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Contemplations of the Spiritual in Visual Art

Brief Description

This paper is an analysis of the concept of spirituality in the visual arts. The purpose of my above paper was to define the terms in which the designation ‘the spiritual’ or ‘spirituality’ can be used to describe an artwork without limiting the scope. The published paper has also led to further investigations in the field, such a study that examined the potential for artwork to convey religious and spiritual meaning, which was discussed in the paper ‘The Neglected Place of Religion in Contemporary Western Art’ in Fieldwork in Religion (Equinox), Vol. 6, no. 1, 2012.

Research Rationale

Many examples of art works are described as spiritual but without fleshing out what this means. This has led to wide applicability of the term but without a sharpening of the concept. The notions of receptivity and context seem to be especially pertinent when thinking about the spiritual – what are the frameworks of interpretation that are required for something to be regarded as spiritual?

Strategies Undertaken

The paper provides an introduction and overview of the increasing pertinence of the spiritual in a secular age. Further the paper address this notion by opening up a dialogue between spirituality and the visual arts. One of the main objectives is to investigate what it means to describe an art work as being spiritual and whether the term ‘spiritual’ can be used in more than one sense in its application. Examples are used from different historical periods in art – early Christian, Abstract Expressionist and contemporary art – to demonstrate the persistence of the concept of spirituality.