The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #165555   Message #3973624
Posted By: Steve Shaw
26-Jan-19 - 07:52 PM
Thread Name: BS: 12 and a spare, how many can you name?
Subject: RE: BS: 12 and a spare, how many can you name?
Sure. Religious tradition has "given us" amazing art. And the art and architecture spawned by Islam, arguably far greater than that spawned by the Judaeo-Christian tradition. I'm a rabid atheist but that art is as much mine as it is yours. And there's an awful lot of art spawned by no religion at all. Actually, I could point to near-pornography spawned by Christianity. I went to the Santa Croce basilica in Lecce in Puglia. The place is replete with sculptured putti, naked full-frontal pre-pubescent boy-child angels by the hundred. Wow. Well what to think! The greatest art I've ever seen, the ceilling of the Sistine Chapel, was created by Michelangelo under severe duress. Art always, always, always, comes from the human soul, never from religion or from paganism or from atheism. You can pay an artist but you can't buy an artist. Your tradition hasn't given us those gifts. Art is the urgent need for humanity to communicate with humanity and you don't get to usurp it.