Art and the Religious Experience

Art and the Religious Experience: The "Language" of the Sacred by F David Martin, 257 pages

 

This is an analysis, from a perspective grounded in Heidegger's ontology and Whitehead's theory of perception, of the nature of art, and especially the religious dimension of art, whether implicit or explicit.  In this view, true art is an immanetization of the transcendent, a pointer to the depths of reality which underlie shallow surface appearances.  As such, the aesthetic experience, properly understood, is a participative experience which involves a relationship with Being itself.  Furthermore, since Being-as-Being cannot be apprehended through sense data, the aesthetic is an indispensable element in the analogical path to God.  Different types of art utilize different approaches to this Mystery, whether the unfolding of music from the freedom of temporal possibility, the immediate visual presence of the surface of an abstract painting, the retrospective foundations of literature, or the manifestation of space in architecture.

 

Martin deals deftly with his subject, but this book is even more interesting for the manner in which it touches on a variety of ideas and perspectives which are outside the scope of this book.  This is the kind of book that is as valuable for the thoughts it provokes as the ideas it presents.