There is no place here for such an idea as “art for art's sake...

There is no place here for such an idea as “art for art's sake,” and traditional civilizations have never had museums nor ever produced a work of art just for itself.4 Traditional art might be said to be based on the idea of art for man's sake, which, in the traditional context where man is God's vicegerent on earth, the axial being on this plane of reality, means ultimately art for God's sake, for to make something for man as a theomorphic being is to make it for God.

In traditional art there is a blending of beauty and utility which makes of every object of traditional art, provided it belongs to a thriving traditional civilization not in the stage of decay, something at once useful and beautiful. It is through its art that tradition forges and forms an ambience in which its truths are reflected everywhere, in which men breathe and live in a universe of meaning in conformity with the reality of the tradition in question.

That is why, in nearly every case of which we have a historical record, the tradition has created and formalized its sacred art before elaborating its theologies and philosophies. Saint Augustine appears long after the sarcophagus art of the catacombs which marks the beginning of Christian art, as Buddhist architecture and sculpture came long before Nāgarjuna.

Even in Islam, which developed its theological and philosophical schools rapidly, even the early Mu‘tazilites, not to speak of the Ash‘arites or al-Kindī and the earliest Islamic philosophers, follow upon the wake of the construction of the first Islamic mosques which were already distinctly Islamic in character.

In order to breathe and function in a world, religion must remold that world not only mentally but also formally; and since most human beings are much more receptive to material forms than to ideas and material forms leave the deepest effect upon the human soul even beyond the mental plane, it is the traditional art which is first created by the tradition in question.

This is especially true of sacred art which exists already at the beginning of the tradition for it is related to those liturgical and cultic practices which emanate directly from the revelation. Therefore, the first icon is painted by Saint Luke through the inspiration of the angel, the traditional chanting of the Vedas is “revealed” with the Vedas, the Quranic psalmody originates with the Prophet himself, etc.