This study attempts to bring together a number of ideas and problems from various parts of the academic spectrum. In the first part of the hypothesis the writer expounds the view that art lost its sacred character in the late Middle Ages. Theories of religious art from the ancient Jewish drama and the Greek tragedy to the Renaissance are examined, which illustrate two different kinds of relationship between art and religion, and the way they developed from Jewish art and Greek tragedy to the Byzantine icon and the medieval Cathedral. Patristic sources are used to explore the connection between art and religion. The second part of the hypothesis is that contemporary philosophy and art, having witnessed the death of the author, are now registering the withdrawal of the work of art as an independent object, and a partial reversal of the Renaissance art paradigm (nevertheless nothing as radical as a move toward a "neo-medieval" paradigm). The withdrawal or "death," of the work of art and of art as a process, are discussed. The writer argues that contemporary art, popular and classical, is withdrawing as a distinct activity, giving its place to a growing religious awareness or practice. The fusion of the limits of art and life, which postmodernism theorized and practiced, is highly consistent with the medieval view of the religious icon as a liturgical and spiritual entity. Book jacket.