art","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3999,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions\/3999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}