Ross Keating - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ross Keating

Studies in Spirituality, Dec 31, 2008

Maryhelen Hendricks: I would like to introduce Mr. Elkins, Professor of Art History, Theory, and ... more Maryhelen Hendricks: I would like to introduce Mr. Elkins, Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His writing focuses on the history and theory of images and art, science, and nature. Some of his books are exclusively on fine arts, for instance, What Painting Is, Why are our Pictures Puzzles, The Poetics of Perspective, and of course most famous and infamously right now, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Other of his works include scientific and non-art images, writing systems in archaeology, for instance, The Domain of Images, On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them. And some are about natural history, for instance, How to Use Your Eyes. And then there is a small category which includes Why Art Cannot be Taught, a Handbook for Art Students, and What Happened to Art Criticism. I think those are just plain ornery. His current projects include a series called "The Stone Summer Theory Institute," a book called Success and Failure in 20 th Century Painting, and another, Theories of Modernism and Post-Modernism in the Visual Art. A very busy man, and his Wikipedia posting needs updating if any of you would like to take a hand at that after this. Jim and I have decided that it will be a fairly short keynote address, something in excess of thirty minutes, because want to preserve the last part for the questions and answer. I have a feeling that the Q and A will be at least as good as the talk itself. And then you will be able to go right for the parts of his book that irritate you or please you the most. Okay? So, with no more ado, will you give a hand please to Jim Elkins? Thank you. Jim Elkins: Okay. Thank you very much. So we agreed this is not really going to be a keynote talk at all, because this is actually like an hour-plus talk. It is an ordinary kind of a keynote talk I suppose, but there is so much to discuss, and I have been hearing great things about the discussions that have been going on. I want to make sure that we leave lots and lots of time. So what I have done is, first of all, went up to my room, took out about half the slides, and second, I am just going to stop when we get on toward six o'clock no matter where we are. So there is not going to be any grand conclusion, which is probably a smart idea anyway. Okay, so a couple of points of reference for this talk: first of all, the book; and then talks that I was invited to after the book came out, especially from Christian institutions. These were a real eye opener for me. And all of the invitations I have gotten in the wake of the book except one are from Christian institutions. Some of the slides that I have, if I get to them, I put in intentionally in talks to those institutions to see if I could shock and dismay the people in those institutions. And I failed for an interesting reason which I am going to try to get too. And then there was a day-long panel discussion called "Re-enchantment" that at least a couple of you have been to. We are working on a book for this now. We had Boris Groys, the increasingly bizarre Terry [DuDuve] there talking about how to be post-Christian. I'm co-editing this book with David Morgan who was also at that event. This is going to be volume seven in this series called The Arts Seminar which, as I think some of you know, is a very inclusive kind of an art theory project in which we transcribe these conversations and then everyone gets to edit them to their heart's delight so that the transcript sounds nothing like what actually happened, and everybody sounds really intelligent and speaks at great length and says improbable things like, "I would like to mention the following seven points in my reply," and things that normal human beings don't really say. But at any rate, then we send it out for comments to 40 or 50 people who weren't at the event. And that is what we're doing right now. Third point of reference is a wonderful essay by a wonderful artist named Peter Petrovski who works in Poznan, Poland, and is about to come out with an English language translation of his book on post-war Eastern European art. This is a wonderful little certain part of a boardwalk, and instead did videos of the sunset. And then this woman, Arlene [Sachet], I don't know her so I don't know how to say her last name, does a wide range of kinds of sculptures but also sculptures that fit my fourth theme, in which details have been, in this case, not burned away, but simplified in order to make the worlds more accessible, or usable, or plausible, or believable, as repositories of religious belief. So, oh, okay, and then there's another one like this which has essays by Eleanor Hartney and some other people. She says in her essay, the contemporary world tends to see art and religions as enemies. So there are some places, some of these exhibitions will start out from that as a