Atheism and the Arts
Razib Khan has a very intersting post up on Christmas and atheism. While Razib is somewhat appreciative of religion's ability to inspire culture, some of his commenters will have none of it:
Thinking about this issue, the work of Steven Goldberg on patriarchy comes to mind. Now the fact that every society on earth has ended up as a patriarchy of some sort, often in total defiance of its official ideology, does not prove that patriarchy is inevitable, but it provides a pretty strong indication that it may be. Similarly, the fact that there are all sorts of astonishing works celebrating God or the gods (the Bible, the Quran, the Mahabharata, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Commedia, Paradise Lost, Giotto, Chartres Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Madonnas, Bernini's sculptures, Bach's B-Minor Mass and St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven 9th symphony and Missa Solemnis, Haydn's Creation, Handel’s oratorios etc.) and the fact that there is an almost complete dearth of comparable works celebrating the absence of God (or the gods) does not prove that you need religion to inspire such great work, but it is a fairly strong prima facie case that religion is a lot better than atheism at inspiring these kinds of works. Even if we grant that atheism could provide equal inspiration for comparable works, which I somewhat doubt, the remarkable ability of religious subjects to provide materia poetica for such astounding masterpieces must still be acknowledged.
Now, just because religion may be really good at inspiring great art does not mean that it is true, and conversely, just because atheism may be true, does not mean that it is capable of inspiring great art. Something can be detrimental to the arts and still be true. Something can be totally crazy and still inspire a masterpiece. Religious stories and ideas tend to provoke strong emotions in most people, and therefore tend to be prime material for the arts, but it is possible that this has more to do with people's innate cognitive programming than it necessarily does with the truth value of the religion. Aesthetic power, in itself, is not an indicia of truth.
The human mind has a cognitive bias towards conflating the good, the beautiful, the useful and the true. This conflation may work as a rough rule of thumb, but, in an absolute sense, it is false. The assumption often made by atheists is that since atheism is true, it will serve well as inspiration for the beautiful. Conversely, the religious will look at the beauty of religious art and conclude that therefore the religion is true. Neither conclusion is necessarily warranted.
Rebellion against religion may provide something of an impetus for art, but cold materialism, in itself, is a rather austere, uninspiring creed. It may be true, but that does not mean that it is particularly beautiful. But why should it be? If you really believe that atheism is true, that should be enough. There is no need to prove that it inspiring or morally beneficial or whatever.
The commenter continues:
Subject matters. Craftsmanship alone = minor art. Of which we have a lot in this century. The mistaken assumption is that the 20th century produced almost nothing of value. This is not true; there is a plethora of good, well crafted art being made right now. What is missing is the really great stuff, the Beethovens, the Miltons, the Michelangelos. As a stylist, Vladimir Nabokov is easily the equal of the translators of the King James Bible, in craftsmanship he's as good as anyone who's ever written English, but in the end style and craftsmanship are not enough. Lolita and Pale Fire are fairly empty books. Even in the visual arts we don't lack for craftsmanship. Charles Murray notes in his Human Accomplishment that going to the movies one sees the tiniest details rendered with fantastic care and attention, as in films like Ratatouille or Transformers. But this is so often put to use serving piffle. The technical ability is there, but somehow its not turning into masterpieces. The example given of the car design is I think a telling one. The track record of “aesthetics with utility” is rather dismal. Car design, however admirable, rarely evokes any strong emotion. Even at its best, there is only so deep you can go with it. Contemporary talent is being diverted into minor genres.
The commenter futher asserts:
Any cursory study of the lives of Dante, Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Raphael etc. puts the lie to this. They were all intensely devout men, in their own way, and their art was no mere bunch of technical exercises. Even the comparatively urbane Handel spoke of the heavens opening up when he composed the Messiah. Of course craftsmanship matters; you have to have the tools to express yourself, but inspiration and subject matter too. Craftsmanship is a means to an end; art is about communicating your thoughts and feelings to someone else, and sometimes that includes your religious thoughts and religious feelings. As sympathies vary from person to person, some may respond more or less to these feelings, but the use of craftsmanship does not vary. It enables, but is not an end in itself. Art, at its best, give form to feeling, but it does not exist independently of it. Now please note, religious feeling, or feeling of any other kind, obviously is not enough in itself to produce great art. In fact, feeling alone, whether religious or not, cannot in itself produce even good art. If craftsmanship alone = minor art, feeling alone = no art at all. If form without feeling can leave you cold, feeling without form leaves you wallowing in a mass of undifferentiated emotion.
