It’s a growing chorus and I don’t think it is a coincidence.

The Supreme Court Just Gave American Evangelicals a Gift

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Joe

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.” Pablo Picasso*

So there it is. The problem of art in at least the U.S. if not the West generally, and the willingness of the artist to play along. Art is not rational, it is immaterial, it is not reasonable. I agree with Picasso. Not everything that is important is quantifiable. To believe we are or should be primarily logical and that emotion is, at best, secondary is to remove half our being. Art does not need to serve a use, it does not need to be utilitarian to be of value. It does not need to be “understood”.

“Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that...

Don’t use artists and don’t ignore artists

Artists are both different and the same. Artists typically do have an intrinsically different take on situations and life. There are different approaches for conveying meaning, both to and from artists.

At the same time, the spiritual needs are the same. The need for relationship is the same. The needs may be expressed in terms that are outside of typical approaches, but the needs are the same.

Artists are not there just to make your place of worship pretty or to serve on the worship team. And they aren’t automatically more spiritual because they are an artist.

On the other hand, just because they may seem eccentric and maybe even stand off-ish doesn’t mean you get to pretend they aren’t an important part of your congregation. It just may be they are important for reasons other than their art.

Arts ministry, are you sure?

If you or your...

I’ve taken to gardening and yard care like a fiend lately. If you had told me even one year ago I’d be doing this much gardening I would have said you were nuts. This gardening could be a never ending task, and in some ways it is. But I realized at some point I am not working on my lawn and gardens for the sake of work. I want to be able to sit back and enjoy what I have set in motion.

I could even get it to the point that if I had kids at home or could afford to hire someone I could let them take over and care for the gardens. I could at the very least get it to the point that only occasional intervention is needed. I could then simply enjoy what grows.

But even if someone else cares for my lawn and gardens I have to keep involved to make sure the right things are happening. Or maybe I decide I want to change things around. Or maybe some shade has cropped up over a part of the...

I really do love the conversation. I am more interested in hearing what other people have to say than what I have to say. In that vein, here I interview one of my favorite artists today, Suzy Schultz. Her website is in the title link above. Be sure to check it out.

On your website you have your artistic vision and you talk about the two innocences, What I want to hear more about is that Second Innocence. What is it that makes it an Innocence and what appeals to you?

I heard that term in an interview in an article years ago. The guy quoted a French theologian, the theologian used that term Second Innocence. I don’t know what it is about that term, I have some ideas. It kind of goes with the whole theory of there being redemption, of things that are broken becoming whole. Or things that are scarred becoming beautiful, not because they lose their scars but the scars are part of the new...

Just be honest

I often talk about and look for authenticity in the artist I know and appreciate. I have already written here about being vulnerable as both the artist and the viewer. It is the only way to have a relationship and a functional community. In a certain way, who you are will come out, no matter how much you try to be covert about yourself. Remember, out of the abundance of the heart. And as recent news and history has shown, no matter how much you try to, not just hide or keep from, but, deceive others about who you really are, one day you might get caught. Those ramifications can be catastrophic. Might as well be honest.

Validity

In Francis Schaeffer’s essays “Art and the Bible”, he discusses one of his standards for art, ‘Validity’.

By validity I mean whether an artist is honest to himself and to his worldview or whether he makes art only for money or for the sake of...

Time is tight right now with several deadlines looming. Here is another great link to ponder. A practical, straight shooting article about the realities of churches entering into the arts’ world discussion. I’m not a fan of flowery speech, if you haven’t noticed. I feel like a lot of the real discussion gets obfuscated at a time when more down to earth talk is needed. The arts are already seen as unapproachable and inaccessible. I know such poetic styles have significance to many artists, academics, and theologians, even enhances the arts discussion. To many people it is just more pretension.

While I do agree with point 4, I do think there needs more exploration and discussion regarding what the author and most other people mean by “engaging” and “redeeming”. In terms of correcting or systemic approaches to “reclaim” art, along the lines of “culture wars” language, he is absolutely...

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.~Albert Einstein

This TedTalk by Dr. Mae Jemison is one of my all time favourites. She was the first African-American woman to go into space. Here she talks about the vital integration of art and science. She rejects the bifurcation of art and science, intuition and analytical. Creativity is science and art. E=mc2 was an intuitive leap. There was no culture that advanced science and technology that did not include advancements in art. Educating without art because it isn’t important is like saying we only need oxygen for water.

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Joe

edit to add, “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors” Oscar Wilde

Opening up

In my previous post I quote C. S. Lewis “We must begin by laying aside as completely as we can all our own preconceptions, interests, and associations. We must make room for Botticelli’s Mars and Venus, or Cimabue’s Crucifixion, by emptying out our own.” Here is where I think a lot of Christians get tripped up. By laying aside all those things, they fear being negatively affected, even defiled, by art. I think this is a huge contributor to the marginalization of art in the Church. I heard one pastor justify this position with scripture saying a little leaven spreads through the whole batch of dough.

Whether that is an appropriate application of that passage I’ll leave for others who are better equipped for such discussions. I do think scripture also has things to say to put that...

A long and winding road

I am going to go down a couple more paths before I go back and revisit some other topics. One topic that I think is extremely important, but rarely looked at, much less in depth, is the importance of what the viewer of art brings to the table. This is probably even more important than the work itself, never mind the artist. I’m not talking just about how well educated the viewer is in art appreciation. I mean that the viewer has the capacity to totally change the artist’s intent or the content. This is a long one. There are many important thoughts about this I want to share.

Is there art?

I fall along the lines of this from the introduction of a book I have titled The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich. In it he starts off with:

There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. Once these were men who took coloured earth and roughed out the forms of...