Jožef Muhovič

ART AND RELIGION

summary

Art and religion are by all means phenomena which attract our attention, even if one has no particular affinity for them. Simply because their bold ideas and condensed symbolic matrices are more persuasive than other things and phenomena in the environment. Yet characteristic of these phenomena are two elementary and, for the present-day period, quite amazing facts which simply compel us to reflect on them. It is to these two facts that this entire book is dedicated.

First: there is not a single human group or culture discovered to this day that would not be based on or function without some form of artistic and religious metabolism. Even if man, driven by his uncurbed Promethean aspirations – as will occasionally occur in the modern era – says "get lost" to art and religion and throws them through the front door of civilization, it is logical that his unfulfilled need for the ideal and for measure will immediately call them back through the windows and other openings: whether this be in the form of radical restitution or simply farcical-historical repetition (new age, postmodern art trends). And this will unavoidably happen in spite of the fact that neither religious nor artistic »products« (ritual, adoration, piety; parafunctional artifacts, deconstruction, catharsis) can be directly classified in any financial accounts of society, that is, despite their practical uselessness.

Second: a relatively quick look at the phenomenology created through the cooperation of Muses and metaphysics shows that only hand in hand can art and religion effectively reach for the quintessence of the spirit. All we need to do is recall the pyramids, Gothic cathedrals or Le Corbusier, cave paintings, the Sistine Chapel ceiling or Chagall, the Song of Songs, the Divine Comedy or the Brothers Karamazov, the St. Matthew passion, Missa solemnis and Messiaen's St. Francis of Assisi ... to realize how their cooperation draws the preferential directions in creativity, vibrant both in form and content, crossing ideological barriers and sovereignly dictating the tempo to universalism and perenniality: like a majestic call of the wild from the other side of the Berlin wall of empirism and temporality, like the injection of a transcendence hormone into man's existential nonfulfilment ...

Therefore, on the one hand a fact which proves that the useless is an absolute necessity, and on the other a fact which favorizes dependence over independence, coproduction over production. All of this in an era of pragmatism, profit, emancipation and autonomy ...

This article about Exterior and Interior is a part of a book, which attempts to feel the pulse of the two above-mentioned facts, i.e. the role of art and religion in the human world and the nature of their relationship, has been designed as a two-storey structure. Its foundation and ground floor comprise a reflection on the perception and study of the two phenomena, the first storey reflects on the relation between art and religion in general, and the second storey deliberates on the relation between art and religion in concreto.

a) On Understanding Things and the Approach

It is part of the conditio humana, says Teilhard de Chardin, that man is the viewpoint of the world. In other words, man himself is always the center of the landscape through which he walks. For this reason his view is limited and partial. All that man sees, he sees from the point where he is standing, and he sees only that which can be seen from that point. This is undoubtedly a kind of slavery, but something which man can immediately compensate with one of his fundamental qualities. Man is not only a stationary, but also a moving viewpoint of the world (both in the physical and mental sense). It is therefore possible that he may accidentally or intentionally find himself at a naturally privileged point of the relief, e.g. on a certain peak, at a watershed, at the confluence of rivers, where his subjective viewpoint is harmonized and »coincides« with the objective structural organization of the state of things. Consequently, the landscape stops showing only the partial and the visible to man's limited view, but reveals itself to him fully and structurally. And man not only sees, but also understands: the landscape and his position in it. All the privileges and all the »objectivity« of man's cognition stem precisely from this intentional search for structurally privileged points in the landscape of phenomena, and simultaneous endeavours to harmonize the explorer's viewpoint with them.

Proceeding from this metaphor, it becomes evident that the success of the exploration depends primarily on three things: 1. how well and how integrally the explorer perceives the landscape of phenomena he has set out to explore (perception); 2. how reliable a methodology he uses to conquer the viewpoints identified by perception (logic), and 3. how fully and correctly he interprets what he sees from them (hermeneutics). Most decisive for his success, however, is how these three levels work together in practice. It is not hard to imagine that all of this is even more significant – as in the case of art and religion – when we are dealing with phenomena whose landscape simultaneously extends outwards and inwards, and its relief is high with peaks continuously immersed in clouds.

The greatest difficulty in exploring artistic and religious phenomena is generally encountered with the integrality of perception, i.e. how to make the explorer study the entire phenomenon, i.e. the »exterior and interior« of a phenomenon, and not merely certain aspects of the whole that are closest, most accessible and »understandable« to him. This is crucial because, as the section entitled Union of the Exterior and Interior attempt to show, art and religion are – strictly speaking – neither exterior (form, institution) nor interior (content, mystery), but precisely that interface which actively and practically mediates between interior and exterior, between content and form, between mystery and its earthly infrastructure.

