Visual Arts And Literature Essay Example for Free

Visual Arts And Literature Essay In visual arts and literature, the sacred and the secular, separate entities in themselves meld into one another, frequently producing a hybrid which gives rise to a new seculo-religious genre. Despite of the doctrine of separation of the church and state, most times it was the priests who were in charge of many other areas outside the religious realm such as education and politics. The far-reaching influence of the church had caused artists, musicians, architects, and authors to incorporate elements of the sacred in their work. Also these practitioners had fervent, deeply-rooted convictions which consciously and unconsciously pervaded their work. In the text Culture and Values: Survey of the Humanities, the dual presence of both sacred and secular represents the union of two major spheres. Cunningham observes that â€Å"the intermingling of secular with religious elements is thoroughly in accordance with Renaissance ideals† (Cunningham 291). Tiziano Vecelli (1473-1576) was a Renaissance artist who mingled the sacred and secular in his art pieces. His major masterpieces include The Assumption of the Virgin (1516), The Pesaro Madonna (1519-1526), Venus of Urbino (1538), Danae with Nursemaid (1553-1556), Presentation of the Blessed Virgin (1539), and St. Peter the Martyr (1530). His artistic life is characterized by the mixture, in one way or another, of Christian religious aspects with secular (and pagan) aspects. On one hand, one attests to Vecelli’s Marian devotion in his portraits such as The Assumption of the Virgin (1516-1518), which stands proudly in the Venetian Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and The Pesaro Madonna (1519-1526), placed at the Frari Basilica Chapel. The paintings laud Mary as a holy human intercessor and deity with the Child Jesus. Enmeshed in the words are the worship of the saints, heavenly glory, and apostles, all in a posture of solemn and sacred reverence At the same time his voluptuous painting of Venus is Venus of Urbino (1538) exhibits the nude body of a woman poised in a supine position on her bed, with seductive airs. Venus is the pagan goddess of love, fertility, and sex often depicted as a prostitute. Danae with Nursemaid also derives from Greco-Roman mythology. The art work demonstrates the naked Danae lying on a bed with her eyes heavenward and her maid Abbot Suger (1081-1151) is the one responsible for the rise of Gothic architecture and its popularity within the Christian church in the early ninth and tenth centuries. In the interpretation and construction of gothic buildings â€Å"(secular) builders and theologians worked closely together† (Cunningham 218). The collaboration of both secular and sacred perspectives gives birth to gothic architecture which began in Paris and which celebrated â€Å"the philosophical and theological traditions known as scholasticism† (Cunningham 209). Suger functioned as the Abbey of Saint Denis and therefore the architecture served both for religious uplift and secular admiration. The fusion of the secular and the sacred is evidenced in the proliferation of literature in the medieval and renascent times. The Summa Theologica, a literary and theological masterpiece, â€Å"represents †¦ the hierarchical and synthetic religious humanism of the middle ages† (Cunningham 232). Written by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the Summa Theologica sets forth the primary beliefs and dogma of the church explaining and confirming arguments for theocentrism and also containing humanism’s doctrines. The scriptorium was the designated writing room within monasteries. Cunningham documents that â€Å"from the seventh century on monastic scriptoria were busily engaged copying a wealth of material, both sacred and profane† (Cunningham 193). Priests and friars wrote several essays, poems, and theses. Moreover in the Islamic tradition, one sees the merger of the secular and the sacred. Islamic literature became a classic art form where calligraphic depictions of sacred writings are etched on Muslim mosques. The art work symbolizes the Muslim concept of their God, Allah, who encompasses everything. These writings were often extracted from passages in the Qu’ran. Observers in classic renaissance mosque bear witness to â€Å"elaborate mosaics and geometric decoration† (Cunningham 311). One major example of the Islamic artistic accomplishment is the Arabic script. The beautiful Arabic script was originally sacred as it read the holy words of the Muslim faith, however it soon became both sacred and secular, as fine art. â€Å"The Kufic script is one of the most beautiful earliest and most beautiful of Arabic calligraphy styles† (Cunningham 176). The geometric lines of the Kufic script are distinctive since they boast vertical lines and shapes. The Catholic Church endorsed â€Å"the double usage for humanist learning for secularist and spiritual reform† (Cunningham 289). Humanistic and theological principles were unified in order to reconcile two divergent views where philosophy became spiritualized. Another artist who believed in the seculo-religious merger was Wassily Kandinsky who composed Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911) and â€Å"claimed that the source of all true art was the human soul† (Cunningham 307). This view is in accordance with humanism where man is at the center of the universe (often represented as a man, centralized within a circle). A characteristic of Kandinsky’s work is his obsession with geometry, triangles, and circles. Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky likens man’s life as a triangular pyramid where the ultimate goal is to achieve ascendancy at the top. Man’s soul can either be base (at the bottom of the triangle or exalted at the zenith. This art system hearkens back to Leonardo da Vinci’s classical Vitruvian Man (1490) where the man is his own universe. This double dimensioned painting shows a naked man simultaneously with his legs apart and his legs together, and his arms apart in two positions. The homocentrtic man stands as his own measure enclosed in a circle and square. Kalinsky also saw the spirituality of color for in his work he expressed the joyful, spiritually ecstasy in vivid and bright color versus the dark, melancholic color. However, there were opponents to the union of secular and sacred who held that both should be kept separate. The unity between sacred and secular was not a smooth transition nor was it a unanimous movement, â€Å"the culture of the fifteenth century often was in fact a dialectical struggle at times classical ideals clashed with biblical ideals; at other times the two managed to live in harmony or in a temporary marriage of convenience. The strains of Classicism and Christianity interacted in complex and subtle ways† (291). Catholic Emperor Justinian I was a fan of secular and sacred architecture. He personally directed the erection of several, elaborate cathedrals with Byzantine designs. He helped construct many churches, convents, and palaces, namely, The Great Palace of Constantinople, Basilica Cistern, Church of St. Sophia, and Saint Apollinaire Nuovo. During the reign of Justinian, after the conquest of the old tribe, the Goths (from which one gets the word gothic), the art works of the conquered tribe became ornaments which were positioned within the churches. Cunningham testifies that gothic â€Å"mosaics were added to the church when the building passed from the Goths into Byzantine hands† (Cunningham 161). In Justinian’s time saw a marked proliferation of icon paintings which featured images of Christ and which commenced an iconic style. However, opponents to the incorporation of these icons rebelled to the new wave of art and thus became iconoclastic (thus the origin of the word). Justinian also had mosaics crafted of him and his wife, Theodora, called the Ravenna Mosaics. They portray the royal couple with divine auras around their heads which explain their religio-political views of divine right to rule. Movements within the church and religion rose up to keep the secular and the sacred separate. One such ardent critic of the seculo-religious combination is Girolamo Savonarola (1542-1498) who in an attempt to reform the church who embraced the secular, implemented book burning to expunge the decadent material from the holy writings. As a passionate Dominican friar, his radical views were vehemently anti-Renaissance and anti-humanist. He disagreed with the secular literary that was gaining ground within the church. However, he was condemned a heretic, excommunicated, and martyred. Savonarola wrote spiritual meditations based on Psalms 50 and Psalms 51. The Church also proscribed certain writings and did not tolerate heretical teachings such as Galileo’s Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632). Galileo Galilei wrote Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) and following Copernicus, concluded that the sun was at the center of the universe. Galileo’s â€Å"discoveries brought ecclesiastical censure and he was forced to recant before the inquisition. Facing a possible excommunication and martyrdom, Galileo chose to renounce his beliefs to preserve his life while the Catholic Church bans his book as a forbidden text. Two branches of Buddhism emerge in the thesis and antithesis of the secular and the sacred. The Hinayana is a more rigid form of Chinese Buddhism whereas Mahayana is more worldly and was attractive to Confucians. On the ascetic side, Hinayana appreciated â€Å"Buddhist art (which) aimed to inspire spiritual meditation and a rejection of worldly values† (Cunningham 129). The art work that emblemized the adherent’s austerity is the Fasting Buddha. The image of the Fasting Buddha embodied â€Å"the command to renounce all worldly pleasures† (Cunningham 120). This sculpture forms an essential part of Gandhara Art which represents a thin, gaunt man in a cross-legged seated position with a halo about his head, symbolizing the resultant enlightenment. This antique shows Siddhartha who fasted for three months, denying himself and meditating. The monasteries which supported Mahayana grew faster and were patronized by the wealthy elite classes. Hinduism also contains a hybrid literature which included Hindu sacred text as well as secular tastes. The Gitanjali is an anthology of poems translated into English from the original Vedic manuscripts where its author, Rabindranath Tagore wrote the anthology which signifies â€Å"an offering of songs. † The poetry still retains its strong religious connotations nevertheless, it speaks of and brings together both worlds of the secular and the sacred. â€Å"in 1913, Tagore won the Nobel Prize for literature for Gitanjali, a collection of poems based upon traditional Hindu themes† (Cunningham 314). The work typifies a drawing together of two bodies the male and the female and at the same time uses this sexual imagery to relay information about the ultimate mystery of man’s spiritual union with the divine. In sum the joining of the secular and the sacred tells that although disparate in nature these dichotomies manage to combine and form a powerful force in art and literature. One cannot deny that in order to not lose its peculiar characteristics and identity, strategies of separation between the secular and the sacred have been executed. Holiness ought to be preserved as holy and the secular as its worldly self. Difference can be necessary in order to prevent dilution and weakening of core principles which can be misplaced with frequent mixture. Works Cited: Cunningham, Lawrence S. John J Reich. Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities, Wadsworth, Boston, 2006.