Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars - Softcover

Turner, Kay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500281505 ISBN 13: 9780500281505

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 1999

Synopsis

In the most basic sense, an altar is a home for sacred images, a place for venerating and inviting the comfort, help, and companionship of the gods. But the amazing, dazzling, decorative, poignant, picturesque, inspiring, glowing, passionate altars in this book are not those of churches and temples, designed for the official worship of an omniscient god ceremoniously tended by a priest, rabbi, or minister. Instead, these places are the expression of the most intimate beliefs and fears, memories and dreams of women who are making new spiritual traditions from ancient ones--pagan, goddess, Celtic, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox. No one knows more about this remarkable efflorescence than Kay Turner, who has been exploring the subject for over twenty years since accidentally encountering the extraordinary altar of a Quiche Maya woman--described by its maker as a "beautiful necessity"--in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Since then she has gathered abundant evidence of how this phenomenon grips women in the most diverse locations, from the studios of artists in New York, Detroit, and San Francisco to the kitchens of Mexican-American homes in Texas, from Mama Lola celebrating Afro-Caribbean gods in Brooklyn to a Wiccan priestess in California worshiping the goddess Aphrodite. The statues, flowers, pictures, photographs, drawings, amulets, pieces of shell, and bits of earth that are collaged together and reproduced here in color represent their makers' histories, beliefs, and desires. Turner draws out the personal stories that lie behind the altars and explains their appeal and significance for everyone.

About this title

About the Author:

Kay Turner has a Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Texas, where her thesis was devoted to Mexican-American women's home altars. Her publications include I Dream of Madonna and Between Us.

From Publishers Weekly:

For at least 1000 years, women have created home altars dedicated to their personal deities. Turner, who earned a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Texas, has spent more than 20 years exploring this rich, cross-cultural tradition. She weaves scholarship in feminist religious studies, many interviews with women altar-makers and an obvious appreciation for this individual art form into an informative (if, at times, repetitive) and occasionally inspirational reading experience. Turner is motivated by a feminist need to discover a woman's spiritual tradition that has been neglected or dismissed by male scholars. She emphasizes how, by creating private, domestic altars, women have claimed space from public and patriarchal practices for their own individual relationships with the Divine. After a brief historical survey of the tradition of women's altars, Turner devotes the major part of her study to analyzing contemporary altars made in what she terms "folk religious practices" (those running counter to institutionalized religions). She also includes altars made by women without institutionalized affiliation, such as pagans, Wiccans and goddess worshipers. In addition, she provides a brief biography of each altar-maker in a particularly valuable appendix. For all the merit of Turner's thorough textual analysis, many readers will feel that the book's value resides in its 110 illustrations, 80 in color, since it is through these that we are allowed to enter the private space of the home altars. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0500281505
• ISBN 13: 9780500281505
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176