However, it is logically not possible to explore this constitutive interface without expanding our perception to both hemispheres of the phenomenon, which most often means: expanding it to that which may seem unusual, alien, insignificant, strange, crazy... to the explorer's experience. Namely, perception, i.e. the way in which we perceive things, is like a map helping us to orient ourselves in our explorations. If the map is complete and accurate, we will usually know where we are, and if we decide to go somewhere, we will also know which direction to take. But if the map is deficient, partial, stereotyped or even obsolete, we will do nothing but wander or get lost (see chapter On Perception).

b) Art and Religion

To explore the relation between art and religion, we must first define the two protagonists. Yet at the very beginning we face a major problem. Despite the fact that hundreds of definitions of art and religion exist today, none of these are sufficiently complete to apply in all cases, sufficiently operational to serve as a practical tool for evaluating the relevance of artistic and religious manifestations, sufficiently precise to allow us to rely on them, and sufficiently founded to be not only acceptable to all, but simply perceived as compulsory by the very logic of things.

Therefore, the first task in the second part of this discussion will be to trace what is referred to as the differentia specifica of a phenomenon. Or in other words: to portray the logic of the religious and artistic views of the world.

In the case of religion, one could roughly say that it was not born as a measure, but as an ideal; as an Ideal of ideals attempting to touch the extreme barriers of the existing and reach beyond the ultimate barriers of the human. The forms derived from religious experience are created for the purpose of contrasting the actual with the transcendental, and thus allowing man to delineate the external boundaries of his existence on one side, and to find its gravitational Center within these boundaries on the other. The ultimate meaning of religion is to give man a clear orientation on several levels: from the edge to the center; i.e. from temporal to eternal, from sporadic to essential, from lower to higher, from apparent to real, from dispersed to concentrated, from secular to sacred ...(see chapter: On the Nature of the Religious Phenomenon).

In contrast, art was not born as man's ideal, but as his measure. The forms produced by art are designed to establish and strengthen the sense of reality and directness of the ideal, and in particular to objectively measure the direction and degree of its realization in the human world (see chapter: Art – That Unknown).

By contrasting the existing with the Transcendental, the Ideal points to the ontological Center, while the symbolic articulation of the understanding of the Ideal measures, at each moment, the coordinates of existential advancement towards the Center. An Ideal which directs and enraptures, and a measure which shows and brings us back to reality. An ideal that must be constant and composed, and a measure that must be descriptive and optimized. What can be said at this point is that, by their very nature, the ideal and the measure naturally search for .... and need one another.

When the foundations of a certain religious Ideal (as occurred with the Christian ideal during the Reformation) or a measure of beauty (as was the case at the threshold of the postmodern period) are shaken, this not only releases vices and deviations that are damaging, but also virtues and innovations that spread and cause even more harm. The postmodern world is full of ideals and full of metres which have gone mad simply because they were separated from one other and are now merely wandering around (see chapter: Matrix of the Interaction Space).

c) Visual Art and Christianity

There is such an enormous volume of evidence of the practical cooperation and interference of art and religion in human history that merely listing them would fill a huge number of thick volumes, if not a library. A scale of interactions extending from complete blending through functional cooperation and partner symbiosis to mutual instrumentalization and open opposition. The primeval forest of forms and strategies is so enormous that it requires – if we are to prevent the discussion from drowning in a sea of generalizations and principles – a logical restriction: to the concrete and the essential.

Consequently, the third part of this discussion will be focused on the relationship between a concrete form of religion and a specific branch of art, and only on those diachronic stages where I have reason to believe their relationship has developed into a cooperative archetype. The religion I have chose for this purpose is Christianity (see chapter: The Phenomenon of Christianity), the branch of art is visual art and its formative approaches (see chapter: Visual Art in flagranti), and the characteristic interaction stages are the Middle Ages with stressed operational coordination (see chapter: Medieval Symbiosis) and the postmodern era with stressed operational ambivalence (see chapter: Postmodern Interference).

d) Hypotheses

Scientific criticism of the 20th century has proven that there is no »pure fact« or pure research that would not be based, from the very beginning, on a system of assumptions predetermining the structure and »action radius« of results. Bearing this in mind, I would like to explain the starting points and the resulting subjective aureole of interpretation embodied in this discussion on the relationship between art and religion.

There are two fundamental starting points. The first is the significance which I attribute to the relationship between the external and internal of phenomena. The second is the spiritual value which I recognize in the organization of the exterior. Therefore: the organic union of the physical and the spiritual (which actually enables the exploration of relations between phenomena and not only the exploration of relations between phenomenal fragments), and the spiritual significance of sign-symbol organization in artistic and religious phenomena. These are two hypotheses that would be disregarded by many at first – if not for their controversial nature, than certainly because of their »theoretical« nature. However, in view of all that phenomenology tells me, I can see no way of avoiding these two hypotheses in tracing the unique pace and unique interference of art and religion in space and time.

