ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the manner in which the material legacy of early modern iconoclasm ultimately contributed to a new aesthetics, especially as it was located in scarred, defaced, or effaced images and spaces. It seeks to address the question as to whether a distinctly “Protestant” aesthetics resulted in turn, and specifically in modernity and modernist art. Early modern Protestant iconoclasm also led to other modern aesthetic forms, however unintentionally. Most of the early modern Protestants would have recoiled from the fetish for the innovative, or the “iconoclastic” anti-traditionalism embraced by modernists. The great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich most famously drew a connection between early modern iconoclasm and the spirit of modern art. But those Protestants who did seek out a world without idols still left behind skeletal monasteries, damaged statues, and broken windows that provoked reflection about the meaning and symbolism that resided in damaged materiality.
