Religious Art is About Being Human
THE GUARDIAN
By Sophia Deboick
The Question: Do we need faith to see religious art?
UNITED KINGDOM - A current exhibition at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp underscores the universal reach of religious art. Featuring a group of 16th- and 17th-century altarpieces commissioned by trades guilds for the cathedral, here we find depictions of birth and death, joy and sorrow made for people bound together by the most earthly of concerns – work. Here the profane and sacred are intertwined. Even the most iconic of religious artworks can have profound meanings for the nonbeliever. Religious art, arguably like religion itself, ultimately deals with the trials of being human, and this is something those of all faiths and none can share in. The pope is right when he says that "art can express and render visible humanity's need to go beyond what one sees, revealing a thirst and quest for the infinite", but that "infinite" is the unfathomable in ourselves, whether we call that "God" or not. [link]
By Sophia Deboick
The Question: Do we need faith to see religious art?
UNITED KINGDOM - A current exhibition at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp underscores the universal reach of religious art. Featuring a group of 16th- and 17th-century altarpieces commissioned by trades guilds for the cathedral, here we find depictions of birth and death, joy and sorrow made for people bound together by the most earthly of concerns – work. Here the profane and sacred are intertwined. Even the most iconic of religious artworks can have profound meanings for the nonbeliever. Religious art, arguably like religion itself, ultimately deals with the trials of being human, and this is something those of all faiths and none can share in. The pope is right when he says that "art can express and render visible humanity's need to go beyond what one sees, revealing a thirst and quest for the infinite", but that "infinite" is the unfathomable in ourselves, whether we call that "God" or not. [link]
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