CONTENTS

FOREWARD

I. ON UNDERSTANDING THINGS AND THE APPROACH

CHAPTER I: On Objectivity
        1. Between Desire and Truth
                    a. Truth and Discomfort
                    b. Truth and Obstacles
        2. Is Objectivity Attainable?    

CHAPTER II: On Perception
        1. Perception and Logic
        2. The Need for Intensifying Perception
                    a. Perception as the Broadening of the Viewing Angle
                    b. Perception as the Varying of the Viewing Angle
        3. Perception and View of Things
                    a. Two Viewpoints
                    b. Interactivity
        4. Union of Exterior and Interior

CHAPTER III: On the Approach
        1. The Approach Problem
        2. Between the Scilo of the Scientific and the Karibdo of the Ideological
                a. Induction and Deduction
                b. Interactionism of Induction and Deduction
                c. Exploration and »Moral Credit«
        3. Starting Points and Perspectives

II. ART AND RELIGION

CHAPTER I: Hypotheses and Coordinates
        1. Counterpoint of Life
        2. Coordinates of the Postmodern Era
                a. Informational Golden Calf
                b. Story about Great Stories
        3. Direction of Action

CHAPTER II: On the Nature of the Phenomenon of Religion
        1. Objective Reality and Beyond
        2. Beyond as a Religious Category
        3. Tracing differentia specifica
        4. On the Nature of Hypotheses and Dogmas
        5. The Hypothesis of God
        6. Genome of the Phenomenon of Religion

CHAPTER III: Art – That Unknown
        1. The Concept of Art and Art in the Concept
        2. The Art Paradox
        3. Paleolithic Overture
                a. First Documented Signs
                b. Leaven of Pragmatic Thought
                c. Concentration of Experience in Signs
        4. Derivatives and their Integral
        5. Genome of the Phenomenon of Art
                a. The Transcendence of Transcendence
                b. The Underskin of the In–formative
                c. Communication with the Archetypal

CHAPTER IV: Matrix of the Interaction Space
        1. Premises and Syllogism
        2. Esthetics and Anesthetics
        3. Excursus on Aesthetic and Anaesthetic Extremes
                a. Semantism and Formalism
                b. Sensualism and Asceticism
        4. Sketches of the Cooperative Model
        5. Initially They were Blended
                a. Twins from the Womb of Ritual
                b. What does Paleolithic Naturalism Speak of?
                c. Neolithic Transformation
                d. Consequences of Paleolithic–Neolithic Bifurcation
        6. The Need for Limitation

III. VISUAL ART AND CHRISTIANITY

CHAPTER I: The Phenomenon of Christianity
        1. Et verbum caro factum est
        2. Horizons of the Incarnation
        3. Christian Coefficient in an Existential Formula
        4. Differentia specifica

CHAPTER II: Visual Art in flagranti
        1. On the Semantics of Artistic Creativity
                a. Daily and Productive Practice
                b. To Look and to See
                c. A Work of Art as a Model of Spiritual Space
                d. Art and Grammar
                e. Two Analyses
                f. Digression on the Logic of Order
        2. Coordinates of Artistic Sensuality
        3. Visual Art between the Individual and the Collective
        4. Phenomenological Extract

CHAPTER III: Interaction Archetypes
        1. Intersection
        2. Intermezzo on Beauty
        3. Two Horizons

CHAPTER IV: Medieval Symbiosis
        1. Prelude
        2. Historical and Sociological Frames
        3. Religious Frame
        4. Matrix of Medieval Symbiosis
                a. »Mechanism« of Correlativity
                b. Picture and Words
        5. Symbiosis in Medieval Painting
                a. Spiritual Role of Colour
                b. Nature and the Supernatural in Planar Space
                c. Zenith and Forecast of New Horizons

CHAPTER V: (Post)modern Interference
        1. Profile of the (Post)modern Era
                a. Constructive Aspect
                b. Deconstructive Aspect
        2. Visual Art between Modern and Postmodern
                a. Xerox State of Culture
                b. Shifts in the Formative Matrix
                c. Metamorphoses of Transition
        3. Christian Yeast in (Post)modern Dough
                d. Time Implication
                e. Christian Status Quo
        4. Interference
                a. Wavelength of Interfering Sources
                b. Negative Transfer
                c. Logic of the Troubadour Effect
                d. Larvatus pro Deo
        5. Final Words

ABSTRACT: ART AND RELIGION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

(Translated by Suzana Stančič)