The Spirit of Secular Art explains the spiritual prestige of art. Various theorists have discussed how art has an aura or indefinable magic. This book explains how, when and why it gained its spiritual properties. The idea that all art is somehow spiritual (even though not religious) is often assumed; but in the best texts, the fundamental supposition remains vague, woolly, sometimes uncritical and unsatisfying. This book, while narrating the historical trajectory of art in the most accessible language, reveals how the mysteries of religious practice are abstracted and saved through all stages of secularization in European culture. The Spirit of Secular Art presents a coherent theory defining the sacred basis of Western aesthetics. It evocatively describes the afterlife of the holy from Ancient Greece to the present, and outlines how the mysterious institution of art can be explained in material terms. Unlike other books in the genre The Spirit of Secular Art radically deconstructs traditional art history in terms of 'prestige' or the value of the non-material.