A Critique of Traditionalist's View about Traditional Art, Sacred Art and Religious Art

Conventionally, "traditionalism" is as old as human history; because according to traditionalists’ claim, all the great traditions the world over have a common origin. One of the most important issues concerning art with which traditionalists have been concerned is defining and explaining such concepts like "traditional art", "sacred art" and "religious art". It is very important to investigate these concepts in order to understand the traditionalists’ theory about art. Based on content analysis and this documentary study, this paper explains and criticizes these concepts. The results of this study show that sacred art is a part of traditional art which is directly connected with religious rituals. However, due to the differences in form, religious art does not fall in to the province of traditional art. The criticism leveled at traditionalist's view concerning traditional, sacred and religious arts is that it not only brings some difficulties to traditionalists’ theory of art, but also represents a distortion of some of their theoretical foundations.