I've been noticing recently that in relation to Art and Spirituality there is a quite startling trend through out history.
The earliest art that can be found is the cave art from the Cro Magnon culture. This artwork usually consists of realistic looking animals, stick figure humans and abstract symbols.
To make the point that I'm going to try to draw in this post I think it is necessary to say a little about Cro Magnon culture. They were extremely spiritual people. They believed that the supernatural world is stronger and more real than the natural.
Thus it is believed that their cave paintings of animals, typically drawn with arrows in the animals are to represent the spiritual killing of the animal before the actual hunt.
The type of artform that is practiced by the Cro Magnon culture is what is today termed Abstract. Just for clarification, Abstract art (by definition) is art that is a simplification of the physical world with representation of the physical world items. For instance, these cave drawings are very simplified attempts at drawing these animals. We recognize that they are animals but they are not very realistic by any sort of the imagination.
Now, in today's culture I believe we have moved into a new phase of art which is termed Realistic or Realism. All of our works of art are meant to accurately express things in nature, or concepts in math or geometry, or to typtify an abstract realistic concept on a canvas. Whatever the case, the art of today is subjected merely to the physical world, rather than the spiritual world.
I could give numerous examples of how this is true.
My point: As human nature has developed from a spiritually based society to a logical society art work as well has transformed from Abstaction of the real world to please the spiritual to Realism to express the physical reality.