Discussion Questions for Art, Religion, and the Market Place

Here are the discussion questions for the third email in the AMV Deep Dive of Marden J. Clark’s essay collection Liberating Form.

If you haven’t signed up for the email, you can read it (and sign up to receive future ones) here: Liberating Form: Art, Religion, Marketplace.

Please note that comments are moderated, and the goal is to make this a place welcome to Mormons of all stripes (as well as folks with an interest in Mormonism).

1. What positive things does religion bring into your life that art hasn’t? What positive things does art bring into your life that religion hasn’t?
2. A lot of the examples Clark uses are works that are explicitly religions, or at least moral. What’s your favorite work of art that is overtly religious? What’s your favorite work of art that religious folks, and especially Mormons, might find heretical and/or distasteful?
3. Which works of art do you find valuable that exist because of the market place (and wouldn’t have been able to be created without it)? The market place can definitely can distort art. Are there ways in which it can shape it and make it better? And is the market place really the main evil or are there other villains to point more strongly at (authoritarianism would definitely be one, in my book)?
4. And the big one: what are the potential pitfalls in re-merging art and religion? What are the potential triumphs that could result? What work could be done to help bring about such a re-merger?