History of Art | Art and Religion

Art and Religion

Religious and mystical themes have pervaded art for centuries.

Religious subjects have influenced artists everywhere for hundreds of years.

And I do mean everywhere. From Renaissance Rome to Africa, China, Japan, Central and South America (and beyond), artists have created art for religious and ritual purposes—or in modern times, grappled with spiritual and mystical themes.

Religious significance traditionally have attached value to art. Think of the Native American people, who adored the sun and represented it in cyclical geometrical patterns. Or Medieval artists, who used art to tell stories from the Bible and legends of the saints to a largely illiterate population. We'll explore the relationship between art and religion in this lecture. It's a story that can tell us a lot about our experience of art.

 

Before we study the influence of religion in art, we must first examine the nature of religious ritual. This question is central to understanding why artwork might be created for use in religious practice.

Religious rituals are the acts and ceremonies by which people who believe in a particular religion appeal to and serve their God, deities, or other sacred powers.

A ritual can be performed alone or in a group. In order to perform a ritual, special objects are required. These ritual objects work as a medium between the worshipper and God. In the Catholic faith, for example, rosary beads are used as a ritual object when worshipers pray. Do you remember the Venus of Willendorf, the prehistoric sculpture we discussed in Lecture Two? That sculpture was a ritual object.

Ritual objects can be large or small, ranging in size from diminutive charms to golden cups, stone carvings, or large totems. Let's explore how they have been used in different societies around the world...

Ritual Art in Africa

In traditional African tribal art, the most widespread ritual object was a fetish. Fetishes are called nkisi in central Africa. A nkisi is a statue or an object with magical power, like a talisman, amulet, or good luck charm. They are used to heal or to control destiny.

Many African tribes believed that fetishes acquired power through ritualistic carving and consecration, the addition of special substances. Some fetishes had their heads or stomachs hollowed out to hold these special substances, while others had mirrors to reflect back evil or to blind hostile spirits.

Fetishes were mostly wooden figures but could have other materials attached, such as horns, roots, shells, nails, feathers, mirrors, metal, twine, paint, cloth, raffia, fur, beads, and herbs—anything thought to add power or magic.

Ritual Art in Latin America

In native Latin American cultures like Inca society (1200-1550 AD), ritual objects were commonly made of pottery. Small vases, oil lamps, incense burners, funerary urns, bottles, cups, figurines, and pitchers were used in rituals to hold sacred substances like chicha or yage. These liquids were used to help believers enter trance states.

Andean bronze bottle (c. 1300). The rat depicted in the bottle is associated with cunningness and quickness. Latin American Indians believed they adopted animal characteristics when they entered a trance.

These ceramics were generally decorated with complex geometric designs arranged in bands and images of sacred animals such as pumas, llamas, and jaguars.

Nazca vessel. Note the geometrical design on the fish's body. This vessel most likely represents a piranha, a ferocious Amazonian river predator.

Ritual Judaica

Judaists use a large number of ritual objects in their ceremonies. Judaism, the religion of the Jewish people, prohibits graven images—images or sculptures that in any way represent God. Instead, ritual objects in Judaic art are used to beautify the act of worshipping an invisible deity.

Among Jewish ceremonial objects we can count the Arc, a ceremonial object generally raised above worshippers and approached by stairs; the Torah scroll, a document mounted in two wooden staves for rolling; the shofar, a ram's horn sounded at the end of morning services; the Wimpel, a linen used in a boy's circumcision; and the Tik, a cylindrical case made of metal or wood to store the Torah scroll.

Judaic ritual objects are carefully made and richly decorated. Ceremonial objects are made of clay, stone, brass, pewter, copper, porcelain, glass, silver, gold, cloth, parchment, and wood. To distinguish them from graven images, the artists avoid all human likeness.

Torah scroll. Torah is the Hebrew name for the pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It presents a continuous story from the creation to the Israelites entering Canaan.

Early Religious Architecture

The architecture of places of religious worship has always been influential to art and artists.

Some of the most beautiful and impressive buildings worldwide are sacred ones. Among religious architecture we can count churches, monasteries, tombs, pyramids, chapels, and shrines. These sacred spaces have been built since antiquity and continue to be a very important part of our cultures.

