Is All Art Religious?

God is Dead

Signs in Peckham

Christopher Clack

2011

 

Art as a Facilitator of Society. 

Is all Art Religious?  Is all Religion Art?

These two over-simplified questions are not reversals of one another.

 In the first question the term Art refers to not just those creative expressions of a society in which all basic needs are met and there is time for recreation and self-expression, but to the practices which have been associated by a structured society to basic needs as well, such as the astrological agricultural practices of the Ancient Egyptians.  This requires a suitably developed social structure which has had time to contemplate non-material explanations for material or natural phenomena.  Art in the first question might also encompass methods which today are regarded as occupying a field completely separate to Art, for example mathematical models of the universe or alpha-numerical sequences of purported significance, the most common, useful and contemporaneous of these, I propose to be the study of Fractals, mathematical sets whereby patterns are the same at every scale or nearly the same at different scales, vaguely comparable to infinite regression.

To be Religious, as the first question is phrased, does not require that something is part of a formal structure or a recognised Religion.  The term encompasses a variety of spiritual, ritualistic and pseudo-scientific phenomena which have parallels across many societies, such as astronomy, idol worship and deification.  Symbolism is a common theme in Art and Religion.

In the second question, Art is a similar concept, but whereas some Art is obviously apparent as itself, the paintings and mosaics of churches around the globe for example, the term encompasses the written and spoken word, the staging of events as managed theatrics, music and decorative visual arts.  In this second question Religion does refer to formal structured religions. 

It requires that all human beings have similar cognitive processes and respond in predictable ways.  Neurotheology (a term from Huxley’s novel Island) is the study of the brain and Religion, and the search for the God Spot.  Responses to Religious stimuli are monitored, but as the extent of any spiritual experience is entirely subjective and so the studies are no more in depth than showing correlations.  There has been research into an evolutionary history for religion.  Nicolas Wade, a British science writer for the New York Times wrote, 

“Like most behaviours that are found in societies throughout the world, religion must have been present in the ancestral human population before the dispersal from Africa 50,000 years ago. Although religious rituals usually involve dance and music, they are also very verbal, since the sacred truths have to be stated. If so, religion, at least in its modern form, cannot pre-date the emergence of language. It has been argued earlier that language attained its modern state shortly before the exodus from Africa. If religion had to await the evolution of modern, articulate language, then it too would have emerged shortly before 50,000 years ago.” (N. Wade. Before the Dawn. Penguin Books 2006 .p.8 p.165)

It may be that religion conferred an evolutionary advantage on those who followed it and it may therefore have been naturally selected for.  Advantages of religion may include social cohesion and thus the elaborate and expensive (in terms of time, money, danger etc.) individual religious practices and ceremonies show the extent of an individual’s commitment to a group (Sosis, R.; Kress, H. C.; Boster, J. S. (2007). "Scars for war: evaluating alternative signalling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs". Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (4): 234–247).

It is impossible to argue that Art is cheap.  One need only to wander into a moderate village Church in the U.K. and if it was constructed before The Reformation (the actions of Martin Luther in 1517 are seen as the starting point in this) then it will have been constructed from and decorated with expensive and elaborate materials.  There are famous examples around the globe of elaborate sacred sites.

There is, once we acknowledge the historical significance of Religion even if it is not as evident today, a lot of power tied up with, not only the physical wealth of, but also the administration of Religion.  In England the Bible was not published in the language of the population until, at the earliest, the tenth century, but it was not translated into Modern English until the early sixteenth century when John Tyndale produced his widely distributed version.  This was also the first press-printed Bible. Thus the work of translating the most important theological ideas to the masses was in the power of an Elite.  The use of visual representations of interpreted scriptural messages was commonplace and thus Art was the language of Religion.  It is easy to believe that those holding such sway over the masses would not wish to relinquish it but to reinforce it through elaborate and mysterious ceremonies and so an understanding of stage craft would be beneficial.

Today, in the UK, we inhabit an increasingly Secular society and yet our brains are no different from those of our forebears.  Religion may be distant from our lives but Art is almost inseparable from it.  Unless we live in the most remote Crofting community, I would suggest that daily life is awash with music, design, architecture, photography and film.  It may be that sculpture and mass produced pictorial Art is not everywhere but it is not hard to find and fine examples of original works, such as paintings and sculpture have to be sought out by an individual but there is designated government funding to make these works available to the public.

If Art is not required as a religious tool anymore and, in general, the population is turning away from Religion, then why should Art retain any importance to us?  Is it a way to access the same basic emotions associated with the human condition and the universal practical issues of living in a society?  As we academically turn towards scientific explanations for material phenomena, we cannot accept the teachings of Formal Religion, but we retain a need for what it provided us with.

  Art was a facilitator for this in the past exactly as it is now.