Sunday, May 21, 2006

A Question of World Views

The world view of different cultures as seen through the eyes of popular artists.


El Greco

Van Gogh
Dali


The point? The worldview which gives rise to a popular artist like Dali is deeply distorted.

Post-modernists have claimed that a religious culture distorts someone's view of the world. Just to look at the art, it would seem that an anti-religious culture distorts the worldview. Later artists show a loss focus, or a loss of the sense of beauty or reality. Finally artists like Dali actually prize deliberate distortion (for its novelty or boldness, or breaking the old tired cliches of the dogmatic and rigid past, of course). It's all very intersting and fun as an experiment. For the record, I actually enjoy the "melting clocks" ... but not nearly as much as El Greco's works.

The same trends can be seen in a culture's scholarship, but the trends are perhaps seen most clearly in a culture's art. The "melting clocks" reminds me a bit of the Jesus Seminar's view of the gospels.


Due to recent lack of time to continue my current series, I've pulled this out of things previously blogged at CADRE Comments. Hope to be back to new-article blogging soon.

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