Pyramids Around the World

As we discovered earlier in this course, the pyramids in Egypt were constructed as tombs for kings. Elsewhere on the planet, however, pyramids were constructed as temples and places for ritual sacrifice. The Indians of Central and South America built pyramids with flat tops. They used the flat tops as platforms for their temples or places to conduct rituals.

The ancient Mayans built two types of pyramids: those that were meant to be climbed and those that were not. The first type was used for holding sacrificial rituals. The other type was not meant to be touched and was sacred. The steps on these latter structures were too steep to climb and many times they had doorways leading to nowhere. During the rituals, the priests would symbolically ascend the pyramid from the Earth to the sky by means of staircases. They believed that this brought them closer to the gods.

El Castillo Mayan pyramid. El Castillo was meant to be climbed. Rituals would take place in the upper level pyramid, a place closer to the Gods in the skies.

Peru is another spiritual land where pyramids can be found. The pyramids of Peru had the same functions as those in centers of once-great civilizations. Most were used as places to worship the gods, perform rituals (at equinoxes and solstices, special times of the year), and carry out ceremonial rites of various kinds.

Theories about the pyramids in Peru date their creation at about the same timeline as the Nazca Lines, massive lines in the Earth created between 200 BC and 600 AD. Many of these pyramids had flat tops looking much like those found in Mexico. Often they were built on a place where the Earth's energies were considered to be high—specific grid points following the measurements of a "sacred geometry" based on astrology.

Roman Catacombs

Most religious architecture is found above ground, of course, but one of the most interesting architectural finds in Rome is well below ground.

Catacombs are systems of underground passages or rooms once used as burial places. The most famous catacombs in the West lie on the outskirts of Rome, where Christians and Jews used them to hide from Roman persecution and perform funerary rites. According to Roman law, burial grounds were sacrosanct, so the Romans rarely pursued Christians into the catacombs.

The early Christians cut the catacombs into soft tufa rock in the 200s and 300s AD, forming a network of connecting corridors and rooms covering about 600 acres. Graves were cut into the walls and bricks or marble slabs were used to close them. When more space was needed, additional galleries (halls) were dug beneath existing ones.

The catacombs lost their usefulness when Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire. Their existence was forgotten after about 400 AD. When the catacombs were rediscovered in 1578, they were first thought to be the ruins of ancient cities.

Parisian catacombs. The catacombs are a sinister reminder of a time when Christianity was a prohibited religion.

Catacombs have been found in other Italian cities and in Sicily, Malta, Egypt, North Africa, and Palestine. The burial chapels of some monasteries and nunneries in Europe are sometimes called catacombs. The catacombs of Paris are abandoned stone quarries that were first used for burials in 1787.

Tibetan Houses and Monasteries

Tibetan architecture contains Chinese and Indian influences, and reflects a deeply Buddhist approach. The Buddhist wheel, along with two dragons, can be seen on nearly every building in Tibet.

Tibetan prayer wheels. Tibetan wheels are meant to be swirled during prayer to induce meditative states.

The most unusual feature of Tibetan architecture is that many of the houses and monasteries are built on elevated sunny sites facing the south, and are often made out of a mixture of rocks, wood, cement, and earth. Flat roofs are built to conserve heat, and multiple windows are constructed to let in sunlight. Walls are usually sloped inwards at ten degrees as a precaution against frequent earthquakes in the mountainous area.

Standing at 117 meters in height and 360 meters in width, the Potala Palace is one of the most important examples of Tibetan architecture. Formerly the residence of the Dalai Lama, it contains over a thousand rooms within thirteen stories, and houses portraits of the past Dalai Lamas and statues of the Buddha. It is divided between the outer White Palace, which serves as the Palace's administrative quarters, and the inner Red Quarters, which house the assembly hall of the Lamas, chapels, 10,000 shrines, and a vast library of Buddhist scriptures.

Buddhist Art

The religion of Buddhism extends well beyond Tibet to many countries in Asia. Buddhist art takes many forms: calligraphy, painting, sculpture, statuary, and architecture, as we've discussed.