beginning point, and then try to do some bridge building. But, the general conclusion that I've drawn from, I would draw from these kinds of exhibitions is, when I say idiosyncratic, what I really mean to say is un-theorized. The boundaries of these kinds of enterprises are so unclear that sometimes there's not really, it seems unnecessary to actually call them faith, or something else like that. But they need to be, they could be re-conceptualized. The second theme here is about native styles. And by native styles here I mean all these things: regional, local, native, tribal, provincial, indigenous, are often acceptable in art world contexts. An example among thousands is this Peruvian artist named Felix Espinoza who does works in two different modes. He's got his School of Paris mode, which you see on the left, and then he's got a kind of regional, vernacular, contemporary Catholic icon painting style. And I don't know enough about Latin American contemporary vernacular painting to know if that's Peruvian or not. It looks Mexican. But I don't really know the difference. At any rate, it would be taken to be authentic. And in the rhetoric of the art world it would be not outsider art, of course, but it would have that, it would share in the authenticity that art of that type might be said to have. But there is a line that's drawn by the art world for a reason which I wouldn't ever try to defend between those kind of things and art that represents established religions. This I got in a Hare Krishna temple in India, and I got it, you can get it in English. You can get it in like 20 languages. And each one has a slightly different version of the painting. It's a somewhat horrifying painting from my point of view, but really kind of wonderful. Of course, there's something about the fact that it represents an established belief system that would put it on the, beyond the pale of the kind of criticism I was just suggesting. And this, in North America I think this would be the most prominent example. These paintings by Arnold Freiberg, which are in current editions of the Book of Mormon. And David Morgan tells me that he tried to get permission to reproduce these. They're in a gallery in Salt Lake City, the originals. And he couldn't get permission. So this may be an illegal reproduction as far as I know. But these kind of things, I think, would be, it would be extremely difficult to apply serious, straight forward, concerted, reflective language of art criticism to works like this when they would remind people, first of all, of Charleton Heston, and maybe second of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and from there the list of associations only gets worse. Third theme then, art commissioned by churches and temples is often weakened-down modernism. And Espinoza's School of Paris paintings would be an example of that. Here's another example. An artist named [UI] [Annan]. This is from his website. He does metaphysical religions paintings. And so some of them are narratives, The Give of Melchizedek at the top. And you can see that red sold sign, by the way. And this is-I always advise my students, if they're going to set up a website, never put "sold" on it, because every artist website has "sold," and if you go back a year later it will be the same painting. It will still say "sold." And it's just like, don't believe it. But the more common kind of paintings that he does are things that are almost abstract like that one at the bottom. And here are the details. So that kind of nearly abstract, but basically expressionistic painting is very common in my experience among Jewish painters who are, younger Jewish painters who are interested in keeping contact with the tradition, and yet carrying on in an acceptable, in a way that's it but the Dean says that we can't print it. Why? Because, as said, Fujimura is not a major artist in the art world, and she said the Dean said he is. So it was never published. There is also this question of what kind of sublime, as in these dark, large Fujimura paintings, what kinds of sublime are acceptable within, on the margins of, and outside the art world. I have a couple of examples of that kind of issue. This is DoDo Jin Ming, who's not a very well known artist. But he does silver gelatin prints. I actually don't know what-it's a negative, of course, but I don't know what's actually going on in the field in that case. But most of his work is like this: really exquisitely printed pictures of boiling ocean waves. My sense of this kind of work is that it's very close to something that could be bought by a major museum. It would go along with their [UI] or something like that. But that's a [UI]. But there's too much drama. So the acceptable flavors of the post-modern sublime are extremely quiet and empty. They have to be seen to be proceeding from a kind of heritage of abstraction that is not gestural abstraction. In the book I mentioned Tacita Dean's videos, "The Disappearance at Sea," which have this kind of quality, and so does her writing, and so do a number of other things she's...

