Apparition and Abstraction: Maurice Denis' Visionary Catholicism
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Heidenreich, Claire
- Graduate Program:
- Art History
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 13, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Nancy Locke, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Willa Silverman, Outside Unit & Field Member
William Dewey, Major Field Member
Elizabeth Mansfield, Major Field Member
Nancy Elizabeth Locke, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies - Keywords:
- Nineteenth Century
Painting
Art History
France
Maurice Denis
Catholicism - Abstract:
- My dissertation participates in a growing movement to complicate monolithic modernism through the case study of the religious art of Maurice Denis (1870-1943) and his engagement with abstraction, medieval revivalism, and popular Catholic devotion. Although the arc of modernism typically pairs Catholicism with traditional, academic art, Denis’ corpus shows that in the religiously fraught 1890s, avant-gardism and Christian art were not mutually exclusive. Through examining the resurgence of miraculous visions in the nineteenth century, I argue that Denis used these vision narratives to reinvent Catholic imagery—deploying miraculous experiences as a way for his audience to connect more easily with the divine. Denis utilized one of the avant-garde’s best known stylistic devices, abstraction, in order to convey to his audience that they were witnessing a visionary experience. In doing so, he not only made a traditional subject—devotional Christian imagery—new, but also drew holy figures into scenes of modern life, helping to bridge the divide between religious art and the avant-garde. Although these works are now seen as a symptom of his later move towards conservative artistic practices, I contend that this period reveals a sincere and effective attempt to modernize Catholic imagery. Focusing on Denis's activities from 1889 to 1898, I articulate the ways in which Denis reacted to religious events and tried to change the visual language of Catholicism, while also experimenting with abstraction. This project addresses the avant-garde’s connections with Catholicism, making a critical contribution to a nascent branch of modernist studies.