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Literature and Theology 2003 17(4):374-387; doi:10.1093/litthe/17.4.374
© 2003 by Oxford University Press
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Un Ange Passe ...A Conversation between Theology and Aesthetics: The Case of Jan Fabre

Yves de Maeseneer

Research Assistant, Fund for Scientific Research–Flanders (Belgium) Faculty of Theology, Catholic University of Leuven, St Michielstraat 6, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium yves.demaeseneer@theo.kuleuven.ac.be

Against the background of Hans Urs von Balthasar's and Marc C. Taylor's opposite visions of art, the case of the Belgian artist Jan Fabre (1958-) opens inspiring perspectives. Of particular interest are the angels of Fabre, bizarre figures assembled out of thousands of insects, which elicit an interpretation where insectology and a metaphoric of fashion cross traditional (e.g. Aquinas) and modern (Walter Benjamin) angelogical motives—hymnology, cosmology/soteriology, and hermeneutics. As of old, the complex figure of the angel raises aesthetic and theological questions of representation and mediation, of (im)materiality, (im)mutability, and (in)finitude, that allow us to indicate marks towards a contemporary theological aesthetics.


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