Encountering Art

How can the experience of visual art point us towards the transcendent? The essays collected in this volume pursue this question from a theological perspective in the encounter with artworks of a variety of genres and epochs, from baroque sculpture to abstract painting and film musicals. The authors argue that in order to understand the possibility of such an experience as a moment of revelation and relationship with the divine, the materiality of the work and the embodied existence of viewer and artist have to be taken into account. Drawing on phenomenology, visual theory, and cultural studies, the volume contributes to an aesthetic theology that takes seriously the sensory dimension of the encounter with art.