Blixa wrote:While I don't think that art is an argument FOR god (which is sort of what your OP was implying), I do find that the human imagination is probably the closest thing to "the divine" that I recognize.
My disappointment was more with other posters' understanding of art as easily explainable or reducible to the visual and so on. To my mind, both art and science are 'laboratories' for asking questions about the world we live in and our experience of it, and in that sense are much closer than your OP suggested.
I was kind of hoping Hoops would decline to take the bait of treating art as some sort of proof of God. That argument appears at best to my mind a very doubtful route to scale.
Yet Hoops I am completely sympathetic to your opening post as a personal narrative. For myself I would picture it as returning to a room where I remember again the dimensions of my experience which point to God. Imagining the lake you reference to be Michigan and the museum Chicago there is a Matisse which for me opens the door to the mystery of human spirituality. I could enjoy the painting as an athiest but it would make me less comfortably atheist.
I was kind of hoping Hoops would decline to take the bait of treating art as some sort of proof of God. That argument appears at best to my mind a very doubtful route to scale.
Let me put a finer point on it. Maybe this will help and maybe it won't. But I think that our need to create art, and our experience of art, as an indication that there is something in us besides firing synapses and chemical reactions. My question is why?
Yet Hoops I am completely sympathetic to your opening post as a personal narrative.
Thank you. I agonized over it for some time, given this board's penchant for mocking and dismissal.
For myself I would picture it as returning to a room where I remember again the dimensions of my experience which point to God.
And I would return to something else, but my something else is born from the same place that yours is. I find that interesting.
Imagining the lake you reference to be Michigan and the museum Chicago there is a Matisse which for me opens the door to the mystery of human spirituality.
Me to.
I could enjoy the painting as an athiest but it would make me less comfortably atheist.
I remember my atheist days, it was art that led me to ask "why?" So I know what you mean.
Hoops wrote:I remember my atheist days, it was art that led me to ask "why?" So I know what you mean.
I'm curious as to what piece of art turned you from atheism to evangelical, Hoops. Perhaps something by Georgia O'Keeffe or Salvador Dalí?
I'm not evangelical. I understand how you see me that way, but I don't self identify with that.
No, not O'Keefe or Dali, though I find them (in the most novice way) entirely interesting. I would love to have Beastie or Blixa take me around an art museum - but, I'm a Christian, that won't happen.
Spenser, More, Malory, etc. There's more. It was an engine of many parts. (Don't forget, I'm taking my GED Test in June, so don't grill me too hard)
Buffalo wrote:As to the first part, I would think that was self evident. The most intelligent species on the planet (namely, us) is clearly the most successful.
By what measure? We're not the most successful organism if you measure by population, biomass, or geographic extent.
We're at the top of the food chain. We've dominated all other life forms on earth (sometimes to the point of extinction).
Parley P. Pratt wrote:We must lie to support brother Joseph, it is our duty to do so.
Morley, as a fan of your picture I meant no value judgement with the title Magus. I would not think of Picasso as pointing toward theism or Christianity(despite a fascinating Christ and Minotaur image) He may not escape a more primative form of religion.
I was impressed with Blixas phrase, laboratory for asking questions about the world we live in and our experience of it. I think Picasso may show dimensions of human religous experience more important than the just so story explaination of religion which is some time made fun of.
In my own Christian view I think arts ability to directly picture human relationship to divine is limited to nonexistent. I see art picturing human spriituality as evenst between us and our neighbors, history and enviroment. In that sense Picassos non Christian outlook does not limit his value, and enjoyability.
I do not think I am able to consider the question of what is human religion without Picasso being a participant in the discussion.
Buffalo wrote:We're at the top of the food chain. We've dominated all other life forms on earth (sometimes to the point of extinction).
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco - To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
huckelberry wrote:Morley, as a fan of your picture I meant no value judgement with the title Magus. I would not think of Picasso as pointing toward theism or Christianity(despite a fascinating Christ and Minotaur image) He may not escape a more primative form of religion.
I was impressed with Blixas phrase, laboratory for asking questions about the world we live in and our experience of it. I think Picasso may show dimensions of human religous experience more important than the just so story explaination of religion which is some time made fun of.
In my own Christian view I think arts ability to directly picture human relationship to divine is limited to nonexistent. I see art picturing human spriituality as evenst between us and our neighbors, history and enviroment. In that sense Picassos non Christian outlook does not limit his value, and enjoyability.
I do not think I am able to consider the question of what is human religion without Picasso being a participant in the discussion.
Sorry to be so slow to respond, Huck; I missed this post.
You say that you "think arts ability to directly picture human relationship to divine is limited to nonexistent." Then you'd tend to believe that the Vatican screwed up with that whole 'Sistine Chapel' thing, right?
Morley wrote:You say that you "think arts ability to directly picture human relationship to divine is limited to nonexistent." Then you'd tend to believe that the Vatican screwed up with that whole 'Sistine Chapel' thing, right?
I'm not sure what huckleberry meant there, either. Perhaps it was just mangled phrasing?
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