One of the most fascinating forms of Buddhist art is the mandala, a sacred diagram of the universe. There are various forms of mandalas, some used for meditation, some for healing. The essence or purpose of the mandala is concerned with invocation, the process of summoning up and realizing the spiritual force within the person contemplating the work.

Buddhist mandala. Note the arrangement of Buddhist preachers around the mandala in the center. Mandalas invite the faithful to concentrate on a representation of the universe in order to achieve a state of meditation.

The symbolism of mandalas has a rich tradition. Each detail in a mandala's construction has symbolic meaning.

The most famous mandala is the Kalachakra: the Wheel of Time. It is constructed during a three-week festival with sand and precious stones. In the Kalachakra Mandala, 722 deities, manifestations of the supreme deity Kalachakra, are portrayed within a circle in the form of miniature human, animal, and flora forms, abstract pictographs, and Sanskrit syllables, approximately two meters in diameter.

The sand is made from white stones ground and mixed with opaque watercolors. After the festival, the mandala is destroyed, as an expression of the insubstantiality of visible forms.

Early Christian and Byzantine Art

We now turn our attention to the types of pieces that often come to mind when we think about Christian and Byzantine religious art, such as beautiful churches and rich mosaics.

Early Christian art is a more of a historical category than a stylistic one. It is used to refer to art created in the first four centuries AD and the Christian works of art made during that period.

Byzantine, derived from the city of Byzantium (named Constantinople by Constantine, and now known as Istanbul) is the name of the style that originated in the Eastern Roman Empire. Byzantine art includes works made in Italy, Greece, and the Balkans under Byzantine influence. When the political and religious distinction between Eastern and Western civilizations became more pronounced, early Christian and Byzantine art diverged.

Early Christian Architecture

The earliest Christian art can be seen in the Roman catacombs, where worshipers painted on the walls symbols of their faith, images of Christ, and stories of the Bible.

When the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire in 313 AD, congregations could finally meet in public, and began constructing places of worship. Unlike Roman temples, which housed statues of gods, Christian churches were built to accommodate crowds of believers. Within a few years an amazing number of churches were constructed in Rome, Constantinople, the Holy Land, and other sites. These churches were modeled after the Roman basilica, but an altar was added and placed in the apse (eastern end), opposite the entrance (western end).

None of the early basilicas have survived in their original form, however archeologists have been able to reconstruct an accurate floor plan of the Old St. Peter's Basilica (333-390 AD), in Rome. St. Peter's is still the seat of the papal power today.

St. Peter's Basilica. The enormity of the basilica represents the huge power of the Catholic church.

Byzantine Art and Mosaics

Byzantine art, produced during the Byzantine Empire (300s to 1400s), is known chiefly for domed churches with magnificent interiors that feature a variety of highly crafted religious images. Artists used costly materials like gold, silver, and lapis lazuli to create colorful murals. Religious artworks of a smaller scale, such as books and panel pictures, also show elaborate work and luxury materials.

San Vitale church (540-547 AD) was constructed during the reign of Emperor Justinian. It is located in the city of Ravenna in Italy, a strategic city to control trade between East and West. The exterior of San Vitale is faced with plain brick, while the interior is richly decorated with mosaics and marble.

The Byzantine mosaic technique consists of embedding tesserae (regular small squares cut from colored glass or stone) into wet cement or plaster. San Vitales's large apse mosaic depicts a beardless Christ, sitting on a globe and flanked by two angels. On the two side walls of the apse are mosaics representing the court of Justinian and his Empress Theodora. The tilted, irregular placement of the tesserae creates thousands of small, shifting planes which reflect the outdoor light entering the church.

Mosaic from the Basilica of San Vitale. The mosaic represents the court of empress Theodora. There is an attempt at shading in the garments and the faces of the characters, however the black outline removes the illusion of naturalism from the image.

Hagia Sophia (completed 537 AD) in Constantinople is the greatest church constructed during Justinian's reign. I have visited it and it is a wonder how such a magnificent and enormous dome was built back then! Actually, two mathematicians worked on it, placing the dome on top of four arches at right angles to each other.

