How Should Secular People Approach Sacred Art? | Hacker News Reader

How Should Secular People Approach Sacred Art?

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The article is mostly about visual art, but religious music is also very enjoyable IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkAa3Zdx6Ro

The "Dies Irae" theme is used a lot in classical music, for example this Totentanz by Liszt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUMR_D6G_Sw

Gesualdo's Madrigals are sublime, too.

I was about to say the very same. There are so many beautiful pieces of religious music, it would be a crying shame to dismiss them simply because you don't believe in the subject matter.

Afterall, most of the history of the human race has been dominated by religion in some form or another, it's a bit silly to disregard all of that.

Let's take a moment to remember Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ui2deAKr8

If I recall correctly this is a love song that takes a deeper spiritual meaning in the context of qawwali.

For regular doses of "Great Sacred Music" of all periods, from Early Music to Modern, I strongly recommend the program by that name which is aired on Sundays, 8-11 US Eastern time by WCPE, The Classical Station, which has Internet feeds: http://theclassicalstation.org/

Thanks, I'll check it out.

The sacredness is hardly in the art. In the presence of sacred art there are no secular people. (Meaning that "the sacred" is precisely that which moves you beyond the mundane.)

Your cultural bias is showing. Without the right background nothing inherently separates religious and secular art. And there is nothing universal about what moves people.

Note: There are a few preferences that show up across cultures on average, but there not universal within a culture.

You seem to be making the same point I was attempting to make.

> And there is nothing universal about what moves people.

Birth, death, time, nature, space...

Strongly agree.

I order most of my books chronologically. In the far top-left are English translations of works from ~5000 years ago. They're so remote that, though bits and pieces of them survive as faint echoes through the centuries scattered across a hundred peoples, these are dead cultures. These pre-date early dates for the composition of the Torah by better than a millennium. Some of the authors were as ancient to Homer as Julius Caesar is to us. Their literature is often quirky and even alien to a modern reader.

The broad strokes, though? The themes, the underlying humanity of the characters and the author? Rarely do they not feel entirely familiar.

Honoring, pleading with, boasting to, daring, threatening the gods. Terrified of death and eager to make a lasting mark on the world. Writing propaganda, hagiographies, libel and honest praise. Teaching and exploring. Full of doubt, hope, love, hate, pride, jealously, and a sense of justice.

Funny, clever, evil little humans.

Just like us.

What are some of the books in the far top left? I'm interested in translations of very old scriptures.

Sorry for the delay, busy few days.

1) The three volumes of Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature

2) Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh

3) Black et al, The Literature of Ancient Sumer

4) Foster's From Distant Days (Akkadian)

After that there should be some major works from India, but I haven't gotten around to that yet, so it's, uh, (counts) 14 volumes of Greek lit, philosophy, and math instead. A few Chinese authors ought to be represented along with the Greeks, but again, haven't gotten to it.

I usual prefer accuracy over readability in translations if I have to choose between the two, but I make an exception for some epic verse. Mitchell's Gilgamesh is one of those cases. It's not an abridgment or a retelling, but it errs on the side of readability. Great read, I'd definitely recommend it.

Lichtheim's introductions leave me wanting more, but those books are still very good, and they make the Sumerian and Akkadian volumes seem really bad in comparison. AFAIK there's not much out there better than those two, so those literatures may be in need of a good, well-edited anthology. The Literature of Ancient Sumer is serviceable, but I wasn't even able to finish From Distant Days and I'm considering getting rid of it. Part of that's the literature itself (seems like a big step down from Sumer, IMO) but part of it's the poor work of the editor, annotator, and translator, Foster.

Only the first few works in Vol. 1 of Lichtheim predate the Sumerian and Akkadian literature, and most of the stuff in Vol. 3 is all the way up in the first millennium BCE, but I keep the trilogy together anyway.

(1) http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egyptian-Literature-Middle-Kin...

(2) http://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-English-Version-Stephen-Mitc...

(3) http://www.amazon.com/Literature-Ancient-Sumer-Jeremy-Black/...

(4) http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Days-Poetry-Ancient-Mesopotami...

[EDIT] formatting [EDIT 2] If you're only going to buy/read one volume of Lichtheim I'd recommend Vol. 2 (not the one I linked)

Finding connections is not what I am talking about. The issue is no specific example is universal.

Even pain might seem universal, but some people simply lack that sensation. As in antithetic while getting a cavity filled would be pointless.

This might all seem pedantic, but it's really important to remember that people don't necessarily think the way you do.

The specific instantiation might vary but suffering is universal. We all suffer in various ways to various degrees depending on the circumstances around us.

The parent was talking about being moved emotionally. And there are plenty of individuals who aren't moved emotionally by those things (usually not all at once, but there are some).

The sacredness is hardly in the art. In the presence of secular people there is no sacred art. (Meaning that "the sacred" is only in the imagination of some of the mundane.)

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

-Douglas Adams

This. As a glaring example, consider the various Ecstasies of Saint Teresa (e.g. the one by Bernini[0] or Albertoni[1]).

They might generally be considered less fit for a church than for an Hell's Angel tattoo.

[0] https://paolabottero.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/teresa.jpeg [1] http://www.inrometoday.it/phototour/churches/trastevere/sanf...

I don't quite understand the problem here. Art comes from a culture, and there are different cultures. Some are secular, others not so much. They all produce art. Good art is good art, regardless of the background. It might open up in a different way for a person who shares the cultural or religious context but that's just one way to look at it and that doesn't mean other views would get any less. I fail to see why would anyone disregard a beautiful fresco just because Christians paid the artist to paint it for them. It's not exactly as if the fresco would try to convert its audience.

I don't think many people would, really; but I certainly remember becoming a militant atheist at the age of 6, and resenting every encounter with a hymn or a christmas carol for most of the rest of my school days. I needed to take a long detour through black metal before I could appreciate sacred music (and while I appreciate the importance of Renaissance art to the development of human culture, I find still that there are only so many paintings of Jesus and martyred saints I can look at consecutively before my eyes glaze over).

So I can certainly imagine there being people out there, like my 8-14 year old self, who really don't like religion to the point that they can't appreciate religious art at all. If the subject matter really does set your teeth on edge, you're not going to appreciate the beauty. Art isn't just a thing; it's an interplay between the thing and the viewer/listener etc. If there's no open port on the receiver, the message won't get through.

"I find still that there are only so many paintings of Jesus and martyred saints I can look at consecutively before my eyes glaze over"

Heh, that I can believe. Fortunately there's a lot of other sacred visual art to view, for example, look at the many depictions of the archangel Michael over the years in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel)

One thing I find very interesting about these works is the application of a society's current aesthetics in depicting a figure from a fixed, much earlier time.

"What does it mean to be moved by the beauty of a vision you can’t believe to be true?"

It doesn't mean anything, it's just like we like fantasy and science fiction, it's the remote worlds filled with wonder, evil and heroic deeds. My favourite musical is Jesus Christ Super Star. How can you not love the song 'Gethsemane' in which Jesus struggles between taking the rough road and dying for his cause, or escaping now and living in peace with the things he has achieved so far? Let alone that he isn't even sure that his death will be justified?

You don't have to be a theist to appreciate that. (As I am not)

I am a man, nothing human is alien to me.

An I approach I have found fruitful is working backwards, while contrasting it with secular art.

Good article, but why is Rothko mentioned in the same breath as Fra Angelico?

I would argue that Rothko is one of the most talented painters ever to live. Whereas everyone else before him was trying to show off how good they were at painting, he was focused on making stuff that actually looked good on people's walls. That sort of empathy for users is the same key ingredient that's behind so many really successful entrepreneurs.

I've never understood why people like Rothko's work. I look at his stuff and say "I could do this myself with 2 - 3 colors of paint and 10 minutes with a paint roller." What am I missing here? Is his talent understanding his market or artistic (or both)?

Rothko's work doesn't come across well in reproductions. The scale, texture, and subtle color variations all matter.

I felt much the same as you until I saw them in person. In particular at the Rothko room at the Philips Collection in Washington DC, with Rothkos on all the walls.

In any case, Rothkos aren't about representation (obviously), but about the feeling the painting brings about in the viewer. For me it's best not to assign them any meaning at all, but just take them in.

Nothing comes across for me from pictures in books or online though. It's a completely in-person experience.

My wife and I spent hours looking at them when SF MoMA had an exhibition a few years ago and we both left the exhibit pretty frustrated. They just don't speak to me, whereas I could stare at a Jackson Pollock painting for ages. Well, de gustibus non est disputandem and all that...

It's a good point that it'll still come down to the eye of the beholder.

I guess my point is that it's unlikely you'll ever appreciate him if all you see are jpgs and pics in books.

I did see one at the Houston Museum of Art, was very large, (to my eyes) uniformly brown except for a roller-wide of slight other-color brown. I also went to the chapel in Houston. It was all black (vertically rolled) with a black (horizontally rolled) swath on the bottom in a dim, concrete building. I didn't like the feelings of dark, gloomy, and depression they evoked; not really what the word "chapel" inspires in my mind.