Now, let me be clear, religious feelings are not the only feelings that can be the subject of great art? Love, sex, children, war, hate, ambition, all are amply represented in the world of art. Everything that is human is represented in art. There is nothing all that religious about Mozart’s operas or most of Shakespeare. But is it really any surprise that something, like religion, that addresses itself to people’s deepest fears and desires should not fail to inspire much great art? Really, religion's only authentic rival as artistic inspiration is love and sex. As the atheist novelist Zola once put it oh so delicately, "Religion and the cunt, there is nothing else."
I should add that I just don't buy the argument that the religious quality of works like the B-minor Mass or the Paradiso is wholly incidental, that if you took the religious component out of these works, and substituted, say, the wonders of particle physics, it would be just as inspiring. In fact, any cursory familiarity with these works plainly shows that the religious component is woven deeply into the fabric of the work of art. Take out the religious content from say the Agnus Dei of the former or from the last canto of the latter and there is hardly anything left. Take out the story from the St. Matthew Passion and have you increased or diminished it? Take out the religious argument from the Upanishads and have you increased or diminished them? None of this means you have to believe in the religious component of a work of art to appreciate it fully, but you do need to enter into at least some emotional sympathy with its religious content. This applies whether you are a believer of some sort or not. I am not a Hindu nor, on the whole, do I have much sympathy for Hinduism, but I find the Gita intensely moving. Appreciation does not necessarily imply assent.
The constant evocation religion as the fountainhead of art, music and other fine human enterprise is false, in my opinion.
Thinking about this issue, the work of Steven Goldberg on patriarchy comes to mind. Now the fact that every society on earth has ended up as a patriarchy of some sort, often in total defiance of its official ideology, does not prove that patriarchy is inevitable, but it provides a pretty strong indication that it may be. Similarly, the fact that there are all sorts of astonishing works celebrating God or the gods (the Bible, the Quran, the Mahabharata, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Commedia, Paradise Lost, Giotto, Chartres Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Madonnas, Bernini's sculptures, Bach's B-Minor Mass and St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven 9th symphony and Missa Solemnis, Haydn's Creation, Handel’s oratorios etc.) and the fact that there is an almost complete dearth of comparable works celebrating the absence of God (or the gods) does not prove that you need religion to inspire such great work, but it is a fairly strong prima facie case that religion is a lot better than atheism at inspiring these kinds of works. Even if we grant that atheism could provide equal inspiration for comparable works, which I somewhat doubt, the remarkable ability of religious subjects to provide materia poetica for such astounding masterpieces must still be acknowledged.
Now, just because religion may be really good at inspiring great art does not mean that it is true, and conversely, just because atheism may be true, does not mean that it is capable of inspiring great art. Something can be detrimental to the arts and still be true. Something can be totally crazy and still inspire a masterpiece. Religious stories and ideas tend to provoke strong emotions in most people, and therefore tend to be prime material for the arts, but it is possible that this has more to do with people's innate cognitive programming than it necessarily does with the truth value of the religion. Aesthetic power, in itself, is not an indicia of truth.
The human mind has a cognitive bias towards conflating the good, the beautiful, the useful and the true. This conflation may work as a rough rule of thumb, but, in an absolute sense, it is false. The assumption often made by atheists is that since atheism is true, it will serve well as inspiration for the beautiful. Conversely, the religious will look at the beauty of religious art and conclude that therefore the religion is true. Neither conclusion is necessarily warranted.
Rebellion against religion may provide something of an impetus for art, but cold materialism, in itself, is a rather austere, uninspiring creed. It may be true, but that does not mean that it is particularly beautiful. But why should it be? If you really believe that atheism is true, that should be enough. There is no need to prove that it inspiring or morally beneficial or whatever.
