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Good art helps us to appreciate the parts of creation that we tend to take for granted.

We tend to think that art is supposed to be about something, but sometimes it can just celebrate the ordinary. Photography can show us how interesting light is when it falls on a person’s face; abstract art draws us to the marvel of colours and shapes; dance demonstrates the beauty of bodies-in-motion.

Think of all the things you learnt names for when you were two and quickly took for granted. Like reds, greens, oranges, triangles, squares, circles, running and jumping. Good art makes us notice these things again. It helps us to remember the world that gets lost in our day-to-day. To see that God has surrounded us with wonder.

As the great philosopher Ferris Bueller once said  “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Here is one fascinating quote:

[According to the common view creativity] is what happens when people are liberated from the constraints pf conventionality.
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The truth … is that creativity is a by-product of mastery of the sort that is cultivated through long practice. It seems to be built up through submission (think a musician practicing scales, or Einstein learning tensor algebra). Identifying creativity with freedom harmonizes quite well with the culture of the new capitalism, in which the imperative of flexibility precludes dwelling in any task long enough to develop real competence. Such competence is the condition … for genuine creativity…

Let me suggest that neither “Christianity” nor “culture” per se make modern society uncomfortable. It is the self-sacrificial and uncompromising pursuit of greatness and quality in these practices, a life singularly devoted to them, which condemns the virtues of contemporary professional and personal life: compromise, mediocrity, and personal comfort that makes modern society uncomfortable.
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Are we now too sophisticated, too enlightened, too iconoclastic to believe in the myths of great art, great culture, even the possibility of a great life devoted to Christ? We’re not humble. We’re cowards.

Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. … I write with a solid belief in ll the Christian dogmas. I find that this in no way limits my freedom as a writer and that it increases rather than decreases my vision. It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. this may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer to believe nothing is to see nothing. I don’t write to bring anybody a message, … this is not the purpose of a novelist; but the message I find in the life I see is a moral message.

While it is understandable that Christians think a Christian [artistic] expression may act redemptively in culture, this idea founders on our culture’s actual uses of art.
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I’ve found that Christians tend to have expectations about what art can do, and what it will look like when Christians do it, that ignore the real terrain of art.

This has linked up with a few other thoughts running around my head — both about art and cultural participation more generally: When we are participating in culture we have respect they way that different media, etc. are actually used and work with that.

We have a tendency to see everything as a route for communicating what we believe. But, we have to be wary of coming with our ‘message’, forcing it on some unsuspecting cultural practice and expect the two to work together seamlessly. We have to respect the diversity that God has embedded in our cultural tendencies. We have to realise that not all cultural enterprises are appropriate as message-carriers. Even if they once were, this may no longer be the case in the current ‘terrain’.

As well as Prescott’s example of the visual arts, we might also consider the well-known observation that ‘politics is downstream from culture’. We have to understand what politics ‘is for’, what its limitations are, etc. and act appropriately.

Or perhaps better ‘serve appropriately’. Perhaps we need to look at cultural practices and ask ‘how can we best serve in this area of culture?’ It may be by presenting a clear message; it may be by working quietly for justice; it may be by being provocative.

To come back to our original example, Prescott suggests that

Our culture’s arts are very effective at mediating experiences of beauty, passion, mystery, intellectual engagement, or cultural challenge. But they are not capable of cultural redemption, unless society as a whole shares in the Christian longing for signs of the kingdom.

I think it’s fair to say that God is not divorced from beauty, passion, mystery, intellectual engagement or cultural challenge. So, this is not to suggest that we throw away what we believe, only that we see culture as it is and work appropriately.

The first is a quote from U2 sermons blog (quoting, in turn, Douglas Blount):

…for U2, “all roads to the Gospel lead first through the blues… gospel without blues leads to self-deception.”

… which, I guess, is the up-swing of what we’ve said previously.

The second is William Edgar’s suggestion (during the talk Heaven in a Nightclub) that jazz is able to express true joy because it has faced up to the darkness and despair in life. In contrast, a lot of current praise music only gets as far as happiness.

Maybe we can link these two fragments together: In a recent interview, Simon Mayo suggested that one of U2′s attractions is their joy. And certainly, for me, little praise music reaches the joy of, for example, Magnificent. Perhaps this is the result of a willingness to take the road that passes ‘first through the blues’.

Or, to be seasonal, we find the full joy of Easter Sunday only when we’ve truly engaged with the darkness & despair of Good Friday. (For more on this, see Robin Parry’s post on Tenebrae.)

The violence communicated by Rainer’s painting and the way it is hung (between two similarly styled paintings to give a triptych or Golgotha-like feel) really drive home aggression of Good Friday. Something missing from many of the more traditional, realistic (and frequently serene) portrayals.

See also his related post at Diary of an Arts Pastor.

The voice of God has been very clear, though, throughout my career that I am doing what He created me to do.
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Being creative is the way I practice being a believer. It’s an act of obedience. I want to do it well to a particular end. Life is now a stewardship project, which is life-affirming. I’m unbelievably grateful that God has given me this gift. I love that I get to be creative. Being creative is a fundamental part of being human.