Religion in American Painting

An Interview with Dr. Peter Mooz

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Dr. Peter Mooz

Art Historian Peter Mooz discusses his new book “Religion in American Painting.”

Dr. Mooz will be familiar to many of our readers through his involvement in Exploring America’s Musical Heritage and Early Sacred Music. I have had the pleasure of knowing Peter for more than 20 years after meeting him while working on the Catherine the Great Exhibition in Dallas. Our paths have crossed in a variety of personal and professional ways ever since, and I sat down with him recently at his home in Virginia Beach to record a series of podcasts. This is just Episode One.

Dr. Mooz always provides an interesting perspective on art and history. His latest project has been the exploration of religious themes in the history of American painting.

Although artists after the Renaissance gravitated to more secular themes, Dr. Mooz explains that American painters have been painting religion from the time of the first documented American painting in 1663 to today. Dr. Mooz explores the ways 19th-century artists like Thomas Cole, who founded the Hudson River School of painting, pursued religious themes of transcendentalism, and explains the religious symbols in the abstract-expressionist work of Mark Rothko.