Pre-Owned Spirituality in Contemporary Art: The Idea of the Numinous (Paperback) 0956267831 9780956267832

An important contribution to an emerging debate about the use and misuse of spirituality in contemporary aesthetics. Jungu Yoon opens up the discourse between Eastern and Western art and introduces the reader to a discussion of the impact of digital culture on aesthetics. Important reading for artists, practitioners and theorists alike, it also opens up a new debate on the impact of digital culture on traditional aesthetics.

I found this text while searching about the spiritual in art or spiritually concerned artists for my photography dissertation. I'm interested in researching how contemporary art has the potential to occupy the spiritual void left by the retreat of religiousity in modern (western) societies, as foretold by both Nietzsche and Jung. This academic text defines quite rigourously the numinous which is a more profound spiritual and universal phenomenological human experience than religousity or the sublime. The author goes through a rather meticulous effort to articulate exactly what he means by numinous, which aspects he has found in contemporary art and how his installations are trying to conjure this mental state in the viewer. The reason I find this read compelling is because Jungu Yoon has set out to identify a more universal human experience of numinousity and spirituality than our culturally defined concept of religious experience. He merges East and West to address and engage a wider audience, not geographically determined. His application of multimedia in order to engender this experience is highly effective. Given the scarcity of philosophical and theoretical material on this subject, I feel the author has succeeded in providing quite a lot of groundwork on the subject. If anyone is interested in this particular application of art, this book offers an important contribution to this sub discipline and to any artistic practice in this realm.