The Task of Theological Humanism
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Art is one medium through which the deepest possibilities for self- understanding are transmitted to people within a culture. We now want to Visual Art as a Mask of Mind
try out a model of visual art. The model of art proposed here incorporates these elements into the structure of made (or chosen) works that (2) visibly embody consciousness (3) in relation to some viewer (4) under aesthetic, moral, or spiritual forms.embodied meaning: artworks are (1) humanly (^23) Art in this
view is a mask of in the form of an image of the inner life of embodied consciousness, which includes of course awareness of the interrelationship of inner life with an expansive world of basic, social, and reflective goods. Whereas anyone who otherness as embodied freedom. Art is the visual expression
says “I” experiences their own consciousness as embodied freedom, “I” experience a work of art by analogy as an embodied meaning. The mask of freedom and the mask of meaning are spiritual twins. As embodied mean-ings, works of visual art have a distinctive sensuous capacity to propose
reflective goods for the sake of respecting and enhancing the integrity of life. That may be true of other forms of art and culture as well (we think it is), but our claims here are rightly limited to the visual arts.A piece of art is externally embodied outside the mind of the artist. Artworks
are physically “there” in the world with us, much like other human beings, things, or animals. Just as human beings, animals, and things have bodies in which they are located, so do artworks present themselves in the materiality of a painted canvas, a sculpted stone, or the like. The artwork is also embodied
present an image of something (e.g., a landscape) that is empirically absent.scious meanings at two different levels. At the In addition, at the meaning, the product of opting as performance. Works of art embody con-expressive level, artworks enable another meaning (or set of representational level, works of art^24
meanings) to appear in, on, or through the representation.perceived image, we feel or sense new meanings, through a “metaphoric twist,” which speaks from the work and strikes us with its significance. In this way art enacts or displays features of consciousness under its mask.^25 Through the
which has a religious root.mode of “manifestation,” which means that a second meaning shows itself naturalistically, as the mystery or even glory of things in their sheer given-A metaphoric twist can happen in at least two different forms, each of^26 Expressive meanings can appear in the first
ness. The expressive meaning illuminates a hidden depth, as if from behind. A famous example might be Vermeer’s painting, ing, we have an utterly commonplace scene: a young woman pouring milk The Milkmaid. In this paint-