Art and Religion

Art and religion have gone hand-in-hand for thousands of years. Almost every religious sect makes use of it. It glorifies, protests, idealizes, and tells the stories of religion. During some periods of out history art existed for the sake of religion. Artists of our time are generally free to create and comment on whatever they choose. People, colors, nature, dreams or shopping carts might be just as interesting to an artist as the appearance of a crucifixion or an Indian fertility god. Religion dominated art--it commissioned it and used it as propaganda. Religion or its ideas were presented in paintings, drawings, sculpture, architecture-- you name it. Religion and art share common features: their origins are uncertain, and it is hard to define exactly their criteria. So much of religion and so much of art belong to the participants--the worshippers, collectors, patrons, and those whom religion and art have left confused.


It seems that nearly all early art has its roots in religion. The Christians used it. The Taoists used it. The Buddhists, the Hindu, the Muslims, the Jewish-- all used decoration, painting, sculpture, or architecture to express their beliefs in a higher place or power. Art was a way of rearranging the mundane to make it seem celestial. Art applied human creativity and ability to the ordinary to make it extraordinary. It pointed to another place, where everything was ready-made perfect. Art was a reminder of good, evil, life and death.


Can art and religion ever truly be separate? Can one exist without another? Can we truly produce a piece that depicts anything of this world without showing our belief or disbelief in the process? So much of art's history was dominated by religion, it is hard to imagine art ever functioning without it. That question will only be answered through the passage of time. (Erwin O. Christensen Primitive Art New York: 1955)


Did art begin as a religious practice? Were ancient artists offering their talents and works when they painted the cave walls at Lascaux, France? One hundred thousand years ago, "give or take a few millenniums...the Neanderthals were burying their dead, placing tools in the graves and perhaps chunks of meat as if for use in an afterlife or spirit world."(John E . Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion 1985)


Did humans always have this suspicion of another world? Is this when religion and art began to have its huge impact on our world, during the period known as the Upper Paleolithic, about thirty thousand years ago? What seems like an almost immeasurable period of time to us is the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. Those distant occurrences--burial of the dead, decoration of cave walls, and other evidence of rituals are what distinguish early humans from other primates and what link our ancestors to ourselves.