This dissertation probes the thorny intersection of religion, spirituality, and minimal art. One art theorist once wrote of the "crux of minimalism, " suggesting that this American art movement, initiated in the 1960s, ushered in a great divide between art and religion. Few scholars have spoken of minimalist works in even quasi-religious terms; and little of the sort has trickled down to the discipline of art history (let alone religious studies). Instead, minimalism is typically seen as stridently materialist, not at all spiritual: "What you see is what you see" has oft been the mantra, echoing Frank Stella's quip. More generally, Marxist or secularist criticism reigned in the academy of art history after midcentury; and spiritually-inflected language dropped off the modern art radar altogether, seemingly rearguard.

I rely upon the historical record, philosophical aesthetics, and theological aesthetics in order to assert that threads of the spiritual can be found in minimal art and movements spawned by it: postminimalism, neominimalism, and earthworks. While artists resisted attachment to formulas or even avowed themselves "atheists" they also engaged fundamental concerns regarding the human experience. They probed "mystery"---however minute or mundane---in sixties minimalism. In the first chapter (Chapter 1), I examine artistic precursors to minimal art. In the second chapter (Chapter 2), I look at the implications of that more distinctively "minimalist" turn toward immanence, emptiness, and presence in minimal art proper. In the next chapter (Chapter 3), postminimalism in turn severed with its forbearer not simply concerning "process, " but by inviting in greater suggestion of transcendence and fragmentation, and by looking to (often Indigenous) wisdom traditions. Earthwork artists attempted to circumvent the commercial aspects of art by fleeing to the American desert, itself inescapably leaden with spiritual connotations (Chapter 4). Among these tropes are "the spiritual desert, " pilgrimage, and ultimate desolation. The last chapter (Chapter 5) acts as both a summary of the previous chapters and a cursory view of current and future directions regarding the intersection of minimalism and the spirit in the contemporary art world. I submit that you will find in what follows more than "what you see.".