Table of Contents

Introduction: Pictorial Beauty and Aesthetic Transcendence
1. Ideal Beauty and Classic Art: A Philosophical Vindication
2. Pictorial Art and Metaphysical Beauty
3. Transcendent Subjectivity: Kant and the Pictorial Sublime
4. Color-Field Abstraction and the Mystical Sublime
5. The Momentary Subject: Photography, Painterly Transformation, and Digital Imagery
6. From Perspective to Icon: Marion's Theology of Painting
7. Metaphysics and Theology of Pictorial Art

About the Author

Paul Crowther is Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His many books include Phenomenology of the Visual Arts (even the frame) (Stanford, 2009).

Reviews

"Paul Crowther's vital contribution to the burgeoning field of theological aesthetics analyzes what exactly the experience of transcendence is and how it takes place through the mediation of visual art. At once a complement and a challenge to contemporary scholarship, his book is a must-read for anyone attempting to understand the visual arts as a humanizing endeavor."—Sandra Lynne Shapshay, Indiana University Bloomington "Bold, original, speculative, and striking a good balance between analytical clarity and phenomenological perceptiveness, this book sets forth an important and exhilarating idea that it explores in a philosophically sophisticated manner."—Richard Viladesau, Fordham University "[U]nlike other aesthetic studies, How Pictures Complete Us looks carefully at a range of specific artists. Crowther's approach is out welcome because he focuses on what artists do....[A] rich study of aesthetics and the divine."—Ben Schachter, Religion and the Arts