Art and religion

In contemporaryWestern culture, science and religion are widely regarded as intellectual foes, the modern version of a much older tension between “reason” and “faith.” By contrast, art and religion are almost equally widely regarded as spiritual allies, especially in the task of “re-enchanting” a world that science has stripped of its enchantment (to use Max Weber’s celebrated terminology). The supposition that there is a natural affinity between the two rests in large part on their long historical association. And it is true that the histories of painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry and the history of religion are inextricably intertwined in most phases of Western culture since the advent of Christianity. Moreover, there is an even older connection between artistic creativity and religious practice. In Greece and Rome the most significant architectural constructions generally had some religious function; the ancient Hebrew psalms use poetry to extol the importance of singing as a form of worship; the Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux in France probably had a religious purpose (or so some experts contend). At the same time, while this historical association is incontestable, it seems equally

undeniable that since the seventeenth century the arts have both sought, and been obliged to seek, a significant measure of independence from religion. In part this was a result of Reformation anxieties about the spiritual dangers of sensuality, combined with the rise of alternative sources of patronage. It is notable that the “Golden Age” of Dutch painting took place in a country that was newly Protestant and increasingly prosperous. But in part, art’s disentanglement from religion was also the outcome of a self-conscious striving for autonomy by artists themselves, an aspiration reflected in an increasing nineteenth-century appeal to the slogan “art for art’s sake.” The resulting separation of art and religion in the early part of the twentieth cen-

tury, though never complete, is evident nonetheless. It can be given diametrically opposing interpretations, however. From one point of view it is art’s “coming of age”; from another it is art’s spiritual evisceration. What is more, protagonists of both interpretations can point to precisely the same phenomenon – the emergence of “modern” art – as confirmatory evidence. For the first, abstract expressionism, minimalist music, free verse, etc., are manifestations of art’s spiritual liberation from religious thraldom. For the second, the abandonment of representationalism, tonality and literary form come at the cost of losing point and purpose – a spiritual bankruptcy that, to some minds, can only be reversed by a renewed alliance with religion.