Name: Massimo Introvigne: Visual Artworks of The Church of Almighty God Convey a Very Deep Message
Uploaded: 2018-05-10T12:22:56.000Z
Duration: 33 min 26 s
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Hello and welcome to the interview dialogues of The Trumpet of Truth.

And today, we're talking about the visual artworks

with Professor Massimo Introvigne, Italian scholar of new religious movements,

founder and managing director of Center for Studies on New Religions.

You're an expert in the study of new religions,

and religious visual art is one of your fields of study.

I've heard that you are interested in The Church of Almighty God's artworks.

you published an article on WRSP online encyclopedia about these artworks.

I'd like to find out a bit more about why this is;

what do you find so fascinating out of these works?

that in 1970s, very few historians of art started noticing

that a very significant art was produced by the new religions.

meaning new religions are minority religions,

but they contribute to the arts in proportion

in a much bigger way than the old religions,

that was even a discovery which was resisted by art critics,

because there was the general idea that the modern artist is very often an atheist.

It came out that this is not true if we have a look at history of art,

but even of modern art we see that the real atheists are very few.

It is true that many art complexes, artworks

are no longer perhaps produced in the traditional churches and religions,

but the new religions started in the 20th century or the 19th century

and really contributed very significantly to the world of art with their productions.

So what happened to The Church of Almighty God?

The Church of Almighty God will produce its own art,

for a very simple reason, because of the persecution.

you cannot have buildings and you had other things to do,

trying to survive the cruel persecution of the CCP (the Chinese Communist Party),

and didn't leave much time and leisure to produce art.

As soon as you started having significant communities abroad in certain countries,

where you may have had some problems as refugees, but you were not persecuted,

that being a growing and large new religion,

The Church of Almighty God started producing works of art.

That perhaps is an unintended consequence of

the persecution of the CCP that generates a diaspora abroad,

and in the diaspora abroad the art started flourishing.

Of course, a second unintended consequence had nothing to do with art,

and was that non-Chinese started returning to Almighty God as well,

that's also because of this significant presence of diaspora communities.

I will say that your artistic production really started in 2013 or 2014.

In few years, there is an astonishing growth of this production

in terms of number of movies and in terms of number of paintings.

I know that paintings are mostly used for the movies,

some of them decorate your churches and offices,

but nonetheless we are speaking of thousands of paintings,

many of them are of very good art quality.

So, I will say that a distinctive body of art is being created very rapidly,

in the sense that some of your movies won awards in Christian film festivals,

because they recognized the good quality of your movies and gave these awards.

it is an important step in the maturity and globalization

when they start having their own distinctive body works of art.

the visual arts of The Church of Almighty God progress rapidly.

without the blessing of God, without the work of the Holy Spirit,

So let's first talk about the paintings of the Church.

or create websites mostly devoted to your paintings

that many people would admire the quality of these paintings.

there are two main bodies perhaps three of paintings I've been exposed to,

some are landscape paintings with a traditional-modern quality,

and you use in a significant way computer-assisted drawing.

That reminds me of an important exhibition of David Hockney, the British artist, in New York.

but he's using a lot the iPad for creating works of art.

You really see that there is a tendency in Modern Art

in the use of computer-assisted technology.

Particularly for producing landscapes, it's quite significant

your artists are inspired by any particular Western artist,

to take advantage of the computer-assisted technology

to produce landscape or scenarios with very bright warm colors.

So in a way your artists are part of this trend.

Then second, there is the biblical scenery,

and here your images are much more traditional.

Particularly, if you want to use this expression

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Massimo Introvigne: Visual Artworks of The Church of Almighty God Convey a Very Deep Message

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