Four huge piers support the arches, and the dome rests on four pendentives: triangular segments with concave sides. Four slender minarets were added when the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453 and Hagia Sophia was converted in a mosque. The Christian mosaics in the interior were largely covered with Islamic decorations. Today, Hagia Sophia is a state museum.

Hagia Sophia. Hagia Sophia was essentially an imperial building. Unlike San Vitale, it was the personal church of the emperor and his court, rather than a place of worship for the whole community.

The Codex and Icons

In contrast to size of the large-scale Byzantine works we've seen, one of major developments in religious art at the time was tiny.

The ancestor of the modern book, the codex was a new method of transmitting miniature imagery and texts that came into use toward the end of the 1st century AD. Its pages were flat sheets of parchment bound together on one side and covered like a book.

One of the earliest codices used to illustrate scenes from the Bible was the Vienna Genesis (named this way for its current location). This codex originally had 96 pages, only 24 of which survived.

Gold and silver script (characteristically Byzantine) fills most of the page, relegating images to the bottom part. These pictures were called illuminations, and they illustrated the margins of psalms and gospels. Illuminated manuscripts were made by monks in monasteries, and a single manuscript could take years to complete.

Illumination of the letter P in a 15th century Bible. Note the golden ink that marks the letter P. The rounded part of the letter is used to contain the image of a saint.

Among the other small works created at the time were icons, based on the frontal portraits found in Byzantine churches. Icons are religious images considered sacred by the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Many icons were painted on wood and were small enough to be carried in processions.

Most icons were portraits of God, Jesus Christ, or the saints. They were painted according to rules established by church authorities and intended to convey the heavenly glory of the holy subjects portrayed. Thus, icons typically appear more stylized than realistic: they lack shadows, and the figures may seem stiff and posed.

 

Romanesque and Gothic Art

Romanesque art flourished in Europe around 1050 and extended to the 12th century. Gothic art is the name given to the art of the later Middle Ages, especially from the mid-1100s to about 1400. The subjects of artwork in these two periods were similar, but you'll see that the artists used somewhat different approaches...

Romanesque Architecture

During Romanesque times, wealthy monasteries became the most important patrons of the arts. Many churches were built, mural paintings became important, and monumental stone sculpture was revived. Romanesque art continued the Medieval taste for flat space, inorganic figures, and lively decorative stylization.

The Romanesque architectural style was especially well developed in churches and monastic structures. The typical Romanesque church was planned in the shape of a Latin cross—that is, a cross with a vertical arm and a shorter horizontal crosspiece above the center. The roof over the nave (the main gathering area) consisted of vaults of stone constructed on the principle of the arch. Side aisles flanked the nave. Large columns called piers supported the roof vaults. Round arches were built in openings in the walls and between the piers. The openings and piers were decorated with stone sculptures and carvings depicting biblical scenes and people. The walls of the church were painted in fresco and also portrayed religious subjects.

Romanesque Sculpture and Tapestry

Romanesque sculpture developed in relation to the roads used by the pilgrims. The work consisted of reliefs and sculptures applied to the exterior of churches to appeal to the lay worshiper. One of the best examples of Romanesque sculpture is the Autun Cathedral in Burgundy (1120-1135). Gislebertus carved its decoration; he was the only sculptor to sign his name on a Romanesque church. Flat patterns and weightlessness characterize the monumental tympanum (semicircle over the portal of a Romanesque church) at Autun. It represents an imposing figure of Christ appearing in a majestic light at the Last Judgment.

Romanesque sculpture from the Cloister of St. Trophime. The contours of the characters form a series of flattened curves that correspond to the curved arm.

One of the most intriguing Romanesque works is the so-called Bayeux Tapestry. It depicts the Norman invasion of England in 1066. It is over 230 feet long and contains 626 human figures, 731 animals, 376 boats, and 70 buildings and trees. The Bayeux Tapestry is not really a tapestry, in which designs are generally woven into fabric. Rather, it is a work of embroidery in which designs are stitched with woolen threads on a background of plain cloth. Unlike most Romanesque art, the tapestry is primarily historical instead of religious in its themes.

Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry. Single threads were used for waves, ropes, and strands of hairs on the horses' foreheads, and the outlines of each section of color.

Gothic Sculpture

In the Gothic period, universities replaced monasteries as centers of learning and culture. Professional painters and scribes, not monks and nuns, began to paint the illuminations in churches.

Gothic sculpture first appeared at St. Denis and at Chartres cathedrals in France. Romanesque sculpture had been vigorous, dramatic, and abstract. In comparison, Gothic sculpture was calmer, grander, and more humane. One of the greatest Gothic sculptors is Claus Sluter (1379-1406). Sluter was from the Netherlands, but worked for the Duke of Dijon. His most impressive works are The Moses Well (1395-1406) and the Portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol (1385-1393).

Sculpture from the Cathedral of Chartres. The door sculptures are slender, columnar figures of Old Testament kings and queens, therefore the sculpture is called the "Royal Portal."

Gothic Stained Glass

Gothic painters looked at the entire world, not just human beings. At first, they studied the details of nature, including leaves, flowers, animals, and insects. Then, they painted human beings acting out stories, with the natural world as a backdrop. However, the main subject matter continued to be religious.

Stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral.

An important architectural trend at this time was the use of stained glass. The technique of staining glass had been perfected in Romanesque times, but it was during the Gothic period that more complex designs began to be made. Huge stained glass windows were made to create a continuous flood of light to the interior of cathedrals.

Around 1200, stained glass replaced illumination as the leading form of painting. One of the best examples of stained glass work is the Habakkuk (1220) at Bourges cathedral. It is 14 feet tall and represents one of the Old Testament prophets. The work is an amazing jigsaw of hundreds of small pieces of tainted glass bound together by strips of lead.

The artist at Bourges painted with glass, as painters with paint. Smaller details, such as the eyes, are actually painted on the glass surface. The rest of the composition is made by combining and arranging shaped glass fragments.

Latin American Colonial Painting

The development of painting techniques in the Andes during the Spanish Colonial period was important to the Christianization by the Spanish Crown. Painting was solely devoted to religious themes: angels, virgins, saints, and biblical scenes were used to teach the native people about the new religion. Towards the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, an original interpretation of the European tradition of painting flourished in the Andes.

Murals and Fabric

The diffusion of European painting techniques such as oil painting on panel was difficult in South America because of a lack of materials. Artists had to adapt these techniques to local materials, and they favored painting on fabric and mural techniques.

Painting on fabric was the most commonly used technique during the colonial period. In the beginning, canvas and hemp fabrics were imported from Europe. However, after a while artists started to mix them with locally produced wool and cotton fabric. This gave higher flexibility to the fabric, allowing the artists to send them away to remote communities where they would be stretched on to wooden frames.

Murals were made over a mud surface covered with several layers of talc. This was coated with animal glue and mixed pigments. Murals were generally large scale, and mostly used to decorate church walls.

Influences and Subject Matter

The European style that most influenced Colonial Latin American art was the Baroque style. In Latin America, however, the style was greatly simplified and adapted towards the tastes of the indigenous population. Instead of creating elaborate compositions, painters aimed to create a mystical experience for an audience of South American Indians, who were newly-converted Christians. Painters combined native mythological scenes along with Catholic themes and mostly avoided references to South American scenes. Colonial painters were still dominated by European models and would represent vegetation and animals of other latitudes.

San José with the Child - Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos. Note the humble way in which both St Joseph and the child are clad. Jesus is covered by a simple white cloth, while St Joseph has a rough brown cloak.

This focus on European subject matter would change in the 18th century, when religious figures would be painted in ponchos and local regalia and placed in native surroundings. The four art schools in Latin America (Quito, Cuzco, Lima, and Alto-Peruvian) flourished in this period. Gold and brocade were incorporated into the paintings. To obtain a gold surface, artists would first apply a layer of red dust and then gold or silver. After this they would rub the surface with an agate and apply a last cover of paint to obtain splendid visual effects.

Myths, Symbolism, and Mysticism

From the 18th century, religious subjects steadily began to be replaced by other subject matters.

