Spotlight: Sin and Salvation

Last update: June 11, 2009 - 6:43 PM

SIN AND SALVATION

Opening Sunday: Talk about marketing moxie! With a title like that, who could resist the temptation to hop over to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts' extravaganza of Victorian era paintings by William Holman Hunt and his Pre-Raphaelite pals. William who, you say? Right. For all the hoopla, Hunt is not exactly a household name these days, a fact that this show -- on loan from top British and Canadian museums -- aims to change. One of the most famous British artists of the 19th century, Hunt was a moralizing evangelical whose hyperrealistic paintings aimed to fuse religion, art and literature into grand visual narratives that would transport viewers onto a higher, more pure, moral plane. A canny marketer, Hunt successfully dodged the all-powerful Royal Academy and, with the help of an art dealer, toured his paintings to provincial cities and popularized them by selling etchings and reproductions to the masses. With their stagey expressions and gestures, the pictures can seem kitschy and camp, but they were theatrical blockbusters in their time. And many contemporary viewers will be mesmerized by Hunt's jewel-toned colors and obsessive attention to details. His 1853-54 painting "The Awakening Conscience" is shown here. Throughout the show, acres of brows and bodices, brocades and blossoms, sheep's wool and stonework are lovingly detailed in paintings by Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and others. (Sunday through Sept. 6, $8 adults. Co-curator Carol Jacobi will give an opening day lecture, 2 p.m., $5. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 3rd Av. S. 612-870-3131 or www.artsmia.org)

MARY ABBE

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