@mastersthesis {13344, title = {Apparition and Abstraction: Maurice Denis{\textquoteright} Visionary Catholicism}, year = {2022}, school = {Penn State}, abstract = {My dissertation participates in a growing movement to complicate monolithic modernism through the case study of the religious art of Maurice Denis (1870-1943) and his engagement with abstraction, medieval revivalism, and popular Catholic devotion. Although the arc of modernism typically pairs Catholicism with traditional, academic art, Denis{\textquoteright} corpus shows that in the religiously fraught 1890s, avant-gardism and Christian art were not mutually exclusive. Through examining the resurgence of miraculous visions in the nineteenth century, I argue that Denis used these vision narratives to reinvent Catholic imagery-deploying miraculous experiences as a way for his audience to connect more easily with the divine. Denis utilized one of the avant-garde{\textquoteright}s best known stylistic devices, abstraction, in order to convey to his audience that they were witnessing a visionary experience. In doing so, he not only made a traditional subject-devotional Christian imagery-new, but also drew holy figures into scenes of modern life, helping to bridge the divide between religious art and the avant-garde. Although these works are now seen as a symptom of his later move towards conservative artistic practices, I contend that this period reveals a sincere and effective attempt to modernize Catholic imagery. Focusing on Denis{\textquoteright}s activities from 1889 to 1898, I articulate the ways in which Denis reacted to religious events and tried to change the visual language of Catholicism, while also experimenting with abstraction. This project addresses the avant-garde{\textquoteright}s connections with Catholicism, making a critical contribution to a nascent branch of modernist studies.}, keywords = {Nineteenth Century, Northern Europe, Painting}, author = {Heidenreich, Claire} }