Religious Art: Yea or Nay?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I can like religious art. Some of my favorite songs are religious. (See: o' brother where art thou)
Though i think it a false assumption to think Michelangelo or Leonardo da vinci or The likes were religious. They might have been. But they lived in a time in which most of their work was contracted by The church. If there had been other less religious organizations employing them, perhaps The art they made would have been less religious.

It is generally understood that Michelangelo, at least, was devout almost to the point of fanaticism. His letters and the opinions of his contemporaries are pretty clear on this point.

Boru

[Catholic_Lady]

Extraodrinarily talanted people using their incredible skills to create something moving should always be appreciated, imho. People are amazing.

[Brian37]

Extraodrinarily talanted people using their incredible skills to create something moving should always be appreciated, imho. People are amazing.

Again, yes and no.

I value my species ability to create, invent and be imaginative, even in art. But, where I disagree is just because a building or painting is beautiful, does not mean whatever it is decorated with or the depiction in the painting, or the song makes the memes in them true. 

I think Harry Potter and Star Wars were created by very imaginative people too. 

I personally like ancient Egyptian religious art. But you'd call it mythology only because nobody believes in those gods anymore. But back then they did as much as you believe in your God now.

Our species unfortunately is also very imaginative in creating horrible things like machine guns, tanks, and jets that are armed, and far too many humans also see those things as works of art too.

No keeping history around is important, but art can and is also used as propaganda too.

[Minimalist]

I visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.  There are wall after wall covered with the same kind of dreary, dead-man-being-held-by-mother, kind of shit that the death cult which is jesusism thinks is so precious.  It is mainly boring.

[Brian37]

Weapons are seen as art too. And like religion, they can be used to justify self defense and or cruelty to your fellow human. Weapons like religion can also be blindly worshiped too.

[brewer]

Case by case basis. I'll always appreciate the talent, if not the inspiration.

[Whateverist]

I like lots of music which was inspired by religious feeling. I think some of it expresses a depth of feeling that one can appreciate without regard to their ideas of what it means. I don't understand the paranoia some people seem to have toward allowing any value to religious traditions.

[Mermaid]

Definitely yea!

[Rev. Rye]

Does this answer your question? Honestly, The Brothers Karamazov is in a neck-and-neck tie with The Catcher in the Rye as my favourite book, and the fact that Dostoevsky was a devout Christian who clearly put a lot of himself into the religious aspects of the book doesn't change things for me (I suppose Ivan's remarks and the occasional foot fetish references make it up for me.)

[GrandizerII]

I certainly do find Renaissance (and later) art to be amazing, religious or non-religious. It's some of the modern art that I find unappealing and I don't really understand what people see in those silly red rectangles or splatters of random dots or toilet stools. I know it gives them weird nice feelings, but fuck if I could feel what they feel.