The season of Advent begins on November 29th. I've decided to shake things up a bit for the Christmas holidays with an unconventional selection of thoroughly modern Madonnas (clockwise from upper left), created in various abstract styles by a quartet of international artists in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. You can see elements of cubism and surrealism in a Nativity etching from Expressionist Artist Naum Tschacbasov, born into a Georgian-Jewish family in the Russian Empire, which fled to Chicago to escape the pogroms. The Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus look curiously like animated organ pipes in a richly toned lithograph on parchment by the German architect, sculptor, and printmaker, Friedrich Press. Maha Rukab, a Palestinian-born artist now living in the United Arab Emirates, creates an image of the Virgin Mary Undoer of Knots, one of the Mother of Christ's many devotional attributions, in an acrylic on paper painting composed of color planes in a pastel palette. Hungarian Artist Miklos Farkashazy presents a Black Madonna in sideview with a golden Christ Child on her lap in a cubist stained glass-styled explosion of color. They can be viewed in The Magnificat page of The Coming of Christ gallery of The Life of Christ section. Best wishes for a Christmas filled with peace and hope. (John Kohan)