THE SACRED AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING WITH THE WORLD (Official Gazette and Institute for Theological Research; Belgrade, 2010)
THE SACRED AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING WITH THE WORLD (Official Gazette and Institute for Theological Research; Belgrade, 2010)

Summary/Abstract: The attitude of a modern artist to the domain of the sacred is more complex than it was in antiquity or in the Middle Ages. This is because of the autonomy which aesthetic values have gained in modern times. When placed in a temple, the marble or bronze statue of a Greek or Roman deity performed its cult function and was also beautiful; the liturgical role of a choral composition was more important than the purely musical effects it achieved. The fact that pre-modern art served the sacred and was subordinate to it does not of course exclude the possibility that individual artworks created in antiquity or the Middle Ages can possess traits that hardly correspond to the usual or prescribed ideas of the sacred, but the modern artist’s relationship to the sacred is no longer self-explanatory, and it contains a principled contradiction, inconsistency, and disturbing awareness of the discrepancy. The forms of this discrepancy can be expressed in a variety of ways, from mild deviations from the canons to the radical rejection of the sacred in favour of the worldly. A special case is the polemic with the sacred, in which the sacred is simultaneously recognized and disputed, seen as indispensable and exposed to suspicion. The possibility and the meaning of such a polemic between the artistic and the sacred is one of the central motives of Dragan Stojanović’s book Energy of the Sacred in Art.

• Details
• Contents