Arts Roundup: Hindu Art Censorship in Baroda, the Pope and Sacred Art in Brazil and Dawkins on Religious Art
May 13th, 2007 by Menachem Wecker
A very thorough post from India Uncut on a terrible instance of abuse and censorship in Baroda, that landed an artist in jail for painting religious material. In response, the “artist community obviously rises up, and organises an exhibition documenting erotica in Indian and Western art.”
[See also: Art Concerns‘ Ranjit Hoskote, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Johny ML, Abhijeet Tamhane and Shashwati’s Blog]
On a visit to Brazil, the Pope held Sunday Mass at Aparecida do Norte, “the largest shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the world.” The shrine was destroyed in 1978, and reassembled by experts at the Museum of Sacred Art (Sao Paulo).
[Reuters]
Embedded within a critique of Dawkins:
Dawkins wants us to think that the ‘God’ element in cultic art is really incidental. In the past artists had to look for patrons and the church was rich: so naturally, they produced religious art. If the patrons had been different, the art would have been different too. This is another example of Dawkins’ ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’ argument. Religious artists like Bach or Michelangelo were sublime despite the fact that they dealt with religious subjects. If they’d dealt with secular ones, they might have been even better … But a secular artist like Shakespeare was sublime because he was secular; it is ‘chilling’ to imagine Will with a Church commission because we would have lost his great plays and got something worse in return.
(Of course, it’s sheer bloody nonsense to see Shakespeare as purely a secular writer. Merchant of Venice is partly about the difference between Jewish theological conceptions of Law and Christian theological conceptions of Grace; Macbeth is partly about Calvinistic pre-destination; King Lear is partly concerned with the fate of the just pagan and what ‘goodness’ means in a pre-Christian world; Hamlet is very much about where the dead go now that purgatory has been abolished. Perhaps Dawkins needs to have his consciousness raised by–well, thinking, basically.)
Does Dawkins think that the words are simply irrelevant to Christian music?
All good points, methinks, but I haven’t read Dawkins yet.
[The Life and Opinions of Andrew Rilstone]
Lisa Lieberman interviews Dickran Kouymjian about Fresno State’s Armenian studies program. The discussion often turns to art.
[Fresno State News]