From immortality to abstraction to soul to religion to art
The urge for abstraction originated in the sense of immortality within primitive wo/man. The conjunction of abstraction with immortality in turn developed in the concept of ‘soul’. This chain of events subsequently created religion; art then led beyond abstraction to the objectivizing and concretizing of the prevailing idea of the soul.
Anything produced objectively in a period by the current idea of the soul was considered to be beautiful. The aesthetic history of the concept of beauty is likely to be nothing more than changing contemporary conception of the soul that resulted from the ever increasing knowledge.
Artistic creation, “art-will†must be comprehended as an expression of both a personal will of the artist and also as an expression of the collective ideologies, i.e. the religious and philosophical ideologies, effecting the artist. “The artist as a definite creative individual uses the art form that he finds in order to express something personalâ€. We might well ask ‘what are the motives and processes that trigger the art-will in order to create an art-achievement’?
To comprehend art and the artist we must focus upon the art-will of the artist and we must also consider the religious and philosophical tendencies of the times; we must consider the collective ideologies of the time. The artist must use what is at hand to express something personal and creative that is somehow connected with the collective nature of the times. The individual artist creates her art while simultaneously using the art in vogue at the time.
The belief in immortality seems to express it self both in art and in social institutions like religion in a parallel manner. The essence of the art-will seems to be to eternalize the object of the art-accomplishment. To give an object of art immortality in an abstract form is to bring it to its absolute value. There is in art an “instinctive urge to abstractionâ€; religion being the best example of that urge. The primitive religious belief in souls is abstract in conception and has been called by more advanced religions wherein gods have already taken a concrete form
The idea of soul as it progresses through history is important consideration here. Original primitive art is an attempt to make concrete what is abstract. The soul, an abstraction, is represented in a concrete manner. It is evident that art and religion are conjoined from primitive times to the present.
Religious art is a display of the ever changing concept of what is beautiful. The concept of the beautiful that inspires the art of a period is derived not from the abstract concept of soul but from the concretization of that concept.
Religious art concretes the abstract idea of soul and thereby makes the soul convincing; it creates something tangible and lasting of a concept as it moves down from generation to generation by a mystical verbal tradition that became fixed only later.
“This close association, in fact fundamental identity, of art and religion, each of which strives in its own way to make the absolute eternal and the eternal absolute, can be already seen at the most primitive stages of religious development, where there are as yet neither representations if gods nor copies of nature.â€
Quotes and ideas from “Art and Artist†by Otto Rank
Now does the title “From immortality to abstraction to soul to religion to art†make sense?