Religious art
Filed in Art - November 28, 2006This is an Art & Perception post really. I’ll come back later in the day with a photography post (I need to check something out first). But outwith photography or not, thinking about visual art from other cultures is a valuable experience.
One of the big nagging questions in my mind during this year has been how we look at art from cultures that are not our own. When I did this course, for example, it was a question that the tutors shied away from.
Things which troubled me have included how we distinguish universal icons from mere local cultural references, and how we begin to look at art when we don’t understand the references.
Mostly when I’ve talked to people about this they seem to have assumed that I’m talking about non-western art – say African, or Chinese. But to me, the same issues apply within the European tradition. Our culture is diverse, and add in a time dimension – say 500 years or so – and I can be pretty well adrift on any ’shared cultural experience’ assumption.
Religious art is an obvious example. What some Renaissance Italian was thinking as he painted the walls of a church is pretty remote from my perspective.
Nigel Warburton has written a really interesting post about whether aetheists can appreciate religious art. It is recommended reading even if, on the face of it, the subject matter doesn’t appeal to you.
So your title is ‘geology…’ . Interesting that it then goes into a religious debate (or art/religion). I don’t think that religious art from several centuries ago or more is significant to our understanding as it exists within a historical context within which artists lived and worked. If one looks at it in that way it is irrelevant whether one is an atheist or not. It is not dissimilar (in terms of historical context) to dissenting writers (in particular) behind the ‘Iron curtain’, who wrote in a way that conveyed messages strong enough to be subversive but which faded away in ‘89. Nigel Warburton makes reasonable points but slightly overeggs how it is possible for an atheist to appreciate the more general messages. One doesn’t have to practice religion to understand what it is that drives people to it (even if one doesn’t understand why they should).The painters were artists with all the emotional baggage that goes with that and they would express themselves as fully in the accepted genre as possible. Looking at other cultures, art from those (if not merely cultural) should offer reference points – or one looks for them (or rejects them).
November 28, 2006 @ 11:25 pm