• Yale Divinity School

Reflections

You are here, seeking god’s splendor: thoughts on art and faith.

Can beauty be a way to God? How can art deepen the church’s impact? Is art a neglected topic in today’s congregational world? Is beauty in the life of faith a luxury … or a necessity? Such questions animate this Spring issue of Reflections , and we we invited answers from several Yale Divinity School students who have a commitment to the arts. Their replies suggest approaches that will shape future relationships between religion and art. Most of the YDS students featured here are dually enrolled in the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, an interdisciplinary graduate center that educates leaders to engage the sacred through music, worship, and the arts. Located at Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, the ISM operates in partnership with YDS, the Yale School of Music, and other academic units at Yale. (See ism.yale.edu )

What the World Needs Now By Megan Mitchell

In a world of immense suffering, is art a luxury, limited to those with the time and resources to spare? Beauty doesn’t feed people, doesn’t stop wars. What does it do?

I have stood in opulently glorious churches, both enraptured by their beauty yet sick with the awareness that histories of hypocrisy and exploitation lurk beneath the glittering surfaces. In less extreme ways, all churches today face the dilemma of how to allocateresources: “Should we tune the organ, commission a sculpture for the altar, or keep upthe foreign missions fund?”

For Christians trying to follow the example of Christ and the early church by caring for the poor and living simply, a focus on art can seem self-serving. The urgent needs of the world force artists of faith to ask what truly matters in each note, paint stroke, or stanza.

Yet my conviction is that art goes beyond luxury. Art and beauty address the human need for hope. For me, hope is functionally inseparable from beauty, for beauty is a reminder that there is, in the words of Abraham Heschel, “meaning beyond absurdity.”

Beauty helps me believe that divine good does prevail. Seeking to bring the Kingdom of God to earth includes restoring the beauty that is present in creation – and adding to it.

Facilitating public murals in the U.S., Africa, and Haiti, I have come to see the process of collaboration itself as art. The effort of people making a mural together involves creative problem-solving and communication. Participants must learn to voice their own opinions but also be willing to make sacrifices for the unity of the whole. Art-making is metaphorically linked to other life-building processes – and helps people tap into the transformative resources already present within themselves.

I saw this happen last summer in neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens, where I worked with Groundswell, an organization that employs high-school and college-age youth to create murals in their communities that respond to social justice issues they face. I saw these young artists take a new kind of ownership of their neighborhoods and histories and develop new ideas for their futures.

Art is about making space – both physical and mental – for listening, searching, and expressing. Art cultivates the ability to imagine a future and so transcend the present moment. This is inherently hopeful.

In her poem “Upstream,” Mary Oliver writes, “attention is the beginning of devotion.” Art gives us the space for attention, which looks quite a lot like prayer. That’s what the world needs now: space to take notice of each other, our own souls, and the still small voice of the Lord who calls but will not force us to hear if we do not desire to listen.

To give hope to the hurting, the church must be invested in the question of what is truly beautiful – both in the work we create and the way we create.

Megan Mitchell will graduate in May with an M.A.R. in religion and the arts. She earned a B.A. in Community Art and Missions from Wheaton College.

God at the Gallergy By Jeremy Hamilton-Arnold

If ever I forget art’s capacity for transcendence, I simply return to work. My place of employment is a sacred treasury – the Yale University Art Gallery.

There I can rely upon some giants of Western Modernism: Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko. All have given the world paintings that inspire near-universal adoration, and all have expressed, through both pigment and the written word, spiritual motivations for their art. Knowing their intentions, I am keen to look in their daubs and hues for evidence of divinity.

I find the sacred wading in the art of many other greats at the museum too, regardless of the artist’s “spiritual” stance. To me, the sacred resides in the congress of colors in Helen Frankenthaller’s canvas, in the powerful gaze of Kerry James Marshall’s painted artist, in the dingy soft glow of light in Joseph Stella’s Brooklyn Bridge. The sacred is felt in the serious humor of Duchamp, the  hpeful lament of Anselm Kiefer, and the daring of Picasso.

Divinity (of course!) abounds in the devotion and innovation of the early European icon-painters. The sacral motivations of religious individuals and communities beyond the West are abundant in the museum as well – around virtually every corner.

I’m not alone in this experience. Religious groups come into the Gallery all the time. They seek the religiously motivated and motivating – the ancient synagogue tiles from Dura Europos, the Islamic miniature paintings from northern India, the Boddhisatva Guanyin from China, the Baga D’mba mask from Guinea.

Even those who do not come to “see God” still venerate their favorite artists and works. They uplift the art museum space as “sacred,” comporting themselves with religious-like postures. They hush and clasp their hands before dimly lit images. The works seem to elicit awe and reverence.

Ultimately, however, I see the divine most clearly not in the works themselves, but in the budding curiosity and unfurling excitement of young visitors – the people I lead on teaching tours throughout the museum. In their expressed wonder before Bierstadt’s Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point Trail and their imaginative narrations at seeing Hopper’s Sunlight in a Cafeteria, I see the sacred.

For you who seek to bring art to your religious communities, I encourage you to find ways to display art on the walls of your place of worship (reproductions are an option!). Support local artists. Encourage creativity among your own congregants.

I especially urge you to bring your community to the art: Visit (repeatedly) your local art museums and galleries. Once there, find something new; spend more time with fewer works; leave the labels until the very end; converse with one another; ask difficult questions; sketch in silence; linger as long as you are able with a work you find boring, irksome, or downright ugly – and do the same with a work you love. Few spaces can match the power of art museums, those revered storehouses of the sacred. 

Jeremy Hamilton-Arnold plans to graduate next year as an M.A.R. in religion and the visual arts and material culture. He has  a B.A. from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX., and an M.A. from Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.

Re-envisioning the Gallery by Meredith Jane Day

One Saturday last December in New York City, I sat in a circle with an intimate group of 20 souls preparing for Advent. At an early-20th century Episcopal retreat center on the Upper East Side, we spent nearly eight hours together in a wood-carved library, hearing only the faintest of horn honks from the frantic taxi drivers on Park Avenue.

Our curator for the day showed us photographs of famous paintings from the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art while we methodically spent time in silence, wonder, and discussion of the pieces. I still remember the way Caravaggio’s “Holy Family” glowed in the afternoon light. Something about Mary’s penetrating black eyes and young Jesus’ crucifix-like posture engulfed me in empathy for their future pain.

The room was full of brilliant seminarians, clergy, and academics, but it was the art that gave us something we could not have offered on our own. It provided a spiritual avenue for confronting our humanity, at the same time assuring us of a mysterious glory within.

A few weeks later, I found myself in a much different place – near the stage of the candlelit Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, TN. I sat with a table of friends (Jack Daniel included) to watch a round of four local songwriters play some of their most treasured music. When Lori McKenna sang her first song, the air in the room turned electric, and the space was transformed. A few songs went by before Barry Dean gripped the audience with a new tune:

Now my heart is falling apart like a confession

My prayers are making a church out of this room

My tears, salt of the past and sweet redemption

I’ve been standing like a mountain

I was just waiting to be moved.**

I managed to break away from the enchantment long enough to scan the room to see that every eye was salty, but clear. It was grace, I think – the kind that can’t quite be articulated for fear that, in doing so, something might be left behind.

When human beings, as creations of God, create or encounter the creativity of others, something full circle happens. We suddenly occupy a holy space that connects us to our humanity and yet is permeated by God’s glorious and merciful presence.

Whether it takes place in church, a retreat center in NYC, or a bar in Nashville doesn’t seem to matter so much. It is the way the Spirit moves through art that grips me most tightly. No matter the kind of art, it provides a way forward during this often oversaturated, overstated, and unimaginative moment in the American church. Art can serve as a means to re-translate and re-envision the story of faith and redemption for this world.

Thanks be to (this creative) God. 

Meredith Jane Day has a background in singing/songwriting, poetry, theatre creative writing, and theology/arts integration. She will graduate this spring with an M.Div. degree and is a member of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. For more information see Meredithjaneday.com or tweet her @mereday.

** Barry Dean, Natalie Hemby, and Sean McConnell, “Waiting to Be Moved,” Creative Nation Publishing, Nashville, 2014 .

Glimpsing the Light By Tyler Gathro

By the time I was six years old I knew I wanted to be an artist. I devoted myself to artmaking with a concentrated ardor, while simultaneously growing in my Mormon Christian faith. My spirituality became the very center of my life, around which art revolved.

In 2009, after serving for two years as a full-time missionary to the people of Los Angeles, I returned to my studies at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City to continue my passion as an artist.

However, after two years of strengthening families, helping people overcome addictions and get jobs, doing community service, and being a direct influence for good in people’s lives, creating art seemed pointless. A dead Damien Hirst tiger shark in formaldehyde or an Andy Warhol can of soup will not save the soul of anyone today or tomorrow. I struggled to understand the spiritual role of art and how it could be of any real use when millions around the world were suffering and needed peace and a helping hand. I sought guidance from God. I fasted and prayed for weeks, wanting to know what to do and how to proceed as a self-declared artist. Around this time I had profound experiences and received revelation regarding the subject, and yet it would be futile to attempt to explain the unexplainable. However, one thing is for sure – I have learned that the visual impacts the spiritual.

With this knowledge, I began to create work that would visually express and capture the spiritual experiences I had and the revelation I had received. It was both a spiritual process for myself and a hope that this art could bring spiritual experiences for others.

You see … it is as if there is a world of ideal beauty, and between it and me hangs only a veil. Often that veil hangs motionless, until that beautiful moment when the wind blows and the curtain flutters aside. It is then that I catch a glimpse of the celestial world beyond – only a glimpse – but in that moment when all my physical senses seem to be turned off, my hair stands on end while a transcendent feeling flows through me, lifting me off the ground and filling me with light.

These glimpses of light and the creation of this artwork have enriched my Christian faith and brought me closer to God. This is what elevates me in life and drives me to seek the ideal.

Jacksonville native Tyler Gathro will graduate next year with an M.A.R. in religion and the visual arts and material culture. He holds a Bachelors of Fine Art from the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. A devout Mormon, he is looking forward to marrying his fiancé this summer and working as an artist and photographer post-graduation.

Don’t forget your Cane by Mark Koyama

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. – St. Augustine

Monday morning I’m up and out before daybreak to be sure to beat the Hartford traffic as I head south from western Massachusetts to my weekday abode in Bellamy Hall at YDS. From that moment on, my doings are governed by the myriad imperatives of Prospect Street – the humming precincts of Sterling Quad, with its lectures and worship services, seminars and colloquia, discussion sections, intersections and collisions.

Friday, late, I shove the week’s laundry in the backseat of my ’97 Nissan (along with a capricious assortment of tomes liturgical), and hightail-it north into the Massachusetts hilltowns where, at length, I will turn with a sigh of relief onto Greenfield Road. The boys are asleep, but my wife is still up. She is pleased to see me. In my absence, the compost has been fermenting and the cat boxes have taken a decided turn for the worse.

The word “commute” comes from the Latin commutare , which combines com (“altogether”) and mutare (“to change”). Yes, I commute between two worlds, but I try to mitigate the “altogether” bit. One hundred miles may separate the storied halls of Yale Divinity School from the child-begrimed walls of my circa-1875 farmhouse, and an even greater gulf may divide the ambient discourses of my two sitz im leben. Nevertheless I insist that the two worlds do, and indeed, must inform each other if I am to succeed in my earnest hope to throw a stole over my shoulders and process down the center aisle as an ordained minister of the Christian faith.

Each world is too full of delicate wonder to be deprived of the other.

During the last two years of my mother’s life, I was her healthcare advocate, her caretaker and finally, her nurse. At that time, a phrase often came out of my mouth:

“Don’t forget your cane …”

These words remain with me today, not for their practical application, but for their spiritual frankness – their quiet insistence that love governs. Good theology – the habit of mind behind good Christian ministry – follows from a Don’t Forget Your Cane biblical hermeneutic.

The same principle applies when I write sonnets. I search for language that quietly insists on telling of the twofold love of God and neighbor.

A Sonnet for An Old Farmhouse at Bedtime

And when, at last, the boys begin to snore

I head downstairs, turn off the kitchen light,

Make sure the dog’s been let in for the night

And throw the deadbolt on the mudroom door.

There’s a local squirrel who makes offshore

Deposits in our ceiling, out of sight

Of the cats, who flick their tails left to right

Like irk’d Egyptian goddesses of war.

Shuffling round in my pajama vestments,

I settle all these final farmhouse cares –

These fitful little bedtime sacraments.

And lying down, I hear the closing prayers

Performed by those unwitting penitents –

The dog’s long claws click-clicking up the stairs.

Mark Koyama M.Div. ’15 studied Buddhism at Bates College, has an M.A. from Union Theological Seminary and an M.F.A. in fiction from UMass-Amherst. He plans to become a United Church of Christ minister.

The World’s Collective Spirit By Yolanda Richard

When I ponder my ancestral material memory, I think of Islamic etchings in the sand of Hispaniola, clay pots fashioned by dark hands dewed with labor’s sweat, cosmic ancestral symbols weaved over and under Catholic crosses, Protestant hymnals drumming to the beat of audible spirit, West African dress that reminds us where we were birthed: In-between cultures.

As a Haitian American woman, my intersectional identity was only obliquely echoed when I navigated the halls of the usual “well-curated” gallery. Leisurely walks through such spaces typically consigned me to African Art collections and modern pieces depicting the black body and traditional renditions of the black experience. My journey to a deeper love for material culture of all traditions had a rough start.

I entered the world of visual art filled with curiosity, seeking models for engaging material culture that resonated with me. Instead, I was met with the many clichés of the art world. I encountered visitors who commodified their gallery experience as intellectual capital, a way to reinforce their own elitism. I witnessed people approach famous works with vague intimidation or over-excitement, stirred by awareness of the work’s monetary value, not the work’s aesthetic beauty or radical message.

I became privy to the dissonance between gallery culture and an authentic engagement with the art. For a while, I simply mimicked the cadences of “gallery goers.” Hands glued behind the back, backs crooked forward, curved necks attempting at angles to see “everything” – the frame, the paint, the cracks in the panel, the exposed fibers of the canvas, the second layer of varnish that makes you cringe, and finally the label.

This experience eerily translated into a monolithic construction of history. It felt flattened, devoid of faith. Sadly, the impression persists that one must know about art before one can engage with it. Or we expect curators and docents to draw interpretive lines for us. And when they don’t, we are left feeling cheated or confused. Overall, gallery spaces felt more like an intellectual exercise than an exercise of the soul.

I needed a new lens.

In my final year at YDS an internship at the Yale Chaplain’s Office allowed me to explore interfaith conversation within the context of art. I began organizing small group interfaith discussions in front of religious pieces at the Yale Art Gallery. These campus dialogues gave me a new intercultural perspective – weaving me into the cloth of the fabric of human history, making my engagement with art an exercise of my mind, my heart, and my soul.

I began listening – to the story of the work encased in its visual presentation, historical setting, and the artist’s intent. I began questioning – the curator, the artist, and myself. I began learning – how to linger with the art for more than a few seconds and  challenge my inclination to generalize whole collections unfamiliar to me. I began conversing – through time, culture, and faith.

Art is the human story of how we have connected with God and imagined the world around us. It is the preservation of the world’s collective spirit in all of its complexity. Interfaith dialogue and art have allowed me to stretch my gaze, connecting me to those beyond a society’s ostensible barriers.

Yolanda Richard graduates with an M.Div. in May. She has served as a Wurtele Gallery Teacher at the Yale University Art Gallery for the past three years, teaching K-12 students from original works of art. After graduation, Yolanda will serve as the Earl Hall Chaplaincy Fellow at Columbia University, focusing on interfaith dialogue among undergraduates.

Rejecting the “Beautiful” By Joshua Sullivan

Step into a gallery or the museum, and a familiar response (at least from my Christian parents) is soon heard: “How is that art?” or “ I could do that!” or “Well, that’s just offensive!”

The two worlds of “fine arts” and “church” have loomed large as stout opponents in my life. Both make demands on my intellectual and spiritual outlook.

The artist’s role as “questioner” and “critic,” I thought, would bar me from ever playing a part in a Christian community. Likewise I feared that being a “confessional” Lutheran would strip me of my credentials as an artist. Yet this dichotomy between fine artist and person of faith is a false one. As a Christian and an artist, I am fascinated by the tension between individual and community. I am interested in the range of non-linguistic communication that visual works can achieve.

It would be foolish to attempt to define the entire range of contemporary fine arts, but I venture to say that much of it now has far more to do with critical cultural dialogue and the material qualities and substances of art than any Platonic or Enlightenment- style quest for the “beautiful.” Churches could take a lesson from this modern insight. Churches hastily turn away from contemporary fine art because of a hostility to art that isn’t “beautiful” by some traditional definition.

But a church’s visual culture itself is not outside a working notion of “fine art” – all production of visual materials in any given community is art. It is a Christian community’s responsibility to take ownership of its visual cultures (be it architecture, carpet color, stained glass, or Sunday school crafts). Taking ownership means understanding the reasons it decided on such visual material. It means giving it prominence as a mode of group intelligibility rather than as objects of “beauty.” An “amateur” piece of artwork produced by a church and a nihilistic piece of work hung in a gallery are on equal footing as modes or vehicles of communication.

The plethora of visual matter in the Christian community’s life – the graphic design of Sunday bulletins, the sanctuary’s architecture, that mainstay portrait of Jesus from the 60s in the church lounge, the little cotton ball lambs made by the preschool kids – are not outside the purview of the fine arts, regardless of their “beauty” or “ugliness.” The church is not off the hook!

Philip Guston’s paintings are “ugly” on purpose. Marina Abramovic`’s performance works are antagonisitc and transgressive. Jenny Holtzer’s installations are terse and scathing. What these and other artists have, and what perhaps the church often lacks, is a razor-sharp grasp of the milieus they are communicating in and about.

Christian communities can take heart by rejecting the “beautiful” as an end in itself. Beauty, like God, will show up when and if it chooses. Visual culture, whether in the gallery or the sanctuary, is about a dialectical relationship between a creator and a community of viewers, not the reign of a pre-existing idea of beauty.

As Karl Barth noted in his Church Dogmatics , “God may speak to us through Russian communism, through a flute concerto, through a blossoming shrub or through a dead dog. We shall do well to listen to [God] if [God] really does so.”

A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Joshua Sullivan will receive an M.Div. degree from YDS in 2016. Experienced as a painter, musician, and conceptual artist, he was Visual Arts Minister at Marquand Chapel this year. He is pursuing ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Beauty Begets Beauty By Jon Seals

I heard it said once that we don’t truly remember an event, place, or person – rather,  we only remember the ways in which we remembered them the last time they were recalled. Our memories become copies of copies, and with each recollection comes a loss in clarity and accuracy. As a visual artist, I’ve given a lot of fearful thought to that fragile, degenerative condition: we are only as good as our last memory. Or so I thought.

My recent quest through the literary epic tradition has taught me different. (Important to me was the YDS course “Human Image: Classical and Biblical Traditions,” taught by Peter Hawkins.) From Gilgamesh to Homer’s Odyssey , Virgil’s Aeneid , Augustine’s Confessions , and Dante’s Inferno , epics reveal themselves to be expansive re-imaginings of what it means to be human in relation to others and to a divine being. Through their revelatory example, I’ve learned the truth that all of life is a collage of sorts – an experience of recollection not degenerative but regenerative.

I n her 1999 book On Beauty and Being Just , Elaine Scarry wrote that “beauty brings copies of itself into being,” so that beauty begets beauty. She quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein, “When the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it.” Clearly this finds expression in the evolution of the epic. Instead of eclipsing or deteriorating the layer beneath, new versions of the epic build on one another, through twists and turns in fresh and interesting ways, revealing the vast complexity of human experience. With each new edition, the epic tradition is enlarged.

What of those big themes of the epic journey – sorrow, pain, and death? I know only a bit of suffering, but it is real and I am learning through it. I had my own descent or katabasis when I was brought low by the death of my brother. In my encounter with his death, I have learned some things crucial to being alive – mostly that faith, art, and others are the only things worth living for. Each of these is knit together and eternal. I am beginning to think of my art as less my own and more as an extension of others around me. Somewhere in the transaction of involving myself creatively with the lives of others I learn more of the presence and character of God.

My art is not a distraction or an entertainment. It is my way through. When I relinquish control of the materials I’m using and allow the spirit of creation to channel through me after intense bouts of struggle, the work produces a powerful catharsis. To achieve this outcome, both the inhale of my doing and the exhale of my giving in are necessary. In many of my drawings I leave behind pentimenti – repentances in Italian – as I work, evidence of where I have been on the paper or canvas, so that I can see the process of building up, adjusting, and making both mistakes and corrections as I go along. Pentimenti keep me honest.

One of the alluring qualities of epic literature is that it can be at once local and global, deeply personal and vastly communal. Whether I work with paint, graphite, collaged paper, or other materials, this is my aspiration too.

Jon Seals has an M.F.A. degree in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design, and worked for seven years as chair of the visual art department at a college prep school in Clearwater, FL. His artwork has been widely exhibited. He graduates from YDS in May with an M.A.R. in religion and the visual arts and material culture, with dual enrollment at the ISM.

The Eros Divine By Timothy D Cahill

Beauty is vain, says Proverbs. Beauty is truth, says Keats. To begin, I make my own list of likenesses: Of beauty as order, as harmony, as clarity. Of beauty as vigor and compassion, justice and faith. Of beauty as mystery. Beauty as grace. But my aim is not to define beauty. I want to stand in its vastness.

To the reasonable mind, my claims are outlandish. The Enlightenment settled the question long ago, drawing a distinction between the tame allure of the “beautiful” and the bracing wildness of the “sublime.” (Yeats undid this when he wrote of “a terrible beauty,” but no matter.) In the middle of the last century, painter Barnett Newman became the voice of our age when he declared, “The impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty.” He was speaking on behalf of the masters who had blazed his trail, from Manet to Picasso, and of his own avant-garde confrères (Pollack, de Kooning, et. al.), and too, for waves of future MFAs. But suspicion of beauty is not restricted to artists alone. We sing of purple mountain majesties, but the churchy sentimentalities of America the Beautiful (the lyrics were first published in a weekly called The Congregationalist ) cannot resist modernity’s ironic derision. There is something grandiose about beauty that rubs against the American grain. My working-class relations rarely used the word, preferring the leveling action of the banal: A grand vista was “nice,” a starry night “pretty,” a comely face “good-looking.”

As compensation, from the chromium brightness of Cold War-era cars to the brushed aluminum of the Apple Store, America domesticated beauty to a cash crop of glamor. (What is more unbeautiful than Project Runway? ) In 1949, Barnett Newman sought to destroy beauty; by the 1960s, Andy Warhol just laughed at it. Who can speak of beauty today without some frisson of self-consciousness?

So where do I come off with my pretensions? I am not as interested in what beauty is as what it does.

Beauty sparks desire. Observe how everything that debases us is devoid of beauty. Blight in its indifference, greed in its cruelty, vengeance in its blindness – all undercut aspiration and disorder appetite. Yet something of virtue sticks to the beautiful. As

Plato and Dante both knew, even carnal lusts may point toward nobler instincts. Base impulses are unexamined expressions of the soul’s instinct for wholeness. Beauty is the juice of the good – the illuminating desire, the eros divine. It always points in the same direction, toward love-in-action.

Beauty cannot feed the hungry, prevent disease, cure injustice. Cynics rightly observe it does not stop the carnage of war. Yet as modernist critiques become more threadbare, we better understand beauty’s necessity. Destroy the beautiful and our humanity erodes too. Compassion, generosity, praise all atrophy, and by slow degrees a capacity for the suffering of others increases. Our eyes, actions, and ideals affirm one truth. Before we made beauty, beauty made us.

Timothy D. Cahill is a cultural journalist and commentator. He was formerly arts correspondent and photography critic for The Christian Science Monitor, and is a past Fellow with the PEW National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. In 2008, he founded a non-profit initiative to engage contemporary art with values of compassion ethics. He is enrolled at the ISM and Yale Divinity School (M.A.R. in religion and the arts, 2016).

Spiritual Alchemies By Robert Pennoyer

As a native New Yorker from a religious-but-not-spiritual family, I enjoyed an unremarkable religious upbringing. What shattered familiar molds and made God credible was  my artistic exposure. As a boy, I spent five years singing in the children’s chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. Most days, after school (and frequently during it), I’d leave my classroom, cross Central Park, and get to work making music with some of the world’s greatest musicians. Onstage at the Met, performing in a production of Cavalleria Rusticana, I experienced the first of those unexpected, overwhelming moments when the world’s capacity for beauty, love, and goodness seemed so ripe and so real that it could only be a sign of the givenness of our existence and a hint of its giver.

But if my musical experience suggested a spiritual dimension to the universe, it was poetry that rescued my faith in it from disillusion, a kind of Death by Church. There seemed an unbridgeable gulf between what I’d experienced at the Met and what I was experiencing in the church of my youth. My church’s vocabulary of faith seemed full of stale words, cheapened by overuse and calcified by overconfidence about what they meant. (I’d blame adolescent obstinacy for my resistance to many formulations of faith expressed in church, but age hasn’t cured me. I remain allergic to certitude and find it, in most forms, morally suspect and aesthetically stifling.)

After leaving home to attend an Episcopal boarding school, I discovered in The Book of Common Prayer words I didn’t quite  understand arranged in cadences of stunning musicality, and the combination of sound and sense made for a strange alchemy: The ineffable opacity of God lifted, or seemed to, if only for brief moments. Such was poetry’s effect on me, and it wasn’t long before I was regularly turning to literary accounts of belief and unbelief that matched my experiences and made my halting faith feel less lonely.

W. H. Auden called poetry “the clear expression of mixed feeling.” That ability to hold together dissonant meanings, intuitions, and beliefs has allowed poetry to give expression to my faith – and to enrich it. My time at Yale and in the ISM has affirmed what I’d learned by accident – that music can point us towards God; that poetry can revivify our tired language of faith; and that beauty can express and reveal the wondrous love of God.

Robbie Pennoyer grew up singing in the children’s chorus of the Metropolitan Opera and juggling in Central Park. He has an English degree from Harvard, where he composed musical comedies and co-founded S.T.A.G.E., an after-school theater program for inner-city children. He graduates with an M.Div. next year and is pursuing Episcopal ordination.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Greek gods and religious practices.

Terracotta aryballos (oil flask)

Terracotta aryballos (oil flask)

Signed by Nearchos as potter

Bronze Herakles

Bronze Herakles

Bronze mirror with a support in the form of a nude girl

Bronze mirror with a support in the form of a nude girl

Terracotta column-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water)

Terracotta column-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water)

Attributed to Lydos

Terracotta kylix (drinking cup)

Terracotta kylix (drinking cup)

Attributed to the Amasis Painter

Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora

Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora

Attributed to the Euphiletos Painter

Terracotta amphora (jar)

Terracotta amphora (jar)

Signed by Andokides as potter

Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora

Attributed to the Kleophrades Painter

Terracotta statuette of Nike, the personification of victory

Terracotta statuette of Nike, the personification of victory

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Tithonos Painter

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Nikon Painter

Terracotta stamnos (jar)

Terracotta stamnos (jar)

Attributed to the Menelaos Painter

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Sabouroff Painter

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Phiale Painter

Marble head of a woman wearing diadem and veil

Marble head of a woman wearing diadem and veil

Terracotta oinochoe: chous (jug)

Terracotta oinochoe: chous (jug)

Attributed to the Meidias Painter

Gold ring

Ganymede jewelry

Set of jewelry

Set of jewelry

Gold stater

Gold stater

Bronze statue of Eros sleeping

Bronze statue of Eros sleeping

Ten marble fragments of the Great Eleusinian Relief

Ten marble fragments of the Great Eleusinian Relief

Limestone statue of a veiled female votary

Limestone statue of a veiled female votary

Marble head of a deity wearing a Dionysiac fillet

Marble head of a deity wearing a Dionysiac fillet

Marble statue of an old woman

Marble statue of an old woman

Marble statuette of young Dionysos

Marble statuette of young Dionysos

Colette Hemingway Independent Scholar

Seán Hemingway Department of Greek and Roman Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2003

The ancient Greeks worshipped many gods, each with a distinct personality and domain. Greek myths explained the origins of the gods and their individual relations with mankind. The art of Archaic and Classical Greece illustrates many mythological episodes, including an established iconography of attributes that identify each god. There were twelve principal deities in the Greek pantheon. Foremost was Zeus, the sky god and father of the gods, to whom the ox and the oak tree were sacred; his two brothers, Hades and Poseidon, reigned over the Underworld and the sea, respectively. Hera, Zeus’s sister and wife, was queen of the gods; she is frequently depicted wearing a tall crown, or polos. Wise Athena, the patron goddess of Athens ( 1996.178 ), who typically appears in full armor with her aegis (a goatskin with a snaky fringe), helmet, and spear ( 07.286.79 ), was also the patroness of weaving and carpentry. The owl and the olive tree were sacred to her. Youthful Apollo ( 53.224 ), who is often represented with the kithara , was the god of music and prophecy. Judging from his many cult sites, he was one of the most important gods in Greek religion. His main sanctuary at Delphi, where Greeks came to ask questions of the oracle, was considered to be the center of the universe ( 63.11.6 ). Apollo’s twin sister Artemis, patroness of hunting, often carried a bow and quiver. Hermes ( 25.78.2 ), with his winged sandals and elaborate herald’s staff, the kerykeion, was the messenger god. Other important deities were Aphrodite, the goddess of love; Dionysos, the god of wine and theater ; Ares, the god of war ; and the lame Hephaistos, the god of metalworking. The ancient Greeks believed that Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in mainland Greece, was the home of the gods.

Ancient Greek religious practice, essentially conservative in nature, was based on time-honored observances, many rooted in the Bronze Age (3000–1050 B.C.), or even earlier. Although the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, believed to have been composed around the eighth century B.C., were powerful influences on Greek thought, the ancient Greeks had no single guiding work of scripture like the Jewish Torah, the Christian Bible, or the Muslim Qu’ran. Nor did they have a strict priestly caste. The relationship between human beings and deities was based on the concept of exchange: gods and goddesses were expected to give gifts. Votive offerings, which have been excavated from sanctuaries by the thousands, were a physical expression of thanks on the part of individual worshippers.

The Greeks worshipped in sanctuaries located, according to the nature of the particular deity, either within the city or in the countryside. A sanctuary was a well-defined sacred space set apart usually by an enclosure wall. This sacred precinct, also known as a temenos, contained the temple with a monumental cult image of the deity, an outdoor altar, statues and votive offerings to the gods, and often features of landscape such as sacred trees or springs. Many temples benefited from their natural surroundings, which helped to express the character of the divinities. For instance, the temple at Sounion dedicated to Poseidon, god of the sea, commands a spectacular view of the water on three sides, and the Parthenon on the rocky Athenian Akropolis celebrates the indomitable might of the goddess Athena.

The central ritual act in ancient Greece was animal sacrifice, especially of oxen, goats, and sheep. Sacrifices took place within the sanctuary, usually at an altar in front of the temple, with the assembled participants consuming the entrails and meat of the victim. Liquid offerings, or libations ( 1979.11.15 ), were also commonly made. Religious festivals, literally feast days, filled the year. The four most famous festivals, each with its own procession, athletic competitions ( 14.130.12 ), and sacrifices, were held every four years at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and Isthmia. These Panhellenic festivals were attended by people from all over the Greek-speaking world. Many other festivals were celebrated locally, and in the case of mystery cults , such as the one at Eleusis near Athens, only initiates could participate.

Hemingway, Colette, and Seán Hemingway. “Greek Gods and Religious Practices.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grlg/hd_grlg.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary . 3d ed., rev. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Pedley, John Griffiths. Greek Art and Archaeology . 2d ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

Pomeroy, Sarah B., et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Robertson, Martin. A History of Greek Art . 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Additional Essays by Seán Hemingway

  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition .” (April 2007)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Greek Hydriai (Water Jars) and Their Artistic Decoration .” (July 2007)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Hellenistic Jewelry .” (April 2007)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Intellectual Pursuits of the Hellenistic Age .” (April 2007)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Mycenaean Civilization .” (October 2003)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Africans in Ancient Greek Art .” (January 2008)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Ancient Greek Colonization and Trade and their Influence on Greek Art .” (July 2007)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480–323 B.C.) .” (January 2008)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Athletics in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ The Rise of Macedon and the Conquests of Alexander the Great .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ The Technique of Bronze Statuary in Ancient Greece .” (October 2003)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Cyprus—Island of Copper .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Music in Ancient Greece .” (October 2001)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Etruscan Art .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Prehistoric Cypriot Art and Culture .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Seán. “ Minoan Crete .” (October 2002)

Additional Essays by Colette Hemingway

  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition .” (April 2007)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Greek Hydriai (Water Jars) and Their Artistic Decoration .” (July 2007)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Hellenistic Jewelry .” (April 2007)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Intellectual Pursuits of the Hellenistic Age .” (April 2007)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Mycenaean Civilization .” (October 2003)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Retrospective Styles in Greek and Roman Sculpture .” (July 2007)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Africans in Ancient Greek Art .” (January 2008)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Ancient Greek Colonization and Trade and their Influence on Greek Art .” (July 2007)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Architecture in Ancient Greece .” (October 2003)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480–323 B.C.) .” (January 2008)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ The Labors of Herakles .” (January 2008)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Athletics in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ The Rise of Macedon and the Conquests of Alexander the Great .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ The Technique of Bronze Statuary in Ancient Greece .” (October 2003)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Women in Classical Greece .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Cyprus—Island of Copper .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Music in Ancient Greece .” (October 2001)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) and Art .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Etruscan Art .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Prehistoric Cypriot Art and Culture .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Sardis .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Medicine in Classical Antiquity .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Southern Italian Vase Painting .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Theater in Ancient Greece .” (October 2004)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ The Kithara in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
  • Hemingway, Colette. “ Minoan Crete .” (October 2002)

Related Essays

  • The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480–323 B.C.)
  • Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques
  • Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece
  • Music in Ancient Greece
  • Theater in Ancient Greece
  • Africans in Ancient Greek Art
  • Architecture in Ancient Greece
  • Early Cycladic Art and Culture
  • Eastern Religions in the Roman World
  • Etruscan Language and Inscriptions
  • Greek Hydriai (Water Jars) and Their Artistic Decoration
  • Greek Terracotta Figurines with Articulated Limbs
  • The Julio-Claudian Dynasty (27 B.C.–68 A.D.)
  • The Labors of Herakles
  • Medicine in Classical Antiquity
  • Medusa in Ancient Greek Art
  • Mystery Cults in the Greek and Roman World
  • Retrospective Styles in Greek and Roman Sculpture
  • The Roman Banquet
  • Roman Sarcophagi
  • Southern Italian Vase Painting
  • The Symposium in Ancient Greece
  • Time of Day on Painted Athenian Vases
  • Women in Classical Greece

List of Rulers

  • List of Rulers of the Ancient Greek World
  • List of Rulers of the Roman Empire
  • Ancient Greece, 1000 B.C.–1 A.D.
  • Ancient Greece, 1–500 A.D.
  • Southern Europe, 2000–1000 B.C.
  • Southern Europe, 8000–2000 B.C.
  • 10th Century B.C.
  • 1st Century B.C.
  • 2nd Century B.C.
  • 2nd Millennium B.C.
  • 3rd Century B.C.
  • 3rd Millennium B.C.
  • 4th Century B.C.
  • 5th Century B.C.
  • 6th Century B.C.
  • 7th Century B.C.
  • 8th Century B.C.
  • 9th Century B.C.
  • Ancient Greek Art
  • Aphrodite / Venus
  • Archaic Period
  • Ares / Mars
  • Artemis / Diana
  • Athena / Minerva
  • Balkan Peninsula
  • Classical Period
  • Deity / Religious Figure
  • Dionysus / Bacchus
  • Eros / Cupid
  • Geometric Period
  • Greek and Roman Mythology
  • Greek Literature / Poetry
  • Herakles / Hercules
  • Hermes / Mercury
  • Homer’s Iliad
  • Homer’s Odyssey
  • Literature / Poetry
  • Musical Instrument
  • Mycenaean Art
  • Mythical Creature
  • Nike / Victory
  • Plucked String Instrument
  • Poseidon / Neptune
  • Religious Art
  • Satyr / Faun
  • String Instrument
  • Zeus / Jupiter

Artist or Maker

  • Achilles Painter
  • Amasis Painter
  • Andokides Painter
  • Euphiletos Painter
  • Kleophrades Painter
  • Lysippides Painter
  • Meidias Painter
  • Menelaos Painter
  • Nikon Painter
  • Phiale Painter
  • Sabouroff Painter
  • Tithonos Painter
  • Villa Giulia Painter

Online Features

  • 82nd & Fifth: “Enamored” by Seán Hemingway
  • Connections: “Motherhood” by Jean Sorabella
  • Connections: “Olympians” by Gwen Roginsky and Ana Sofia Meneses

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A brief history of religion in art

Video from TED Ed

Before we began putting art into museums, art mostly served as the visual counterpart to religious stories. Are these theological paintings, sculptures, textiles and illuminations from centuries ago still relevant to us? Jeremiah Dickey describes the evolution of art in the public eye and explains how the modern viewer can see the history of art as an ongoing global conversation.

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Religious Influence on Art and Architecture Essay

Discuss the topic of how religion influenced art and architecture in the ancient world and during the Christian era, it is necessary to point out that all civilizations beginning from the primitive ones, through the ancient and mediaeval to the modem ones, developed and produced some special religious traditions and values which determined their cultures. In order to exalt their civilizations and cultures, they created art and architecture, in which they expressed their identity, language, depicted social customs, philosophy, world – views, codes of behavior and laws.

It is significant that the religious aspect played a great role in all those spheres of life; it is possible to say that religion not only influenced them, but determined their origins and styles. Following this, it would be relevant to suggest regarding the influence and the impact of religion on the art and architecture of the different periods of the ancient world and during the Christian era.

The credible scholar in the sphere of Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, Krautheimer, stated: “Every civilization’s religion too, in the course of its history contributes something to the world in general and in particular to the world of art and architecture … [religious beliefs, ideas and ideals are sometimes] … given visual expression and sometimes form the subject matter of art and architecture” (Krautheimer, 2005, p. 67). Therefore, one may firmly assert that a, so called sense art and sense and architecture serve as certain mirrors which reflect the religion of civilization.

For example, if regard the art and architecture of the Buddhism period, then it is possible to see that the religious themes determined it as the reflection of human suffering from the one side, and as reflection of the monumental and rich legacy from the other side, which can be viewed nowadays in the homeland of Buddhism – India and in the eastern part of the world. The special kind of Indian art – the aniconic images, containing of the Buddha’s religious message to mankind became very popular in this country after the death of this religious leader.

This man was regarded as the embodiment of all perfect personal qualities and highs, and this is why, “… the earliest artistic tributes to the Buddha Gotama are abstract symbols indicative of major events and achievements in his last life and in some cases his previous lives …” (Dhamma, 2005, p. 6). The religious (Buddhism) influence on the early aniconic representations of can be seen on the examples of: the footprints of Buddha created at some places often visited by him; the depiction of his symbols and religious believes: the Bodhi – tree, the Lotus Flower, the Wheel, a ‘riderless’ horse, an empty throne.

Speaking about the role and the influence of religion on the Christian era’s (or also called Common or Current era) art and architecture, it is important to point out that the Christian iconography art was very popular and widespread at that period of time. Basically the religious motifs expressed in the Rome, Byzantine and others European territories’ art and architecture symbolize the main values of the religion of that time: the hope of resurrection and immortality of soul.

Those art works, dating after the death of Jesus (since 4th century AD), were exhibiting main Christian themes and were intended to support the Christian worship which was created soon after then Jesus’ death, like the aniconic images of Buddha after his death. Therefore, one may firmly assert that the religious themes not only influence the development of the art and architecture courses, but also profoundly define them.

Art and Religion

Art and religion.

ART AND RELIGION is a discrete field of multidisciplinary study that attends to the creative interplay between image and meaning making as religious activities. More general usage of the term signifies investigations into the role, place, or experience of art in religion(s).

As a mode of creative expression, communication, and self-definition, art is a primordial facet of human existence and constitutive factor in the evolution of religion. Through visible expression and form, art imparts meaning and value to anthropic aspirations, encounters, and narratives, and simultaneously orients the human within the horizon of a community, world, and cosmos. Thereby, art renders the human situation — origin, existence, death, and afterlife — comprehensible through visual representations. As a stimulus for creativity and culture, religion is the spiritual impulse that conjoins humanity with divinity through spiritual experience, ceremony, and mythology. Art and religion converge through ritual practice and presentation of sacred narrative, thereby affecting "an experience of the numinous" (Otto, 1923). Enigmatically, art can recognize and project the essence and significance of a spiritual experience through form, thereby engendering a tangible record that informs the initiation or repetition of the original spiritual moment. Commensurately, art employs visual archetypes and idealizations on the journey to truth and beauty, thereby proffering visions of the sacred and models to follow on the path to salvation. As visible religion, art communicates religious beliefs, customs, and values through iconography and depictions of the human body. The foundational principle for the interconnections between art and religion is the reciprocity between image making and meaning making as creative correspondence of humanity with divinity.

The intimacy between art and religion has prevailed beyond historical convolutions, transformations, and permutations in global cultural and religious values. Unimaginably arduous to label with a universal standard, the intercommunion between art and religion has endured proliferation, diversification, and diminution through world cultures and religions. Nonetheless, this impossible regularization or definition of art and religion in any form, communal or universal, may be interpreted as appropriate to as amorphous an entity as art and religion is, and reflects its fundamental heuristic and multivalent nature. From their inexplicable differences within individual cultures to their inherent and unconscious manifestations in the human psyche, the numerous conjunctures between art and religion persist even unto their camouflaged survival in the secular societies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Art has power in the anthropological sense of mana . This troublesome and distinctive characteristic of art, and commensurately of images and imagery, is evidenced through the power to evoke or affect the human capacity to feel . The distinguishing human ability to feel, to have feelings, extends beyond simple emotion to the capacity and sensitivity that are elemental to the human capability to interpret and to reason. This connection between art and feeling is privileged by the naming of the philosophy of beauty as "aesthetics." The English word aesthetic is derived from the Greek root aisthetikos , meaning "to be sensitive" in the etymological context of "coming to know through the senses." Conversely, an anaesthetic prohibits the human ability to have feeling. The universality of this association of art as an affector of emotions and sensitivities, and a connective to religion, is evidenced in Bharata Muni's treatises on art. His comprehension of rasa as levels of human consciousness educed by art in which the aesthetic merges into the spiritual for artist and viewer is crucial to the Hindu tenet of the indivisibility of art and religion. This aptitude to effectuate feeling, either as emotions or sensitivities, is an elementary motive in the intellectual "fear of art" that led to the denial of the visual both as a prime response to the epistemological question and as primary evidence in the study of history.

The authoritative preference, at least in the West, is for the primacy of the text, that is, of the word over the image. Historians of religion reputedly advocate the unconscious act of selection between the image and the word by every religious tradition with appropriate cultural consequences. Religions, like Hinduism and Eastern Christianity, which favor the primacy of the image are differentiated as sacramental, creative, and intuitive in linguistic and cultural attitudes from those religions, such as Protestant Christianity and Judaism, preferring the primacy of the word and labeled as legalistic, pragmatic, and rational in language and cultural reception. Further, the study of religion, particularly in the West, has been predicated upon the authority of the written text, or a series of texts, not upon the image. The disciplined reading of these canons encompasses exegesis as the fundament for study, debate, and interpretation. A hegemony of texts, canons, and scriptures — that is, the written word — results in the incorporation of art simply as illustration for explication and dissemination of textual themes.

Late twentieth- and early twenty-first century publications in religious studies reveal interest in the inclusion of new themes, foci, and methodologies, given the insights toward religion accessible through a variety of new disciplinary fields interested in the religious dimensions of art, most specifically material culture, popular culture, and visual culture. These new styles of analysis incorporate "activities," including worship, personal piety, public rituals, and all styles and levels of art, in unison with intellectual interpretation of the canon to provide broader comprehension of religion. Although recognized as a contributor to religious meaning and orientation, the partnership of art and religion remains a complex enigma. Art as an object to be both analyzed and experienced is recognized as empowering artist and viewer in transcending the quotidian existential and the rational in a temporary communion with the sacred, the experience of which is so singular as to incite the desire for repetition emphasizing the ritual character of art.

Art is simultaneously an objective and a subjective event — the object being seen and the effect of the process of seeing. This exchange between art and religion, in coordination with the fundamental reality of its heuristic and mutually beneficial mien, challenges the logocentricity of traditional, especially Western, scholarship and cultural values, which normatively dissociates religion from art. This Enlightenment principle of the separation of the experience of art from the intellectual analysis of religion parallels the transfer of religious meaning from institutional to non-institutional environments. The intellectual divorce of the academic study of religion from the practice of religion, and from the experience of art, is analogous to the separation of the academic study of art history from the creating and encountering of art.

The Practice and the Study of Art and Religion

The position of art — whether in the broadest frame of religious studies, or a specific category such as church history or history of Buddhism — locates a useful parallel in traditional distinctions between the study of religion and the practice of religion. Applicable to art as well as to religion, this dichotomy exceeds the categories of objectivity and subjectivity, for "the doing of" religion (or art) is physically and intellectually distinct from "the thinking about" religion (or art). The telling distinctions here include recognition of class, gender, and ethnicity as well as education and the revelation of the privileging of the study of religion, and of art and religion, as a Western scholarly phenomenon. The practice of religion is primarily sited in worship and religious education, or catechesis, in which art either iconographically or figuratively envisions established narratives to transmit religious ideas and practices, to convey religious truths and practices, and to promote worship individually and communally.

Historically, Western scholars, especially those intrigued by religious art, or what they may have identified as the interconnections between art and religion, emphasized the primary role that art played in religious practice, for example, an altarpiece or a bronze sculpture of Ś iva Nataraja, and were unaware the fact that this mode of study could be read as restrictive, exclusivist, and parochial. Further interpretive difficulties arose as these scholars — including theologians like Roger Hazelton (1967) and Paul Tillich (1987) and art historians such as Jane Daggett Dillenberger (1986/1998) and Timothy Verdon (1984) — were committed members of the religious communities whose art was being examined. This style of scholarly investigations is better identified as theology and art, not art and religion. The significance of both the choice of category names and the order of their arrangement — that is, art and religion as distinct from religion and art — announces more than the focus of intellectual attention.

Traditionally the academic study of religion has been distinguished by the suspension of personal faith commitments so that the scholarly deciphering and evaluation of art and religion encourages the innocent eye to be open to the multivalent meanings and influences of art upon religion, and of religion on art, without prejudgment or prejudice. This is not to suggest that the work of art is neutral or benign, for art is neither conceived nor executed in a vacuum. The significance of art, regardless of medium or critical appraisal, is its cultural embeddedness by which it enables reflection on past cultural histories, connection with contemporary cultural attitudes, and projection of emerging cultural values. The fundamental ambiguity in the reading or perception of art attests to its heuristic and multivalent nature.

Art, especially religious art, is the external expression of the artist's personal vision, and under normal circumstances, a work of religious art, whether identified as Christian, Jain, or Aboriginal, is initiated from an identifiable faith commitment and communicates in the vernacular of that faith community. For example, the sixteenth-century German artist Mathias Gr ü newald depicts in his magisterial Isenheim Altarpiece (1515: Mus é e d'Unterlinden, Colmar) a series of significant biblical episodes in the life of Jesus of Nazareth for the hospice at the Antonite Monastery in Colmar. Gr ü newald included specific visual cues so that members of that religious community could "read" his meaning, and other Christians familiar with either the biblical narratives or the liturgical celebrations of Christmas and Easter could access this work of art. The Isenheim Altarpiece operates as visual theology within a clearly defined religious tradition reflecting its religious practices and beliefs. Concurrently, the "outsider," visitor, or curious can see this artwork as an invitation to or initiation into a particular religious vocabulary and landscape of religious vision.

Traditionally, for scholars of religious studies, especially in the West, the "voice of authority" has been a canon — a series of written texts including a sacred scripture, commentaries on that scripture, and doctrinal or conciliar decrees. However the "reality" of religion is more complicated given the transmutations and permutations of history, geographic expansion, and the constant presence of the human element, especially the collective of believers, many of whom were illiterate, thereby unschooled in the finer points of textual exegesis and theological ruminations. A religion to be apprehended and comprehended fully by both the faith community and researchers requires the display of its multiple dimensions from iconography to canon, from theological tome to devotional prayers. Such a coordination of the elite and the mundane reconstructs the meaning of religion as texts are accessible to the literate, whereas art ranging generically from icons to devotional hymns to liturgical dance to folk art , poetry, and morality tales proffers an inclusive and comprehensive reading of fourteenth-century Western Christianity in coordination with the "authoritative texts."

Critical Questions

Regardless of methodological approach or religion investigated, art and religion inquiries have been initiated from two critical, oftentimes implicit, questions — "what makes art religious?" and "how is religion artistic?" Since the 1970s, scholarship in art and religion has incorporated several other critical questions into the modes of approach in both research and publications. These critical questions affected the direction of study and interpretation process. Primary among these critical questions is the issue of the "starting point" for an art and religion investigation. The choices range from an individual work of art or a group of works, to one artist or a group (school) of artists, to a specific historical or religious event, to a new religious doctrine or a singular iconographic motif. The second critical question is what art is to be studied. Each investigator develops a set of criteria to discern art as high or low, art as popular culture, art as material culture, and art as an element of visual culture. The crucial decision is whether the focus of study is a traditionally defined work of art or from one of the domains of art such as folk art , photography, or popular culture. The third critical question is that of procedure, for example, examination from a specific historical question such as that of the process of secularization, the meaning of Christian art as the "Bible of the poor," or the implications of political power and authority for religious art. The fourth critical question has been formed by the academic recognition of "the marginalized" — those previously little investigated groups including women, racial and ethnic minorities, classes, and gender — whose art has reformulated traditional art historical categories not simply by introducing new iconographies or styles but by the very nature of their understandings of art and religion in their respective societies and cultures.

With the advent of the new century, scholarship in art and religion has formulated new critical questions arising from both contemporary events and a growing global recognition of the broader ethical and societal responsibilities for cultural heritage. The recent loss of works of religious art through natural disasters, war, and violent acts of iconoclasm has focused attention on the role of religion in fomenting or silencing acts of destruction, whether initiated by environmental neglect or military activity. Further analysis as to religious meaning and cultural value of the works selected for destruction is a topic for new studies from the perspective of art and religion. The related critical question for art and religion study is that of the complex ethical and moral issue of the "theft" or transfer of art from one country to another on the grounds of protection or military conquest, and the potential for repatriation. Another new critical question, which may be related to the primary question of "what makes art religious?" and which simultaneously impinges upon the ethical quagmire of ownership, is the collecting and display of religious art in institutional environments such as public museums and special exhibitions, thereby in sites and for uses distinct from those sacred criteria for which it was created, and perhaps consecrated.

The Nature of the Relationship(s)

The oftentimes controversial and amorphous interconnections between art and religion proffer five distinctive relationships that can be categorized as distinguished by power (Apostolos-Cappadona, 1996) and that extend beyond mana to include economic, gendered, political, societal, and religious concepts of power. The first is authoritarian, in which art is subject to religion. The authoritarian relationship permits no place for artistic creativity, individuality, or originality; rather, art and artists are controlled by the higher authority as art becomes visual propaganda. The second relationship is that of opposition, in which both art and religion are equal powers, and while neither is dominated or subservient to the other, there is a constant struggle to subjugate the other. The third relationship is one of mutuality when these two "equals" inhabit the same cultural environment in a symbiotic union of inspired nurture. The fourth relationship is separatist, as each operates independent of and without regard for the other, as in an iconoclastic religious environment or a secular culture. The fifth relationship is unified, so that their individual identities become so completely blended into a single entity it is impossible to discern what is art from what is religion.

As a corollary to, if not a result of, the fact that there is no universally agreed upon definition of either art or religion, none of the major world religions have a historically consistent attitude toward art. These cultural and geographic variations even within one religion such as Islam and Buddhism confirm that any or all of these five relationships between art and religion exist either simultaneously or in a chronological progression in one religious tradition. In his now classic Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art (2005 [1963]), Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890 – 1950) considered the nature of the arts in relation to religion and specifically identified Christianity as a religious locus in which all five relationships between art and religion can be identified.

Religious Attitudes Toward Art

Every religious tradition has an attitude toward art, and thereby toward image. Some are formalized in written canons, hierarchy, dogma, creeds, and liturgy, while others are predicated upon oral tradition, ritual, and mythology. The fundamental modes of religious attitudes toward art are iconic (advocacy), aniconic (acceptance), and iconoclastic (denial or rejection). The iconic attitude locates the image in representational or anthropomorphic figures of identifiable and known reality, as evidenced in the Byzantine icons of Mary as Theotokos or Jesus Christ as the Pantocrator. Taken to its extreme, however, the iconic religious attitude treads lightly upon idolatry. The aniconic attitude defines the image as a symbolic or allusive presentation of sacred reality, exemplified in nonrepresentational images to facilitate contemplation, devotion, and worship, as evidenced in the elegant calligraphy of illuminated Islamic manuscripts or the Ś iva li ṅ ga . Taken to its extreme, the aniconic religious attitude verges on total abstraction and thereby the complete absence of forms. The iconoclastic attitude rejects totally images and imagery in any media, style, or form, as exemplified in the otherwise imageless environment of Jewish synagogues and many Protestant churches. Taken to its extreme, the iconoclastic attitude is violent destruction of all images and imagery, sacred and secular.

Although these three religious attitudes toward art can be delineated, it is rare in the history of any religious tradition to operate without some variation in its attitude(s). As with all theories and constructs in art and religion, there is a coexistence of multiple religious attitudes toward images either in a historic process of evolution or simultaneously so that patterns develop: iconic to iconoclastic to iconic; iconic to iconoclastic; iconic to aniconic; aniconic to iconoclastic; or aniconic to iconic. Buddhism is one of several world religions that has had these three religious attitudes toward art in its history. Initially aniconic, Hinduism slowly assimilated image into worship and devotional practice, eventually establishing a complex religious iconography composed of representational and symbolic elements. The operative principle is that as each world religion evolves, its fundamental attitude toward art is similarly transformed. Certain religions such as Christianity and Buddhism have espoused a variety of attitudes toward image. Earliest Buddhist teaching was aniconic, while Zen Buddhism is iconoclastic. However, contacts with other cultures, including Hellenism, and expansion into other geographic regions caused Buddhism's initial aniconicism to evolve into a bifurcation of the iconic and iconoclastic religious attitudes. This Buddhist dichotomy is illustrated in the use of iconic and aniconic forms in those ma ṇ ḍ alas that are ceremonially created and then ritually destroyed. Further, a fundamental ambiguity exists within several world religions as the hierarchy affirms the proscriptions or prescriptions pronounced in written texts, dogmas, or creeds, while the praxis of the collective of believers venerates an unconsecrated but nonetheless miraculous image.

The Veneration of Art

Images are either inherently venerable or become sacralized through an act or ceremony of consecration. The primary classification of natively venerable images is those singular sacred images known as acheiropoietai (from the Greek for "not made by hands"). Believers recognize these particular images as divinely inspired and divinely created as they are discovered either fully formed in nature, including the acheiropoietai images of Buddha, Ś iva, or the Black Madonna of Montserrat, or those acheiropoietai reported to have "fallen" from the heavens to the earth like the iron thokchaks in Tibet and the Black Stone in Mecca. A second mode of acheiropoietai are those formed by direct divine imprint on cloth, such as the legendary Mandylion of Edessa and the Christian scriptural Veil of Veronica. A third mode of acheiropoietai are contemporary portraits of sacred persons created in their lifetimes by an artist who may also have been a holy person; for example, the icons of the Theotokos and Child painted by Luke the Evangelist and the sandalwood images of the Buddha reputed to have been carved in his actual presence.

A second category of sacred image meriting adoration and respect is the miraculous image that receives gifts and votives regularly from devotees. Miraculous images such as the Black Madonnas of Spain, Italy, France, and Switzerland, or Gane ś a, the Hindu "remover of obstacles," exhibit their sacrality by performing miracles, especially miraculous healings of otherwise inexplicable illnesses, bodily ailments, and physical disabilities; the dissipation of obstacles; and the conception and birth of healthy children to previously barren women. To evidence reassurance or perhaps to foretell impending disaster, some miraculous images produce a sign such as a glowing light, aromatic scents, streams of oil or blood, or tears as those of the renowned twelfth-century icon of the Theotokos of Vladimir . Other miraculous images such as the icon of the Theotokos Hodegetria of Constantinople were known for responding to prayers of protection from invading armies or natural disasters, so the preservation of the city or the conditions for a good harvest witnessed the inherent sacrality of the image.

Rituals of consecration performed by holy periods, or ecclesiastical hierarchs, affirmed venerability through the ceremonial imbuing of diving energy so that the image is worthy of adoration and respect. Consecration ceremonies range from the ancient Egyptian "Opening of the Mouth" ritual to the Hindu "Installation of Breath" rite in which the image was brought to life through the initiation of breath to the Zen Buddhist rite in which the eyes of the image are completed. Representative of that living dichotomy between the collective of believers and the religious hierarchy are images accepted as miraculous and venerable by the former prior to any formal ecclesiastical approval or consecration ceremony, as with a manifestation of the Bodhisattva Avalokite ś vara or an icon of Theotokos Treheroussa .

Following the ceremonies of consecration, sacred images garner specific forms of behavior and reception from believers. Often the simple viewing of the sacred image is an efficacious ritual, as witnessed through the ceremonial acts of elaborate ornamentation and dressing of sacred images in Hinduism and Roman Catholicism . The practice of offering delicate edibles, lit lamps, aromatic incense, beeswax candles, fresh flowers, and objects precious to the believer to the sacred image occurs either on significant feast days or upon the fulfillment of an intercessory plea. Sacred images are oftentimes anointed with consecrated liquids ranging from precious oils to holy water to melted butter — as a rite of cleansing and honor. The secularization of this ritual is practiced in the consecration of monarchs with precious oils and holy water . Devotees may follow prescribed patterns of posture and gestures to embody their acts of veneration, such as offering prayers from positions of prostration or the kissing of the sacred image with the intoning of prayers. Furthermore, the religious practice of ritual processions, which concurrently display and honor the sacred image, extend the ritualized boundaries of sacred energy and blessing throughout the processing areas.

Religious Categories for Art

Art has performed a variety of roles in the environments, rituals, and teachings of world religions, from devotional objects to divinely inspired works to communicators of sacred knowledge. Through pedagogy, devotions, and contemplation, art has nurtured the development and establishment of religious identity for both individual believers and the larger collective community. One of the normative and primary rationales for art in the context of religion is "to teach the faith" by means of symbolic and representational depictions of the major sacred narratives and tenets. This pedagogical, or didactic, aspect of art in religion is identified as "visual theology." Representational art can provide visible models for appropriate behavior, dress, postures, gestures, and modes of liturgical actions, and symbolic and representational liturgical objects of beautiful design and proportions can enhance the religious ceremonies. This liturgical, sacramental, or ritualistic dimension of art in religion is labeled "visual liturgy." Whether symbolic or representational, works of art that induce prayer or evoke personal devotions are identified as "visual contemplation." Art that offers spiritual orientation as the symbols and images facilitate the devotee into an experience of transcendence or momentary encounter with the sacred are categorized as "visual mysticism." The symbolic vocabulary of motifs, images, or signs that transfer religious meaning and theological tenets in a mode accessible only to the initiated is the art of "visual codes." Art that enhances through design and patterning the religious environment or the experience of spiritual encounter for the believer is identified as "visual decoration." The art of any of the world's religions can also be a combination of any or all of these categories so that one work can be symbolic and mystical or didactic and liturgical. Nonetheless, there are always works of art that are difficult, if not impossible to categorize, such as the Muqarnas, or stalactite decoration of Islamic architecture, which some scholars and believers identify as beautiful form and others interpret as the multiplicity of God's unity.

Art as Religious Communication

As a multivalent communicator of meaning and value, art can be defined as religious art on account of its theme, subject matter, or iconography, ranging from a scriptural narrative to a sacred portrait to a holy image created within the prescriptions of a particular faith. Religious art incorporates signs and symbols accessible to the initiated who have learned to read the iconography while recognizable as beautiful form to the uninitiated, such as the carved reliefs covering the interior and exterior walls of the Khandar ī ya Mah ā deva Temple in Khajurano or multiple panels on Mathias Gr ü newald's Isenheim Altarpiece .

Art may be characterized as religious art by its function. The fundamental function of most religious art is as religious pedagogy to illustrate bodily postures and gestures or a story or dogma of a religious tradition, as do visual symbols and representational imagery. Beautiful ceremonial objects that priests or religious officials employ in a sacramental manner or as part of a religious ceremony, such as illustrated holy books, candelabra, or chalices, have a clearly identifiable religious function. Visual art, for example, the wall frescoes depicting yoga postures at Ajant ā in western India or the Byzantine mosaics portraying the sacrament of baptism on the ceilings of the Orthodox Baptistry in Ravenna, have simultaneous liturgical and pedagogical functions. Other works of art such as Yoruban masks and Navajo sand paintings have a function as ritual art.

The positioning or site of a work of art — on an altar or inside a temple — signifies it as religious art. Religious edifices differ in architectural style and function from religion to religion and country to country; however, ecclesiastical, monastic, ritual, and sacred locations include temples, synagogues, cathedrals, monasteries, and mosques as well as tombs and shrines. Oftentimes, patrons, whether individuals, royalty, religious hierarchs, or monastic communities, commission works of art, including but not limited to altarpieces or stained-glass windows, for a specific location. An artist's comprehension of the scale and siting of the work of art from the time of the commission permits design according to the spatial environment, as with Hubert and Jan van Eyck 's Ghent Altarpiece (1432). Other works of art, for example, the sculpture of Athena in the Parthenon or the monumental Buddha at Kamakura, are identified as religious art as their function determines their placement.

Commissions for works of art either for placement or use within a religious environment — whether temple, mosque, monastery, synagogue, or church — or for a religious activity — ecclesiastical, liturgical, sacramental, devotional, contemplative, or catechetical — qualify art as religious art. Patronage of religious art may be the result of a special devotion, a healing, a response to an intercessory plea, or to assuage divine anger. Throughout the religions of the world, patrons of religious art have included laypeople as well as monastics and religious, the court and aristocracy as well as the lower classes.

The artist as the creator of art has a significant role to play in the characterizing of art as religious art. The definition of the artist and of the artist's spirituality varies from religion to religion. The characteristics and categories by which the artist is defined include descriptions of the relationship between artist and art, between art and personal spirituality, and ultimately, between the aesthetic and spiritual experiences, and are delineated in distinctive fashions within each world religion and culture. For example, art discloses the character and thereby the spirituality of the artist, according to Daoist and Confucian aesthetics, while an intimacy between artist, art, and spirituality is presumed by Hindu aesthetics, as art is spiritual and the spiritual is expressed through the arts. However, the distinction between artist and art, whereby a nonbeliever could create works for a religious community or environment, is the modern Western position. Traditionally, even in the West, the normative pattern was that the artist was a believer and practicing member of a religious community for whom the creation of art was a spiritual path. The making of religious art was, then, a form of religious ritual that began with an act, or period, of spiritual cleansing, including intense prayer, abstinence from sexual relations, and fasting. Further a complex but carefully defined rubric of forms, symbols, colors, and motifs was followed; each religious image was a codebook and "earned" the appellation "religious art." In the making of ma ṇ ḍ alas the Buddhist monk followed such ritual procedures and codified rules as did the Eastern Orthodox Christian monk who "wrote" icons and the Navajo shaman who created the healing image through sand paintings.

Religious Responses to Art

The response to religious art is predicated upon individual faith, pronounced dogma, religious attitudes toward the image, and aesthetic quality projected by the work of art. The operative principle should be that as the embodiment of the sacred, a religious image provides for immediate and permanent access to the deity. Such a response, however, would require the believer's receptivity to the power of images and the primacy of sacred nature. The practical reality is that even one work of religious art can garner a diversity of responses, each of which is dependent upon the believer's preconceptions regarding religious encounter and the image. As an example of this multiplicity of response to one image, consider that of Ś iva Nataraja, the divine dancer who creates and destroys the universe with each footstep. Ś iva is invited to enter an image of himself at the beginning of ritual prayer or ceremonies; his presence may be perpetual or fleeting, although the physical image endures through the work of art. Throughout the ritual both Ś iva and his sacred energy reside within the image but depart when the ritual comes to a close. The image remains as a visual aid for personal devotion and prayer and as a visual remembrance of the god's activity so that Ś iva's sacred presence is known even in his absence. The artistic rendering of Ś iva Nataraja functions as a visual reminder of the divinity's existence rather than an embodiment or temporary receptacle of the sacred; it thereby becomes a centering point for meditation, prayer, ritual, or religious experience. For many devotees, such an image is simply the point of initiation toward their individual "goal" to transcend materiality and to ascend to a mystical state of imageless union with the divine. Other believers find such an image to be simply a pedagogical object but not relevant for personal prayer, devotions, or mystical experiences. For an iconoclast, such an image of Ś iva Nataraja should be denied, if not destroyed, as much out of a fear of idolatry as a simple distrust of images.

What is most significant in the human response to religious art is that even a minimal response provides an entry into the experience of or participation in divine power and energy. Works of religious art, for believers, are not simply material objects but mediators of spiritual energies. Simultaneously as efficacious location and a distancing from devotees, sacred space is created by the presence of a religious image. Recognized as a religious image in many religions, the human body is identified as a reflection of the divine bodies of the gods and goddesses in Classical Greece and as an object of glorification in certain Hindu sects and African traditions. Thereby, the response of the human body to religious art provides an aesthetic channel for devotions, contemplation, prayer, and worship.

A Preliminary History of the Field

As a discrete field of study, art and religion has no singular historic event or scholar to recognize as its formal beginning or founder. From the beginnings of scholarly discourse, critical and academic discussions of art or religion impinged each upon the territory of the other, as reflected in the initial pages of this entry. As an identifiable formal topic, however, the study of art and religion was initiated with the virtual plethora of mid-nineteenth-century publications on Christian art that emerged from the pens of a diverse group of predominantly self-trained writers beginning with Alexis-Fran ç ois Rio (1797 – 1874), De la po é sie Chr é tienne (1837); Adolphe Napol é on Didron (1806 – 1867), Iconographie Chr é tienne (1843); Lord Lindsay Alexander (1812 – 1880), Sketches of the History of Christian Art (1847); and Anna Brownell [Murphy] Jameson (1794 – 1860), Sacred and Legendary Art (1848). These publications, especially Jameson's books and serialized texts, which built upon her renown as an author of museum guidebooks, inaugurated a genre dedicated to the appreciation of Christian art as an exemplar of moral values and good taste. Nonetheless, these texts situated the paintings and sculptures discussed within their historical contexts, carefully described any stylistic or technical innovations, and explained the "lost language" of Christian signs and symbols. Apparently, there was a charisma for Christian art at this time throughout Western Europe and America, as witnessed by the establishment of a variety of art movements — the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in London, and the Nazarenes in Vienna — dedicated to the reunification of art and religion as epitomized in the medieval synthesis.

Cultural and language shifts beginning with the Renaissance were formative on this nineteenth-century movement, as the concept of art was transformed from craft and that of the artist to individual creator. These terms were further clarified with the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement, as the Renaissance cult of the artist as an individual, and perhaps a genius, matured into common vocabulary. The German Romantic philosophers, including J.G. Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich W.J. Schelling (1775-1854), and August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845), built upon the foundations of subjectivity introduced by Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) and the spiritual in art of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Other philosophical and theological influences from Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834) to Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) to John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) corroborated this transformation toward a spiritualizing of art and toward the establishment of an academic discourse identifiable as art and religion. This genre of Christian art initiated by Rio, Lindsay, and Jameson was quickly expanded by a variety of ministers, artists, and educators predominantly from England, France, Germany, and then the United States . Their publications included travel diaries, behavior manuals, gift books and annuals, and treatises on the history and symbolism of Christian art; and this genre flourished into the early twentieth century, as witnessed by the popular books of Estelle Hurll, The Madonna in Art (1897) and Clara Erskine Clement Waters, Saints in Art (1899).

Concurrently, the academic study of religion, especially as the history of religions, began to surface in the German university system, while an assortment of cultural events, including the artistic modes of Orientalism and Japonisme in the nineteenth century and the fascination with le primtif in the early twentieth century, the Christian missions into China and Japan, the Chicago World's Fair, the Parliament of World Religions, and the phenomenon of theosophy created a cultural climate of intellectual and popular interest in other religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism. Nonetheless, the lens was Western — so a Western perception of Hinduism or Buddhism as both a religion and a culture. Western scholars and commensurately Western scholarship has privileged this field of study. Students of religion and artists learned about the aesthetics and art of "the other." As the academic study of art history was being organized in several European universities, the recognition of the need to learn about religion was mandatory for the research and discussion of Christian art, and later of the arts of India, China, and Japan. From its earliest moment, then, art and religion was a multicultural and multireligious form of discourse.

Further developments in the study of art and religion resulted from the breadth of vision among a select group of religion scholars: Rudolf Otto (1869 – 1937), Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890 – 1950), Mircea Eliade (1907 – 1986), and Suzuki Daisetz (1870 – 1966); art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877 – 1947); and theologian Paul Tillich (1886 – 1965). Of this magisterial group, the phenomenologist of religion, Rudolph Otto, and the historian of religions, Mircea Eliade , contributed most significantly to the development of the discrete field of study known as art and religion. In his now classic The Idea of the Holy , Otto identified the connectives between art and religion. Beyond normative language and rational description, religious experience is initiated by the nonrational modes of communication and sensory perceptions provided by art. Despite his silence on any comparison between aesthetic and religious experience, or the commonalities between religion and artistic creativity, Otto points to the critical importance of the experience of art as a moment of the silence, awe, wonder, and fear encountered before the numinous.

Eliade describes the visualizing of the otherwise invisible sacred through art in a variety of forms and styles in Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts (1994 [1985]). Art is a conduit to the sacred and a human activity permitting the possibility for involvement with divinity/ies. Art is essential to the proper performance of religious ceremonies and rituals. Eliade interpreted art as embedded in the human universal consciousness and in all world cultures and emerging in the artistic visioning and reinterpretation of symbols and images even in the secular art of the twentieth century. Coomaraswamy sought for the commonalities between the spiritual art of East and West, but perhaps his most significant contributions came during his tenure as curator of Asian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he introduced the concept of "spiritual art" into the vocabulary of curators, museum displays, and special exhibitions. He furthered the definition of spiritual art when he supervised the acceptance of several of Alfred Stieglitz 's (1864-1946) photographs as works of art — the first photographs ever to enter a museum or gallery collection under the rubric of art — into the museum's collection. Van der Leeuw proposed a phenomenology of art and religion in his Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art , in which he described how all the arts — dance, drama, poetry, painting and sculpture, architecture, and music — signaled and manifested the presence of the sacred. His is the only text to expand the discussion comparatively among the arts.

Tillich is to be credited with relating contemporary Christian theology with twentieth-century art. His efforts to see and to discuss the connectives between contemporary works of art with both religious and secular themes to the classic masterpieces of Christian art, and as venue for discussing theological issues, opened the door to the serious consideration of the spirituality of modern art. Suzuki's significance to the study of art and religion was his masterful text Zen and Japanese Culture (1970 [1938]), in which he introduced his interpretation of the Zen aesthetic to the West. However, his famed lectures on Zen and Zen aesthetics at Columbia University in the 1950s opened the eyes and the minds of many of New York 's most promising and creative artists, including musician John Cage (1912 – 1992), choreographers Martha Graham (1914-1999) and Merce Cunningham (b. 1919), and the painters and sculptors who became known as the Abstract Expressionists, including Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and Mark Rothko (1903-1970), to an alternate way of envisioning and experiencing the sacred, and to the spirituality of art.

Similarly, a quick survey of the academic field of art history and of the influence of several prominent art historians such as Charles Rufus Morey, É mile M â le, Erwin Panofsky, and Meyer Schapiro would provide critical moments in the evolution of the field of art and religion. Panofsky's work in deciphering iconography from iconology may be one of the most crucial art historical contributions to the study of art and religion prior to Freedberg's "response theory." Iconography was a carefully detailed method of analysis of the symbolic vocabulary delineated within an image, while iconology was an explanation of an image or art form within the context of the culture — social, political, religious, and engendered — that produced it.

Methods and Methodologies

The amorphous nature of the relationship between art and religion as both a topic of investigation and a field of study is paralleled by the oftentimes perceived "flexible" methodologies employed by specialists. The breadth of methodological approaches, technical languages, and questions investigated continue to expand in tandem with the study of religion. The lacuna of a single or even commonly accepted "core" methodology is irksome at best. The diverse technical vocabularies and methodologies include but are not limited to art history, iconography and iconology, cultural history, church history, ethics, history of religion, ritual studies, comparative religions, and theology. The primary characteristic of art and religion that defies its definition as a normative field of study is that it is fundamentally a multidisciplinary field that is broad in its subject matter, geographic sweep, world religions foci, and technical language.

From its possible "official" beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century into the twenty-first century, art and religion has traversed a variety of methodological formulae and vocabularies, beginning with art history, iconography and symbolism, history of religion, cultural history, theology, philosophy, phenomenology, and iconology, while the foci of a new generation of scholars in the 1970s incorporated the principles and lenses to expand the borders of art and religion into the questions raised by the emerging categories of "the marginalized" and feminism into the 1980s issues of the body and class. The reception of art historian David Freedberg's groundbreaking study, The Power of Images (1989), defined and traced the history of "response theory," which provided art and religion with an affirmation of its interest in the human, or worshiper's, experience of art. Beginning with the late 1980s, specialized studies with methodologies and languages for material culture, popular culture, performance and display, visual culture, and museum studies were incorporated, sometimes tangentially, into art and religion.

These additional disciplinary approaches and topical interests may be interpreted as diffusing the field of art and religion that much more broadly. However, the reality is twofold: oftentimes these new approaches or fields give a "name" such as Freedberg's "response theory" to an attitude, theme, or subject of art and religion research and investigation; and secondly, the fundamental nature of art and religion is to be inclusive, and to that end, it is a metaphor for religious studies. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to consider whether art and religion as a field without a methodology is an academic nomad or a valid but discrete field of study.

The methodological lacuna for art and religion may be problematic, especially in any attempt to defend its existence as a field of study. However, the range of disciplinary methods and topics ranging from art history to cultural studies to theology to gender studies and beyond has created a multilayered syntax for the research, writing, and discussions of art and religion. Among the fundamental topics for investigation have been the historical relationships between art and religion(s); religious attitudes toward image (or icon or idol); religious attitudes toward the veneration of images; the symbolism of gender in religious art; changing cultural attitudes toward religion and the effect(s) upon art; changing cultural values toward art and the implications for religion; and the visual evidence for cultural shifts in understanding of gender and the body. Further, the normative pattern has been that specialists in art and religion operate with the methodological formulae and vocabulary in which they were first trained, and expand, transform, and re-form these in the process of research and writing about art and religion.

From the nineteenth-century "establishment" of art and religion as a focus of study, there are three identifiable investigative categories related directly to the initial or primary lens in which a scholar of art and religion is initially trained: art history, theology, and history of religion. Further, these categorizations to the point of origin within the research — that is, the category of "art-centered investigations" — proceed from art as a primary document; "religion-centered investigations" advance from the religious impulse; and the "art-and-religions-centered investigations" emerge from the comparative study of traditions.

Art-centered investigations begin with a fascination with or spotlight on art, particularly a specific work of art. Critical in this mode of analysis are the topics of the origin of the work of art, the "reading" of the signs and symbols, and recognition of the cultural and historic context as formative in the shaping of the artist and the artistic vision. Scholars who operate from this category of "art-centered investi-gations" are predominantly art historians, art critics, and aestheticians who typically analyze the art and religion of one faith tradition, as evidenced by Hisamatsu Shin'ichi's (1889 – 1980) study of Zen Buddhist art (1982), Andr é Grabar's (1896 – 1990) texts on Christian art and iconography (1968), and Stella Kramrisch's (1898 – 1993) work on Hindu art and architecture (1946 and 1965). Students involved in research on Byzantine, medieval, and Renaissance art will quickly learn that the art of those historical epochs is undisputedly difficult to decipher without some study of the history and theology. The texts on Christian art by É mile M â le (1984), Erwin Panofsky (1953 and 1972), and Otto von Simson (1956) evidenced a careful interweaving of theology, scripture, and church history as connectors in the visual codes in the individual artworks analyzed. During the late 1960s the formal academic concern for the creative process corresponded with more than a comparative analysis of the aesthetic and the spiritual experience. Rather, fascination grew with the code of visual vocabulary and the mode by which images communicate ideas, as seen in the 1969 and 1974 texts of Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904) and the 1971 text by Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976).

Religion-centered investigations emerge from a fascination with or a devotion to the theological impulse or religious character of art. Central to this mode of examination are the topics of the affect of theology or religion on the making and symbolic content of a work of art, and of the cultural interplay between artists and the theological postures of prevalent themes. Scholars who participate within the frame of "religion-centered investigations" include art historians, church historians, and theologians who typically engage in the study of art and religion from the perspective of one faith tradition, as witnessed by Jane Daggett Dillenberger's books on the style and content of Christian art (1965), John Dillenberger's texts on Christian art in the context of church history and theology (1988 and 1999), and John W. Dixon's studies of the theological impulse in Christian art (1978 and 1996). The creative process for the artist as an act of religious communication of ideas is evidenced in the "religion-centered investigations" of Jacques Maritain 's (1882 – 1973) 1978 work and Nicholas Wolterstorff's 1980 study.