Towards Establishing a Wisdom Dimension in Education Through Poetry: an Exploration of Some of Thomas Merton’s Ideas

International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2009

According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates s... more According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates society so as to provide students with a more balanced outlook on life. This corrective role, Postman argues, needs to be built into a school’s curriculum. In the late sixties and early seventies, he saw this role as a subversive one, and argued that students should be allowed to question authority and to approach learning as an act of self-guided exploration. Ten years later, in response to what he saw as largely a commercial, mass-media driven society he promoted the idea of teaching as a conserving activity, and promoted the skills of critical analysis so that students could be made aware of manipulative self-interests acting within society. In his latest book in this progression, The End of Education (1995), his most radical, he continues his appraisal of education in a society that he feels has lost its identity and sense of moral direction. This time he makes the point that schools ...

Michael Washburn, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2003, pp. 256, ISBN 100791458474. Review doi:10.1558/arsr.v20i3.367

Australian Religion Studies Review, 2008

Towards Establishing a Wisdom Dimension in Education Through Poetry: an Exploration of Some of Thomas Merton’s Ideas

International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2009

According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates s... more According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates society so as to provide students with a more balanced outlook on life. This corrective role, Postman argues, needs to be built into a school’s curriculum. In the late sixties and early seventies, he saw this role as a subversive one, and argued that students should be allowed to question authority and to approach learning as an act of self-guided exploration. Ten years later, in response to what he saw as largely a commercial, mass-media driven society he promoted the idea of teaching as a conserving activity, and promoted the skills of critical analysis so that students could be made aware of manipulative self-interests acting within society. In his latest book in this progression, The End of Education (1995), his most radical, he continues his appraisal of education in a society that he feels has lost its identity and sense of moral direction. This time he makes the point that schools should not attempt to serve the public but rather ‘create’ a public; and that teachers need to make this their foremost responsibility. Postman’s own solution for this present predicament is for teachers to start with a vision. A vision of their students entering public life ‘imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance’. And for this vision to become reality, he argues, two things are necessary, ‘the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling’ (Postman, 1995, pp 17–18). In his elaboration of this position he places an emphasis on the word ‘inspired’. In his view, schools now need common ‘gods’ more than common goals. Postman then

Religion Literature and the Arts

In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the univ... more In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the universal meaning of beauty and its relation to truth than Francis Brabazon. Indeed his life is a remarkable story of how a young, shy, farming boy living in an relatively isolated part of the Australian bush ends up staying in India for ten years as the poet-disciple of a person who declared himself to be God in human form, the Avatar, or in Sufi terms, the Rasool, the divine messenger, of this age.

Francis Brabazon: A New Measure in Modern Australian Poetry

Sydney Studies in Religion, 1994

Brabazon's only claim to fame in Australian literature is one poem published in the 1956 edit... more Brabazon's only claim to fame in Australian literature is one poem published in the 1956 edition of The Oxford Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright (p.129). There are no poems of his in any other anthology of comparable standard nor is there to be found any critical assessment of his work apart from the occasional book review. These facts indicate either a poet who has been neglected or on whose work has been found wanting. Certainly, Brabazon's output is not excessive but he has produced, along with other works, twelve collections of poetry and his major work Stay With God (1959) had a remarkable six hundred pre-publication sales which for an Australian poet writing in the fifties is quite exceptional. Part of this neglect may be due to the difficulty critics have found in coming to terms with Brabazon's thought and his eclectic references to saintly personages and metaphysical ideas. This has often given him the label of being a mystical poet which he flatl...

Sydney Studies in Religion, 2008

In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the univ... more In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the universal meaning of beauty and its relation to truth than Francis Brabazon. Indeed his life is a remarkable story of how a young, shy, farming boy living in an relatively isolated part of the Australian bush ends up staying in India for ten years as the poet-disciple of a person who declared himself to be God in human form, the Avatar, or in Sufi terms, the Rasool, the divine messenger, of this age.

Towards Establishing a Wisdom Dimension in Education Through Poetry: an Exploration of Some of Thomas Merton’s Ideas

International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2009

Sydney Studies in Religion, Oct 29, 2008

In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the univ... more In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the universal meaning of beauty and its relation to truth than Francis Brabazon. Indeed his life is a remarkable story of how a young, shy, farming boy living in an relatively isolated part of the Australian bush ends up staying in India for ten years as the poet-disciple of a person who declared himself to be God in human form, the Avatar, or in Sufi terms, the Rasool, the divine messenger, of this age.

Religion Literature and the Arts

Creativity and the artwork: the perspectives of a painter and a philosopher

J Beliefs Values Stud Relig E, Aug 1, 2009

ABSTRACT

Adult Education

Teachers College Record, 2004

Connecting Art with Spirituality within the Indian Aesthetics of Advaita Vedanta

Studies in Spirituality, 2008

49 49 CONNECTING ART WITH SPIRITUALITY WITHIN THE INDIAN AESTHETICS OF ADVAITA VEDANTA Ross Keati... more 49 49 CONNECTING ART WITH SPIRITUALITY WITHIN THE INDIAN AESTHETICS OF ADVAITA VEDANTA Ross Keating ACU National University Ltd ... unity− body, mind, and spirit in harmonious accord− which then became reflected into a wider social harmony creating, over ...

