Art And Religion

1. Art & different schools of thought
2. Art & aesthetics
3. Art, religion and morality
4. Art & religion – closely connected
5. Religion, art & human nature
6. Religion, art & unity
7. Pre-history & their inter connection
8. Difference between a craftsman & artist
9. Conclusion

Towards the close of the 19th century, a school of thought arose who said that art had nothing to do with life, whether moral or social, but that I existed for its own sake.

I has no; and it need not have any bearing on life. They asserted that the purpose of art is to achieve perfection in the formal expression of life and nature. The en of art, according to this history, s not to preach but to give aesthetic pleasure. It does not have any social purpose. The artists who believe in ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ put the manner, the technique before everything else. To them, the art has no ties, no duties, and no assignment in the scheme of life, except to exist as the symbol of beauty. Consequently, this school of thought tries to find what stand eternally beautiful in the sheer perfection of form, the most adorable of all created things, the cherished of the world.

But there is another school of thought who attaches great importance to moral and religious values in art. Mathew Arnold, the renowned poet and critic of the Victorian age, interprets literature in terms of moral and religious values. He maintains that without poetry, our science will appear incomplete. Most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. The greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful applications of ideas of life. Hudson remarks that all great literature should be essentially based upon ethical views. There should be no negation, no violation to the religious ideas in literature as such an attempt would destroy all what is good and virtuous in man. He writes, ‘The ethics must be wrought into the texture of the story, the philosophy must be held in isolation, the novelist must never for a moment be lost in propagandist of preacher.’

‘Art’ says Herbert Rad, ‘is most simply usually deemed as an attempt to create pleasing forms. Such forms satisfy our sense of beauty and the sense of beauty is satisfied when we are able to appreciate a unity or harmony of format relations among our sense- perceptions.’ An artist appeals to persons directly as is done by Music most effectively.

A general notion has been present in the minds of people that art is always beautiful. A layman perhaps will hesitate even to differentiate Art from beauty, because in his mind there exist notion of the necessary beauty. Goethe, says, ‘Art id formative long before it is beautiful. ‘For man has in him a formative nature which displays itself in activity as soon as his existence is secure… And so the savage remodels with bizarre traits, horrible forms and course colours his father and his own body. Through this imagery consists of the most captious forms, yet without proportions of shape, its part will agree together , for , a single feeling has created them into a characteristics whole, And this characteristics art is the only true Art. Here comes the unity- the characteristics of A rt. Art has unity and harmony give value and beauty to a piece of Art.

Beauty may be defined as that which gives pleasure and thus people are driven into admitting that- all physical sensations can be regarded as art. Through this seems a ludicrous idea but it is correct and so to avoid definition in which the ‘beauty’ comes nearer to Art is thought to be related to it. Another theory of Art has been propounded by Benedetti Croce. According to this theory, art is better defined when simply define as imitation. This theory has been proved to be much more correct and clear more than other ones.

Now we come to Religion. Art is the idealization of Nature Similarly, Religion may as idealization of Nature Religion and Art, in this way, are closely connected.

Man has sense of the sacred, and religion fans under the category of the sacred. The sacred is quite a vague term. It may be defined as that which is deemed to have an indefinite worth and value or to involve an unconditional obligation. The savage may treat as of infinite worth this fetish; he may give his life rather than break a ritual law which in itself has no rational significance. Here he projects his sense of the scared upon that which is intrinsically worthless, but his prostration before his crude idols is no less than Plato’s Relato’s reverence, for the idea of the good is an illustration of man’s innate sense of the sacred. Man’s spiritual advanced can be measured by the worth of the object of his worship to that which is ready of infinite worth of which really involves an absolute obligation.

Religion offers an answer to the insistent questions posed to every human being by human life itself. Hence it belongs to the rational part of man’s nature. But I is not solely or even primarily a matter of the intellect. It is response to environment. The history of Religion is not so much intellectual as it is passionate. ‘Most of which we call Religion” says Frazer in his ‘Golden Bough’, “is a confuse jumble of ideas and practices, almost infinitely various, almost equally irrational an often repellent or obscene.’ He is certainly correct as there are many travel religion which are so horrible and so obscene.

But, anyhow, since human nature is everywhere fundamentally the same, it is likely that if we fully understand ourselves, we should be in a position to understand all religions to understand all religions. This gives a uniform and universal character to religion. All men share a common human; nature; sympathy, imagination and self-knowledge can make us intelligible to another. Religion, no doubt, differ in proportion and emphasis, yet they are rooted in a common nature.

Religion is, ultimately, not a matter temperament or even speculation, but of response of that super- passable reality of which all men, dimly or clearly are aware; it is not given to all man to see with equal clarity man’s response may be right or worn, perfect or imperfect, but because his supernatural environment – better called God – is one, there is unity in religion amidst all the diversities of the various religions.

Religion, has the quality of unity which is also possessed by Art. Whistler said that he mixed his paints with his brain; in Germany they say that a man paints with his blood; theses phrases show simply that the elements of a picture have a coherence by means of the personality which dominates them, and moulds them into a unity which is the unity of painter’s direct emotional apprehension of the subject before him: “when we have finished analyzing all the physical elements in a picture”’ says Herbert Read, “we have still to account for this intelligible element which is the expression of the artist’s individually, and which, when everything else is shared in common subject, period, generation and materials-still leaks to totally different results”. R.H. Wilenski has gone so far as to suggest that we are really concerned with two entirely different conceptions of art – art produced in the services of religion, and art pursued as a consciously held idea. The distinction amounts in effect to judging a work of art in the light of its intention, a course that seeks to the intrusion of all kinds of irrelevant prejudices. The Chinese Lohan in the British Museum, a figure from the West Portal Charters and the latest work of Eric Gill or Epstein must be related to the same sensibility.

It is evident religion and art are a sort of two parallels. The history of art is parallel to the evolution in the man’s understanding universe-his philosophy and religion. The immense distance between a negro statue and a statue by Praxiteles is the immense distance between negro’s animistic religion and the intellectual insight of a Greek at the highest point of their civilization. Greeks had attained the summit of intellect – they lost all the fear of external world would a turned towards this world with quite a sympathetic attitude – and hence their art became the true and sincere expression on their observations, and idealization of nature. The organic rhythm of life became the very essence of the Greek art.

Religion and Art have a very intimate and close relation with one another. They emerge hand in hand from the dim recesses of the pre-history. Due to their familiarity and close connection they remained with one another till the Renaissances became more free and independent and individualists in its origins, and now it aimed at expressing something more than merely the personality of the artist. Religious sensibility has always been there with the great artists of all ages.

Primitive man is perhaps the best example of the union of Art and Religion. Sensuality is worked on his art as well as in his of Art and Religion. Sensuality is worked on his art as well as in his religion. His art and religion cannot be separated. The magicians and priests an identical with the creative artists and art only exists as a function of worship or propitiation. In modern times so many statues and painting of Virgin an Child, Christ, Angles, God and the like in Churches, all show the same thing. The only difference between them is that sense of glory which is the offspring of spiritual courage. It is entirely lacking in the primitive men except in Egyptians and Indians Pyramids and the caves of Aganta an Alora can be presented as examples of the oldest unity of art and Religion. Classical Art and Christian Art of middle Ages are the highest attainders of the thing.