Sunday, March 20, 2011

art and spirituality

I have a hypotheisis that me thinking I write slower than others is a construct my mind has created that I am following without applying consciouness. I think the most important hing will be to learn the material. Want me to type the notes for you? Ok!
We looked at the way various religions use bodies...gods in Greek art are indeed anthropomorphic.. great emphasis on bodies in Greek art.. man is the measure.. precedent for rejection of physical manifestation them--> of bodies? If we look at Mythic stories we find that looking directly at a God has negative consequences (so they must be powerful images, right?

Then Action, Artemis (Diana) --> basically artemis turned Action into something because he looked at her
To see the divine is overwhelming..the sense in many religions that representation of the divine as a body implies that the God is vulnerable and fragile.

presenting God lessens him (prevalent in African art)

Orphic movement in Greece - put emphasis on gods and the human spirit or soul..philosophical and religious movement that rejects material aspects and portrayal of gods. Put emphasis on god's divine origin.

Plato - God is the measure of all things but he himself has no measure"
Plato wrote "there are two somethings: we must look towards the divine and it alone is worth contemplating. 2. Representing the divine is futile, almost ac-religious"

as soon as we have thought of divinity we have already limited it..
we are necessarily limited by our human capacities...
in exodus when God asks for an image to be made it is completely fine

if I live in the James house and get to paint and take those two awesome classes... I have to really behave myself..

we are studying graven images because it helps us understand the agency the people surrounding it ascribed it..

a religion would want to make the god tangible so he becomes relateable
NEW PAGE:
Turn to Islam: strong history of not portraying the body of the divine. The Qur'an says little about the prohibitoin of image making. :They are of Satan's handiwork". God is considered a metaphysical unity. He is allah, the one, the eternal.

Sufi scholar" I have never seen anything without God in it. I have never seen anything but god".. the notion of god is so transcendent that the idea of him being everywhere is part of the faith.

Christian Icoloclasm: The rejection of images, almost always the rejection of relgious images.. how does the religion ban images of the invisible?

The Christians differentaiated from 2D images to 3D images. Because of the Jewish background of most Christians there is not a whole lot of religious imagery that includes a body. Words and symbols were of often included.. there is some.

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