“With a disturbing decline in the teaching of art and art history in schools, our Write on Art competition. Any kid between the ages of 15 and 18 who is enrolled in a UK school (Years 10–13) is eligible to enter to win up to £500 by submitting a short personal write-up (400–600 words) on any artwork in the UK’s national collection. WRITING CONTEST FOR UK TEENS: “Write on Art”: In an effort to get teenagers learning and writing about art, Art UK and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art are co-sponsoring “Write on Art” for the second year in a row. ![]() Can’t wait to see the new Mary Poppins Returns next month! Now as an adult, I can appreciate some of the movie’s deeper themes, and pick up on its resonances with the upside-down nature of Christ’s kingdom. I remember trying to soothe my baby brother many a time by singing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” Once we were elementary school–age, we would eagerly await the “Step in Time” scene, at which point we would rush to grab brooms from the garage, using them as props as we danced along with Dick Van Dyke-which sometimes ended in injury. My mom says that from a young age she would play it for me, and I would sit mesmerized for the entire 139 minutes. ![]() While the world would have us pile up our coins in a bank vault, Jesus calls us, against the world’s wisdom, to give them away. Last year Niles Reddick wrote an article about Mary Poppins as the first female Christ figure in American film, and “Feed the Birds” as a “song-parable” that serves as the linchpin of the movie. The oppressive orderliness booming over people’s lives “is contrasted with something unpredictable and joyful-the wind, dancing chimney sweeps, and this beautiful bird woman giving her crumbs away.” The movie is about what happens when both adults and kids relax into joy. if you want a movie about the great reversals that are present in the kingdom of God, you don’t need to look any further than Mary Poppins,” says Pastor Becca Messman. PODCAST EPISODE: “Mary Poppins,” Technicolor Jesus, episode 49: “If you want a movie that really shows the foolishness of the gospel next to what the world thinks is wise and is turned on its head. Thank you to Rain for Roots for letting me use their wonderfully playful musical rendition of Isaiah 11 from their family Advent album Waiting Songs. For more on Hicks and this favorite subject of his, see this post of mine from 2016. See the video below, and be sure to check back on the Seeing Art History YouTube channel next week for subsequent videos. ![]() But Hicks’s image of “peace on earth” is not as simplistic as it may seem at first there is tension. I chose to write about The Peaceable Kingdomby the nineteenth-century Quaker preacher-artist Edward Hicks, which visualizes the prophecy of Isaiah 11 about predators and prey lying down together in friendship, and a little child leading them. For 2018, he is spotlighting paintings from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, my neck of the woods. +++ A bear and a cow share a snack of grass, and a child pets a leopard without consequence, in this charming little detail from Edward Hicks’s 1834 Peaceable Kingdom in the National Gallery of Art.ĪDVENT ART VIDEO: The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks: This year I was invited to make a guest contribution to art historian James Romaine’s annual Art for Advent video series on YouTube. I will be giving away another free book, from Eerdmans, sometime in the next month or two, so stay tuned! ![]() Congrats to the three winners of the Wounded in Spirit book giveaway.
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