Kevin Gontkovic - Ancient Art and Ritual

In Ancient Art and Ritual by Jane Ellen Harrison, she talks about that both art and ritual is related to each other even if it may not appear that way as much as it did in ancient times. She compares the theatre of ancient Greece to modern day theatres, essentially showing how much we revere the arts as compared to how much the people of ancient times revere art. Her comparison shows that we do not hold art, theatre in particular, as a religious activity that is inseparable from our lives. The people of Greece did revere it as a very important religious because the coliseum was always open all day from morning to night. Our theatre is usually open after our work is done and it is mostly used for entertainment purposes, not religious purposes like it is with the people of ancient Greece. The people of Greece have a god residing over their theatre, which they are showing respect to by going to the theatre. We do not have any god that we are revering usually when we go to the theatre.

I would have to agree with Harrison’s argument against Plato’s idea that art is just an imitation of concepts of natural objects. I also believe that most artists are not merely copying an object out in nature. They are taking aspects of the object and coming up with their own version of it. It is not a mere copy. Harrison gives a good example of a situation where the art could not have been a copy of something on page 23, “Take the representations of Osiris that we have just described—the mummy rising bit by bit from his bier. Can any one maintain that art is here a copy or imitation of reality? However “realistic” the painting, it represents a thing imagined not actual.” Objects that are imagined in one person’s mind cannot be a mere copy of the natural world because there is no such thing in the natural world. Now someone could say that the object that was created in the person’s mind could be based on concepts of objects that are in the natural world. Humans are not able to picture how a god is supposed to look because the realm of the gods is beyond our comprehension; so, we have to use concepts based on the natural world around us because we do not know how any other worlds may look. But it cannot be said that the art created is a mere copy or imitation of the natural world because it can look very different from the natural world especially if it is a portrait of a god or other heavenly being.

The distinction Harrison makes between rites and rituals is very interesting. She says on page 33, “The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially for the public good.” Many religious dances that Van der Leeuw was talking about could be classified as rites according to this definition because those were social acts that were to benefit the good of the tribe. Dances are usually social in nature but they can be private acts that would be classified as rituals in this case. Some religious dances can be rituals if one does it by himself or herself or they can be rites if done with other people. If we go by this definition that Harrison gives us, then we could classify the dance of some animals as being rites. The bees’ dance is a good example of this because the dance is done to benefit bees so that they can find food. It is social because the scout bee does it in front of a group of bees, though the other bees just watch and do not participate in the dance. Whether it is a ritual or a rite it is heavily related with the areas of art, as the area of dance has shown us.