V&R Unipress Kirche und Kunst

This volume examines various facets of a research area that has hitherto only been dealt with marginally in academic art-historical studies. It is concerned with art policy and art funding by churches, whose aesthetic norms were for a long time remote from official art discourse. Recently, however, there has been a growing rapprochement between the two, attracting much media attention (as with a window design for Cologne Cathedral by Gerhard Richter). These modernizations, which in the case of the Catholic Church were frequently prompted by decrees of the Second Vatican Council, have been and still are the subject of controversial church debate among theologians and laypeople alike. In case studies these debates are examined, and the lines of argumentation considered that played a central role.