Overview

In The Nazarenes, Cordula Grewe presents a timely revisionist account of the Nazarenes, a group of early nineteenth-century German artists who have been occasionally reviled, but more often ignored, in the history of modern art. Viewing critically the effects of a century of skeptical Enlightenment and decades of political revolution, the Nazarenes committed themselves to a reenchantment of the modern world and a revitalization of contemporary art through a return to the plainspoken piety and stylistic simplicity of medieval and early Renaissance art. The Nazarene style soon became commonplace across Europe and the United States, and its popularity in Bible illustrations and devotional print culture continues today. Despite, or perhaps because of, this success, modern accounts have commonly dismissed this art as hackneyed, kitsch, or hopelessly conservative. Grewe argues that such dismissal overlooks the complexity and quintessential modernity of the Nazarenes' revivalism. Exploring the Nazarenes' vanguard beginnings, Grewe considers their intellectualized approach to art and art-making in the context of the longer history leading up to conceptual art. Tracing what Grewe calls the Nazarenes' art of the concept, a phrase that instructively labels an encompassing history in which to situate the origins of the conceptual art movement, The Nazarenes reveals an alternative side of modernity, one manifested in a historicism born from religious revival, a side well explored in the fields of history and sociology but, until now, largely ignored by art historians.

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9780271064147

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Reviews

After two centuries of negative critical reception of this artistic movement, [this book] presents a compelling revisionist account that succeeds in recapturing the radicalism of what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe disdainfully described in 1817 as 'neo-German, religious-patriotic art'. --Frederique Baumgartner, Burlington Magazine

Revisions of modernism seem perpetually in the works these days. But there is perhaps none more persuasive and stimulating than Cordula Grewe s The Nazarenes. An exciting new history of this nineteenth-century Germanic movement and a rare one in English the book s narrative offers a fresh critical take on the Nazarenes retrospective vanguard art. Along the way, Grewe convincingly places the Nazarenes at the beginning of a genealogy of conceptualism in art, arguing for the lasting effects of their self-reflective picture theory. Andre Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania

Revisions of modernism seem perpetually in the works these days. But there is perhaps none more persuasive and stimulating than Cordula Grewe's The Nazarenes. An exciting new history of this nineteenth-century Germanic movement--and a rare one in English--the book's narrative offers a fresh critical take on the Nazarenes' retrospective vanguard art. Along the way, Grewe convincingly places the Nazarenes at the beginning of a genealogy of conceptualism in art, arguing for the lasting effects of their self-reflective picture theory. --AndrE Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania

Author Information

Cordula Grewe is Associate Professor of Art History at Indiana University Bloomington.

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