The Spritual in Contemporary Art: David Jasper Considers History, Place, Community and Liturgy in Relation to the Spiritual (Critical Essay‪)‬

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I am a university professor and an Anglican priest, two elements of my life that do not always exist comfortably. Yet interestingly, together they reside in a confluence of what might once have been called the critical spirit and the will to believe. When I wrote this essay I was teaching in Renmin University of China in Beijing. There, where Christianity has always existed on the edge of an ancient culture, the traditions of painting are fundamentally abstract, though never absolutely so, for they draw on a particular relationship with nature and the spiritual. In the words of one contemporary Chinese art historian, Lin Ci: