soapbox: on kitsch [from the draft file/2009]

While I spend time catching up on rest and family time and battle continued sinus headaches that are keeping me from much reading or writing, I thought I'd publish several rough posts that never made it out of my draft file this past year. Please be gracious, the words are unedited, unfinished and, frequently, half-baked. But in an attempt to put something out into the world (and working my way backwards), I offer you unedited draft #5...



Go here to read Jeff Berryman's entire post on kitsch (a topic I will revisit I am sure):

Kitsch

Christian Kitsch

Here’s another interesting review of Robert Scruton’s book Beauty.  This time the subject is high art’s trashy cousin, kitsch. Robert Fulford, of the National Post, doesn’t really let on whether he agrees with Scruton’s didsdain of kitsch or not, be he does a nice job of summarizing the issue.  On the essence of kitsch: “an imitation of human feeling wrapped in a thick layer of cuteness.”  On the problem of kitsch: “Kitsch encourages us to dwell on our own satisfactions and anxieties; it tells us to be pleased with what we have always felt and known. It reaches us at the level where we are easiest to please, a level requiring a minimum of mental effort.”  And in contrast with beauty:

At the other end of the scale (from art and beauty), kitsch (“that peculiar disease that we can instantly recognise but never precisely define, and whose Austro-German name links it to the mass movements and crowd sentiments of the 20th century”) degrades beauty through the Disneyfication of art. Kitsch trivializes human conflict and demotes feeling into bathos. It’s a mould that forms, as Scruton says, over a living culture.

What’s behind this sort of thinking is the notion that in an encounter with art,...read more...

A related post at Culture Making on a topic I'm sure will come up again:



Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Kinkade

No doubt many people who would praise a rich, popular, establishment-approved hack like Andy Warhol despise Kinkade for being a rich, popular, evangelical-approved hack. But I think a solid case against Kinkade can be made on purely aesthetic criteria, especially when you compare his work to a superior artist.

Consider two works of on similar themes. Both are images of the Water Tower in Chicago. Both have similar elements—a carriage, trees, people with umbrellas. Indeed, paintings are almost identical in theme and content, if not in style.

And yet the first is unquestionably technically superior. The use of texture and shadow puts the viewer within the picture. You can almost feel...read more...

from the journey of a blind woman: a discussion on Hallelujah (part 3)

"Your ordinary self is exactly where God wants to work extraordinary
miracles. The inconspicuous nobody who shivers when it's cold and sweats when it's hot, who wakes up so many days feeling not-at-all-ready to face the world, who can barely get dressed and show up on time and at the right place, who has to read the paragraph three times to understand it, who feels lonely and hopeless, isolated, crowded, horny, left out, and taken in all at once -- YOU are the one God loves! Deal with it." (Brennan Manning)

"IN MY MIND THE NEW ALBUM IS ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF GOD, HOW IT REALLY DOES EXIST, AND IS AS REAL AS YOUR CAR OR YOUR KRISPY KREME DONUT, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR PROBLEMS. IF WE CAN FIGURE IT OUT, GOD HAS INVITED US TO LIVE in His kingdom in the midst of our regular existence. It is not a place of isolation and perfection, it is not far away where we cannot reach it. It happens at all the places where we intersect with each other..." (SARA GROVES)

Question #2 restated, is it possible to mix the sacred and the secular, the pure and the profane, without one diminishing the other?

This question came from the excellent comments regarding the original lyrics of the song by Leonard Cohen and its various rewrites by other performers. But the importance of this question is crucial beyond this tiny discussion of one song and one song-writer. One of the very interesting issues regarding Cohen's lyrics is that he includes both biblical and sexual references, but the two are not separated. They are, in fact, inseperable -- David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah and all that.

We must guard against the deception that our lives are compartmentalized into these categories of sacred and secular. This concept does not exist in the Bible (see: David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, and pretty much the rest of the entire biblical narrative). It does exist in reference to some of the heretical teaching of groups like the Gnostics who taught a dualism that the physical realm was evil and the spiritual realm was good; therefore, the man Jesus who lived the crude life of a carpenter and suffered the cruel death on a cross could not be the Christ who was the transcendant Savior.


In the letter to the Colossians, Paul shut down the heresy, "We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body." (Colossians 1:15-18)


Dallas Willard addresses the mindset this way, "There truly is no division between sacred and secular except what we have created. And that is why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and the cause of Christ. "In other words, it is not the act itself that is defined as sacred or secular, pure or profane, but our own sinful stupidity that muddies the waters. In the next post, we'll talk more about the artist's intentions behind the lyrics, and there is some analysis to be done on his interpretations of these gifts of love and sex and relationship and art that have been created by and gifted by our good Father.


But I believe, before we can even have an intelligent conversation about the artist's intentions, we need to be crystal clear about our own. For myself, I find a reflex of fear kick in whenever a piece of art even puts its toes into the waters of life outside of the pre-approved Christian feelings, thoughts and behavior . So in this line of thinking, references to, say lust, are taboo while references to Krispy Kreme donuts or Foghorn Leghorn cartoons are perfectly acceptable. I am not willing to live and think and feel this way any longer. I do not want to cooperate with the "incalcuable damage" this mentality does to my own life and the "cause of Christ."


If we become students of the Truth found in God's Word as well as the work of His Spirit being worked out all around us in our Christ-community, it is obvious that God does not categorize between sacred and secular. Together and alone, we experience the delights and agonies of living as spiritual beings in a physical world. We cry together over the death of a friend, we laugh at Steve Carrell, we eat pumpkin cake with cream-cheese frosting, we wrestle with the temptation to violate each other, we sing without tiring yet another Lincoln Brewster worship song.


Let's listen to L'Engle again, "To be truly Christian means to see Christ everywhere, to know him as all in all. I don't mean to water down my Christianity into a vague kind of universalism, with Buddha and Mohammed all being more or less equal to Jesus - not at all! But neither do I want to tell God (or my friends) where he can and cannot be seen. We human beings far too often tend to codify God, to feel that we know where he is and where he is not, and this arrogance leads to such things as the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch burnings and has the result of further fragmenting an already broken Christendom." (Walking on Water, p. 35)


While I would not compare much of the legalism I witnessed in my upbringing to the Spanish Inquisition, I do have a collection of stories that smacked somewhat of persecution. Early on, under the influence of my pious grandmother, battles were waged against pants on women and playing cards...these were debateable, but were extremely suspect. However, there was no debate regarding movie theatres and alcoholic beverages; these were completely illegal. In high school with the advent of contemporary Christian music, our parents had to make tough decisions about new dilemmas such as rock music at the roller rink and drums in church music. (one of my friend's parents settled the decision by allowing her to listen to Amy Grant any day of the week BUT Sundays).


These examples of separating sacred and secular may seem ridiculous, but I am not that old and the discussions were real in my lifetime. This serves as proof that it is not the specific holiness-earning regulations being debated but the mentality behind the debate that creates all the problems. When we view God in categories instead of as a Person with whom we are invited into relationship, then we will continue these dumb-ass conversations ad nauseum. (speaking of which, consider how OK God was with entrusting his own sacred words to Balaam's dumb ass in the Old Testament story!)


When it comes to art, wouldn't it be exciting if the church would begin to consider more important how a subject was being treated instead of what subject was being treated? If God thought the same way about us as we think about art, we would all be living in ivy-covered Kinkade houses, eating Testamints, listening to Christian radio, watching Gospel TV, borrowing money from Christian debt services, reading Chicken Soup for the Soul, networking on GodTube and plastering yet one more Christian slogan on our car bumper. We'd never have to experience sorrow, never have to ask forgiveness from sin and never have to interact with anything that might give us sin "cooties" (to borrow a term from Pastor Craig).


What if, instead, we began to critique art based on the Truth, Goodness and Beauty it reflects. And, by this mean, I mean more than the rosy light of a Kinkade painting. You have seen, as well as I, photographs of horrific tragedies that demonstrate a respect for beauty. You have watched documentaries covering topics of evil that demonstrate a commitment to investigating truth -- even truth that is hard to swallow. You have read novels, listened to lyrics, rented movies, that celebrate even the smallest acts of goodness which bring redemption to cruel circumstances. After all, the story of the Incarnation (which we are about to celebrate in full-out frenzy!) demonstrates once and for all God's commitment to breaking all barriers between sacred and secular when he sent His very own self through the muck of embryonic fluid into a setting of cobwebby cow stalls and sheep dung. No ivy-covered walls here. No scented candles with a Bible verse plastered on them to cover the stench of the barn. No contemporary Christian muzak to make the envirnoment more spiritual. Nope. No such thing for our Savior.


We've got to rip out of this bubble, friends. It's killing us -- turning us into illiterate, dumbed-down, plastic-wrapped people.


I loved .love's comment, "I honestly worry more about music that is labeled 'worship' but lacks effort and creativity."

She's in good company. Here's what Dr. Hans Rookmaaker had to say, "In a way there is no specifically Christian art. One can distinguish only good and bad art, art which is sound and good from art which is false...A work of art is not good when we know that the artist was a Christian: it is good when we perceive it to be good. Nor is a work bad if we know that the artist was a hater of God." (Modern Art and the Death of a Culture)Imagine if Christ-followers who create art placed more importance on the godly traits of discipline, creativity and imagination than they did on the latest consumer demands from the Christian-bubble subculture. Imagine that! I imagine it would look a lot like the kingdom here on earth.


I officially clamber down from my soapbox, clear my throat and whisper, "Thanks for listening. What do you think?"

from the journey of a blind woman: a discussion on Hallelujah (part 2)

Recently I was reading a post from The Diary of An Arts Pastor and realized that part of the reason I haven't been blogging lately is the overall lack of discipline in my life.

The other reason I haven't been blogging lately is an overall lack of discipline in my writing.

I realize that if I don't see myself as a writer -- or even a 'blogger' -- I can't be undisciplined. Either way, I know that, at the very least, I need to finish this discussion I started about Hallelujah and I've been procrastinating. Like crazy.

Hmmmm, let me think about this a moment....
Lack of discipline causes procrastination.
Fear of failure causes procrastination.
Laziness causes procrastination.
I'm three-for-three.

So, read the rest if you like, but know that the person I'm most writing this for is me. I need to do it as a part of my quest to not just consume information and not just talk about information, but to analyze, discern and apply information with wisdom.
Before going any further, I should state my bias. I do not believe that, in general, most of us in the church have a well-formed education when it comes to the intersections of faith and art and culture. I believe that almost all of us have been taught from one side of the fence or the other a sort of separation of church and art and culture. That is why I believe this conversation is so important. We need a healthy self-assessment about our understanding -- or lack thereof. It is crucial.

Here we go...
Question 1a re-stated, can we worship Father, Son and Spirit through works of art that were not created by artists who intend their work to bring reverence or awe to Him?

First of all, God is Lord of all whether or not we recognize Him as such. In other words, it is not the spiritual intentions of the artist that initiate recognition of God. As humans , we do not create ex nihilo -- from nothing -- we create as reflections of our Divine Creator. This is true whether your name is Jon Bon Jovi or Johann Sebastian Bach.
James 1:17 (CEV) Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father who created all the lights in the heavens. He is always the same and never makes dark shadows by changing.

Colossians 1:16 (CEV) Everything was created by him, everything in heaven and on earth, everything seen and unseen, including all forces and powers, and all rulers and authorities. All things were created by God's Son, and everything was made for him.

"Beauty stirs our hidden nostalgia for God." -- Pope John Paul II
"All truth is God's truth" -- Aristotle
I would extrapolate these statements to say All goodness is God's goodness and All beauty is God's beauty. (I realize the issue of beauty opens doors to personal preference...that's another topic for another post.)

God creates Goodness and Beauty and Truth. Scratch that. God is Goodness, Beauty and Truth.
He initiates; we respond. Worship happens when we choose to look outside our own tiny self-absorbed existence and recognize the goodness and beauty and truth of God and His gifts and respond in love and obedience toward Him.

