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Religion in its most authentic part is an art form. Religion does what art does. This idea is richly illustrated and supported by materials of diverse origin. The vast range of the author's experience in the arts and in religious texts and works of aesthetics allows him to lay hold of a great mass of disparate material and to bring out new dimensions in all of it. He always has just the example he needs at his fingertips, a Tibetan Buddhist text next to a French impressionist painting and a remark about early Banogu counterpoint, and each example is seen in a new and interesting way. Through this gentle yoking together of heterogeneous materials, common roots are discovered. Most studies of art and religion describe and explain them as data. Thomas Martland identifies them as expressions of ideals and asks what they are when they are authentic rather than merely what they are when they are self-identified as art and religion. This is an identification through assessment, not an Aristotelian classification, and the means of assessment are provided.
In Religion and the Arts: History and Method, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona presents an overview of the 19th century origins of this discrete field of study and its methodological journey to the present-day through issues of repatriation, museum exhibitions, and globalization. Apostolos-Cappadona suggests that the fluidity and flexibility of the study of religion and the arts has expanded like an umbrella since the 1970s - and the understanding that art was simply a visual exegesis of texts - to now support the study of material, popular, and visual culture, as well as gender. She also delivers a careful analysis of the evolution of thought from traditional iconographies to the transformations once scholars were influenced by response theory and challenged by globalization and technology. Religion and the Arts: History and Method offers an indispensable introduction to the questions and perspectives essential to the study of this field.
The artistic and religious traditions of Africa constitute a primary expression of the intellectual and cultural vitality of this vast and fascinating continent. Art plays a vital role - especially when oral traditions dominate - in expressing and communicating ideas about the relationships between the human, spiritual and natural worlds. However, despite the ritual and symbolic significance of many artistic works, the interactive and interdependent relationship between art and religion in the African context remains understudied and misunderstood. This book draws on the methodologies of several disciplines to provide a greater understanding of the philosophical and religious aspects of artistic works and to challenge Western perceptions of what is "important". Case studies and examples reflect the geographical, material and gendered diversity of Africa's visual and performing arts and highlight the changes imposed by Christianity, Islam and the newer religious movements in post-colonial Africa.
This book, first published in hardback by Macmillan in 1991, appeared in paperback in 1998, with a new concluding chapter and extra illustrations. After an opening chapter which tells 'the story of modern art', George Pattison leads the reader through a more or less historical narrrative of the relationship between Christianity and the visual arts. He begins with the deep-rooted fear of images in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, through Thomism and the writings of Maritain, Rukin and Forsyth, into the uncertainties of the twentieth century. There are concluding discussions on how respect for the integrity iof the visual image becomes a way of grace and how the Zen experience indicates a metho...
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Contributors include: Doug and Linda Altshuler, Mircea Eliade, Langdon Gilkey, Barbara Novak, and many others. "A seminal work... widely adopted". -- Religious Studies Review
An art historian develops a theological, philosophical, and historical framework within which to experience and interpret modern and contemporary art that is in dialogue with the Christian faith.
Excerpt from Art Religion To artists and lovers of the beautiful, I want to speak my definite expectation of a time soon to come again when patrons of the arts will see in the religious institution an incomparable opportunity for the most pervasive influence of beauty upon the people. Every church building in village or city should itself be a noble work of art. And the arts have each a proper place in the fostering of the supreme experience of worship. I am led to say these things by the very oppressive burden of disunity in the spiritual life of the community and the time. There cannot be an age of great artistic brilliance until we reach a more nearly harmonious faith. I am happy in the ...
The field of 'art and religion' is fast becoming one of the most dynamic areas of religious studies. Uniquely, "The Art of the Sacred" explores the relationship between religion and the visual arts - and vice versa - within Christianity and other major religious traditions. It identifies and describes the main historical, theological, sociological and aesthetic dimensions of 'religious' art, with particular attention to 'popular' as well as 'high' culture, and within societies of the developing world. It also attempts to locate, and predict, the forms and functions of such art in a changing contemporary context of obligation, modernity, secularism and fundamentalism. The author concentrates on four chief dimensions where religious art and religious belief converge: the iconographic; the didactic; the institutional; and the aesthetic. This clear, well-organised and imaginative treatment of the subject should prove especially attractive to students of religion and visual culture, as well as to artists and art historians.