Michael Washburn, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2003, pp. 256, ISBN 100791458474. Review doi:10.1558/arsr.v20i3.367

Australian Religion Studies Review, 2008

Creativity and the artwork: the perspectives of a painter and a philosopher

Journal of Beliefs & Values, 2009

ABSTRACT

Studies in Spirituality, Dec 31, 2008

Maryhelen Hendricks: I would like to introduce Mr. Elkins, Professor of Art History, Theory, and ... more Maryhelen Hendricks: I would like to introduce Mr. Elkins, Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His writing focuses on the history and theory of images and art, science, and nature. Some of his books are exclusively on fine arts, for instance, What Painting Is, Why are our Pictures Puzzles, The Poetics of Perspective, and of course most famous and infamously right now, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Other of his works include scientific and non-art images, writing systems in archaeology, for instance, The Domain of Images, On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them. And some are about natural history, for instance, How to Use Your Eyes. And then there is a small category which includes Why Art Cannot be Taught, a Handbook for Art Students, and What Happened to Art Criticism. I think those are just plain ornery. His current projects include a series called "The Stone Summer Theory Institute," a book called Success and Failure in 20 th Century Painting, and another, Theories of Modernism and Post-Modernism in the Visual Art. A very busy man, and his Wikipedia posting needs updating if any of you would like to take a hand at that after this. Jim and I have decided that it will be a fairly short keynote address, something in excess of thirty minutes, because want to preserve the last part for the questions and answer. I have a feeling that the Q and A will be at least as good as the talk itself. And then you will be able to go right for the parts of his book that irritate you or please you the most. Okay? So, with no more ado, will you give a hand please to Jim Elkins? Thank you. Jim Elkins: Okay. Thank you very much. So we agreed this is not really going to be a keynote talk at all, because this is actually like an hour-plus talk. It is an ordinary kind of a keynote talk I suppose, but there is so much to discuss, and I have been hearing great things about the discussions that have been going on. I want to make sure that we leave lots and lots of time. So what I have done is, first of all, went up to my room, took out about half the slides, and second, I am just going to stop when we get on toward six o'clock no matter where we are. So there is not going to be any grand conclusion, which is probably a smart idea anyway. Okay, so a couple of points of reference for this talk: first of all, the book; and then talks that I was invited to after the book came out, especially from Christian institutions. These were a real eye opener for me. And all of the invitations I have gotten in the wake of the book except one are from Christian institutions. Some of the slides that I have, if I get to them, I put in intentionally in talks to those institutions to see if I could shock and dismay the people in those institutions. And I failed for an interesting reason which I am going to try to get too. And then there was a day-long panel discussion called "Re-enchantment" that at least a couple of you have been to. We are working on a book for this now. We had Boris Groys, the increasingly bizarre Terry [DuDuve] there talking about how to be post-Christian. I'm co-editing this book with David Morgan who was also at that event. This is going to be volume seven in this series called The Arts Seminar which, as I think some of you know, is a very inclusive kind of an art theory project in which we transcribe these conversations and then everyone gets to edit them to their heart's delight so that the transcript sounds nothing like what actually happened, and everybody sounds really intelligent and speaks at great length and says improbable things like, "I would like to mention the following seven points in my reply," and things that normal human beings don't really say. But at any rate, then we send it out for comments to 40 or 50 people who weren't at the event. And that is what we're doing right now. Third point of reference is a wonderful essay by a wonderful artist named Peter Petrovski who works in Poznan, Poland, and is about to come out with an English language translation of his book on post-war Eastern European art. This is a wonderful little certain part of a boardwalk, and instead did videos of the sunset. And then this woman, Arlene [Sachet], I don't know her so I don't know how to say her last name, does a wide range of kinds of sculptures but also sculptures that fit my fourth theme, in which details have been, in this case, not burned away, but simplified in order to make the worlds more accessible, or usable, or plausible, or believable, as repositories of religious belief. So, oh, okay, and then there's another one like this which has essays by Eleanor Hartney and some other people. She says in her essay, the contemporary world tends to see art