Consider this statement by Madeleine L'Engle, a well-formed artist and God-responder,"...we call the work of such artists un-Christian or non-Christian at our own peril. Christ has always worked in ways which have seemed peculiar to many men, even his closest followers. Frequently, the disciples have failed to understand him. So we need not feel that we have to understand how he works through artists who do not consciously recognize him. Neither should our lack of understanding cause us to assume that he cannot be present in their work." (Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, p.33)

And this essay from David Taylor, arts pastor at Hope Chapel in Austin, (I apologize that I lost the title of the actual post I took this from. You should read all his stuff anyway...it's pretty great!)

"Can unregenerate sinners make good fruit? Yes. Yes, because God enables them to do so. Yes, because they have not completely forgotten what goodness tastes like; they've not completely forgotten the garden. The image of God in them is not dead, it is simply sick unto death. If it were completely dead, we would only have pure evil, and there is only one kind of creature that is purely evil and that is the demonic creature. Humans, on the other hand, however dimly, still recognize goodness when they see it; they even desire it. Theologians call this common grace, i.e., a grace common to all humankind. The non-Christian cannot accomplish in his own power the regeneration of his heart, only God can do that. But he can do good things - disburse potable water, heart surgery equipment, Fiddler on the Roof musicals - many good things indeed that remind him that it is good to be alive: that life is better than death. Granted, he often makes a miserable mess of his life because his heart is terminally ill, but oddly enough his works of art often betray his love for the Good ("Man of La Mancha"), the True ("In the Heat of the Night"), and the Beautiful ("The Nutcracker"). He can't quite seem to shake that mysterious lust for eternity in his heart."
This leads us to part b of question 1. Essentially, it asks, can someone respond to God's Truth, Goodness and Beauty through a work of art (say a song like Hallelujah) without the intention to recognize Him as the Creator?
I think this question is asking more than I bargained for, and it was in response to my initial claim that I felt like Bon Jovi was recognizing his Creator on that now infamous Unplugged episode. Truly the larger question is Are my eyes and ears open to recognizing God everywhere I go? If so, I can worship anywhere and anytime.

I can not truly know this man's heart. He could just be a great performer. He could just be worshipping the idea of God or spirituality and not God Himself. At the same time, I think it is entirely possible that Bon Jovi was transported through the truth and beauty of the music he was performing and the truth of the lyric "Hallelujah" (praise ye the Lord) to admit for even a moment that there is Someone larger than himself.

Consider many of the pagan kings in the Old Testament who were forced to recognize God as the true God after witnessing his mighty acts. Consider that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. That those who did not make that vital choice in this life will show reverence to the true God in eternity.

At the risk of taxing those of you kind enough to read this far, I will post the rest of this conversation in the next two days. At least I'm hoping I'll choose the disipline to do that.
In the meantime, what is your response to what I've posted so far? What do you think I've missed? Anyone disagree? Anyone agree? Why?

from the journey of a blind woman: a discussion on Hallelujah (part 1)

It was six men of Indostan,

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The First approach'd the Elephant,

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

"God bless me! but the Elephant

Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,

Cried, -"Ho! what have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me 'tis mighty clear,

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a spear!"

The Third approach'd the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

"I see," -quoth he- "the Elephant

Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,

And felt about the knee:

"What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain," -quoth he,-

"'Tis clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said- "E'en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Then, seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

"I see," -quoth he,- "the Elephant

Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

MORAL,
So, oft in theologic wars

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean;

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen!

John Godfrey Saxe's ( 1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend

The process of digging into the 'behind the scenes' details of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah felt a little bit like interviewing the six blind men of Indostan. It seems that so many people have strong feelings about the song. (Or is it that the song has strong feelings about us?)


I kept having to ask myself, "Why am I doing this? Why do I care? I like the song. I saw it covered in a cool way by Bon Jovi. I enjoyed the experience. Isn't that enough?"


Well, yes -- and no.


