Strangeness and Recognition

About this book

How do you paint a figure who is fully human and fully divine? How do you paint Christ? 'Strangeness and Recognition' takes a fresh look at well-known Renaissance paintings of Christ and shows how surprising and deeply 'strange' they can be. This book brings an imaginative and affective theological perspective to the viewing experience as it explores the twin roles played by 'strangeness' and 'recognition' in responding to the challenge of creating and relating to images of Christ. By confounding expectations and defamiliarising subject matter, the ambiguity and mystery of these paintings disturbs viewers' expectations and reconnects them with the extraordinary mystery of the Incarnation. While neither words nor images can fully describe God, through a questioning, challenging dialogue with paintings, whose visual language disrupts itself, viewers can be brought to the limits of their own understanding and can enter into transformative and personlike relationships with paintings. These personal exchanges lead through estrangement to the rediscovery of the familiar within the strange and the renewed within the familiar, and to the ultimately unspeakable, unpaintable, mystery of the Incarnation.