Art is religious* insofar as humans have made icons and idols—aesthetic objects—that intermediate between God and people. But God was declared dead in the late 19th Century, and it was the Enlightenment and ensuing modernity that killed him. Is all art created after this juncture, then, not religious? Well, no. Art is religious also insofar as it brings us into a spiritual connection with ourselves, with one another, and with the external world.
"Opening us up to an inner depth we may not be aware we possess is integral to the experience of great works of human creativity,"
writes Sister Wendy Beckett in a foreword to Icons: Divine Beauty by Richard Temple. The spiritual has always and will always exist in aesthetic objects.
The most notable modern art movement that supports this claim is The Transcendental Painting Group (TPG), which blended European avant-garde abstraction and theosophy. The group's paintings are often seen as spiritual quests to get beyond binary modes of understanding the world (e.g. scientific / spiritual; rational / emotional; etc) and integrate scientific discoveries about the world and universe with inwardly-focused, deeply personal inquiries.
Whereas European avant-garde artists were interested primarily in experimenting with shapes, color, light, and medium, the TPG was experimenting with symbology and acquiring ancient religious iconography into their work to create a transcendent experience for the viewer. The Abstract Expressionists who come from the lineage of Europe's avant-garde are not not making religious art. In their experiments with their medium and relentless inquiry into what painting can be, or what sculpture can be, they are also participating in a quest to take viewers into a higher level of consciousness. The implicit purpose of abstract art is to create a spiritual experience, i.e. an experience that opens up a deeper awareness of the mysteries of life.
There's a difference in motive, though, between the TPG and Abstract Expressionists. Whereas the TPG understood that, if all art is religious, then they had a moral imperative to continue experimenting with forms in order to bring people into a deeper relationship with a higher consciousness, the Abstract Expressionists were navel-gazing and preoccupied with formal experimentation for experimentation’s sake. Spiritual ends were still met with Abstract Expressionism, though. And why shouldn't they have been? All art is religious because the act of creation is profound and the art produced puts us in touch with that truth. Now, whether or not the art object is perverse is another story.
If all art is religious, then all art can be broken down into categories of good and wicked. If morally good art is an object that brings us in closer communion to ourselves and the external world, then depraved art misuses the mystical power of aesthetics to cleave us from eternal profound truths and mysteries. A group that understands these conditions all too well is the CIA, who weaponized modern art—Abstract Expressionism, in particular—to promote America during the Cold War. The fact that art at all can be used as a psy-op is proof that it has deep spiritual, religious power. And I sometimes wonder if spiritually corrupt art is more susceptible to being used as a psychologically manipulative weapon.
*What do I mean by "religious" in this section heading, though? I use the word loosely. Anything done out of dogmatic obligation, or attached to moral imperatives is "religious" for the purposes of this post. I'll take up arguments for and against this notion in another post maybe.