Art is an essential part of our life. People, with the help of art, express their feelings and emotions, describe their vision of different events and people. It may be expressed as something beautiful or disgusting, but still, it is an art. We can see our past and different points of view about the present by means of different types of art. People usually perceive one and the same piece of art in a different way. It is impossible to say what exactly the artist wanted to say by this or that work. Every culture has its own masterpieces in different fields of art. Religion in art is absolutely separate, I would even say mysterious, topics for discussion. I will try to describe religion in art in this research. Religion and art give us ideas for reasoning and it is our choice where we will appear.
I am going to compare and contrast a pair of artwork located in the Krannert Art Museum. These works of art are on the topic of religion. The artworks, we are going to deal with, are Christian Baptism in Ethiopia in the middle of the 20th century and Koranic verse in Cairo of 2001. These two artworks are made in 2D vision. The purpose of the Koranic verse is not to let people forget about Allah and his words about evil temptations in people’s life. The artwork of Christian Baptism shows us the ritual of christening a newborn child.
Baptism in most Christian churches is a sacrament. It is a rite of purification by water, a ceremony invoking the grace of God to regenerate the person, free him or her from sin, and make that person a part of the church. The rite is sometimes called christening, and this term is applied especially to the giving of a baptismal name. (Encyclopedia article 4215).
It must be mentioned that the purpose of both these artworks is to set people on the right path, to remind them about the higher force. Looking at these works of art people should remember that the religion we profess helps us to withstand temptation. The koranic verse is a painting made on papyrus. The sizes of the two artworks are not big. The artist of Christian Baptism emphasizes line and linear contours; the line is strong and continuous. Talking about the Koranic verse, the artist emphasizes lines but in a different manner. The lines here are continuous but sometimes broken up into many small hatches. But still, the lines are smooth here.
Colors deserve separate attention. The artist of Christian Baptism uses slight, not bright colors. The background is one color. It is light, without any decorations, as a simple beige wall in the church. We do not see the contrast in colors between different parts of the artwork. The other vision I have about Koranic verse. The colors are in contrast here. The background is light, connecting in itself a lot of different colors. It ripples with lots of colors and gives the impression that the verse is written on a carpet. This impression approaches the viewer to the mystery and traditions of Cairo. And the inscription is bright blue. It stretches your attention when you look at it, as it is highly saturated. It is as if there is no that bright background when you look at the picture for the first sight. The artworks are made in a simple way, in my point of view, without the artist’s use of different shadows or shading or lightening.
Talking about Christian Baptism the artist does not focus your attention on one object. The viewer perceives the artwork as a whole. It is impossible to look at this work of art and to notice only one of its parts, in this way the perception will be not full; you will not be able to understand what the artist wanted to carry to the viewer.
It is very easy to speak about angles and how the artist approaches the scene. We see the front side of both works of art.
To sum it up I would like to say that art and religion are very similar spheres of people’s life. They both are given to mankind to show the beauty of this world, to give people hope and belief in a happy present and future. People get to know the world by means of religion and art. These two spheres of life give people inspiration, the ability to think, and to have their own point of view. Religion gives us the ability to think about our behavior. Religion makes us analyze our acts and think about our future. The art in most cases makes the same. It shows us the beauty and the harmony of the world and we try to reach it. But in some cases, art shows us the terrible pictures from our past life and in this case we think about the ways how to avoid the mistakes and sins of past, we are given an opportunity to think over our lives and to make right conclusions.
Works Cited
“Baptism” The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 2007.