3 Religion Trends at the European Fine Art Fair

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/menachem-wecker/three-religion-trends-at-european-fine-art-fair_b_1377488.html

Menachem WeckerReligious art blogger, Houston Chronicle
Posted: 03/30/2012 5:04 pm



One wouldn't necessarily expect to find The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) Maastricht to be bursting at the seams with faith. If the art auction and fair worships at any altar, it would be Mammon's rather than Apollo's. The notion that a camel has a better chance of crawling through the eye of a needle than a rich man does of setting up shop in heaven couldn't be further from the culture of TEFAF, whose press releases talk of 170 private jets descending on the Maastricht airport and about 65,000 tulips adorning the halls of the convention center.

The scenery one sees as one nears the end of the two-hour drive from Amsterdam to Maastricht, a historic city located in the southern-most tip of the Netherlands, doesn't necessarily inspire one to anticipate great art. One enters Maastricht on a highway flanked by an industrial skyline panorama of smokestacks and warehouses. But as one gets closer to the city center, one encounters a much more picturesque vision of medieval battlements and the dominating presence of the Meuse river.

At the fair -- which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and which ran from March 16 to March 25 -- more than 250 dealers from nearly 20 countries sell their wares, which span from Greek and Roman antiquities to contemporary sculptures. Calvin Klein was among the collectors at the fair, which draws museum acquisitions staff and other purchasers with deep pockets. One early sale, for example, was a Peter Paul Rubens Crucifixion, which had an asking price of €3.5 million (Bernheimer Fine Old Masters).

But whatever the odds, there was a lot to be said about religion and religious art at TEFAF. In virtually ever section of the fair -- paintings, antiques, modern, manuscripts, classical antiquities, design, works on paper and jewelry -- there were at least dozens of examples of fascinating works with religious content and themes (and, to be fair, many not so interesting works). Here are three noteworthy trends:

1. Obscure Old Testament Scenes Galore

2. Biblical Hebrew Is Anything But A Dead Language

3. Whatever Happened To Islam?

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