Religion and Art
FORTUNATELY this is not a work which primarily demands consideration as a study in aesthetic criticism.- Mr. Spearing's Alternative title, The Ascent of Man, and his sub-title, A Sketch of the vicissitudes of his upward struggle, based chiefly on the relics of his artistic work in prehistoric times, make it clear that he is concerned rather with the progress of Society, as evidenced by artistic achievement than with the achieve- ment itself. This makes the task of the reviewer lighter by substituting for the rather indefinite criteria of art the more precise standards of social histOrk.
Illustrations, lavishly profuSe, assist is materially in follow- ing Mr. Spearing's arguments, and it is the more to be'regretted, therefore, that a work of such importance should be disfigured by the. use of too thin and transparent a paper._ This is a revised edition .of a work first. published -in -1912, but a few anachronisms have survived despite the author's vigilance. " Perhaps the impressionists will say that the average Englishman is, as regards art, not much better than the untutored savage." This may have been very well in 1912, but where are the impreasionists now ? Surely, too, Mr. Spearing would have been well advised to withdraw the word " prehistoric" fora his title. He does not need to be told how far the prehistoric has been -pushed back since 1912, and even the most cursory glance at these two volumes suffices to show that his sketch is based more on historic than on prehistoric works of art. Or again, " this hesitation as to how much should be represented and how much should not is common among primitive artists of all ages." The' use of the 'word " primitive " robs the sentence of any meaning which it might
have had in 1912. " • - • -
Mr. Spearing's survey takes us from the earliest examples of Palaeolithic art that we know through the artistic develop- . ments associated with Egypt; Chaklea, and Crete to the triumphant expreaSion of -Greek art.' - Arelifteeture is'omitted as it.is considered too dependent on material conditions, but does this not apply to all forms of early art ? Paintings, for instance, must, for climatic reasons, be found chiefly on the walls of caves and rock shelters and Only occasionally in the open, :Whereas ,engravings or sculpture in the round can be executed on any outlying patches of-rock. "_ The prevalence of these two forms of art seems to have been determined by the nature-of the rock surface availaie. In Bo-Annan art,
for instance, where the stone was soft or porous and provided large plane surfaces, paintings were generally made ; where the stone was hard and there was little prospect of the paints adhering, engraving prevailed. The material context is not of importance to architecture alone.
Criticism in minor points of detail, where detail is so abun- dant, and sometimes open to such different interpretations, would be unfair to the author, as space does not permit con- sideration of all the relevant factors. Good reasons arc given for adhering in the main to Piette's generalization that
sculpture was the earliest form of art, prompted probably by
fortuitous resemblances, much as we see anthropomorphic characters in wallpaper patterns, and that painting on the flat was a gradual development from the round, a change, no doubt, which was partly accelerated by a shortage of material owing, for instance, to the disappearance of the mam- moth. But though the author rejects, and in our view rightly rejects, the hypothesis that primitive art was aimless. decoration, we are not satisfied that he has fully appreciated its religious or magical significance.
It is too much, perhaps, to ask that an author should keep abreast with the most recent thought in all the sciences which touch on his subject. It is not, therefore, in any hypercritical spirit that we must cavil at Mr. Spearing's statement that " magic is one of the earliest forms of religion, and is also a sort of natural philosophy." Modern ethnology draws clear lines of distinction between magic, religion, and science. Magic has certain elements in common with religion, it is true, but it cannot be said to have preceded religion or even to have been an early form of religion. The two have, to the best of our knowledge, always co-existed, but ,magic differs
from religion partly in being a method, whereas religion is a belief, and, in being an ad hoc application, contrasted with the timeless character of religion. Magic is directed 'to the particular, religion is a generalization.
With this distinction in mind we can see possible solutions to some of the problems which Mr. Spearing has left rather in the air. He suggests that, whereas early artists began by carving human figures and afterwards chose only animal subjects, showing far less success in modelling the human form, this may have been due to the absence of clothing
in the earlier period. We do not believe that this explanation is satisfactory. If we attribute a magical significanCe to art, it becomes a question of relative importance. War is
said to be a stimulant of art, but, as Mr. Spearing points out, Palaeolithic artists seem to have got on very well without war. The food supply was 'the really important question, and so art, if it was magical in intent, was forced to concentrate more and more on animal subjects as the population increased, and as the animal sources of food decreased.
In our view, early art was both magical and religious, and this double function explains why on one and the same site we find animals delineated with exquisite artistry, and others of quite crude design' and technique. With religion are associated totemism and fertility cults, and 'there can be no doubt that much of early art is directed to these aspects of religion. It had a permanent significance and would demand a higher standard Of execution than the crude representations which hunters would scribble off as magical talismans to ensure success at a particular hunt. On the one hand magic prepared the hunter for the killing of animals, on the other, religion attempted to guarantee their increase. Duplication Of animals, then, need not be, as the author suggests, due to a desire for symmetry or rhythm, but a religious performance to ensure the propagation of an edible species. The two reindeer in the British Museum (Fig. 30) which fit together, as the Abbi Breuil discovered, afford an excellent example of such a fertility motif. It is possible also that the prefer- ence for red as a colour had an esoteric significance, and Miss Harrison's acute observation, to which the author refers, puts the matter concisely :—" It is not so much about the family and the domestic hearth that the beginnings of the arts cluster, as about the institution known as the ` Man's House' "—that is, the centre of war and hunting and the religious and magical practices associated with these activities.
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