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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Palaeolithic art and religion handout

After reading the article on Palaeolithic art and religion, the topic of art and how it is intertwined with religion has lingered in my mind... "Nevertheless, the quest for ur-religion is inevitably intertwined with the origins of art" (9). My question with this statement is- where do you draw the line with associating art with any form of spirituality, formal religious group or not? Art to me is a communication tool for the individual or a group of people's self expression. There is no such thing as art that is not intended to be shared in some form. Understanding that art is rooted as a self expression communication tool, how can you really separate it from spirituality ever? For instance, they give the example in the article about Stonehenge being a strong example of symbolic religious affiliated art. Whoever created must have had some form of religion or spirituality present. You don't create a fairy circle like structure of boulders just because your bored. The structure signified something, they were sharing an idea, possibly as solid to them as the boulders they were using. So the structure represents at least a presence of an idea to be shared, and that communication of human expression was successful because people still travel all around the world to see this magnificent structure.  How does this successful use of communication relate back to spirituality? well, my very simplified definition for spirituality is the sharing or acknowledging within yourself of ideas you have about the world around you, and your gut feeling for how to answer these questions that aren't rooted from a physical thing, but rooted emotionally, and shared through the physical. like art. 

1 comment:

  1. I like your point. How can we ever extract religion from any of people's actions or products, especially if we don't know the religion to begin with. I just wrote a post on how religion defines people's view of the world and thus influences their actions, so maybe there isn't anything we can look at without considering religion.

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