Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton

Roger Lipsey; Paul M. Pearson

ISBN 10: 159030313X / ISBN 13: 9781590303139

Published by New Seeds, Boston, MA, 2006

About this Item

Original two-color paper over boards with cloth spine in fine+ condition both externally and internally. Housed in the original dust jacket which shows only the faintest running at corners, else fine. Frontis., notes, biblio., index, heavily illus., 197p. The art of an amazing man. Seller Inventory # 004807

Bibliographic Details

Title: Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton

Publisher: New Seeds, Boston, MA

Publication Date: 2006

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine+

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

In the last decade of his life, while living as a hermit-monk in dialogue with the world, Thomas Merton created a body of visual art that has remained largely unknown and little studied in the nearly forty years since his death. With this book, Merton's art at last moves out of the shadows to be appreciated for what it is: a revealing expression of his state of mind and heart in the 1960s, and a visual correlative to his mature works of spiritual writing such as New Seeds of Contemplation and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Roger Lipsey provides a fascinating analysis of the simple and striking images and their significance in Merton's journey. He find in them resonances with Asian calligraphy and American abstract expressionism, and relates them to the influence of Merton's wide circle of friends, which included such diverse figures as the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, the poet Czeslaw Milosz, the Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki, and the artist Ad Reinhardt—among many others.

But the centerpiece of the book is the art itself, presented in a portfolio of thirty-four representative pieces that reflect the changing themes and methods of Merton's work. Each is accompanied by selections from his writings from the 1960s that reflect the inward and outward territories Merton was exploring in the period when these remarkable images were created.

About the Author:

Roger Lipsey is a biographer, art historian, editor, and translator. He is the author of An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art; Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton; and most recently Hammarskjöld: A Life, hailed as the definitive Dag Hammarskjöld biography.