Join us at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night for the first talk in our series, “Reflections on the Image: Seeing Christ in Shadows of the ArtForm,” at the Rattlesnake Bar and Grill with the presentation beginning at 7:30 p.m.  We’ll see you there!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

“Two Georges and a Clive:
Gadamer, Steiner, and Lewis on Intellectual Hospitality”

Bruce Herman
Lothlorien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts at Gordon College

In George Steiner’s Real Presences (1989, Cambridge Univ Press) the secular British linguist explores an alternative to deconstructionism in his theory of “real presences” (obviously a reference to Eucharistic theology).  What Steiner has in common with C. S. Lewis and Hans Georg Gadamer is that all three advocate for a certain “courtesy” or hospitality toward texts, images, works of culture. Lewis’s Experiment in Criticism and Gadamer’s The Relevance of the Beautiful share this common ground with Steiner’s theory. We will explore the concept of literary and artistic real presence and its possible relevance to the life of faith in a culture that has radical suspicion toward all texts, particularly sacred ones.

Bruce Herman (American, b. 1953) is currently Lothlorien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts at Gordon College. He completed both undergraduate and graduate fine arts degrees at Boston University School for the Arts. He studied under Philip Guston, James Weeks, David Aronson, Reed Kay, and Arthur Polonsky. Herman lectures widely and has had work published in many books, journals, and popular magazines. His artwork has been exhibited in more than 20 solo and 100 group exhibitions in eleven major cities including Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. His work has been shown internationally, including in England, Italy, Canada, and Israel. His art is featured in many public and private collections including the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art in Rome; The Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts; DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; and the Hammer Museum, Grunwald Print Collection, Los Angeles.