

How Should Secular People Approach Sacred Art? - benbreen
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/how-should-secular-people-approach-sacred-art/

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkAa3Zdx6Ro](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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUMR_D6G_Sw)

Gesualdo's Madrigals are sublime, too.

~~~
adwf
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.

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

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

------
carapace
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.)

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
Alex3917
> And there is nothing universal about what moves people.

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

~~~
ashark
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.

~~~
Retric
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.

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

------
yason
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.

~~~
tragic
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.

~~~
hga
" _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)](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.

------
tinco
"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)

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

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

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

~~~
Alex3917
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.

~~~
prewett
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)?

~~~
Ollinson
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.

~~~
Alex3917
> 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.

------
jqm
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.

