After having visited the Pacific Asia Museum today, I have been thinking about a lot of the religious symbolism I have seen. I was fascinated by a lot of the gestures and poses of the deities. Having been raised Catholic, I was always exposed to images of suffering and pain. I'm sure these sort of images exist among many different cultures, but I was taken aback to see how many of the poses and gestures of deities and religious figures reflected peaceful a demeanor.
This might make for a great comparative research project for students. Perhaps they can compare the artwork and reflect on how it reflects on the given culture's belief system/lifestyle.
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comparing religious symbolism and ideas in art
07/24/2013 02:35 PM
#1
comparing religious symbolism and ideas in art
I forgot to mention, I was particularly fascinated with a balance in terms of male/female, good/bad energies in the artwork from Nepal. I was reminded of the similar balance in many native Mexican peoples (the eagle/snake on the flag itself is symbolic of native ideas of male/female balance). There were symbolic deities that represented female figures, male, wrathful gods and peaceful gods. very interesting.
apologies, once more I realized that I found out that the actual hand gestures of the deities in the art do in fact mean something.
here are a few of the meanings I discovered today at the museum:
"fear not"
and
"the explanation"
among others... I can't remember some of the others off hand, but I do remember each providing some sort of positive message of hope, rather than one of suffering.
dmagana wrote:
This might make for a great comparative research project for students. Perhaps they can compare the artwork and reflect on how it reflects on the given culture's belief system/lifestyle.
I thoroughly agree that the students can use this as an opportunity for reflections and comparative study. I felt very calm and serene as I walked through this portion of the museum. The similarities of the deities is what I found the most impressive as well. You may want to direct students to document the location of the artwork first before making their comparisons. I can see where they might get confused with origins of each piece.
Ideas of religion is always interesting to me, and for some reason I can present them in an interesting way for my students. They always seem to want to know more than I actually do know. I to was raised Catholic, so seeing the diferent posses of the Asian figures, especially the peacefull Buddha as compared to the sacrifice of Christ was always interesting to me. I can easily see how students may be engaged in this project.
I think it would be very interesting to do a unit where you compare religious symbolism throughout different cultures. Maybe you could start with asking students what values each symbol represents? What can we tell about a culture based on what images they choose to reflect their spiritual beliefs? THis could be very interesting.