Author's Response

Erika Doss’s recent publication, Spiritual Moderns: Twentieth-Century American Artists & Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2023), joins the ranks of significant, often provocative publications in recent years that have sought to reveal and reevaluate the religious or “spiritual” resonances of artistic modernism. Focusing on the work and life of four iconic American artists of the 20th century – Joseph Cornell, Mark Tobey, Agnes Pelton, and Andy Warhol – Doss challenges the presumed secularity of modern art and illuminates the compelling, often dense, sacrality of modern American visual culture. This roundtable discussion, featuring four prominent scholars in dialogue with the author, will explore the assumptions, motivations, and insights of Doss’s analysis, and consider a more open, inclusive, and diverse reading of American Modernism.