Religions-and-art-centered investigations proceed with comparative analyses of at least two religious traditions, with art as the focal point. The process of comparative readings of the same work of art determines the universality of art and of the religious impulse. Comparative studies of symbols and images extend beyond syntax and vocabulary to witness the creative impulse of imagination as it shapes new worlds and formulates new understandings of the human and of the world, which cannot be achieved through language or reason. Scholars operating within the "religions-and-art-centered" investigations include art historians, historians of religion, and aestheticians who share a passion for comparative study and the desire to learn the vocabulary of signs and symbols, such as Titus Burckhardt's (1908 – 1984) comparative analyses of Hindu, Christian, and Islamic art (1967 and 1987), Coomaraswamy's studies of Christian and Hindu art and religion (1943), and S. G. F. Brandon's (1907 – 1971) books on comparative rituals and iconography (1975). Also within this category is a place for the art of world religions to be evaluated with reference to the energy and power of art to fascinate and communicate through emotive codes and images, as discussed by Andr é Malraux (1953 and 1960) and F. S. C. Northrop (1946).

The interpretative critiques raised by those scholars representing "the marginalized" transferred attention from the traditional art being studied to the nature and intent of the questions being asked. Initially, feminism wielded vast influence in transforming scholarly foci and the methodological formulae. The incorporation of feminist concerns, motifs, methods, and vocabulary in art and religion is evidenced by the work of Margaret R. Miles (1985) and Celia Rabinovitch (2002). Scholarly interest in the process of seeing, the relationship between art and religious vision on all levels of society, and the role of seeing in the process of making art is emphasized in the new disciplinary visual culture studies by Colleen McDannell (1995) and David Morgan (1998 and 2005). An important reference is the special exhibitions and their catalogues and books, which have begun to focus on issues related to the art and religion of the so-called Third World in the work of Rosemary Crumlin (1988 and 1991), Thomas B. F. Cummings, and Kenneth Mills (1997). The writing and discussions of two art historians — David Freedberg (1989) on response theory and James Elkins (2001) on the interconnections of optics/vision, human emotions, and religious meaning in art — have greatly advanced the studies of art and religion.

New Considerations

As scholars engaged in the study of art and religion continue their perennial quest to answer the critical questions "what makes art religious?" and "how is religious artistic?", the analytic methods, subjects, and vocabulary have responded by crossing over into the borders of new disciplines, such as visual culture, and the new critical gauntlets of technology, globalization, and secularization. Technology transformed the definition, experience, and study of art with the nineteenth-century invention of the camera, as photography challenged painting into new directions. The contemporary challenges of technology include the advent of computer art, virtual reality , and an environment in which one merely needs to press the right button to encounter masterpieces of art on the websites of major museums. The computer becomes then a mediator between art and the viewer, between art and artist, and between human consciousness and the projection of reality.

The challenge of globalization coincides with religious pluralism as the dominance of Western cultural and religious values appears to be ending as the symbolism and visual codes of Western art are being synthesized with those from other cultural and religious heritages. A new visual vocabulary is emerging from the confluence of religious traditions. Interwoven into this new fabric of the global and pluralistic world are the questions raised about the moral and ethical policies of collecting and exhibiting the sacred art of other cultures, and the issue of repatriation. Multiple considerations related to the presentation and display of sacred art in a secular or institutionalized setting are significant topics for the study of art and religion, including the issues of function, consecration, and response. Furthermore, and perhaps more significant, globalism and pluralism should assist in erasing the privileged status of Western scholars and Western art within the boundaries of art and religion. Comparative studies of specific artistic images or motifs might prove to be a positive venue to examine the commonalities and the differences and even the possibility of reformulating the basic vocabulary and issues of this discrete field of study.

Another way to consider this serious concern of the presentation of sacred art is the growing awareness that the "objects" being studied are being analyzed, researched, and encountered outside of their original placement and purpose. Thus, to be inclusive, our analysis must extend to the consideration, if not reconstruction, of the physical space in which the work was originally sited, its function (devotional, liturgical, ceremonial, ritual), and the experience of encountering the work for the first time in its "home" place.

Art is an imaged reflection, prophecy, and witness to human experience and religious values as well as an expression of culture. The topic of art and religion continues to entice consideration and to adapt itself to the transformations and permutations of scholarly concerns. The call continues among a new generation of young scholars to define the field and to adopt a methodology. The field of study identified as art and religion continues to survive despite its lack of a recognized methodology or academic vocabulary. Art, like religion, defies categorization and universal definition. Art and religion are inexorably interconnected throughout human history and human creativity.

Bibliography

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Theories of Religion and Art

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Dixon, John W. "What Makes Religious Art Religious?" Cross Currents (spring 1993): 5 – 25.

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Van der Leeuw, Gerardus. Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art. Translated by David E. Green. New York, 2005 (1963 [1932]). Reprint edition.

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Wuthnow, Robert. All in Sync: How Music and Art Are Revitalizing American Religion . Berkeley, Calif., 2003.

African Art and Religion

Hackett, Rosalind I. J. Art and Religion in Africa . London, 1996.

Thompson, Robert Farris. African Art in Motion . Berkeley, Calif., 1974.

Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy . New York, 1984 (1983).

Pacific Art and Religion

Crumlin, Rosemary. Images of Religion in Australian Art . Kensington, Australia, 1988.

Crumlin, Rosemary, ed. Aboriginal Art and Spirituality . North Blackburn, Victoria, Australia, 1991.

Moore, Albert C. Arts in the Religions of the Pacific . London, 1997.

Hindu Art and Religion

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. The Transformation of Nature in Art. New York, 1956 (1934).

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. The Dance of Shiva: Fourteen Indian Essays , rev. ed. New York, 1957.

Davis, Richard. Lives of Indian Images . Princeton, N.J., 1997.

Eck, Diana. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India . New York, 1998 (1981).

Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple . Calcutta, India, 1946.

Kramrisch, Stella. The Art of India: Traditions of Indian Sculpture, Painting and Architecture . London, 1965.

Kramrisch, Stella. Manifestations of Ś iva . Philadelphia, 1981. Exhibition catalogue.

Kramrisch, Stella. Exploring India's Sacred Art: Selected Essays by Stella Kramrisch , edited by Barbara Stoller Miller. Philadelphia, 1983.

Larson, Gerald J., Pratapaditya Pal, and Rebecca P. Gowen. In Her Image: The Great Goddess in Indian Asiat and the Madonna in Christian Culture . Santa Barbara, Calif., 1980. Exhibition catalogue.

Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Culture . Princeton, N.J., 1974 (1946).

Buddhist Art and Religion

Hisamatsu, Shin'ichi. Zen and the Fine Arts. Translated by Gishin Tokiwa. Tokyo, 1982.

Pilgrim, Richard B. Buddhism and the Arts of Japan . New York, 1998 (1993).

Suzuki, Daisetz T. Zen and Japanese Culture . Princeton, N.J., 1970 (1938).

Classical Mediterranean Art and Religion

Gardner, Ernest. Religion and Art in Ancient Greece . Port Washington, N.Y., 1969 (1910).

Gordon, R. L. Images and Values in the Graeco-Roman World: Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art . Aldershot, U.K., 1996.

Rosenzweig, Rachel. Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens . Ann Arbor , Mich., 2004.

Scully, Vincent. The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods . New Haven , Conn., 1982.

Jewish Art and Religion

Bronstein, Leo. Kabbalah and Art . New Brunswick , N.J., 1997 (1980).

Mann, Vivian. Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts . Cambridge, U.K., 2000.

Mayer, Leo A. Bibliography of Jewish Art . New York, 1967.

Narkiss, Bezalel, ed. Journal of Jewish Art (volumes 1 – 5, Spertus College; volumes 6 ff ., Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University, Jerusalem).

Christian Art and Religion

Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-century American Art . New York, 1995.

Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. "Painting," "Sculpture," and "Symbol." In Christianity: A Complete Guide , edited by John Bowden. London, 2005.

Bailey, Gauvin A. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America , 1542 – 1773 . Toronto, 1999.

Brown, Frank Burch. Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Meaning and Making . Princeton, N.J., 1989.

Brown, Frank Burch. Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life . New York, 2000.

Coulton, G. G. Art and the Reformation . New York, 1958.

Damian, Carol. The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco . Miami Beach, Fla., 1995.

Dewhurst, C. Kurt, Betty MacDowell, and Marsha MacDowell. Religious Folk Art in America: Reflections of Faith . New York, 1983. Exhibition catalogue.

Dillenberger, Jane. Secular Art with Sacred Themes . Nashville, Tenn., 1969.

Dillenberger, Jane. Style and Content in Christian Art . New York, 1986 (1965).

Dillenberger, Jane. Image and Spirit in Sacred and Secular Art. Edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona. New York, 1990.

Dillenberger, Jane. The Religious Art of Andy Warhol . New York, 1998.

Dillenberger, Jane, and John Dillenberger. Perceptions of the Spirit in Twentieth-Century American Art . Indianapolis, Ind., 1977. Exhibition catalogue.

Dillenberger, Jane, and Joshua C. Taylor. The Hand and the Spirit: Religious Art in America, 1700 – 1900 . Berkeley, Calif., 1972. Exhibition catalogue.

Dillenberger, John. A Theology of Artistic Sensibilities: The Visual Arts and the Church . New York, 1986.

Dillenberger, John. The Visual Arts and Christianity in America: From the Colonial Period to the Present. New York, 1989 (1988).

Dillenberger, John. Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe. New York, 1999.

Dixon, John W. Nature and Grace in Art . Chapel Hill, N.C., 1964.

Dixon, John W. Art and the Theological Imagination . New York, 1978.

Dixon, John W. The Physiology of Faith: A Theory of Theological Relativity . San Francisco , 1979.

Dixon, John W. The Christ of Michelangelo: An Essay on Carnal Spirituality . Atlanta, 1994.

Dixon, John W. Images of Truth: Religion and the Art of Seeing . Atlanta, 1996.

Finney, Paul Corby. The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art . New York, 1994.

Freedberg, David. Iconoclasm and Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1566 – 1609 . New York, 1988.

Gambone, Robert L. Art and Popular Religion in Evangelical America, 1915 – 1940 . Knoxville, Tenn., 1989.

Grabar, Andr é . Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins . Princeton, N.J., 1968.

Hazelton, Roger. A Theological Approach to Art . Nashville, Tenn., 1967.

Hirn, Yrj ö . The Sacred Shrine: A Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church . Boston, 1957.

M â le, Emile. Religious Art in France, the Thirteenth Century: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources. Princeton, N.J., 1984.

Mathews, Thomas F. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art . Princeton, N.J., 1993.

McDannell, Colleen. Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America . New Haven , Conn., 1995.

Miles, Margaret R. Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture. Boston, 1985.

Mills, Kenneth. Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andes Religion and Extirpation, 1640-1730 . Princeton, N.J., 1997.

Morey, Charles Rufus. Early Christian Art , 2d ed. Princeton, N.J., 1953 (1935).

Morgan, David. Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production . New York, 1999.

Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origins and Character . Cambridge, Mass., 1953.

Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance . New York, 1972.

Pattison, George. Art, Modernity, and Faith: Towards a Theology of Art . New York, 1991.

Promey, Sally M. Painting Religion in Public: John Singer Sargent 's Triumph of Religion at the Boston Public Library . Princeton, N.J., 1999.

Rombold, G ü nter, and Horst Schwebel. Christus in der Kunst des 20, Jahrhunderts . Basel, Switzerland, 1983. Exhibition catalogue.

Schapiro, Meyer. Late Antique, Early Christian, and Medieval Art . New York, 1979.

Schwebel, Horst and Heinz-Ulrich Schmidt. Die Andere Eva: Wandlungen eines biblischen Frauenbildes . Menden, Germany, 1985.

Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion . Chicago, 1996.

Steinberg, Leo. Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper . New York, 2001.

Tillich, Paul. On Art and Architecture. Edited by Jane Dillenberger and John Dillenberger. New York, 1987.

Verdon, Timothy, and John Dally, eds. Monasticism and the Arts . Syracuse, N.Y., 1984.

Von Simson, Otto. The Gothic Cathedral . London, 1956.

Warner, Marina. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary . New York, 1976.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic . Grand Rapids , Mich., 1980.

Islamic Art and Religion

Blair, Sheila S., and Jonathan M. Bloom. The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250 – 1800 . New Haven, Conn., 1995.

Blair, Sheila S., and Jonathan M. Bloom. Islamic Arts. London, 1997.

Burckhardt, Titus, and Roland Michaud. Art of Islam: Language and Meaning . London, 1976.

Grabar, Oleg. The Formation of Islamic Art . New Haven, Conn., 1973.

Grabar, Oleg. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem . Princeton, N.J., 1996.

Rice, David Talbott. Islamic Art. New York, 1965.

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (2005)

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Art and Religion

Max stirner.

Hegel treats of art before religion. This order is fitting, even under a merely historical perspective. Now, as soon as man suspects that he has another side of himself (Jenseits) within himself, and that he is not enough in his mere natural state, then he is driven on to divide himself into that which he actually is, and that which he should become. Just as the youth is the future of the boy, and the mature man the future of the innocent child, so that othersider (Jenseitiger) is the future man who must be expected on the other side of this present reality. Upon the awakening of that suspicion, man strives after and longs for the second other man of the future, and will not rest until he sees himself before the shape of this man from the other side. This shape fluctuates back and forth within him for a long time; he only feels it as a light in the innermost darkness of himself that would elevate itself, but as yet has no certain contour or fixed form. For a long time, along with other groping and dumb others in that darkness, the artistic genius seeks to express this presentiment. What no other succeeds in doing, he does, he presents the longing, the sought after form, and in finding its shape so creates the — Ideal. For what is then the perfect man, man’s proper character, from which all that is seen is but mere appearance if it be not the Ideal Man, the Human Ideal? The artist alone has finally discovered the right word, the right picture, the right expression of that being which all seek. He presents that presentiment — it is the Ideal. ‘Yes! that is it! that is the perfect shape, the appearance that we have longed for, the Good News — the Gospel. The one we sent forth so long ago with the question whose answer would satisfy the thirst of our spirit has returned!’ So hail the people that creation of genius, and then fall down — in adoration.

Yes, adoring! The hot press of men would rather be doubled than alone, being dissatisfied with themselves when in their natural isolation. They seek out a spiritual man for their second self. This crowd is satisfied with the work of the genius, and their disunion is complete. For the first time man breathes easy, for his inward confusions are resolved, and the disturbing suspicion is now cast forth as a perceptible form. This Other (Gegenüber) is he himself and yet it is not he: it is his otherside to which all thoughts and feelings flow but without actually reaching it, for it is his otherside, encapsulated and inseparably conjoined with his present actuality. It is the inward God, but it is set without; and that is something he cannot grasp cannot comprehend. His arms reach outward, but the Other is never reached; for would he reach it how could the ‘Other’ remain? Where would this disunion with all of its pains and pleasures be? Where would be — and we can speak it outright, for this disunion is called by another name — religion?

