Katie Kresser

Every year in my Contemporary Art class, I guide my students through a 1960s manifesto called Society of the Spectacle. Written by the angsty, art-adjacent theorist Guy Debord, it captures the philosophical energies informing contemporary fine art in a pithy and memorable way. Debord’s central thesis (informed by Marxist thought) is this: that modern society…

The world is full of recrimination nowadays. There’s the online marketplace of terror, for one thing: doxxing, death threats, so-called “cancelling,” and just plain old ad hominem bomb throwing. There is the bloodthirsty tribalism that casts one’s opponent as an existential (and almost inhuman) enemy. And there is always, in abundance, that quiet world of “bitching…

Though few of us have the patience to really contemplate them, great pictures are rich “icons” of human nature. They are considered great precisely because they contain timeless, complex, interlocking truths in one small “box.” They are the world’s most dazzlingly efficient form of deep, rich, and instantaneous-yet-endless communication. The old platitude says “a picture…

“We are not living in an era of change, but a change of era.” - Pope Francis Written on the Feast of Pentecost. Graduation is coming here at Seattle Pacific University (SPU). (Our school year in the PNW starts and ends late compared to the rest of the U.S.). Graduation, of course, is a time…

A few days after Easter, the Wall Street Journal published a story titled “Our Many Jesuses.” The blurb below the headline read: “At a time of shrinking church membership, Jesus remains a uniquely powerful and popular figure in American culture. The great divide is over what he stands for.” Next to the headline were Warhol-esque…

In the Seattle Art Museum, there is a little painting that often perplexes my students. It shows a scrawny, aged, half-nude man kneeling on desert ground and facing a small crucifix mounted on a stick. His left arm is extended with its empty hand splayed; his right hand holds a gray, prism-shaped rock. And despite…

Albrecht Durer, Rock Study, ca. 1497, Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria In a memorable exchange from Luke’s gospel, Jesus (as he was wont to do) rebukes the Pharisees. The jubilant events of Palm Sunday are happening. The Pharisees are scandalized and tell Jesus to make His disciples quiet down. In response, Jesus says, “if they keep…

John Everett Millais, A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1852 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Huguenot,_on_St._Bartholomew%27s_Day In 1852, the pious British artist John Everett Millais (who has been featured elsewhere in this blog), painted a heart-rending image called A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew’s Day. Here, beside an ivied wall, two young lovers furtively embrace. The air is thick and the…

This December, in her Language Arts class, my fifth grader is retelling the Christmas story. And she can’t just write any old, kid-style paraphrase. Instead, my daughter’s story has to be from the vantage of a minor, or even invisible, character. What, my daughter must consider, did the Nativity look like to the overlooked? Well,…

(John Everett Millais - Blind Girl)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Girl#/media/File:John_Everett_Millais_-_The_Blind_Girl,_1854-56.jpg In 1856, the British artist John Everett Millais painted The Blind Girl, a captivating image of two young sisters in a rain-drenched field. Their clothes are threadbare, and the youngest has no cloak; she sidles next to her sister, sharing her covering. They clasp hands tightly and unconsciously, as…

In the mythology of modern art, there are a few old chestnuts that get repeated again and again. There is the time Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and then bore witness through confessional portraiture. There is the time Pablo Picasso unveiled his first masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and declared it an “exorcism.” (For…

In my life, there’s a lot of beating up going on. Personally, there’s the matter of my illness. As a recent survivor of stage 3B cancer, I get batteries of scans and blood tests every few months. Sometimes the numbers are alarming, and they feel like a punch to the gut. My whole self –…

In my role as an Art History professor at Seattle Pacific University, I have accompanied students to Rome, Italy six times. We stay there for about a month, visiting umpteen million churches, in addition to wonderful museums, grand palazzos, and major archaeological sites. Among these sites, the churches are the real treasures - pedagogically, artistically,…

Do buildings push your buttons? How does it feel to walk down a city street and feel gleaming glass rising on either side? What about towers of stone, casting long, dark shadows? How does it feel to see spires of commerce (think New York’s Chrysler building) rising like space-age cathedrals against a vast, blue sky?…

Everything is compromised. Nothing is worthy. Strip it down, strip it down. Take off the sugar-coating, the veneer, the gilding, the velour, and what is left? Nothing. Emptiness. Posing, pretending, preening, delusion.  Those of us who love – truly love – sometimes feel like the prey of shadowy hunters. We are huddled together for safety…

I’ve been teaching college students for almost 16 years. Make that 20 years, if you count teaching assistantships in graduate school! This vocation has had its ups and downs, along with ever-shifting dynamics. When I began, for example, I was almost the same age as my students. Now, I’m old enough to be their mom.…

As we celebrate the New Year, we commemorate the passage of the old. In the mass media, this comes in the form of top ten lists and “in memoriam” montages. In folk imagery, it is symbolized by Father Time with his sickle. (He even appears in Rudolph’s Shiny New Year.) Though often comical in recent…