I've never experienced art quite in that way before. It was grounding and sobering to look at art which has outlasted nation and empire, and recognized by the world in some way or another as something truly beautiful. One of my previous professors at JMU often talked about some pivotal moment when you experience art that truly moves you, and you feel like you could spend hours planted in front of that one piece. I never could relate to that on the level that he seemed to deeply and intensely feel the work, but today I must have come as close as ever.
I got lost in Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.
The men who stood before these blank walls and canvases poured over them for hours. Imagine the care taken in rendering the images in their minds. It was important to them! These people revered the human body and considered it the most beautiful and perfect thing in creation. And to think that nowadays we cut it away and replace it with plastic counterfeits. The greats might be a little insulted.
Thoughts were bouncing around in their heads with every stroke they made... how precious his subject was--the dog running across the street--the woman he could not woo... and all of that is captured in a grand work of art that has been preserved for hundreds of years. In the case of Venus about 530 years.
Another train of thought I dawdled down---- Before the Renaissance, art was created only and strictly for la chiesa--the church. The average person could not read or write, so the monastery commissioned artists to depict the stories of Christ's life (the annunciation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, etc.) in order for the people to see and learn from them. This sounds good, but it means this thing I love, art, historically was the way the monastery maintained control over what people knew/didn't know about Jesus, the church, and really anything for which it interested them to withhold information. It gave them the ability to blindly lead the people into religiosity and doctrine that parted from the teachings of Christ. This is how the church became and remains so far separated from the church Christ soared in his heart as he offered up his life.
This was incredibly interesting and your article prompted me to look up pre-Renaissance art and I found an article that talks about how the Roman Catholic Church had a pathological fear of knowledge and how they destroyed literature and killed scholars in order to "discourage students from following their teachers." Here's a link to it if you want to see it. (I have no idea how accurate it really is)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mimenta.com/Mimenta_Art/VisualArts/Visual%20Art09.html
It definitely provokes a lot of thought as to how the church can sometimes actually oppress people through the use of religious authority, which also corresponds with how certain governments develop religious tyranny. I guess that is what happens when man tries to establish "God's law," which is inherently perfect, and maintain imperfect human control over it. I don't know if I've gone off track of your post, but it got me thinking in this direction. So thanks for posting this and stoking my brain. Keep these educational/informational blogs coming. It sounds like you are having a great time.
Art + Fine Wines = Satisfaction