Consider this statement:"We must learn again that vision is not for private consumption. My vision is my vocation; the world is waiting for it to find concrete form. So few people, alas, still perceive the art in which they participate -- music, films -- as an arena for exchange of visions, for discovery of our common human vocations...Many of our contemporaries think of art...simply as relaxation or personal therapy. They use their imaginations to flee into their mental cocoon, to weave a personal lifestyle not open to discussion."


(essay "The Christian Imagination" by Janine Langan The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing. 71,72)


So, hurray for the six blind men of Indostan for at least talking about the elephantin the room! Sadly, it doesn't seem that they got very far in listening to each other, "Of course, an elephant is a wall, or a rope or a snake. This is what my personal experience dictates as truth!" But you got to start somewhere.


In the spirit of learning from the six blind men, and because this conversation about a song and a song-writer seemed to become more than a simple discussion about songs and television shows and 8o's rockers. And, because it seemed, to me, to grow into a deeper discussion about some pretty important subjects -- art and faith; sacred and secular; art-making and art-responding and all that. And, because we have this wonderful vehicle of discussion, our blogging community, why not further the conversation right here, right now?


And, why not? What follows is my very ameteur attempt at breaking down the discussion-- generated here and elsewhere -- regarding this piece of a art, a song Hallelujah, written by an artist, Leonard Cohen. Please be patient with me, gentle readers, as one blind man to another.


First the questions:
1. Is it possible to engage in worship with a song (in this case) that was not ever intended to be a vehicle for worship? Part b: Is it possible for a person to engage in the act of worship without the intention of worship?

2. Is it possible to mix the sacred and the secular, the pure and the profane, without one diminishing the other?

3. Lastly, what the heck did Leonard Cohen mean when he wrote this song, anyway?


Alright, I'm going to go hang out with the elephant a little bit longer.
I'll be back soon.


In the meantime, feel free to give your input. From the discussion here and here, do you think these three stated questions are a fair summary?

let's tawwwk....

OK, so BurningAlive and I are having a pretty interesting discussion about the song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. Here's the comments from this post:

3 comments:
BurningAlive said...
Ok....question.....and I might be crazy. I watched Bon Jovi do the song on youtube and then looked up the lyrics to Leonard Cohens version and it doesn't seem like a worship song at all. Am I nuts here? lol. It even has the line in it "Maybe there's a God above". I'm very confused.
9/10/2007 1:13 PM
livingpalm said...
thanks for investigating that...i was watching so late at night and the volume so low i couldn't hear all the lyrics. however, there's something about the chorus of that song...the 'hallelujah' that seems to move people beyond themselves. of course, this is no measure of one's understanding of Truth in Jesus Christ, but it does seem to demonstrate longing for that Truth. OR -- I could be completely out to lunch! thanks for your feedback.
9/10/2007 1:32 PM
livingpalm said...
checking into this a little bit more 'cuz i don't want to asserting stuff on my blog willy-nilly like. the dictionary definition of 'hallelujah'.hal·le·lu·jah 1. Praise ye the Lord! –noun 2. an exclamation of “hallelujah!” 3. a shout of joy, praise, or gratitude. 4. a musical composition wholly or principally based upon the word “hallelujah.” maybe when a musician enters into this song he is an example of "even the rocks cry out" -- as he dives into his created giftings and delivers the message that literally means "Praise ye the Lord", then he is, in fact, engaged in worship. i'm not a theologian by any means, but it's interesting to think about. i'll have to check out the rest of the song lyrics. why do you think cohen wrote "hallelujah"??

I would love to hear from some of you others out there. What do you think?? Why do you think this song is so powerful and has been covered by so many artists and showed up on so many soundtracks? What do you think about the lyrics (in all of the various forms)?

Bon Jovi holds church

i've been noticing Jon Bon Jovi showing up in very interesting places lately. A while back i caught him on Crossroads with Sugarland. Tonight I found him on MHD Unplugged. He sang with All-American Rejects (It's My Life) and Lee Ann Rimes, but the moment that caught my attention most was his version of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah". I am not kidding you when I say that he was worshipping...it came up from his toes. Can't guess what the rest of his life looks like, but in that moment he seemed to be fully aware who his Creator was.