Art creates disunion, in that it sets the Ideal over and against man. But this view, which has so long endured, is called religion, and it will only endure until a single demanding eye again draws that Ideal within and devours it. Accordingly, because it is a viewpoint, it requires another, an Object. Hence, man relates himself religiously to the Ideal cast forth by artistic creation, to his second, outwardly expressed Ego as to an Object. Here lie all the sufferings and struggles of the centuries, for it is fearful to be outside of oneself , having yourself as an Object, without being able to unite with it, and as an Object set over and against oneself able to annihilate itself and so oneself. [1] The religious world lives in the joys and sorrows which it experiences from the Object, and it lives in the separation of itself. Its spiritual being is not of reason, but rather of understanding. Religion is a thing of understanding (Verstandes-Sache)! [2] The Object is so firm that no pious soul can fully win it over to itself, but must rather be cast down by it, so fragile is its spirit when set against the Object of the understanding. ‘Cold understanding!’ — know ye not that ‘cold’ understanding? — Know ye not that nothing is so ardently hot, so heroically determined as understanding? ‘Censeo, Carthaginem esse delendam’ spoke the understanding of Cato, and he remained sane thereby. [3] The earth moves about the sun spoke the understanding to Galileo even while the weak old man knelt adjuring the truth — and as he rose up again he said ‘and yet it moves about the sun’. No force is great enough to make us overthrow thought, that two times two is four, and so the eternal word of understanding remains this’ Here I stand, I can do naught else!’ [4] The basis for such understanding is unshakable, for its object (two times two is four, etc.) does not allow itself to be shaken. Does religion have such understanding? Certainly, for it also has an unshakable Object to which it is fortified: the artist has created it for you and only the artist can regain it for you.

Religion itself is without genius. There is no religious genius, and no one would be permitted to distinguish between the talented and the untalented in religion. For religion, everyone has the same capacity, good enough for the understanding of the triangle and the Pythagorean theory as well. Of course, one does not confuse religion and theology, for not everyone has the same capacity here, just as with higher mathematics and astronomy, for these things require a particular level of — calculation.

Only the founder of a religion is inspired, but he is also the creator of Ideals, through whose creation any further genius will be impossible. Where the spirit is bound to an Object, its movement will henceforth be fully determined in respect to that Object. Were a definite doubt over the existence of God, over this transcendent object to emerge for the religious person, that person would stop being religious, somewhat as a believer in ghosts would no longer said to be a believer once he definitely doubted their existence. The religious person concerns himself only about the ‘Proofs for God’s Existence’ because he, as bound fast within the circle of belief, inwardly reserves the free movement of the understanding and calculation. Here, I say, the spirit is dependent upon an object, seeks to explain it, to explore it, to feel it, to love it, and so forth ... because it is not free, and since freedom is the condition of genius, therefore the religious spirit is not inspired. Inspired piety is as great an inanity as inspired linen-weaving. Religion is always accessible to the impotent, and every uncreative dolt can and will always have religion, for uncreativeness does not impede his life of dependency.

‘But is not love the proper essence of religion, and is not that totally a matter of feeling and not of understanding?’ [5] But if it is a matter of the heart, must it be less a matter of the understanding? If it takes up my whole heart, then it is a concern of my heart — but that does not preclude it engaging my whole understanding as well, and that in itself is nothing particularly good, since hate and envy can also be concerns of the heart. Love is, in fact, only a thing of the understanding (Verstandes-Sache) , but otherwise, it can retain unblemished its title as a thing of the heart. Love, in any case, is not a concern of reason (Sache der Vernunft) , for in the Kingdom of Reason there is even less love than that which will be celebrated, according to Christ, in the Kingdom of Heaven. Of course it is permitted to speak of a love that ‘passes understanding’, but it is either so far beyond understanding as to be worthless — as that often called love by those enamoured by an attractive face — or it can appear in the future, a love that is presently beyond the expression of understanding, but yet to have expression. Childish love, without consciousness, is only understandable in itself , and taken alone is nothing without the given concerns of consciousness, going only so far as the maturation and growth of the child’s understanding. As long as the child gives no sign of understanding, it shows — as anyone can learn from experience — no love. Its love begins in fear — or, if one wishes to say, in respect — of that Object which first separates itself from the general chaos that contains all, including men, and which then focuses itself upon it more than another. The child loves because it is drawn by a presence, or thing, and so a person, into its boundary of power or its magical circle. It clearly understands how the being of its mother is distinguished from another being even if it yet knows not how to speak of this understanding . No child loves before any understanding ; and its most devoted love is nothing but that innermost understanding. Whoever has sensibly observed the love of a child will find this principle confirmed. But not only does the love of a child rise and sink with the understanding of its ‘Object (Gegenstandes) ’ (as so often the loved one is significantly, but crudely, named) but rather every love. If a misunderstanding enters, so love more or less exists while it lasts, and one even uses the word ‘misunderstanding’ to exactly signify the discord which disturbs love. Love is gone and irretrievably lost whenever one has been totally mistaken about another: the misunderstanding is then complete, and the love extinguished.

The beloved thing is an indispensable Object, an ‘Other (Gegenstand) ’. It is this way with the understanding, that one and only proper spiritual act of religion, because understanding is only thought over and about an object , only meditation and devotion, and not free, undirected (objectlose) ‘reasonable’ thinking, which religion would rather consider and so condemn as ‘philosophical chimeras’. Since to the understanding an object is necessary, it will always cease its activity whenever it finds more to know. Its concern with a case expires with its activity upon the case, and for it to willingly dedicate itself and its powers to anything, that thing must be a mystery for it. This holds equally for the beloved as the lover. A marriage is only assured of a steady love when the couple discover themselves anew each day, and when each recognizes in the other an inexhaustible spring of life, that is, a mystery, unfathomed and incomprehensible. If they find nothing new in one another, so love dissolves inexorably into boredom and indifference. The activity of understanding, when unable to be exercised upon a mystery because its darkness has been dispelled, turns away from the completely understood and now insipid other. Who wishes to be loved must take care, like the clever woman, not to offer all charms at once. With something new every morning the love might endure centuries! The understanding is concerned with real mysteries which it develops into affairs of the heart: the real person is involved with matters of understanding, and so these are transformed into concerns of the heart.

Now as art has created the Ideal for man, and with this gives man’s understanding an object to wrestle with, a wrestling match which will, in the course of time, give worth to those empty objects of the understanding, so is art the creator of religion, and in a philosophical system — such as Hegel’s — it should not be placed after religion. Not only have the poets Homer and Hesiod ‘made the gods of the Greeks’, but others, as artists, have established religions, although one hesitates to apply the superficial name ‘Artist’ to them. Art is the beginning, the Alpha of religion, but it is also its end, its Omega . Even more — it is its companion. Without art and the idealistically creative artist religion would not exist, but when the artist takes back his art unto himself, so religion vanishes. However, in this return it is also preserved, for it is regenerated. Whenever art strides forth in its full energy, it creates a religion and stands at its source. On the other hand, philosophy is never the creator of a religion, for it never produces a shape that might serve as an Object of the understanding, and its insensible ideas do not lend themselves to being the revered objects of cultic worship. Art, other than philosophy, is compelled to draw forth from its seclusion within the concealing darkness of the subject the proper and best form of the spirit, the most completely idealized expression of the spirit itself, and to develop it and to release it as an Objec t. At that,’man stands opposite to this Object, this creation of his spirit, to the God, and even the artist falls before it on his knees. In this engagement and involvement with the Object, religion pursues a course opposite of art. In art, the world of the artist is set before one’s eyes as an Object, a world which the artist has brought forth and concentrated from the full power and richness of his own inwardness, a world which will satisfy every real need and longing. For its part, religion strives to recover this world once again for man’s inwardness, to draw it back to its source, to make it again subjective . Religion endeavors to reconcile the Ideal, or God, with man, the subject, and to strip God of his hard Objectivity. God is to become inward — ‘Not I, but Christ lives in me.’ Man, sundered from the Ideal, strives to win God and God’s Grace, and to finally transform God into his own being (Gott ganz zu seinem Ich zu machen) , and God, separated from man, would only win him for the Kingdom of Heaven. Both sides seek and so complement each other. However, they will never find one another, and will never become united, for if they ever would then religion itself would vanish, for religion only exists in this separation. Accordingly, the believer hopes for nothing more than that he will someday have a ‘face-to-face view ’.

But still, art also accompanies religion, for the inwardness of man is expanded by its struggle with the Object, and in the genius of the artist it breaks forth again into a new expression, and the Object becomes yet further enhanced and illuminated. Thankfully, hardly a generation has been passed without such enlightenment by art. But, at the last, art will stand at the close of religion. Serene and confident, art will claim its own once again, and by so doing will rob the Object of its objectivity, its ‘other-sidedness’, and free it from its long religious imprisonment. Here, art no longer will enrich its Object, but totally destroy it. In reclaiming its creature, art rediscovers itself and renews its creative powers as well. It appears, at the decline of religion, as a trifling with the full seriousness of the old belief, a seriousness of content which religion has now lost, and which must be returned to the joyful poet. Hence, religion is presented as a ridiculous comedy . [6] Now, however, terrible this comedic destruction might be, it will nevertheless restore to actuality that which it thinks but to destroy. And so, we do not elect to condemn its horror!

Art creates a new Ideal, a new Object and a new religion. It never goes beyond the making of religion. Raphael’s portrayal of Christ casts him in such a light that he could be the basis of a new religion — a religion of the biblical Christ set apart from all human affairs. From that first moment when the tireless understanding begins to pursue its long course of reflection upon a new Object, it steadily deepens in its thoughts until it finally turns upon itself in total inwardness. With devoted love, it sinks into itself and attends to its own revelations and inspirations. But yet this religious understanding is so ardently in love with its own Object that it must have a burning hatred for all else — religious hatred is inseparable from religious love. Who does not believe in the Object, he is a heretic, and who is not truly godly, he tolerates heresy. Who will deny that Philip II of Spain is infinitely more godly than Joseph II of Germany, and that Hengstenberg [7] is truly godly, whereas Hegel [8] is quite not? In our times, the amount of hate has diminished to the extent that the love of God has weakened. A human love has infiltrated, which is not of godly piety but rather of social morality. It is more ‘zealous’ for the good of man than for the good of God. Truly, the tolerant Friedrich the Great cannot serve as a paragon of godliness , but can indeed well serve as a pattern for manliness , for humanity. Whosoever serves a God must serve him completely. It is, for example, a perverted and unreasonable demand of the Christian to have him lay no fetters upon the Jew — for even Christ, with the mildest heart, could do naught else, for otherwise he would have been indifferent to his religion, or would have been proceeding thoughtlessly. If the Christian were to reflect understandingly upon the ordinances of his religion, he would exclude the Jew from Christian rights, or, what is the same, from the rights of a Christian — and, above all, from the things of the State. This is so, for religion is for anyone other than a mere tepid hanger — on a relationship of disunion .

And so, this is the standing of art to religion. Art creates the Ideal and belongs at the beginning of religion; religion has in the Ideal a mystery, and would, by holding fast to the Object and making it dependent upon itself unite with it in inward godliness. But when the mystery is cleared up, and the otherness and strangeness removed, and established religion is destroyed, then comedy has its task to fulfill. Comedy, in openly displaying the emptiness, or better, the deflation of the Object, frees men from the old belief, and so their dependency upon this exhausted being. Comedy, as befitting its essence, probes into every holy area, even into Holy Matrimony, for this itself is no longer — in the actual marriage — Holy. It is rather an emptied form, to which man should no longer hold. [9] But even comedy, as all the arts, precedes religion, for it only makes room for the new religion, to that which are will form again.

Art makes the Object, and religion lives only in its many ties to that Object, but philosophy very clearly sets itself apart from both. It neither stands enmeshed with an Object, as religion, nor makes one, as art, but rather places its pulverizing hand upon all the business of making Objects as well as the whole of objectivity itself, and so breathes the air of freedom . Reason, the spirit of philosophy, concerns itself only with itself, and troubles itself over no Object. God, to the philosopher, is as neutral as a stone — the philosopher is a dedicated atheist. If he busies himself with God, there is no reverence here, only rejection, for he seeks only that reason which has concealed itself in every form, and that only in the light of reason . Reason only seeks itself, only troubles itself about itself, loves only itself — or rather, since it is not even an Object to itself — does not love itself but simply is with itself. And so, with a correct instinct, Neander [10] has proclaimed the destruction of the ‘God of the philosophers.’

But as it lies outside of our theme, we have not undertaken to speak any further of philosophy as such.

[1] A clearly similar conception is found in Bruno Bauer’s The Trumpet of the Last Judgement over Hegel the Atheist and Anti-Christ . Stirner had reviewed this text for Gutzkow’s Telegraph für Deutschland in January of 1842.)

[2] (Stirner’s treatment of both understanding (Verstand) and reason (Vernunft) follows that as given by Hegel.)

[3] (In full, ‘Ideoque, Censeo ego Carthaginem esse delendam (Therefore, I vote Carthage to be destroyed).’ Cato usually concluded any of his addresses to the Roman senate with this harsh statement. The repetition of this uncompromising sentence was highly irritating to the majority of Senators.)

[4] (Luther’s statement to the Diet at Worms in 1521. Stirner repeats it in The Ego and His Own (p. 61), and characterizes it as ‘the fundamental maxim of all the possessed’.)

[5] (An obvious reference to the sentimental religiosity of dependency held by Hegel’s rival Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). Stirner had attended his lecture series at the University of Berlin in the Spring of 1827.)

[6] (Cf. Hegel’s similar treatment of Comedy which unmasks ‘the pretentious claims of the universal abstract nature’, in Phenomenology of Mind , trans. J. B. Baille (London, 1964), pp. 745ff )

[7] (Ernst W. Hengstenberg (1802–72), a determined and influential Lutheran pietist critic of Hegel and the Young Hegelians.)

[8] (Bauer’s Posaune des jüngsten Gerichts had satisfied both the Berlin pietists and the Young Hegelians that Hegel was a covert atheist.)

[9] (This was written a year and a half before Stirner’s own purposely irreverent and somewhat comical second marriage. See John Henry Mackay’s Max Stirner: sein Leben und sein Werk (Berlin, 1910), p. 124ff.)

[10] (Daniel A. Neander (1786–1850), Professor of Theology at the University of Berlin. He was a celebrated Church Historian. Stirner had attended his lectures.)

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Art and Religion Essay Examples and Topics

Art and religion: understanding social conflicts through art and songs.

