The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics—or more precisely, Revolution—co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church.
ATTRIBUTION:
Octavio Paz (b. 1914), Mexican poet. “Seeing and Using: Art and Craftsmanship,” Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature, Harcourt Brace (1987).
