Full Description
Ashley Crawford investigates how such figures as Ben Marcus, Matthew Barney, and David Lynch—among other artists, novelists, and film directors—utilize religious themes and images via Christianity, Judaism, and Mormonism to form essentially mutated variations of mainstream belief systems. He seeks to determine what drives contemporary artists to deliver implicitly religious imagery within a 'secular' context. Particularly, how religious heritage and language, and the mutations within those, have impacted American culture to partake in an aesthetic of apocalyptism that underwrites it.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: American Gnosis.- Chapter 2. Delirium: A brief history of America's religious founding(s).-Chapter 3: Dualism: An exploration of good and evil via David Lynch's films.-Chapter 4 Delusion: On Mormon and Masonic symbolism in Matthew Barney's CREMASTER films.- Chapter 5: Deconstruction: On Judaic law and the apocalypse of language in Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet.- Chapter 6: Dereliction and Defecation: On the religious underpinnings in Matthew Barney's Subliming Vessel and Ben Marcus' Leaving the Sea and the apocalyptic imaging of Matthew Barney's River of Fundament.- Chapter 7. Dark Gnosis.
