‘Freemasonry and the Visual Arts’

     
“Freemasonry is a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols….”

That snippet of ritual language differs from place to place; it sometimes goes “a peculiar system,” but the larger point about allegory and symbol is what matters. A study of Masonic thought vis-à-vis visual arts is a natural path to blaze, and fortunately a book was published last November that imparts the findings of more than a dozen scholars who examined the fine arts and material culture brought to fruition by and for Freemasonry around the world these past three centuries.

I’m embarrassed to admit I completely missed a roundtable discussion of this very book hosted last Friday at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, but you and I can profit from hearing from one of this book’s editors in three weeks when the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library will host Professor Reva Wolf for a lecture. From the publicity:

Symbols, Trade Cards, Portraits

and Figurines: Case Studies

at the Intersection of Freemasonry

and the Visual Arts

Thursday, February 27

6 to 8 p.m.

Masonic Hall

71 West 23rd Street, Manhattan

RSVP here

With the dramatic rise of Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, art played a fundamental role in its practice, rhetoric, and global dissemination, while Freemasonry, in turn, directly influenced developments in art. Professor Reva Wolf’s lecture provides an overview of diverse approaches to the study of Freemasonry and art, the wide range of art and places that its history encompasses, and some challenges inherent to the subject.

Prof. Reva Wolf

Reva Wolf is Professor of Art History at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she teaches courses on art of the eighteenth century to the present and on methods and history of art history. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and is the author of Goya and the Satirical Print (Godine, 1991), Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press, 1997), and numerous articles and essays. Her co-edited book, Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives, was recently published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Professor Wolf has been awarded an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, and an NEH Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, among other fellowships, to support her research. She is a recipient of a State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.


And about that book! Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives is edited by Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg, and published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts. It’s an academic text, which is a nice way of saying it retails for more than a hundred bucks, so shop around.

It unites scholars, some of whom you’ve read about previously on The Magpie Mason—David Bjelajac, William Moore—to lead the reader on a tour of Europe, the New World, Near East, and beyond to document how art and architecture have been inspired by the Masonic mind.

“The enormously rich visual culture generated by Freemasonry has not received the attention it deserves from art historians,” says Professor Andrew Prescott of the University of Glasgow, no stranger to the educated Mason. “This pioneering collection of essays provides fascinating and tantalizing illustrations of the rich artistic legacy of Freemasonry in many different countries ranging from Europe and America to Haiti, Iran and India across media, including paintings, prints, metalwork, jewelry, ceramics, and architecture.”

The book’s contents include:


Freemasonry in Eighteenth-Century Portugal and the Architectural Projects of the Marquis of Pombal by David Martín López

The Order of the Pug and Meissen Porcelain: Myth and History by Cordula Bischoff

Goya and Freemasonry: Travels, Letters, Friends by Reva Wolf

Freemasonry’s “Living Stones” and the Boston Portraiture of John Singleton Copley by David Bjelajac

The Visual Arts of Freemasonry as Practiced “Within the Compass of Good Citizens” by Paul Revere by Nan Wolverton

Building Codes for Masonic Viewers in Baron Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France by Alisa Luxenberg

Freemasonry and the Architecture of the Persian Revival, 1843-1933 by Talinn Grigor

Solomon’s Temple in America: Masonic Architecture, Biblical Imagery, and Popular Culture, 1865-1930 by William D. Moore

Freemasonry and the Art Workers Guild: The Arts Lodge No. 2751, 1899-1935 by Martin Cherry

Picturing Black Freemasons from Emancipation to the 1990s by Cheryl Finley and Deborah Willis

Saint Jean Baptiste, Haitian Vodou, and the Masonic Imaginary by Katherine Smith


This lecture hosted by the Livingston Library will take place inside the Jacobean Room on the eighth floor of Masonic Hall—I guess in anticipation of a large crowd. Photo ID is required to enter the building. See you there.

Evidently, our library is in great hands! Congratulations to the Trustees and to Director Alex Vastola.