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Religious Art and Religious Belief
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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Few sociologists of religion have been tempted to explore the visual dimension of religious change. The problems—both theoretical and methodological—are formidable.
In the first place, when scrutinizing religious art in any culture we have to be very careful about our assumptions concerning the iconicity of religious symbols and the so-called creative character of visual images. Richard Wollheim, for one, has argued persuasively that when we discuss iconicity in any cultural setting we have to take account of the relation of the sign to the sign-user as well as what is represented by the sign, i.e. the referent. It is, he says, “when signs become for us ... ‘fuller’ objects, that we may also come to feel that they have greater appropriateness to their referents”. The problem for sociologists of religion is just how to tease this kind of sense data from respondents.
Secondly: as Hugh Duncan has noted, “the problem is not that of asserting that there is a reciprocal relation between art and society, but rather of showing how this relationship exists” ‘Proof’ might be arrived at by establishing either valuative congruence, social structural influence or interpersonal influence within the artistic vocation itself. But here we also need to postulate a psychological mechanism through which the individual artist transmutes social, cultural and credal themes into tangible artistic statements, as well as a theory of perception and symbolic process to account for art’s effect on the disposition and behaviour of the audience.
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- Copyright © 1984 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Richard Wollheim, Art and its Objects. Penguin, 1970. p. 64
2 H.D. Duncan, Communication and Social Order. O.U.P., 1968. pp. 138f.
3 quoted in J. Dillenberger, Style and Content in Christian Art. Abingdon Press, New York, 1965. p. 18.
4 J.K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage a study of institutions and moral values in a Greek mountain community. O.U.P., 1964.
5 Margaret Kenna, “An Anthropological Approach to Icons”, paper presented to Lancaster Religious Studies Colloqium 1977.
6 Campbell, op. cit. p. 344.
7 quoted in Dillenberger, op. cit. p. 44.
8 M. Roskill, ed., The Letters of Van Gogh. Collins, 1972. p. 151.
9 John Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism. J.M. Dent, 1906. p. 21.
10 Dillenberger, op. cit. p. 34.
11 Emile Mâle, The Gothic Image. Harper, 1958.
12 Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance. Penguin, 1967.
13 quoted in M. Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death. Harper, 1951. p. 87.
14 in P. Burman and K. Nugent, Prophecy and Vision. Bristol, 1982.
15 W.S. Rubin, Modern Sacred Art and the Church of Assy. Columbia U.P., 1961. pp 71f.
16 Rubin op. cit. p. 122.
17 Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture. O.U.P., 1959. p. 74.
18 Harold Rosenberg, Tradition and the New. Scribner, New York, 1960. p. 210.
19 Hans Küng, Art and the Question of Meaning. Hodder, 1981. pp. 12ff.
20 Paul Gauguin, Letters to his wife and friends. Saturn Press, 1966. p. 224.
21 Max Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music. Southern Illinois University Press, 1957. p. 117.
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