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The Four Holy Gospels

“The Four Holy Gospels is an exquisitely designed and produced edition of the four canonical Gospels in the English Standard Version, published in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version (KJV) Bible in 1611. Renowned artist and writer Makoto Fujimura is not shy about the importance of his latest project. ‘Whether I like it or not, this is what I will be remembered by,’ Fujimura asserts. ‘I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that it is a commission of the decade, if not more,’ says Valerie Dillon, whose Dillon Gallery is Fujimura’s main exhibitor.”

The commission is an illuminated manuscript published by Crossway, to commemorate the four hundred year anniversary of The King James Bible, set to be released January 2011. The leather-bound English Standard Version of the Bible, printed with a six-color metallic process, will comprise the four Gospels as designed and illustrated by Fujimura. Five major new works, painted in the artist’s Manhattan studio, will be the volume’s main images, making this the first such manuscript to feature abstract contemporary art in lieu of traditional representational illustrations. It is this unprecedented marriage of a modern, usually secular art form with ancient scripture that most interests Fujimura, who aims to depict “the greater reality that the Bible speaks of… for the pure sake of integrating faith and art in our current pluralistic, multicultural world.”

h/t Ruben Sanchez

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