Аспекты постсекулярности: о растворении религии в искусстве.pdf (original) (raw)
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See note to chapter 1. This is a chapter in the book On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004), available on Amazon. Chapter 2 was originally published with two "verys": "From Bird-Goddesses to Jesus 2000: A Very, Very Brief History of Religion and Art," Thresholds [MIT] 25 (2002): 76–83, including a discussion with Caroline Jones. Later it was reprinted in Faith, exh. cat., edited by James Hyde (Hartford CT: Real Art Ways, 2005-2006), 79-90. This is about as brief as a history can get: the idea is to show that in Western practice before the Renaissance, the concepts of "religion" and "art" did not exist in their current forms, so it does not make sense to talk about "religious art" in all centuries and cultures. The chapter also points to developments from the 16th to the 19th centuries, in which "art" became increasingly detached from "religion." Without these very abstract, very sweeping observations, it can sometimes be difficult to know what is being claimed in conversations on religion and art.
Phenomenon of Christian Art Through the Prism of Ancient Russian Art
Atlantis press, 2016
The article deals with the specifics of the Christian art, which is based on the spiritual and moral values, through the prism of the features of the ancient art, the object of the national pride of the modern Russia. The author addresses the question of differences of the Christian art in general from the ancient one, conducts a comparative analysis of the Orthodox and Catholic art, reveals the specifics of the ancient art.
The paper aims to introduce an art historical phenomenon, which appears in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. The early years present plurality of art movements in Russian and in Europe. Efforts have been made to constitute a true art of Russia. To do so, the traditional/religious art and folk art, mainly of the peasants, were reconsidered. The accumulation and study of works of folk art already began by the mid-19th century. By this time, an increasing interest had emerged concerning icons and folkloric elements, found in arts and crafts. Kasimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, Vladimir Tatlin are among the leading figures who vigorously defended a re-investigation of these art forms. They elaborated genuine features of icon painting and adapted to their contemporary art conceptions and compositions. Accordingly these leading figures are to be mentioned in brief. Russian Avant-garde artists, Constructivists, Suprematists with their non-objective art show re-percussions of traditional particularly religious art modelled after the Byzantine tradition.
This paper is an attempt to highlight and reflect on several interrelated issues that seem to be very important in terms of working out a relevant theological approach to the wide variety of artistic expression, particularly as far as theoretical aesthetics is concerned. I shall focus on some most characteristic ideas developed in 20 th century Russian religious philosophy that may appear to be significant not only for the Orthodox tradition of spirituality and thought in which they are rooted, but for other Christian traditions as well. As for the Russian Orthodoxy, it should be pointed out from the very outset that the relationships between theology and art have always been rather uneasy, and in fact confined to the theology of church arts, icons in particular. Based on the teachings of the Saint Fathers, the Russian Orthodox tradition has always been extremely rich in artistic creativity within the sphere of church arts; however, up to the present moment it has been quite reluctant in acknowledging deep spiritual dimensions of secular arts. There were, of course, many attempts towards religious evaluation of literature, painting, music or poetry, but the gap between " sacred " and " secular " art has always been present and articulated by the Church. I would not say, however, that it is typical of the tradition as such; rather, it was historically and, in some cases, spiritually determined, inasmuch as the primary concern of the Church is to keep people away from the temptations of the flawed world. The tradition, however dominated by certain prescribed norms or rules, is an " open system " , and its evolution is characterized by a dialectic of the canonical and the heuristic principles, the static and the dynamic. In Russia, it was not until the beginning of the 20 th century that the theoretical heritage of Orthodox iconology started being philosophically and aesthetically deepened and in some ways reassessed in the works of a number of prominent thinkers, so that it became possible to consider the challenge of overcoming the traditional gap between " religious " and " non-religious " spheres of creativity by means of developing a fundamental theoretical basis for the interpretation of art. In the present-day Russia, with the growing interest in theological evaluation of art and literature, this is one of the most crucial issues, as well as it has been in the West. The following observations, though covering just a few general and purely theoretical points, might provide, I hope, an outline of what could be called iconological thought in Russian religious aesthetics, how I view it, both rooted in and different (in terms of subject and treatment) from what is known as the theology of Icon. 1. Image/Icon as a Category of Religious Consciousness This is something that would, perhaps, seem quite natural to Western thought, whereas, for some reason, it is not a common way of reflecting upon the icon in Russia. In fact, the image has always been one of the central categories of Orthodox religious consciousness, a category linking together theology, aesthetics and anthropology. The concept of the Divine image that constituted the basis of understanding personal relationship between God and man was, at the same time, the major idea underlying patristic iconology: an icon is always an expression of the Divine image as an ontological reality present in human nature. However, the question arises: how is such an expression possible? From the very beginning, the image (εικων) has, therefore, two inseparable dimensions: ontological and epistemological, i.e. the nature of the image as revelation of the Divine is accounted for by the fact that it is an immanent structure, or category, of consciousness; and vice versa: cognition and experience of the Divine through the image is possible only because its ontological nature is asserted. It was precisely the categorical aspect of the image that Fr. Pavel Florensky, one of the greatest Russian religious thinkers, stressed in his
The death of art: the transformation of art from a religious perspective
1998
The hypothesis put forth in this dissertation is twofold. The first part is based on a view (supported by writers such as Hans Belting) that maintains that art lost its sacred character in the late Middle Ages, when art was emancipated from religion and the artist was recognized as an original Creator. The two first chapters examine this issue: The first chapter (A Religious View of the History of the Arts) discusses theories of religious art from the ancient Jewish drama and the Greek tragedy to the late Middle Ages. Psychological material, mostly drawn from Lacan and Jung, is used to explore the connection between art and religion in the East and the West. The second chapter (Anti-Leonardo) focuses on some important changes in the Renaissance which can be observed mostly in art, that have affected religious and social consciousness to date.
CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ART AND RELIGION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By taking into consideration the manifestation of the relationships between arts and religion during the 20th century, the research herein studies the general frame of artistic representations and approaches realized in the influence space of the religious field. By selecting some of the most representative artistic creations of this period, this study treats the idea of religiousness transmitted by art. Thus there are analyzed some of the main issues that the artists of the last century based their creations on, issues that marked a certain separation, already experienced by the previous periods in the field of arts and Church. Regarding artistic achievements, the 20th century meant a permanent attempt to replace past expressions, knowing the affirmation of a great variety of artistic trends and guidelines, which, in spite of the more intense process of laicization of society, nevertheless continued to assure a special space and interest to religious themes, although very different from the ones in any periods of the history of arts.
Apology of Culture: Religion and Culture in Russian Thought
Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, Paweł Rojek (red.), Apology of Culture. Religion and Culture in Russian Thought, Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications 2015, pp. 252, ISBN 978–1-4982–0398-2.
Contemporary philosophy and theology are ever more conscious of the fact that the model of relations between religion and culture developed in modernity is fundamentally flawed. e processes of the secularization of society, culture, and even religion are rooted in the dualistic vision of religion and culture introduced in the late Middle Ages. In seeking a way out, we need to explore domains of culture unaffected by Western European secular thinking.