The commenter continues:
The artistic input however brilliant and loving, need not have come from any particular religious stirring in the heart of the craftsman artist. It may have been no different from building a sleek car or building a beautiful house - pure aesthetics, precision and pride in one's workmanship. Aesthetics with utility.
Subject matters. Craftsmanship alone = minor art. Of which we have a lot in this century. The mistaken assumption is that the 20th century produced almost nothing of value. This is not true; there is a plethora of good, well crafted art being made right now. What is missing is the really great stuff, the Beethovens, the Miltons, the Michelangelos. As a stylist, Vladimir Nabokov is easily the equal of the translators of the King James Bible, in craftsmanship he's as good as anyone who's ever written English, but in the end style and craftsmanship are not enough. Lolita and Pale Fire are fairly empty books. Even in the visual arts we don't lack for craftsmanship. Charles Murray notes in his Human Accomplishment that going to the movies one sees the tiniest details rendered with fantastic care and attention, as in films like Ratatouille or Transformers. But this is so often put to use serving piffle. The technical ability is there, but somehow its not turning into masterpieces. The example given of the car design is I think a telling one. The track record of “aesthetics with utility” is rather dismal. Car design, however admirable, rarely evokes any strong emotion. Even at its best, there is only so deep you can go with it. Contemporary talent is being diverted into minor genres.
The commenter futher asserts:
It is just a thing at that moment, certainly not a representation of that the worker worships, adores, or venerates.
Any cursory study of the lives of Dante, Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Raphael etc. puts the lie to this. They were all intensely devout men, in their own way, and their art was no mere bunch of technical exercises. Even the comparatively urbane Handel spoke of the heavens opening up when he composed the Messiah. Of course craftsmanship matters; you have to have the tools to express yourself, but inspiration and subject matter too. Craftsmanship is a means to an end; art is about communicating your thoughts and feelings to someone else, and sometimes that includes your religious thoughts and religious feelings. As sympathies vary from person to person, some may respond more or less to these feelings, but the use of craftsmanship does not vary. It enables, but is not an end in itself. Art, at its best, give form to feeling, but it does not exist independently of it. Now please note, religious feeling, or feeling of any other kind, obviously is not enough in itself to produce great art. In fact, feeling alone, whether religious or not, cannot in itself produce even good art. If craftsmanship alone = minor art, feeling alone = no art at all. If form without feeling can leave you cold, feeling without form leaves you wallowing in a mass of undifferentiated emotion.
Now, let me be clear, religious feelings are not the only feelings that can be the subject of great art? Love, sex, children, war, hate, ambition, all are amply represented in the world of art. Everything that is human is represented in art. There is nothing all that religious about Mozart’s operas or most of Shakespeare. But is it really any surprise that something, like religion, that addresses itself to people’s deepest fears and desires should not fail to inspire much great art? Really, religion's only authentic rival as artistic inspiration is love and sex. As the atheist novelist Zola once put it oh so delicately, "Religion and the cunt, there is nothing else."
I should add that I just don't buy the argument that the religious quality of works like the B-minor Mass or the Paradiso is wholly incidental, that if you took the religious component out of these works, and substituted, say, the wonders of particle physics, it would be just as inspiring. In fact, any cursory familiarity with these works plainly shows that the religious component is woven deeply into the fabric of the work of art. Take out the religious content from say the Agnus Dei of the former or from the last canto of the latter and there is hardly anything left. Take out the story from the St. Matthew Passion and have you increased or diminished it? Take out the religious argument from the Upanishads and have you increased or diminished them? None of this means you have to believe in the religious component of a work of art to appreciate it fully, but you do need to enter into at least some emotional sympathy with its religious content. This applies whether you are a believer of some sort or not. I am not a Hindu nor, on the whole, do I have much sympathy for Hinduism, but I find the Gita intensely moving. Appreciation does not necessarily imply assent.
posted by Thursday at
7:46 PM
14 Comments:
The grand religious ideals and ideas do inspire art.
It is more rare to find an orthodoxy, a congregation, or a creed that has inspired art.
Oddly enough, the respectable churchgoers are often uninspiring.
Great art, or maybe just real art, somehow elevates us above the quotidian realm. In the absence of religous belief, one is inevitably confronted by the probability that the "quotidian" is all there really is. That's not much to write home about.