and religions as enemies. So there are some places, some of these exhibitions will start out from that as a beginning point, and then try to do some bridge building. But, the general conclusion that I've drawn from, I would draw from these kinds of exhibitions is, when I say idiosyncratic, what I really mean to say is un-theorized. The boundaries of these kinds of enterprises are so unclear that sometimes there's not really, it seems unnecessary to actually call them faith, or something else like that. But they need to be, they could be re-conceptualized. The second theme here is about native styles. And by native styles here I mean all these things: regional, local, native, tribal, provincial, indigenous, are often acceptable in art world contexts. An example among thousands is this Peruvian artist named Felix Espinoza who does works in two different modes. He's got his School of Paris mode, which you see on the left, and then he's got a kind of regional, vernacular, contemporary Catholic icon painting style. And I don't know enough about Latin American contemporary vernacular painting to know if that's Peruvian or not. It looks Mexican. But I don't really know the difference. At any rate, it would be taken to be authentic. And in the rhetoric of the art world it would be not outsider art, of course, but it would have that, it would share in the authenticity that art of that type might be said to have. But there is a line that's drawn by the art world for a reason which I wouldn't ever try to defend between those kind of things and art that represents established religions. This I got in a Hare Krishna temple in India, and I got it, you can get it in English. You can get it in like 20 languages. And each one has a slightly different version of the painting. It's a somewhat horrifying painting from my point of view, but really kind of wonderful. Of course, there's something about the fact that it represents an established belief system that would put it on the, beyond the pale of the kind of criticism I was just suggesting. And this, in North America I think this would be the most prominent example. These paintings by Arnold Freiberg, which are in current editions of the Book of Mormon. And David Morgan tells me that he tried to get permission to reproduce these. They're in a gallery in Salt Lake City, the originals. And he couldn't get permission. So this may be an illegal reproduction as far as I know. But these kind of things, I think, would be, it would be extremely difficult to apply serious, straight forward, concerted, reflective language of art criticism to works like this when they would remind people, first of all, of Charleton Heston, and maybe second of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and from there the list of associations only gets worse. Third theme then, art commissioned by churches and temples is often weakened-down modernism. And Espinoza's School of Paris paintings would be an example of that. Here's another example. An artist named [UI] [Annan]. This is from his website. He does metaphysical religions paintings. And so some of them are narratives, The Give of Melchizedek at the top. And you can see that red sold sign, by the way. And this is-I always advise my students, if they're going to set up a website, never put "sold" on it, because every artist website has "sold," and if you go back a year later it will be the same painting. It will still say "sold." And it's just like, don't believe it. But the more common kind of paintings that he does are things that are almost abstract like that one at the bottom. And here are the details. So that kind of nearly abstract, but basically expressionistic painting is very common in my experience among Jewish painters who are, younger Jewish painters who are interested in keeping contact with the tradition, and yet carrying on in an acceptable, in a way that's it but the Dean says that we can't print it. Why? Because, as said, Fujimura is not a major artist in the art world, and she said the Dean said he is. So it was never published. There is also this question of what kind of sublime, as in these dark, large Fujimura paintings, what kinds of sublime are acceptable within, on the margins of, and outside the art world. I have a couple of examples of that kind of issue. This is DoDo Jin Ming, who's not a very well known artist. But he does silver gelatin prints. I actually don't know what-it's a negative, of course, but I don't know what's actually going on in the field in that case. But most of his work is like this: really exquisitely printed pictures of boiling ocean waves. My sense of this kind of work is that it's very close to something that could be bought by a major museum. It would go along with their [UI] or something like that. But that's a [UI]. But there's too much drama. So the acceptable flavors of the post-modern sublime are extremely quiet and empty. They have to be seen to be proceeding from a kind of heritage of abstraction that is not gestural abstraction. In the book I mentioned Tacita Dean's videos, "The Disappearance at Sea," which have this kind of quality, and so does her writing, and so do a number of other things she's...