Art is a social metaphor. It has been deployed, since ages, as a tool to rethink on all arenas of life like gender, caste, economics, politics, religion, war, language, culture and one’s sense of self. It establishes an analogy of everyday life or reflects a…

Islam and Christianity: Art that Defines Religion

Islam and Christianity are two religions that both offer a unique view of their respective religions, history, and cultural similarities and differences by the manner in which the artists depicted their respective subjects. The two artworks, the Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy (Byzantine) and…

The Connection Between Art and Spirituality

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” – Pablo Picasso Spirituality has always held a place in our human experience, thus a place in art. Right from the dawn of humanity we have produced images of Gods, visions of the afterlife,…

The Relationship Between Music and Religion

Music and pop culture are interchangeable. Most people listen to music in some, shape or form in their everyday life. A major population of the world is deeply connected to music emotionally. Hip-hop emerged in the late 70s by the African-Americans’ as a way to…

The Relationship Between Religion & Society

The relationship between religion and society Introduction As far back as history can document, religious belief has been one of the most prevalent and inescapable features of human society. Due to the omnipresence of religion across the entire world, it naturally plays a role in…

Chartres Cathedral in France

The Chartres cathedral is in France about an hour train ride from Paris, It’s easy to think about this church a day trip from Paris. About back in the 11th ,12th, 13th centuries, the town of charters was a major destination unto itself. But it’s…

Portrayal of Pope Leo X on Painting of Raffaelo Sanzio

The chosen work of art that was recreated is known as Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi by Raffaelo Sanzio aka Raphael. The oil paint on wood was created in 1518-1519. Its intended location is unknown although it was…

Politics and Religion in Architecture: West Vs East

In the current context of living in this world as an architect, there is an importance on the fact that globalization has enabled designers to share and exchange ideas, but there is also a significance to the higher value of a western narrative as compared…

The Works of Modernism and Religion

Modernism is defined as a philosophical movement that arose from a host of cultural changes in western culture between the 19th and 20th century. Standards were changing, and art and literature had to adapt to the changing times. Modernism gave us multiple movements where art…

Aspects of Confucianism as One of the Mains Religions

Let’s Not Paint it Black Imagine a bright, meandering river cutting through a dense, luscious growth of trees, bushes, and plants of the like. While I closed my eyes and transported myself to this beautiful place, the only colors I see are a majestic blue…

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Religion Expressed Through Art Essays

Religion through art form provides us with a vision into a realm of heavenly beauty. Religion provides us with a sense of spirit fulfilment. It is only through worship and devotion that we feel connected to God. The practice of devotion and worship takes place in churches and cathedrals. It is these places that help us gain knowledge and a deeper more spiritual meaning of God. The churches and cathedrals are the very foundation of religious practice and devotion to God in my opinion. They are known as temples, ceremonial places, and are places of worship to God. However it is the claim that ‘art museums in the modern period fulfil some of the same functions as cathedrals and churches have done in the past’, which challenges contemporary …show more content…

The next thing you must know is the functions that art museums have do take on the role that the churches and cathedrals once had. 'Museums enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artifacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society.' Art museums, in reference to this definition of museums, specifically ‘make accessible’ a body of work to people around the world. It in essence offers a ‘new’ stage in which artists can both appreciate and challenge religion. Art museums of the modern period have the same aesthetic as cathedrals or churches of the past. ‘The very architecture of museums suggest their character as secular rituals. It was fitting that the temple façade was for two hundred years the most popular signifier for the public art museum .’ It is not just that they give on the impression of temples Carol Duncan suggests, but rather that they function and work like temples, shrines and cathedrals of the past. Other

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To What Extent Do Audiences Need Art Galleries to View Their Works

Art galleries are essential to the art world, however, is not the only source for audiences to view art. To begin with, art and artwork is defined as the application of human skill, creativity and imagination. Taking this into consideration, individuals need to examine the nature and purpose of art galleries as a facility to collaborate, organize and display a collection of artworks. As art however, is any expression of human creativity, its presence is not bound to art galleries and is evidently present in the world around us be it in photographs, the internet or even in graffiti.

The Metropolitan Museum Of Art Essay

Positioned alongside Central Park in the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museum, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a certain set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within the museum. Brent Plate in Religion, Art, and Visual Culture argues that “objects obtain different meanings in different locations and historical settings.”An object placed on display behind a glass case inside a museum would hold a vastly different meaning if it was put on sale by a street vendor, like the ones who set up their tables in close proximity to the Met. The different meanings that objects are able to obtain is attributed to the relationships that are established between the object itself and the environment that surrounds it. These relationships often involve the kind of audience that a museum attracts, where the work is exhibited, and how the exhibits within a museum is planned out. Museums subsequently have the ability to control how these relationships are established which influences the way a viewer is able to construct meaning. When a visitor observes an object on display at the Met, they instinctively construct a certain set of

Dallas Museum Research Paper

The first room of the museum pulled in the audience with artwork from the 20th century. Although it may seem like artwork put together at the last minute, if you look closer, you will see something entirely different. Each piece had so much detail and unique qualities, such as style and art form, that you haven't see in many other museums before. It is important to appreciate the erratic design and character of each piece of art, but after seeing the entire museum, it is easy see the monumental difference between art now, and the art of our past. Art of the past showed a lot more

Lane County Historical Museum

I hope to see museums make more concerted efforts to educate the public. Too many exhibits are of the “passive, didactic looking” than like the engaging Object Stories program (Dartt, Murawski). Exhibits should seek to tell untold narratives, and programs should be places of communication and cross-cultural encounters. For too long, difficult confrontations have been avoided, both inside the museum, and by dominant communities

A Christian Art Analysis

As I write this post, a recent memory springs up in my mind. Earlier this year, my dad had an art show at the Steffen Thomas Museum focused on Christian Art. One afternoon, Chris and I decided to go over there so I could look at his show. I am always amazed at my dad's art and this was no exception. As we went from painting to painting, I could not imagine the countless hours he spent on each one of these paintings.

African American Tourism

In the Robyn Autry article, it mainly focuses on the national conflict of museums mainly focusing towards African American. The author travel to 15 museums around the United States that focuses towards African American. She mainly talks about how the African American were facing numerous hardships in the U.S and how the museum represents those issues to the general public. She believes the way to tell the hardship of African Americans is by exhibiting through a museum. When traveling through these museums she focused towards “centered on three traumatic episodes: capture and displacement from Africa, enslavement, and racial segregation” (Autry 64). The author of the articles wants to show that over time that museums meanings has changed over

Byzantine And Christian Museum

This past spring, I had the opportunity to spend the semester in Athens where I was able to visit many museums. One particular visit late in the semester still stands out as particularly moving. I was following my classmates as we made our way through the Byzantine and Christian Museum when we entered one room and one by one everyone’s gaze was drawn upward until the entire class was staring open-mouthed and with craned necks at a 13th century Byzantine dome. We were all left speechless at seeing the dome above us, as if it were still a part of a church. In fact, the entire room was designed in the typical manner of mirror the layout of the church they had originally come from. That skeleton of a Byzantine church resonated with the class, and

Analysis Of Steven Lubar´s Inside The Lost Museum

In Steven Lubar’s book, Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present, the recurring idea that museums are “more than the sum of their parts” plays a critical role in the overall argument (329). Lubar notes many aspects that make up a museum, the collection, for example is an essential part of any museum, but the community, as well as the experiences of the patrons create a lasting museum experience. Additionally, Lubar aptly utilizes real-world examples, contemporary and historical, highlighting the work of individuals in museums and establishing a connection between past and current events. Central to this narrative is the example of the lost Jenks Museum. Lubar uses this museum to argue that museums of the past can educate museum goers

Bellevue Art Museum

To me, museums serve as trains that deliver goods that are arts to people. Art can be perceived as a mean to entertains our life, reflects customs and communicates thoughts, ideas and emotions and it’s museums job that bring them closer to people. There is a huge difference when it came to seeing the artwork in person and seeing the artwork from a book or website and magazine. You will never be able to feel a piece properly when you see it in the textbook, you will never understand how the color was put together and what is the meaning behinds it, you won’t see how the lines and curves are blend together to make the painting look perfect and how strong that art can affect you in emotion. Many people nowadays don’t even bother watching the art themselves, they rather listening to what critics have to say about the works in their own perspective and can’t even make a decision themselves whether or not they should see the arts. “An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance”, in my opinion, I think we will never know what is good until we see it

Personal Narrative: The Twin Hickory Public Museum

While some may view museums as homes of the dusty, decrypt, and decaying, I think back fondly to the memories I've made in them. When I was four and living in a small apartment in Shaker Heights, Ohio, my father would take me to the Cleveland Museum of Rock and Roll on the weekends when he wasn’t busy working on his MBA at Case Western Reserve University. Every time we visited, I would tell my father that I would grow up to be just like Elvis, to which he would laugh and scoff affectionately. When we moved to Glen Allen, Virginia when I was six, we would occasionally drive up to Washington, D.C. to the Smithsonian Museums. On some Saturdays, we would walk for hours through the halls of art I didn't understand (and still don’t really understand) at the Museum of American Art. On other Saturdays, we would go to the Library of Congress, where I would press my forehead against the glass of the observation deck—much to the dismay of security guards. But perhaps the most significant "museum" I've been in is just a short three-minute drive or seven-minute walk from my suburban home: the Twin Hickory Public Library.

Righting America At The Creation Museum Summary

The authors state that the museum is part of the US right wing religious (and political) mainstream and is used as a weapon in the so-called culture war. Righting America tries to answer the following questions: What exactly is the message of the museum and how is it conveyed? How are the museum-goers constituted as Christians – and as Americans? And what are the implications for American politics and religions? To answer those questions thoroughly, the authors visited the museum on multiple occasions and gathered plenty of material. Their approach was to look at it as a museum-like institution, at its treatment of the Bible and its representation of science. It is generally understood that when a site refers to itself as a ‘museum’, several criteria must be met. The authors identify several aspects, among others, that it should be a place of education and thus gain a protective status. They also provide the reader with a brief insight into the history and exhibition methods of museums in general and in doing so reveal the clever techniques employed by Ken Ham and AiG who established a site that seems to be built on knowledge and facts but in truth is a subjective outlet of Evangelical beliefs. The founders of the Creation Museum use the implicit knowledge behind the term ‘museum’ (a place of insight and knowledge) for

Analysis Of The Temple Of Hera

Religion was a huge motivator for both of these periods, and held deep emotional connections for many artists. I find this to be somewhat relatable, since I also need emotional attachment as a motivator to complete my artwork sometimes. These designs resemble those of today in the amount of effort and forethought put into planning and building them, however, the complexity of these older religious structures lies in the artistic and visual nature of the building, rather than the efficiency-related accomodations one would observe today. This demonstrates the metamorphosis of human priorities over the centuries. Both of the images to be discussed (Temple of Hera II and Palatine Chapel) speak to the

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Essay

  • 7 Works Cited

Visit any major museum of art, at any given time, and one could find an abundance of monumental names listed on tiny plaques hanging next to even more recognizable works of art. The excitement felt by any art enthusiast when walking into these buildings of time and creation, is undeniable and especially unique. Could it be the atmosphere of the building, the presence of artwork, the people, possibly the grandeur of the space, or perhaps, could it be the spirit of the artists themselves, peering through the work they created?

The Role Of Museums On Community Engagement

The information contained in museums is meant to represent changing and new ideas that are present within a given society. Whether museums contain historic artifacts, modern art, or other pieces, they are meant to represent people living in the past, present, and sometimes future. As such, they also act as educational modalities to help students and adults understand more about the world around them. An important component of museums in many instances is the extent to which they are able to engage their community, and the extent to which the community is able to contribute to the success of the museums. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, community is defined as “a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society” and “a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests” (“Community”). These institutions work to understand the needs, assets, and concerns of communities. Therefore, museums are tied into the cultures of the neighborhoods and regions that contain them, and this contributes to the unique nature of each individual organizations.

Why Are Museums Important? Essay

The Cambridge Dictionary Online defined museums as “places of study, buildings where objects of historical, scientific or artistic interest are kept, preserved and exhibited”. To The Museums Association, a museum is “an institution which collects documents, preserves, exhibits and interprets material evidence and associated information for the public benefit”. Since 1998, this definition has changed. Museums now enable the public to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society. Mike Wallace (1996) categorised museums into four distinct types, namely National Museums that hold collection of

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Essay Samples on Art and Religion

Role of cultural and religious pluralism.

Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their own unique cultural identities. Migration is a key process that makes significant contribution to the growth of urbanism. Often immigrants belonging to particular region, language, religion ,tribe etc tend to...

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The Portrayal of the Culture of Death and Afterlife in Art

Throughout history, different cultures dealt with the concept of death and afterlife according to their beliefs, and developed different perspectives about what happens after the body dies. These ideas were often reflected in their art, literature, and their lifestyle as well. Most cultures produce art...

Tesla Company: Profiling and Contribution to the Auto Industry

Tesla Crystal Mew Berkeley College Tesla is an automotive company that has a specialization in electric cars. They are based in Paolo, California and were founded in 2003 by a group of engineers including Elon Musk that had a goal to prove that electric cars...

The Artistic Value of the Holidays Celebrating Death

For many years art has existed and has been a way of uniquely expressing ourselves. It has followed us everywhere in the world and our daily lives, yet it can be ignored. When we do pay attention to art, we can be inspired and influenced...

History of the Beggars Opera and John Gay's Ballad Operas

First shown on 29th January 1728, The Beggar’s Opera was a revolution for its time. Today we are spoilt by a plethora of witty, satirical shows written in English shown throughout the West End and all over the world. However, in the early 18th century,...

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Performance Hansel and Gretel in Fargo-Moorhead Opera

For my fourth journal I chose to attend the Fargo-Moorhead Opera. The drive from Grand Forks was definitely worth it for this one. The opera took place on Sunday, October 27th at 2 PM, in Reineke Concert Hall located on the campus of North Dakota...

Outlining Baptism and Judgement in Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Baptism: The Hunchback of Notre Dame Standing on her pyre, awaiting her death, Esmeralda understands the true meaning of baptism and judgment. She encounters and confronts the judgment of others by making a statement in those last moments that she will not lose hope. Through...

The Place of Symbolism And Iconography In Religious Faith

Much to our understanding, the Synod’s and Iconoclasts believed that Christ is uniformly both God and man, having two natures integrated in perfect harmony. Iconic artworks were typified, usually depicting the separation of God and man, and, according to the Synod’s and Iconoclasts, one that...

Whats The Deal With Religion

As we explore the differences and similarities of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” and “Young Goodman Brown,” our focus will remain on how the theme of religion is portrayed throughout the stories. Religion is defined as “shared collections of transcendental beliefs that have...

  • A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
  • Young Goodman Brown

Best topics on Art and Religion

1. Role of Cultural and Religious Pluralism

2. The Portrayal of the Culture of Death and Afterlife in Art

3. Tesla Company: Profiling and Contribution to the Auto Industry

4. The Artistic Value of the Holidays Celebrating Death

5. History of the Beggars Opera and John Gay’s Ballad Operas

6. Performance Hansel and Gretel in Fargo-Moorhead Opera

7. Outlining Baptism and Judgement in Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame

8. The Place of Symbolism And Iconography In Religious Faith

9. Whats The Deal With Religion

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Home / Essay Samples / Art / Art and Religion

Art and Religion Essay Examples

How different cultures and religions judge the value of an artist.

Throughout history, artists have been both revered and ridiculed. The ancient Greek’s and those who practice Christianity have expressed varying beliefs concerning artists. The Greek’s held fundamentally oppositional views, while the bible expresses a significant disagreement to those views. It is important to reflect on...

My Visit to Buddhist Site

I went to Buddhist function at the midtown YWCA right off Lake Street train station by South high school. The date I went there was on Sunday September 11, 2016 from 10am- 12:30pm. I work at the YWCA as a front desk so once every...

The Socio-cultural and Political Impact of Christianity in the Town of Pandacan, Manila

During the Pre-Hispanic days, Pandacan was part of an ancient Malayan kingdom known as Namayan, which was later called by the Spaniards as Sta. Ana de Sapa of the district of Sta. Ana. The kingdom’s jurisdiction includes what we would know today as Dilao (Paco),...

Evaluation of the Relevance of Religion Today by Exploring the Mediums of Art and Photography

For many years, religion has always been a major topic of discussion, whether that be within modern culture, or from its humble beginnings as early as second-century art. Within my essay, I intend to discover more about religion and the relevance it has in today's...

Similarities and Differences Between Futurism and Fascism

Fascism and Futurism both played key roles in the historical development of Italy. Futurism derived its ideals from an artistic point of view and wanted individuals to be more expressive and meaningful in their clothing choices. Being bold, loud, and out-of-the-box is what Futurism wanted...

Comparison of Futurism and Neo-plasticism Art Movements

What comes up to your mind when you hear the word Avant-Garde? Avant-garde is basically a French term, meaning in English modern art which started in the beginning of 1850s. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, it seemed with reference to art in France...

The Artists Contributing to the Formation of the Italian Futurism

Futurism originated in Italy during the 20th century and was considered to be the turning point in Italian art. This style can also be depicted as a Social movement and was launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Futurism is considered to be an...

African Art as the Epitome of Traditional Art

Traditional art can best be defined as art that is part of a culture of a group of people. This type of art is reflective of a group’s ethnic heritage, cultural mores, language, religion, occupation, or geographic region (National Endowment for the Arts). There are...

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