View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-religion-in-art-ted-ed Before we began putting art into museums, art mostly served as the visual counterpart to religious stories....
========== It's only been the last few hundreds years or sothat Western civilization has been putting art in museums,at least museums resemblingthe public institutions we know today.Before this, for most, art served other purposes.What we call fine art todaywas, in fact, primarily how people experiencedan aesthetic dimension of religion.Paintings, sculpture, textiles and illuminationswere the media of their time,supplying vivid imageryto accompany the stories of the day.In this sense, Western artshared a utilitarian purposewith other cultures around the world,some of whose languages incidentally have no word for art.So how do we define what we call art?Generally speaking, what we're talking about hereis work that visually communicatesmeaning beyond language,eit...
