(November 9, 2023 at 9:46 am)Istvan Wrote: It doesn't seem that weird to me. Most times we're appreciating aspects of the art that don't involve religion. We can acknowledge the religious context of Chartres Cathedral or Josquin's settings of the Mass, but what we're appreciating is almost wholly aesthetic. Even when we're affected by religious artwork on an emotional or "spiritual" level, it's not usually because of religious devotion. I saw Michelangelo's Pietà in Rome this summer and was stunned by its depiction of the human condition: the real suffering of real people. The Big G, as usual, was neither here nor there.
I certainly agree that non-religious people can get a lot from the aesthetic aspects of art, music, etc. And I think that everyone is entitled to appreciate it in his own way, to the extent that he can. I would never say that an atheist is listening to Bach wrongly.
That said, there is more to it than simple line and color. Your own example is a good one -- what moved you about the Michelangelo was not simply its form and color, or the skill of its craftsmanship, but the emotional quality of the human condition. This shows that you are way past what Duchamp called "retinal art," or what Blake called "the vegetable eye." The physical object points you to a far more than physical appreciation.
(And I would expect no less from someone who had a Giacometti as his avatar. That's a high-quality thing.)
I would say that there are additional layers or references that would be available from the Pietà than the human condition you mention. The guy who ordered it, the guy who made it, and the people who keep it, see it as pointing to a more transcendent reality than the suffering of individuals. For them, the suffering of that individual, who is in a way all of us, is a world-historical event that will have a significant effect on the outcome of all our suffering in the long run. It is, of course, about how people suffer. But it plugs into a much larger system as well.
Since I have never been Christian, this more religious layer didn't come naturally to me. I do think, though, that through imaginative sympathy we can feel something of what it's like. Think of Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief," or Keats' "negative capability." These are tools for our imagination, through which we gain access to messages which, in our daily rational life, we don't believe. Some people will recoil from these fictional layers, but I think they are significantly enriching, no matter what metaphysical beliefs one has. So the closer we can get to the meaning which the Pietà had for Michelangelo and his circle, the more we are getting to its richest aura.
And as an aside, I've learned not to say that something is "just aesthetic." The aesthetic aspect of things is a way of teaching important messages also. The German Idealists were adamant about this, though I first heard of it from the writings of Kobo Daishi, the monk who introduced esoteric Buddhism into Japan. He said that the theology of such religion is best understood through symbolic spiritual art. And I believe him.
