Erin Simonds
Period 4 English
Sunday, March 14, 1999
The Growing Irreverence of "Society’s Eye"
Over the course of time, the views on religion in the Western world have been represented most truthfully through art. "No written text captures the essence of a people’s reaction to religion in the way that visual expression can" (Kramer 66). Surely, there exists a plethora of stories, poems, fables, and documentaries on the subject of religion, written by everyone from Monks to farmers. However, any written account has an inescapable flaw: Solitude. Any written piece expresses but one opinion – that of its author. Art, however, breaches this boundary. The brush of one man painting a medieval celebration can illuminate the thoughts and expressions of hundreds (Feldman 49). Why? Because through the centuries, artists have sought to paint the beliefs of not only themselves, but of society. The truths rendered by the hands of thousands of artists paint a grand picture: A mural of society’s image of religion, and illustrated within that mural, the growing skepticism gained over time.
In the Middle Ages, presenting society’s views on religion was a simple task, as artists needed only to show a marriage, a coronation, a funeral, or a Crucifixion to demonstrate the fact that 1400’s society believed unequivocally in the actions and power of a Supreme Being. In fact, "Art itself was a visible representation of the obsession with tradition and belief" (Secular 13). The people of these times were so heavily engrossed in religion that no one dared question it, and even artists didn’t dare go astray, outside the confines of religion. Due to this unquestioning faith, early art illustrates little more than complete reverence.
Upon reaching the 1600’s, the serenity of the mural reaches a drastic and sudden change. The pleasant paintings of religious ceremonies are suddenly challenged by society’s plunge towards reason rather than religion. The Age of Enlightenment, as historians have chosen to call this period of change, was this breach in the serenity of the mural. Soon, paintings of God inspiring growth of new crops were replaced by paintings of farmers sowing seed. The middle class of Europe was coming to their senses, and realizing that orbits around the sun, not God’s mystical will, caused the sun to rise. Soon, every man sought his own rights to success, regardless of what his "destiny" was supposed to be. When the Church stood in the way of this uprising, Europe "witnessed constant protests against existing wrongs, and these protests fostered a revolutionary determination to reform and improve, not only material and spiritual conditions, but social and political institutions as well" (Secular 11). From the beginning of time until this point in European history, few questioned the validity of faith. "Such conditions would never exist again" (Secular 168), but all the while, artists were there to capture the thoughts, the emotions, the fears, and the revelations of society.
On this mural – this timeline of faith as represented through art – the Age of Enlightenment marks the beginning of the end for the unquestioning reverence that once engrossed Europe. Over the 17th and 18th centuries, religion became an increasingly less important aspect of Western life. People began exploring aspects of their lives that were once forbidden by religion, and expressing thoughts that used to be considered taboo. Eating what one felt like eating when one felt like eating it, working on Sabbaths, dressing in ways that were most comfortable; all of these aspects of life, and of course many more, were restricted by religion. Once the Age of Enlightenment consoled those fearing the wrath of mystical forces, the middle class of Europe quickly trampled such inane traditions of the Church. "The Enlightenment, in essence, freed Western civilization from an oppression that had spawned from the fears of the unknown" (Lopez 14). The enjoyment of man’s freedom from the restrictions of religion and tradition sparked an entire change in the expression of creativity in the Western world. Art was reborn with a new vigor as all of society sought to explore the creativity that was hidden for so long. Art underwent the Renaissance.
With the Renaissance, art penetrated the territories of life that had been untouched for so long. Statues spawned from creativity rather than praise, paintings of nudes, and "hundreds of thousands of landscapes filled the walls of homes and galleries and museums, unburdened by the gloominess of Church-controlled life" (Feldman 310). In looking almost any collection of pieces from this point in time, one can see the jubilation of a society after taking the first step (of many) away from religion. To the artists of the time, standing back and recording the emotions of society, the late Renaissance represented a new era for life, happiness, and creativity. To the clerics of the time, the late Renaissance (and early post-Renaissance) marked the visible degradation of religion.
The years following the Renaissance, the 19th and 20th centuries, let loose a new generation of bold, risqué artists, and the foundation of a new type of working class: the Irreverents. To artists, being irreverent meant expressing ideas in ways never imagined before. Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Geometric Expressionism, and a flood of other representational-art phenomena sprung up all over America and Europe, representing the freedom, individuality, and sometimes chaos of Industrial Age life. Although "the irreverence of the New Artists was often tied to society’s reaction to the World Wars, debates over racial and sexual freedom, and other issues" (Kramer 38), Western society was undergoing a similar plague of irreverence from religion due to industrialization. The emergence of the working family, born from the proliferation of "factory towns", began the first large population of non-religious families. For many, church became somewhat of a commodity, a symbol of how much free time one has. Not only was it no longer taboo to defy religious traditions, life without church at all became acceptable. In America, church often didn’t fit in properly with the pursuit of the American dream, and was hence abandoned. For both Western society and Western art, clinging to the very last threads of tradition was no longer necessary. Cases in which art and religion are directly related are increasingly rare in the 20th century, but that does not make the conclusion invalid. The very fact that religion is nearly absent from art parallels the fact that religion is nearly absent from the Western norm.
The connections between art and religion are visible in every century and every era, whether or not the relationship is deliberate. The obsession with following religious traditions in the Middle Ages inspired the same obsession in the work of that periods artists, yielding work that is dominated by symbols of faith and reverence. As society began to turn from God towards science, art too began to wander astray from the expectations of religion. The Renaissance marked the true turning point; the period in which society was on the brink of abandoning true faith, and art was preparing for a plunge towards complete surrender of the techniques, methods, norms, and subject matter of the past. Once religion and art breached this threshold, neither was ever to be the same. The chaos and segregation in the last portion of the mural illustrates both worlds’ abandonment of tradition. Since the Middle Ages, art and religion have progressed (or digressed?) simultaneously, each slowly making their way towards complete degradation of the ideals of the past.
Feldman, Edmund. Art As Image and Idea. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. Kramer, Hilton. Perspectives On the Arts. New York: Horizon Press, 1961.
Lopez, R.S. The Three Ages of the Italian Renaissance. Charlottesville: Banam, 1970.
The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1975.
Selz, Peter. New Images of Man. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1959.