This doesn't mean that spirituality in art disappeared—it simply shifted towards other parts of collective consciousness related to the mystical realm. Myths, history, literature, heroes, symbols, dreams and fantasy, all formed part of this new artistic approach to representing the divine and the superhuman.

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism developed in France at the end of the 1700s and dominated French art until the early 1800s. Neoclassicism was closely associated with the Revolution. Stylistically, Neoclassical artists valued the formal elements of line and form over color. In subject matter, they attempted to convey moral lessons in great historical events and mythical scenes, reviving a passion for Classical antiquity. Following the lead of the 18th century Enlightenment, Neoclassicism also championed the rights of the individual.

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) was one of the leading Neoclassical painters. His Oath of Horatii (1785) illustrated an event in Roman history in which honor and self-sacrifice prevailed. The cities of Rome and Alba agreed to settle their differences through combat between two sets of triplets, rather than all-out war. The figures in the painting wear Roman dress and the scene takes place in a Roman architectural setting. The painting was commissioned by Louis XVI as part of a program aimed at the moral improvement of France.

During the same period in England, the painter Angelica Kauffmann (1741-180) began to paint mythical scenes. Her most famous picture is Amor and Psyche (1765). In the painting, many different styles overlap. The subject is Neoclassical in the sense that it revives a Classical myth, however we could say that the mood was Romantic. Baroque influences can be noted through the loose brushwork and the light and shading, and yet all the detail of jewelry and drapery in the work might be associated with Rococo. Kauffman was a co-founder of the Royal Academy of Arts in England.

Venus Convinces Helen to Go to Paris - Angelica Kauffmann. Kauffmann imparts a velvety quality to her subjects by using pastel colors and gentle brushwork. In this picture she recreates a Greek mythological scene.

French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) also painted historical, mythological, and religious subjects. Smooth surfaces and precise drawings characterize his paintings, which are so clearly executed that you feel you can actually touch the skin or fabric depicted.

Some of his mythical paintings include Oedipus and Sphinx (1808) and Jupiter and Thetis (1811). But it was in his Odalisques that Ingres achieved the high point of his painting career. An Odalisque is a harem girl; Ingres would generally depict them nude. In Grande Odalisque (1814), he depicts an idealized reclining nude seen from the back and turning to gaze at the observer. Ingres takes us to an exotic place by incorporating details such as a feathered fan, a fur bed covering, a silk curtain and sheets, and a Turkish pipe.

Grande Odalisque - Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The Grande Odalsique illustrates Ingres' love of clarity, which he associates with line, though he was also attracted to the Romantic elements of sensuality and color.

Romanticism

In the last lecture we studied those Romantic painters who were socially conscious. Now we will look at some Romantics who emphasized passion, imagination, and intuition, rather than logic, in their work.

The primary goal of the Romantic artists was to express the individual's innermost feelings and emotions. But the Romantics were also interested in the mind as a site of mysterious, unexplained, and possibly dangerous phenomena. For the first time in Western art, Romantics began to portray dreams and nightmares as internal events that were the product of individual imagination, rather than an external supernatural happenings.

In The Nightmare (1785-1790) by Englishman John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), we can see the Romantic quest for terrifying experiences and dark recesses of the mind. A sleeping woman is haunted in her dreams by a grinning devil that is crouching over her. A luminescent horse glows in the dark and reminds us of Medieval folklore.

The Nightmare (1781) - John Henry Fuseli. Fuseli invites us to enter the realm of the nightmare by incorporating the subject's terrifying dream into the actual space of the bed. The smoky texture and contorted pose of the woman suggests a haunting experience.

One artist who combined mysticism with traditional religion was the Englishman William Blake (1757-1827), who had a strong Christian strain in his work.

Blake was a painter and critic who befriended Fuseli and was strongly influenced by Fuseli's strange personality. Blake was a visionary himself: He produced and published his own books of poems with engraved text and hand-colored illustrations (his books were meant to be successors of the Medieval illuminated manuscripts).

Illustration from The Song of Los (1795) - William Blake. Blake was strongly influenced by Christianity. The circle is a recurrent image in Blake's visual language, representing the precision of God's acts.

