Art, music, architecture

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CyberLN's picture
Art, music, architecture

Do you think religious music (Redemption Song, Amazing Grace, etc.), artwork (Corpus Hypercubus, The Pieta, etc.), or architecture (the Pantheon, Santuario de las Lajas, etc.) are any less beautiful because of their subject matter?

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algebe's picture
I can appreciate the

I can appreciate the Parthenon, the Pantheon, the Pieta, St Pauls Cathedral as works of art in their own right, independently from their religious significance. I love the stained glass of York Minster.

By the same token, I think the Sagrada in Barcelona is the ugliest, overblown, over-busy concoction I've ever seen in religious or secular architecture.

The Pieta has universal beauty and value as a depiction of a mother mourning her child. Amazing Grace is a beautiful expression of redemption by a man who realizes he's devoted his life to a truly evil profession. I like many of the old hymns, perhaps from a sense of nostalgia because I only ever sang them at school.

One genre that I can't see any beauty in is crucifixion scenes. There's nothing beautiful about torture. It's a shame that so much talent has been devoted to degrading depictions of a human body contorted by agony.

Cathedrals are showcases of artistic, architectural, and engineering brilliance. My appreciation of them is tempered by regret at the colossal waste of human effort.

Grinseed's picture
@ CyberLN

@ CyberLN

No, its not less and its not more either, just because of the subject matter.
The beauty is in the expression, regardless of the subject matter. Its the recognition of the beauty in an artwork that reveals what unites us as people.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling is beautiful but no more so than Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or the Bison from Lascaux. People gather in churches, art galleries and caves to appreciate the artistic expressions of other human beings.
Handel's Messiah is no more moving than Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings (from the movie Platoon, which always sends a shiver up my spine.)

Beauty is in the eye or ear of the beholder I don't think there can be any absolute measures for art.

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boomer47's picture
@CyberLN

@CyberLN

"Do you think religious music (Redemption Song, Amazing Grace, etc.), artwork (Corpus Hypercubus, The Pieta, etc.), or architecture (the Pantheon, Santuario de las Lajas, etc.) are any less beautiful because of their subject matter?"

NO

I've seen Michelangelo's sublime Pieta in St Peters as well as the Sistine chapel not long after the painting had been cleaned, .

So far, one and only one work of art has moved m to tears. It's a carving of the penitent Mary Magdalene by Donatello in Florence

Link to article and photo

https://www.donatello.net/penitent-maddalena.jsp

A lot of church music is also deeply beautiful, in my opinion.

Below

Benedictine monks choir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBgoU2M5J_s

Link to Non Nobis Domine and Te Deum from Henry V.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPXXuEel0fU

Old man shouts at clouds's picture
@ Cyber

@ Cyber

It is all art, the sacred and the profane. The inspiration that an artist gets is as individual as the artist.

Cognostic's picture
@Cyber: No

@Cyber: No

What would be interesting, on the other hand, is "What would the great artists have been doing were it not for the wealth of the Church? Perhaps it would be political frescos, perhaps science would have gained a foot in universities earlier and the amazing imaginations of the artists would have been released to explore the universe instead of dead and dying Gods.

Dworkin's picture
Folks,

Folks,

I kind of go with the old chestnut 'Art for art's sake'. In religious music I like plainchant and in religious architecture I like the simple Romanesque round arch. Neither of these 'likes' are related to religion. I tend to dislike Gothic church architecture as it seems kind of nervous somehow, and the flying buttress is a builder's bodge.

D.

dogalmighty's picture
You seem to be fixated on

You seem to be fixated on nuts.

Grinseed's picture
Its a welcome break from

Its a welcome break from bananas.

Kreston's picture
Personally, I absolutely love

Personally, I absolutely love watching music videos and art stories on twitch.

demik's picture
I have a channel on twitch

I have a channel on twitch where I do small reviews of music, of course I would like to make my channel the most popular. To do this, I decided to read this article to understand how buying twitch followers affects the development of the channel, and you know, I liked it. Every month I bought 500 followers for an optimally natural result.

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