Text and Icon in Religious Art

Abstract

At the 2013 AFS annual meeting, when giving the lecture named for him, Don Yoder isolated the traits that separate Protestant from Catholic folk art in the United States. From a global perspective, those differentiating traits appear most radically and clearly in the traditional art of Islam and Hinduism. Islam is rigorously monotheistic, aniconic, and its highest art is the calligraphic representation of Koranic texts. Hinduism is polymorphous, iconic in the extreme, and its highest art is the sculptural representation of the deities. Islam has a single great text that unifies arts and acts. Hinduism does not; icons, not texts, are foundational. Rituals, orally performed myths, and images flourish in abundance, varying from region to region, temple to temple, house to house. The limitless, inclusive nature of Hinduism, closely paralleled in the religions of Mediterranean antiquity, befuddles interpretations by scholars accustomed to faiths based on texts.