Towards Establishing a Wisdom Dimension in Education Through Poetry: an Exploration of Some of Thomas Merton’s Ideas

International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2009

According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates s... more According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates society so as to provide students with a more balanced outlook on life. This corrective role, Postman argues, needs to be built into a school’s curriculum. In the late sixties and early seventies, he saw this role as a subversive one, and argued that students should be allowed to question authority and to approach learning as an act of self-guided exploration. Ten years later, in response to what he saw as largely a commercial, mass-media driven society he promoted the idea of teaching as a conserving activity, and promoted the skills of critical analysis so that students could be made aware of manipulative self-interests acting within society. In his latest book in this progression, The End of Education (1995), his most radical, he continues his appraisal of education in a society that he feels has lost its identity and sense of moral direction. This time he makes the point that schools ...

Michael Washburn, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2003, pp. 256, ISBN 100791458474. Review doi:10.1558/arsr.v20i3.367

Australian Religion Studies Review, 2008

Towards Establishing a Wisdom Dimension in Education Through Poetry: an Exploration of Some of Thomas Merton’s Ideas

International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2009

According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates s... more According to Neil Postman, education should provide an alternative view to that which dominates society so as to provide students with a more balanced outlook on life. This corrective role, Postman argues, needs to be built into a school’s curriculum. In the late sixties and early seventies, he saw this role as a subversive one, and argued that students should be allowed to question authority and to approach learning as an act of self-guided exploration. Ten years later, in response to what he saw as largely a commercial, mass-media driven society he promoted the idea of teaching as a conserving activity, and promoted the skills of critical analysis so that students could be made aware of manipulative self-interests acting within society. In his latest book in this progression, The End of Education (1995), his most radical, he continues his appraisal of education in a society that he feels has lost its identity and sense of moral direction. This time he makes the point that schools should not attempt to serve the public but rather ‘create’ a public; and that teachers need to make this their foremost responsibility. Postman’s own solution for this present predicament is for teachers to start with a vision. A vision of their students entering public life ‘imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance’. And for this vision to become reality, he argues, two things are necessary, ‘the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling’ (Postman, 1995, pp 17–18). In his elaboration of this position he places an emphasis on the word ‘inspired’. In his view, schools now need common ‘gods’ more than common goals. Postman then

Religion Literature and the Arts

In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the univ... more In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the universal meaning of beauty and its relation to truth than Francis Brabazon. Indeed his life is a remarkable story of how a young, shy, farming boy living in an relatively isolated part of the Australian bush ends up staying in India for ten years as the poet-disciple of a person who declared himself to be God in human form, the Avatar, or in Sufi terms, the Rasool, the divine messenger, of this age.

Francis Brabazon: A New Measure in Modern Australian Poetry

Sydney Studies in Religion, 1994

Brabazon's only claim to fame in Australian literature is one poem published in the 1956 edit... more Brabazon's only claim to fame in Australian literature is one poem published in the 1956 edition of The Oxford Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright (p.129). There are no poems of his in any other anthology of comparable standard nor is there to be found any critical assessment of his work apart from the occasional book review. These facts indicate either a poet who has been neglected or on whose work has been found wanting. Certainly, Brabazon's output is not excessive but he has produced, along with other works, twelve collections of poetry and his major work Stay With God (1959) had a remarkable six hundred pre-publication sales which for an Australian poet writing in the fifties is quite exceptional. Part of this neglect may be due to the difficulty critics have found in coming to terms with Brabazon's thought and his eclectic references to saintly personages and metaphysical ideas. This has often given him the label of being a mystical poet which he flatl...

Sydney Studies in Religion, 2008

In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the univ... more In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the universal meaning of beauty and its relation to truth than Francis Brabazon. Indeed his life is a remarkable story of how a young, shy, farming boy living in an relatively isolated part of the Australian bush ends up staying in India for ten years as the poet-disciple of a person who declared himself to be God in human form, the Avatar, or in Sufi terms, the Rasool, the divine messenger, of this age.

Towards Establishing a Wisdom Dimension in Education Through Poetry: an Exploration of Some of Thomas Merton’s Ideas

International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2009

Sydney Studies in Religion, Oct 29, 2008

In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the univ... more In Australian literature there has arguably been no figure more committed to a quest for the universal meaning of beauty and its relation to truth than Francis Brabazon. Indeed his life is a remarkable story of how a young, shy, farming boy living in an relatively isolated part of the Australian bush ends up staying in India for ten years as the poet-disciple of a person who declared himself to be God in human form, the Avatar, or in Sufi terms, the Rasool, the divine messenger, of this age.

Religion Literature and the Arts

Creativity and the artwork: the perspectives of a painter and a philosopher

J Beliefs Values Stud Relig E, Aug 1, 2009

ABSTRACT

Adult Education

Teachers College Record, 2004

Connecting Art with Spirituality within the Indian Aesthetics of Advaita Vedanta

Studies in Spirituality, 2008

49 49 CONNECTING ART WITH SPIRITUALITY WITHIN THE INDIAN AESTHETICS OF ADVAITA VEDANTA Ross Keati... more 49 49 CONNECTING ART WITH SPIRITUALITY WITHIN THE INDIAN AESTHETICS OF ADVAITA VEDANTA Ross Keating ACU National University Ltd ... unity− body, mind, and spirit in harmonious accord− which then became reflected into a wider social harmony creating, over ...

Michael Washburn, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2003, pp. 256, ISBN 100791458474. Review doi:10.1558/arsr.v20i3.367

Australian Religion Studies Review, 2008

Creativity and the artwork: the perspectives of a painter and a philosopher

Journal of Beliefs & Values, 2009

ABSTRACT