Houden van elkaars crisis

Modern religion often shows a lively interest in visual art. As if it presumes art to be more capable of realizing its proper core mission, which is to make people attentive for life’s transcendent dimension. The reason why, in its turn, art frequently shows an interest in religion is similar. Then art considers religion to be more familiar with the ‘irrepresentable’, which turns out to be the ultimate thing that, one way or another, modern visual art works intend to show, to ‘represent’. Yet, what if the link between both, rather than completing one another, consists in using the other’s crisis in order to hide with it the own one? Religion faces a deep crisis, art struggles with its very ‘raison d’être, and each of both projects the answer to the own problem into the other. The crisis of the one covers up the crisis of the other. This essay develops an enquiry into that thesis.