The dilemma, it seems to me, is that both religion and art breathe into being a conception of humanity that may be at its bottom an overestimation - seen increasingly as an absurd overestimation - of our genuine condition.
Much of the art of the past century has been dedicated to exposing, and tearing down, these inflated pretentions, including that most grossly inflated of pretensions, the human soul. The problem, going forward, is that demolition projects are of necessity only carried on for so long. Once the cathedral has been torn down, there's nothing left to do but cart the rubble away. I suspect that, culturally, this is where we now are.
Of course, from the religious point of view, this prospect appears so bleak because it constitutes a denial, and what's worse, a betrayal, of what we most essentially are.
The following is a hazily remembered paraphrase from a novel (French, I think) which I recall the poet James Dickey citing in an interview. I don't remember the title or author, so if anyone could help me here, I'd be obliged.
One character says to another that life, for him, resembles nothing so much as a scorched wasteland, to which the second replies that this is undoubtedly true, but that it probably wouldn't if he weren't going through it with a blowtorch.
I've always loved that, and I wish I knew where it came from.
The human mind has a cognitive bias towards conflating the good, the beautiful, the useful and the true.
Modernity is all about separating them out. The achievements of science, liberalism and the cultural sophistication are the wondrous consequence of the Western struggle against the Platonic trinity. But the worry is that each of these occidental triumphs are somehow depleting their pre-modern sources. Or maybe that innocence is just always being refreshed because so few of us are even modern, let alone post-modern.
China doesn't believe in God. They've got plenty of art.
SFG,
David Hinton has a fantastic series of translations of Chinese poetry. Read the prefaces, they will rapidly disabuse you of this notion that Chinese art is areligious. The greatest Chinese poets and painters were almost all Buddhist hermits of one sort or another, at least for some part of their lives.
China doesn't believe in God. They've got plenty of art.
Yes, as the walls of any Chinese takeaway will rapidly attest.
I don't know if I find the arguments here very convincing.
We can look at the past to see that many famous composers (known, ironically, in some cases for religious compositions) were atheists or some other brand of religious skeptic: Berlioz, Bizet, Prokofiev, etc. There are also the big names from literature and/or theatre: Ernest Hemmingway, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, etc.
I think a much better explanation for the lack of truly inspiring art today is that the esteem of the arts in general has diminished in our culture. We tend to value commercially viable entertainment over inspiration, which overtime has eroded our patience with art the calibur of Da Vinci and Michaelangelo. Takes a long time, and we have short attention spans.
Do you think the artists of the twentieth century, of today, are trying to do the same sort of thing as in the past? My impression is that a lot of energy was diverted to asking questions about art itself: what is art? what is the point of art? I'm thinking of the dada movement particularly, and the phenomenon of 'found art'. They challenged the idea that art has to be beautiful. So if you're right that the subject matter of art has ceased predominantly to have religious themes, it's because the subject matter nowadays is art itself. You need to take this into account because it's an alternative explanation to artists merely lacking appropriate inspiration.
"My impression is that a lot of energy was diverted to asking questions about art itself: what is art? what is the point of art?"
Art about art is art largely disengaged from the broader culture. Most people, even most intelligent, literate people, just aren't that interested in reading novels about what a novel is, or looking at a painting that explores what painting is. Such art, however does reflect the contemporary culture in two ways.
The first is the narrowing specialization of all sorts of pursuits. Art by art "experts" for art "experts," exploring issues and questions of interest - by and large - only to other art "experts" (and wannabee "experts")is very much in line with the way we sub-divide human endeavor into increasingly narrow fields with their own, more or less impermeable language.
The very fact that so much modern art seems unintelligible has, at least until recently, made it more, not less, impressive to the general public. It may be, however, that in the past couple of decades people have decided that they just don't care, and can't be bothered to pretend that they do. As Tyler Dipietro points out, the level of esteem at which art is held in our culure has declined. We could attribute this to an artisitc decline, or to a more widespread decline in the general culture, but I suspect that this is a false distinction.
The second contemporary condition mirrored in such art is its intensely solipsistic nature. One of the considerable achievements of someone like Philip Roth is that he's able to write a novel about a novelist writing a novel (about a novelist?) and still open the story up to something larger and more significant. But Roth is the exception.