In his hand-colored etching The Ancient of Days (God Creating the Universe) (1794), he depicts a muscular God enclosed in a circle of light. As the architect of the universe, God is shown holding a compass, with his long white hair blown sideways by an unseen wind. One might think that The Ancient of Days stands for the Almighty God, but in Blake's esoteric mythology he stands for the power of reason, which the poet regarded as ultimately destructive, since it obstructs vision and inspiration.

Folk Art

At a more subdued level, religious and spiritual themes continued to be found in folk art, particularly folk art with nature as a subject.

Folk artists are not academically trained; in folk art, forms are usually flattened, proportions unnatural, and imagery generally has no reference to classical tradition. Folk art has been produced in many countries for hundreds of years. Most interesting is American folk art, especially during its most productive period from about 1780 to 1860. Most folk artists worked in small towns in Illinois, New England, New York, and Ohio.

The most famous American folk artist was a Quaker preacher called Edward Hicks (1780-1849), who did around 100 versions of a work called Peaceable Kingdom. Hicks based his painting on a passage of the book of Isaiah in which animals coexist peacefully with humans. The animals and persons in the picture are arranged as if they are on a stage with a fixed front. They have a static quality. In Peaceable Kingdom, Hicks merges the natural landscape with a utopian Garden of Eden.

Peaceable Kingdom (1826) - Edward Hicks. Rather than being drawn into a vast space, the viewer experiences an immediate confrontation with the subjects in this image, especially the wild cats.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of seven young English artists and writers who wanted to reform English art. They called themselves Pre-Raphaelites because they admired the simple, informal style of Italian painting before the work of Raphael in the early 1500s.

The leading Pre-Raphaelites were William Holman Hunt, Sir John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. They were resolved to paint genuine ideas and represent the world according to nature rather than formal rules. This led them to use striking color and minute, abundant detail. The paintings and poems of the group are often heavily symbolic. Many are set in the distant past, and a number of them have religious and literary themes.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's (1828-1882) early masterpiece Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850) depicts the annunciation of the Virgin Mary. It radiates an aura of repressed eroticism that would become characteristic of all his work. Elizabeth Siddal, his wife, inspired most of his characters, so all of his subjects have an archetypical femme fatale figure: long red hair, full lips, and a melancholic gaze. She died prematurely, which inspired him to paint Beata Beatrix (1864).

Beata Beatrix (1864) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti uses atmospheric perspective to give Beatrix a mystical appearance. The subject's gesture is one of profound faith at the moment of praying. The elongated neck is characteristic of Rossetti's depictions of women.

Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) painted literary and religious subjects. His work was very detailed and realistic. I have had the fortune of seeing his pictures and they evoke a kind of trance...a desire to walk into the frame and dwell in these mysterious places. In Ophelia (1852) he depicts a beautiful drowned woman, floating in a crystal clear pool. The realistic detail in this painting makes it a disturbing image of reality.

Ophelia (1896) - Sir John Everett Millais. Millais carefully converts Ophelia into part of the pond landscape, by depicting her in as much careful detail as the foliage that surrounds her.

For a more in-depth look into another work by Millais, check out the following video tutorial:

Video Tutorial: Religious Theme in Art

English painter William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) painted in a precise, detailed style. Many of his pictures emphasize moral or social symbolism. Hunt strove for authenticity in his work. He made three trips to Egypt and Palestine to paint Biblical scenes with accurate detail. His best-known pictures include The Light of the World (1853-1856), The Awakening Conscience (1853-1854), and The Scapegoat (1854).

Symbolism

Symbolism flourished in France during 1880s and 1890s. It was mainly influenced by Symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Mallarme, Poe) and by fantasies painted by the pre-Raphaelites. The Symbolists attempted to convey the pathos and decadence of the turn of the century and protest the pace of pollution and industrial development.

Instead of fighting these historical forces, the Symbolists retreated into melancholy, dealing with their own personal feelings and imagination in their work. Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, which you saw earlier in the course, is often associated with Symbolism.

