The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art

This paper responds to four critical reviews of The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art (University of Notre Dame Press, 2025). Addressing questions about interpretive communities, the political and theological horizons, the status of theology as discourse, and the risk of totalization, it clarifies the book’s central claims and corrects several misunderstandings. The theological horizon is presented not as a disciplinary enclosure or ontotheological system, but as a hermeneutical field of questioning open wherever the question of God remains live. The response defends the dialogical, nontotalizing aims of the project and reiterates that its purpose is to expand contemporary art history’s interpretive resources rather than to supplant them. Ultimately, the paper argues that the book’s value lies in its capacity to provoke further inquiry, sustaining rigorous dialogue about religion’s visibility and intelligibility within contemporary art discourse.