{"id":1006,"date":"2022-05-10T11:17:49","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T11:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2022-06-27T13:26:52","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T13:26:52","slug":"suzanna-ivanic-publishes-new-book-on-catholic-visual-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/2022\/05\/10\/suzanna-ivanic-publishes-new-book-on-catholic-visual-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Suzanna Ivanic publishes new book on Catholic visual identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Suzanna Ivanic<\/a>, Lecturer in the School of History, has recently published Catholica: The Visual Culture of Catholicism<\/em><\/a> with Thames and Hudson. Featuring over 400 colour images, the sumptuous volume investigates the influence of Catholic iconography and ritual items, equipping the reader with a detailed knowledge and method for interpreting Catholic art \u2013 and the art it has influenced in turn.<\/p>\n

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Dr Ivanic\u2019s approach to understanding the material culture of religion is heavily informed by anthropology, placing great emphasis on how religious meaning is created by the religion\u2019s icons, objects and artefacts. \u201cReligion can no longer be thought of in that very nineteenth-century Protestant sense: as being just about internal beliefs, words and texts,\u201d explains Dr Ivanic, reflecting on her approach to analysing religious artefacts. \u201cIt is equally about the visual and material context and the things people do with objects in rituals and devotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though readers may be familiar with Catholic art\u2019s most famous images and icons \u2013 such as The Creation of Adam<\/em> in the Sistine Chapel \u2013 Dr Ivanic shows that Catholicism\u2019s visual culture includes objects we might not initially expect. She explains: \u201cIt was great to be able to work across all types of visual and material culture with this book, from ‘material texts’ like the lavish Lindisfarne Gospels to bizarre modern-day Catholic trinkets.\u201d One such trinket is a plastic Holy Water bottle in the shape of the Virgin Mary \u2013 souvenirs which will be familiar to anybody who has visited the Vatican City in recent decades. \u201cAnd there are weirder ones that weren’t included,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

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As the reader builds up their knowledge of recurring themes, motifs and practices on the Catholic visual code, it becomes clear that the influence of this culture extends into areas outside of religious art. \u201cWe see the enduring impact of Catholic visual culture in many unexpected places today, but perhaps most obviously it pervades fashion,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe Met Gala in 2018 featured Katy Perry with gigantic angel wings, Rihanna wearing a heavily embroidered Papal mitre (hat) and Blake Lively in a Versace gown that reflected the exquisite liturgical vestments worn by priests as well as various halos and bejewelled crosses.\u201d She also points out that this influence is even felt in our everyday language and emojis: 👼.<\/p>\n

From the first page, Catholica<\/em> is visually striking, and shows how the findings and subtleties of rigorous academic research can be expressed and presented to wider audiences. \u201cI really wanted to integrate the images and text and make sure that they spoke to each other throughout the book, so there was a lot of back and forth as we fitted the layouts together, took out five words here and added a sentence there!\u201d, says Dr Ivanic, reflecting on the process.<\/p>\n

Catholica: The Visual Culture of Catholicism<\/em> is available now, published by Thames and Hudson.\u00a0 On Thursday 26 May, Dr Ivanic will be hosting a special book launch with the publishers, and will focus on the process of producing the book and publishing research for wider audiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Suzanna Ivanic, Lecturer in the School of History, has recently published Catholica: The Visual Culture of Catholicism with Thames and Hudson. Featuring over 400 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77087,"featured_media":1016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77087"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}