Gustav Moreau (1826-1898) created a world of personal fantasy in his paintings. His mystical images evoke long-dead civilizations and mythologies. He treated his subjects with extraordinary sensuousness and created bizarre settings encrusted with jewels. Amongst his famous pictures are Galatea (1880-1881) and The Apparition (Dance of Salome) (1876).

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) had a haunted imagination like Moreau. But his imagery was even more personal and disturbing. Most of Redon's work consists of black and white charcoals and etchings. He developed a distinctive repertoire of weird subjects: strange amoeboid creatures, insects, and plates with human heads inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. In Eye-Balloon (1882) he depicts a single eyeball removed from its socket and converted into a balloon that floats aimlessly in the sky.

Eye-Balloon (1878) - Odilon Redon. Redon creates a precursor of a Surrealist work in this image by combining two objects that have no other relationship than a similar form.

Naïve Art

Naïve is a term applied to painting produced in sophisticated societies but lacking formality in representation. However, naïve artists are not necessarily untrained or amateurs as the name may suggest. Some artists deliberately adopt naïve or primitive elements.

Henri Rousseau was a naïve artist who painted in his spare time; he was a customs officer. At first, critics mocked Rousseau's work, but in time he influenced many modern artists. In his painting The Dream (1910), he shows a female nude reclining on a Victorian couch in the middle of the jungle. A dark gray figure emerges from the thick foliage, wearing a colorful tunic and playing an instrument.

The Dream (1910) - Henri Rousseau.

In The Dream, Rousseau merges the visionary world of a dream, with a detailed depiction of reality (although reality in his painting has an eerie quality). In this sense he synthesizes the two main trends of European art at the turn of the century: subjectivity, the characteristic of the Romantics and Symbolists, and objectivity, the ideal of the Realists and Impressionists.

The Snake Charmer (1907) - Henri Rousseau. Rousseau's lack of formal training can be seen in his plain use of color, the free use of perspective, and the eerie quality of "reality" in his painting.

Russian-born artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) also invoked mystical themes in his naïve painting.

Chagall combined elements of dreams, fantasy, and religion to create paintings with a joyous quality, something quite rare in the art of the 1900s. He incorporated Jewish religious symbols and childhood memories into geometrically divided surfaces. He portrayed objects without concern for their realistic scale. His figures include animals, lovers, and musicians who often floated in the air, sometimes upside down. In Chagall's I and The Village (1911), he weaves together animals, characters, symbols, and memories into a dreamlike vision.

Transcendental Painting

Carrying on the tradition of representing dreamlike and symbolic themes were the Transcendentalists, a unique group of avant-garde painters formed in New Mexico between 1938 to 1941.

These painters were dedicated to the principles of abstraction and inspired by the expanses of South-Western landscape and by Kandinsky's book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art." They chose Transcendentalist as the name of their movement because their aim was to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world. They explored imaginative realms and their works were idealistic and spiritual.

Agnes Pelton's works incorporated biomorphic forms and bright colors with shiny effects. In The Blest (1941), a large floral form rises and stretches like an explosion in slow motion. It seems to dissolve as it expands, creating a mystical, floating effect that is related to elusive notions of transcendental spirituality.

Georgia O'Keefe (1887-1986) was married to the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. She is difficult to place in a specific stylistic category, but I think many of her more abstract works share the spiritual qualities of transcendental art. She was influenced by photography and early 20th century abstraction. O'Keefe's Black and White (1930) is an abstract depiction of textures and forms. In her Cow's Skull with Calico Roses (1931), she depicts a dissected skull found in the desserts of New Mexico. If you view it in close up, you will only see abstract forms. Her palette of colors is quite monochromatic—black and whites—with just a few browns.

Black Iris (1926) - Georgia O'Keefe. Notice the painter's approach to scale in this work. By elevating the everyday, O'Keefe's approach to the portrayal of nature was both abstract and spiritual.

Her flower paintings are her best-known works. She produced sensuously smoothed representations of floral forms, enlarging them into highly abstract designs. These works have a great elegance and rhythmic vitality and are often sexually suggestive.

Discussion Share your thoughts on art history with your fellow students. Exercise Explore and critique pieces of religious and spiritual artwork.