How are Navajo religion and art related to one another? What is their relationshp?

Answer 1

Sand paintings are used in Navajo healing ceremonies although these paintings are destroyed after use. All Navajo art that is made for public viewing are never exact duplicates of the real ceremonial paintings.

I do not think I can adequately answer the question posed, however I did come across a very thoughtful essay (with multiple sources cited) about Navajo sand paintings at a commercial website that explains the religious significance of sand paintings.

Legends in Sand: The Evolution of the Modern Navajo Sandpainting
-- An article by Lee Anderson
http://www.americana.net/sandpaintings_article.html

(Quoted from website given above)
There are two forms of Navajo sandpaintings. The first is used in the traditional healing or blessing ceremony conducted by a Singer or Medicine Man, a hataalii. This is referred to by the Navajo as an iikaah, “a place where the gods come and go.” The sandpainting is the crucial element in this 2- to-9-day ceremony, which is designed to restore balance (hozho), thus restoring lost health or insuring “good things.”

Answer 2

Depends on what you mean. Sandpaintings aren't art although they are beautiful - they're meant to heal people. If you're talking about silversmithing, rugweaving, or bronzework - the Holy Ones are often depicted but these works aren't used for religous purposes.

I'll scream the next time I hear the word shaman. Sounds like Shamu's younger brother.

Answer 3

like in most indian cultures, navajo art is involved in religion as a symbolic language that helps to guide energy (to perform magic, as you wish). All over the world tribes have or used to have a shamanistic culture, that uses power animals to heal and protect people (sometimes to damage people). These power animals are contacted by the shaman in a shamanistic dream, in trance by drums or drugs. Some artworks serve as a map of the other side, where the power animals live. Some artworks are portraits of the power animals; a request to them to stay with a person to protect him. Sometimes they also serve as a shield against power animals sent out to harm me, by an opponent shaman for example. This is on a personal level, and in healing practices.
In more dayly life servival of the whole group is important: The scenes depicted in these artworks are wished futures. (lot of animals caught, good crops, fertile man and woman, etc.) In the history of shamanistic cultures people lived so close to nature, that surviving depends on these basic nature forces, so it is important that these forces are in favour of your people. The art and the trance (and the art made in trance) are ways to influence these forces. And most of all to influence the minds of the people (farmers, hunters, gatherers) so that they will be succesfull in their survival. Art is a reminder to the people: yes, we'll make it, we'll have a good harvest, let's work with passion.
Religion and art in a shamanistic culture are almost the same as eating and drinking, a way to survive. And on top of they both give a life meaning: they make one enjoy (the beauty of) life.
with love,
Dr Aram

Answer 4

artwork is frequently beforehand of certainty. Artists are very frequently "forward of their time." They convey what's again, and dissimilar at the instant cannot verify the fee in those expressions on an analogous time as the artist is alive. it somewhat is in simple terms in looking back can we see the creative and prescient that the artist had. artwork is visionary. all persons are artists. Our each and on a daily basis lives are our canvas and our clay. What we make of each and every 2d shapes the subsequent. we are in a position to be grounded in "certainty" or we are in a position to attain for something previous, something unknown. we could desire to continuously open as much because it, and then we are starting to be certainty. it somewhat is magical and it somewhat is somewhat genuine.