Karttikeya Kumara, temple drape. Tamil Nadu, 18th cent AD
Art is image making and all image-making is rooted in the creation of things that stand
for other things. Works of art are not mirrors but they share with mirrors that elusive
magic of transformation and substitution that is hard to put into words. This magic of
transformation is particularly difficult to comprehend when we view native tribal art. We
have begun to see that the qualities which the Post-Impressionists read into African
sculpture were after all qualities which sprang from a European cast of mind. The real
difficulty, I believe, lies in the fact that African art, as much as art in medieval Europe, is
the client of religious belief and practice. African sculpture is talismanic art. That is to
say it is concerned with the concept of "force", which may be paralleled by the Christian
notion of grace. Such a notion means that we can no longer discuss the native art in
purely aesthetic terms, as a matter of exciting relationships between abstract forms.
Instead, we must begin to think in terms of a whole culture, of a tribe which is driven by
instinct and tradition to express its relationship to nature in a certain way, for a certain
kind of ritual purpose.
The making of icons and symbolic images as talismans is a form of magic. Many people
believe that an image of a person or thing shares some of the qualities of the original.
Many prehistoric, and even modern-day primitive tribes' paintings depict birds, animals
and abundant fertile fields as magical charms, believing that the birds and animals will
be easily hunted and that the fields will yield rich harvests. The idea behind making
images of planets and constellations was to summon the essence of the original and to
attract their favourable influence. This idea was known all over the world. A 15th century
Florentine philosopher and doctor called Marsilio Ficino (1498 A.D.) in his medical book
called Libri di Vita (Book of Life) recommended the use of images of planets to attract
their attention and to persuade them to be more favourable. In India, images, paintings,
geometrical yantras, mythological stories about astral divinities were evolved with the
same magical purpose in mind. The images were, and still are, made of special metals,
given specific forms and objects to hold, all in the hope of pleasing the awesome powers
of nature and the celestial bodies they represent. So it should be remembered that,
however beautiful some of the examples of astrological art may be, their purpose is mainly magico-religious. They are not works of art created for their own sake, in the
modern sense. They are magical charms and diagrams.
Utimately the purpose of religious symbolism, and therefore of sacred imagery, is to
explore and explain humanity's relationship with its gods. It is often comparatively easy to
assess what ancient societies held sacred, and why. Surviving artefacts, paintings,
sculptures and religious buildings provide insight into the beliefs and fears of most
culture groups. The lives of earlier generations may have been shorter and more difficult,
but they were also simpler: people were concerned about the very basics of existence
and worshipped the forces that governed their survival.
Many sacred symbols are derived from nature; others are created to remind people of
critical events, ceremonies or people in their religion's history. Some are simply
representations of gods and can be worshipped as such. They appear in many different
forms—as statues, carvings, paintings (on anything from rock to canvas), engravings,
even buildings. All represent an optimistic belief that mankind is not alone, a humble,
almost childlike faith that unknown forces beyond our control are watching over us.
As civilizations became more complex, so, too, did their gods. The first evidence of
human ritual or ceremonial belief in an afterlife is evident from Neanderthal graves. Fifty
thousand years ago, a people who scratched out an existence at the mercy of the
elements buried their dead with flowers and artefacts. This suggests that they were
concerned about what happened after death, and perhaps believed in some sort of
supernatural power who would be appeased by their offerings.
The great standing stones of western Europe, epitomized by Stonehenge, show that the
Bronze Age people of Europe worshipped the sun; several millennia later, the Greeks
had acquired a pantheon of gods whom they consulted about their future and who
protected them in both life and death. This philosophical leap changed the nature of
religious imagery dramatically. Perhaps less concerned than their ancestors with the
forces of nature, and more impressed by rational human achievements, the Greeks
endowed their gods with human forms. Most of their deities had perfect bodies and
beautiful, unblemished faces. In short, they were divinized humans, not amorphous
spirits of an unpredictable Nature.
Carl Jung's anthropological studies convinced him that for generations, from earliest
recorded history until the present day, the same archetypal symbols have occurred in
the myths and legends of almost every civilization. If Jung was correct, and every society
has drawn from the same universal well of images and archetypal symbols, why are the
images of different cultures dissimilar, and why have they changed so much over time?
The answer appears to lie in the endlessly fertile human imagination. Every culture must,
to some extent, adapt a faith to suit society's needs and enable adherents to understand
the basis of belief. Similarities do occur, however, as in the earliest sacred images,
drawn from nature. All primitive religions developed among illiterate people wholly
dependent upon hunting, gathering and later, agriculture for survival. Early human
beings were awed and baffled by the forces of nature, and
it is not surprising that the
rain, wind, sun and moon were deified. Depictions of these gods were firmly rooted in
the visible world: powerful animals lent themselves to sacred images, and they were
hybridised into human forms to emphasise the holistic aspect of human existence.
Given the strictures of the Bible's second commandment- 'You shall not make yourself a
graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in earth
beneath, or that is in water under the earth"—it seems surprising that the
Judeo-Christian
tradition has produced any artwork at all. However, this prohibition was, according to
Christians, addressed to the creation of iconic objects that could become the focus of
worship, (so-called false gods like the Canaanite Baal or the Golden Calf).Thus,
Christian artists have freely depicted Biblical scenes, while Jewish tradition interprets the
second commandment more widely.
Islam, too, restricted its artists in representing the Prophet Muhammad, and, in some
sects, prohibited all images of the human form. Muslim figurative art is evocative and
ornamental, not representational.
Sacred images have also been important to secular societies, acting as powerful binding
forces that have united people in times of trouble. Opportunist rulers have adopted and
misused them to further their own ends. In the late eleventh century, for example, the
powerful Norman knight Bohemond de Taranto had acquired all the land he could in
southern Italy and was seeking a new theatre of operation. The preaching of the First
Crusade in 1096 must have seemed like a gift from God: at once, he equipped his army
with white tabards bearing a red cross and transformed his marauders into God's
soldiers, whose brutal actions were now sanctioned by the Almighty. "Taking the Cross"
became medieval shorthand for joining a crusade, and Bohemond's troops led the way
by capturing the great city of Antioch, which would become the strongest of the
Crusader states.
A far more complex question is what we hold sacred today, on the brink of the twenty-
first century and a new millennium. In religious terms, the sacred symbols of the great
faiths have barely changed, yet we live in an increasingly secular age, and, certainly in
the West, fewer and fewer people find solace in conventional religion. We are
bombarded with more information in a day than our ancestors dealt with in a year—from
newspapers, radios, televisions, computers and the other paraphernalia of modern life.
We have more control over our everyday lives than our ancestors did, but are still at the
mercy of the elements and the whims of the gods or fate. Despite the amazing medical
advances made in this century, the phrase "In the midst of life we are in death" remains
as true today as it did when the New Testament was written. Trains crash, storms
destroy livelihoods, global warming alters weather systems, random acts of violence
occur everywhere, and individuals have no power to stop them. For all these reasons,
sacred images retain their power, whether as talismans, spiritual roots or the common
focus of belief that orders the universe in ways beyond our limited comprehension.
