Corpus Hypercubus
“Religion, not philosophy,” Dali is oft quoted. He was also a Catholic. It might be easy for some to equate this in a literal way; to say that Dali was advising a conversion to Christianity and a rejection of the worldly understandings of philosophy. But one must keep in mind how complex a man Dali was. Did he ever do anything usual? Was his life lived like the stroke of his brush on the canvas: every movement thought out and intentional?
Most likely, yes.
Were Dali a normal, practicing Catholic, his painting would have been far from what it was. It’s fair to say that the church would shun his over-sexualized Freudian surrealism. So we should therefore consider his words, “Religion, not philosophy,” in the context of the man himself. And in such context, the man dripped art from his pores: “...I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly.”
But also, upon converting to Catholicism proper in 1940: ”My painting in the future will be an amalgam of my Surrealist experience and the classicism of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Renaissance.”
The product of which resulted, one, in the masterpiece shown above.
Now was Dali’s religion a product of his art, or his art a product of religion? Perhaps both were not at all separate to him: art is religion, religion is art. This is a profound assumption both in its complexity and simplicity. What better tool has there been for art than religion? Indeed, just take a look at the world. Paintings throughout history, architecture, music, dance, literature, film-how much is inspired by religion? Movements such as cubism or dada are feeble in comparison to the impact of a religious movement on the artistic and subsequently socio-political world.
However we must now bring up Nietzsche’s overman, or Plato’s philosopher king. The mob is easily influenced into wrong contexts by designing men who use art/religion as a tool for control. The result of this is both economic and environmental, as one is allowed to trounce the other. It takes a certain kind of person to understand Dali or Nietzsche. The kind of person who can hear “Religion, not philosophy” and work it out through their own mind, make up their own ideas about what it means. It is this kind of person that will bring meaning to life and perpetuate the fulfillment of needs deeper than sensual. Those who are not led out of context-off path-by the compelling literal element.
“If you please God, you go to heaven when you die,” is seductive; the individual wants to believe it literally, that they will be immortal and live in a paradise by following a few simple rules. But in the bluntest sense, it simply isn’t real, just like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chappell is only a series of paint smears on a ceiling, and is thus not “real.” But we can see something else-through art, through religion. A place that is magical and inspiring and awesome as the deep cosmos. It is a way to move upward; a way to become something greater. It is the practice of the spirit, born within ourselves and perpetuated by great individuals with vision.
Michelangelo said: “Into this stone there comes nothing but what I put there.” Indeed. Religion is art, art is religion. We create it all and it is all created by us. Dali is telling us, as Nietzsche did, not to get consumed by the secularism and loose our spirit; to put spirit/art/religion into everything we do; refine and create greater gods to inspire greater art. This is the eternal process and is in sync with the cosmic order. For a century we have been reflecting ourselves, as we always have, and the world has become ugly because we have become ugly. To those who are beautiful: Religion, not philosophy; the world is your stone, make it beautiful again!