Most people who work this vein (John Barth, for example) produce, at best, mildly clever, and ultimately uninteresting work, because it just doesn't grapple with all that much, although professional critics may find it wildly amusing. Once you get the conceit though, it isn't really worth the time to keep plowing along, page after page.
I'm not a big believer in the theory that art bubbles up from the common culture. But art is the product of an exceptionally acute and perceptive sensibility aware of and engaged with its particular age. Perhaps our age simply isn't interested in asking the sorts of questions that might result in more compelling answers. So what we're left with is, at best, entertainment and decoration.
Of course, there is always science.
This post has been removed by the author.
Is the stuff Damien Hirst does art? Dissected animals or humans on display in formaldehyde? What about Rauschenberg? A stuffed goat through a tire? That's "art?"
There isn't really much if any art being created. I doubt any real work of art has been created (painting, sculpture) since the early 20th Century. Photography probably died it's artistic death with the passing of Ansel Adams.
Instead we have, IMHO, talentless, and crafstmanship-free, "shock" stuff of no interest but in how ugly an "artist" can make things. It's a giant con-game. Bono is running some art auction and expects to generate around 30 million USD from it, with donated pieces. The descriptions sound stupid -- a skull decorated with diamonds. How much artistic effort, craftsmanship, or merit is involved in that? I believe an assistant with a glue gun will do all the work.
"Art" is meaningless, it's all about image and hype. Which connects to the lack of artists to find religious inspiration. Atheistic art generally ends up as a pickled pig in a jar. Quite literally.
The thesis may be largely correct, but SO MUCH was wrong with the 20th century that it's hard to tell.
I honestly have very little to say to someone who thinks that Lolita and Pale Fire are relatively empty or that Nabokov is only "as good" as the authors of the King James. Really. Aesthetically different planets.
Interesting thread. China has a long history of art - however under the modern communism/atheism most of that art has been systematically and intentionally destroyed. The best Chinese art was smuggled to Taiwan under Chiang Kai Shek. As a fine artist, many of my pieces are pointedly anti-religious (although not 'atheistic'...what meaning would there be in an absence of belief?) My strong opinions about religion however, although not beautiful, are certainly social indicators.
Lolita and Pale Fire are modern commentary, 1st person narratives (kind of). The Bible is mostly mythological, and taps into very ancient story-telling traditions which resonate with psychological desires...
It strikes me that it is easier to discern art created with a specific religious inspiration as opposed to the alternatives. Art inspired by atheism is unlikely for two reasons, least of all because it would be art dealing with the absence of a object (in this case religion or God) rather the object itself. As such, art by atheists is not likely to be inspired by their atheism itself as it is to be inspired by something else entirely, and is not necessarily as discernable as religiously inspired art as the inspirations for it are not homogenous; it is not a continuum where art can be inspired by god, agnostic beliefs, or atheism, rather it is the case that god and religion are but one of a wide range of inspirations for art and are in fact entirely subjective.
It must be kept in mind that atheism is not an overarching belief, belief system, or faith, but instead is a word to describe the absence of such.
From my perspective as an atheist who produces art I in fact enjoy producing poetry and writing broadly 'inspired' by religion, but that's just me. My lack of belief in the subject matter does not have any bearing on my ability to enjoy it, or to enjoy producing it.
Finally, looking at Damien Hirsch and contesting his position as an 'artist' is missing the broader point of art, at least from the perspective of modern artists. To me, what matters is the ideas behind the art, not the aesthetics, so while I agree that Hirsch is a crap artist its more because his ideas are shoddy than because I think that a dead shark in a tank full of formaldehyde does not count as 'art' as such. My favourite artist is in fact Marcel Duchamp - the famous originator of 'readymades' (found art) - but my favourite of his works of art is not likely to be considered art by many people at all. That piece of 'art', if you are wondering, is his complete abandonment of the art world only a few years after revolutionising it to devote the rest of his life (some 25 years) to becoming a chessmaster. I personally think that's brilliant.
What I'm trying to say is that it is, ultimately, merely a matter of opinion and taste.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home