No Idols

The first in the new Power Polemics series, Thomas Crow's No Idols: The Missing Theology of Art tackles a pervading blindspot in today's art-historical inquiry: religion. Crow pursues a perhaps unpopular notion of Christianity's continued presence in modern abstract art and in the process makes a case for art's own terrain of theology: one that eschews idolatry by means of abstraction. Tracking from anti-idolatry controversies that stirred the Jansenists, through exploration of a humble still li