I'm not really a modern art fan, but I'll try to keep an open mind next time I see some. Scale, texture, subtlety, I'll keep that in mind. (Certainly the scale is impressive!)

Of course it just comes down to preference, but as someone who finds his work beautiful even in reproduction one point of context is that many (maybe all? not sure) of his pieces were made for very specific spaces, to enhance the environment -- restaurants, etc. I think this is why I've never found seeing them in a museum to be a significantly transcendent experience either. It's my understanding that they were made to be lived with, even if just for a few hours, and to have a conversation with the space they were meant to be installed into. Not things you study and focus your attention toward specifically, but things that transform the environment you're in. My favorite Rothko experiences are just prints that I've found a proper home for in my apartment, honestly.

So it's the painting version of ambient or furniture music, art which aspires to the condition of Erik Satie's or Brain Eno's compositions.

There are hundreds if not thousands of artists who can recreate some of the most famous and technically difficult paintings of the past 1000 years and yet they're lucky if they can sell their original work at a garage sale.

Art has very little to do with reproducing what the eye can see, in fact some of the most renowned art does exactly the opposite.

If you're confused by Rothko I hope you never come across Duchamp.

In an age where our pocket phones take excellent pictures, I can see how representative painting does not do well.

I never said I was expecting representative art. I'm confused by your statement "some of the most renowned art does exactly the opposite [of reproduction]," though. Could you explain it?

I'll freely admit I'm not much of a modern art fan. I'm not sure that colored stripes really clears the bar, even if you make the gigantic (although as another poster said, maybe I need to see them in their intended setting). I feel like just as art is more than simply reproducing a scene, art is also more than just producing a feeling.

I looked up Duchamp, yeah, not a fan :) I think I probably understand the works better than Rothko, though.

> If you're confused by Rothko I hope you never come across Duchamp.

As Seth Godin says, the first guy to install a toilet in a museum was an artist, the second was a plumber.

If Rothko or Duchamp cause confusion, I think the fault lies with preconception of art. It's not all intended to please the eye or the ear, in case of music. Some of it is intended to inflame the mind. Some of it is intended to amuse the mind. Some of it is intended to amuse the artist and his/her friends. I enjoy art as a special kind of light, in which many people will reveal themselves to me in ways they usually try to hide.

Referencing my much downvoted comment currently at bottom, Rothko (I had to look him up) is a prime example of exactly what I'm talking about.

Quite possibly I just don't get it. But what I suspect is something along the lines of wine snobbery. The experts all agree. Even if it really tastes like paint thinner. No one wants to appear undiscerning or unenlightened. To me, this is not art at all. Not beautiful, not enlightening, not interesting and serves no functional purpose with the possible exception of giving art folks something to talk about. The first person who thought of using fire. Now THAT is an artist.

Whilst I broadly agree with your sentiments, you should also get out more, and open your eyes. Whilst not knowing Rothko doesn't imply your insular views, life can become more interesting if you don't close off alternative experiences.

> The experts all agree.

No, they don't.

> To me, this is not art at all. Not beautiful, not enlightening, not interesting and serves no functional purpose with the possible exception of giving art folks something to talk about. The

The difference between you and some subset of experts is that art experts are far more likely to divorce their own reaction to art from their evaluation of whether it is art.

That art experts recognize, say, abstract expressionism in general or Rothko's work in particular as art doesn't mean that they like it, or that it does something for them personally (and the same is equally true of, say, photorealism as of abstract expressionism.)

Some of the most important software in my life is code I could have written myself.

But I didn't. The developers did. It's still good software.

I don't appreciate art for its technical difficulty, I appreciate it for its aesthetics. There are a lot of Rothkos that look really nice.

he was focused on making stuff that actually looked good on people's walls

I'm sure you have A/B test data to prove this claim :-)

Myself, as a secular person, the way I approach religious art is the same way I approach non-religious art.

I give it a brief glance and a slight nod (if nod worthy which usually I don't feel is the case), then I proceed to ignore it. Most of what is called art isn't in my opinion anyway so I usually don't even bother with that.

There is some cool stuff for sure, Burning Man comes to mind, especially before the steampunk infestation. But generally I wonder why people waste their time.

I do however (nearly) fall to my knees in worshipful rapture at a good piece of technical work be it a building, a vaccine or a piece of code. But it has to be functional or I don't care about it beyond a glance. And efficiency and functionality it what makes it beautiful to me.

I'm guessing this view might be considered by some to be a disorder and it probably correlates with my lack of religiosity. As a side effect of said disorder, I simply don't care what these kind of people think.

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