Can Religion and Art Learn From One Another?

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Can Religion and Art Learn from One Another?
Maggie Nelson is an American writer who has so far written five non-fiction books, all of which defy categorisation as we would normally understand it. The Art of Cruelty, which will be focused on during this paper, focuses on art – more specifically, violence in art and various forms of art. Karen Armstrong is a British author who mostly focuses on comparative religion of various kinds, and whose subject matter usually revolves around the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Case for God is a book written in response to the claims made by various well-known atheists (such as Richard Dawkins) that God is now dead, because we have no more need for him. Armstrong, in this book, floats the idea that religion may need to turn the world of the arts for advice, since that world is always changing and adapting, and religion needs to learn how to do that. This paper will explore an opposite idea: if religion can take inspiration from art, can art do the same from religion? What would that mean for art as a whole? What Nelson refers to as the art of cruelty is something which could be changed or mitigated by the influence of religion and the morality which is commonly associated with it.
Nelson has written a surprising book, because she takes the opportunity of completely opposing and reframing the accepted wisdom we have surrounding avant-garde work, and the rigidity of the conversations which surround it (Nelson 17-18). The way in which the avant-garde supports cruelty and violence in art is something which has been unquestioned, so Nelson is treading new ground here.
So religious discourse should not attempt to impart clear information about the divine, but should lead to an appreciation of the limits of language and understanding. The ultimate was not alien to human beings but inseparable from our humanity (Armstrong 672)
Avant-garde’s approach to cruelty and what Nelson refers to as us “revelling in the spectacle” (Nelson 9) of various horrifying acts, as seen in the proliferation of reality TV and our own propensity for now recording horrifying events is something which is derided in this chapter. Perhaps then, we could see Nelson advocating for a return to the same kind of collaboration which Armstrong herself sees as being naturally occurring through religion, as a post-avant-garde approach to art.
Armstrong has said that she thinks that religion could take some cues from art as to how inclusive and open to change it is, but when looking at Nelson’s book, it would appear that all art is united under the banner of showing as much pain as is possible. From reality to reality TV, the emphasis is on suffering, and how much we enjoy watching it.
The question of what one should look at, along with attendant inquiries into the nature and effect of the images ...