Islam and the Art of the Cross, Evan Kuehn Reviews Navid Kermani

LOS ANGELES BOOK REVIEW
By Evan Kuehn

David Kermani describes his book, Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity, as “freely associated meditations” on Christian art. Wonder Beyond Belief is an exercise in aesthetic reflection as a viable mode of negotiating religious discourse and distance. What Kermani provides is more than simply a model for dialogue between faiths, although he does do this. In his engagement with Christian visual art, we encounter a model for aesthetic judgment that also does justice to the everyday piety of religious believers, who may not engage with sacred art as works of genius, but do potentially invest a religious significance in these works that is open to recognition and question by the tourist. This approach recommends itself in large part because it is unassuming. [More]