(got a giggle out of his farewell, "You've been a hell of an audience!")

Art & Fear -- a review

So, I decided to stop watching TV on weeknights. I have way too much thinking and reading and writing I'd like to do in my lifetime, and since we've been reminded recently that

"We are becoming who we will be -- forever"

I decided I'd better get cracking! I also decided that -- for now anyway -- I'd stop spending a lot of time on other church websites. Don't get me wrong -- this has been a hugely valuable (and fun!) resource for me in my ministry role at church. I've found, however, that it is way too easy to get discontent with what God is doing right here where His Kingdom meets mine in Broome County, NY.

My first goal is complete -- to finish reading this great book, Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. I could complete a review in one sentence...

IF YOU ARE AN ARTIST OR HOPE THAT YOU ARE AN ARTIST OR KNOW AN ARTIST, GO BUY THE BOOK AND READ IT IMMEDIATELY!!


But, maybe you'd like a few more details??

What does the title mean?: It wasn't till the second-to-the-last page that the authors really described this fully. In their words,

The question was: Do artists have anything in common with each other? Like any good question, that one quickly generated a flurry of relatives: How do artists become artists? How do artists learn to work on their work? How can I make work that will satisfy me? For young artists filled with energy and idealism, the answers seemed just around the corner. Only as the years passed did we begin to encounter, with increasing frequency, a much darker issue: Why do so many who start, quit?

Although, I have no reason to believe (or disbelieve) the authors are church attenders or Christ followers, all that they wrote to the artist as an individual could be applied to what we try to do together as a community of artists in the church. I especially appreciated the practical and, yet, thoughtful way the authors 'de-mystified' the process of artmaking and art appreciating. By adding context to statements like, "ARTMAKING INVOLVES SKILLS THAT CAN BE LEARNED" and "ART IS MADE BY ORDINARY PEOPLE" and the fun Q & A spoof,

Q: Will anyone ever match the genius of Mozart?
A: No.Thank you.

Thank you. Now can we get on with our work?

allows the reader to relax and believe that maybe -- just maybe -- this desire to be known as an artist is not just some kind of pie-in-the-sky, what-the-heck-have-you-been-smokin' hoke.

Another myth that gets busted by the authors is the ever-popular artist declaration: "I'm only able to work when I'm feeling inspired!" According to the authors and in the words of my highschool friend, 'That's BULL Ca-Ca!!'

"...artmaking can be a rather lonely, thankless affair. Virtually all artists spend some of their time (and some artists spend virtually all of their time) producing work that no one else much cares about. It just seems to come with the territory. But for some reason -- self-defense, perhaps -- artists find it tempting to romanticize this lack of response [from the art viewer], often by (heroically) picturing themselves peering deeply into the underlying nature of things long before anyone else has eyes to follow.
Romantic, but wrong. The sobering truth is that the disinterest of others hardly ever reflects a gulf in vision. In fact there's generally no good reason why others should care about most of any one artist's work. The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. ... The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about -- and lots of it!

I'm gonna stop here 'cuz I'm afraid to climb on a soapbox!! (And, that's just the first chapter...we haven't even gotten to the 'FEAR' part) I might continue this in my next post...

bad Jesus art

You gotta check out this post by the arts pastor at Hope Chapel in Austin, TX...

It reminds me of the following excerpts from my studies:

"Christian art? Art is art, painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject." --L'Engle, Walking on Water



"Aeschylus writes, 'In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'

We see that wisdom and that awful grace in the silence of the Pieta, in Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems; in Poulenc's organ concerto, but we do not find it in many places where we would naturally expect to find it. This confusion comes about because much so-called religious art is in fact bad art, and therefore bad religion...Some of those soppy pictures of Jesus, looking like a tubercular, fair-haired, blue-eyed goy, are far more secular than a Picasso mother and child. The Lord Jesus who rules my life is not a sentimental, self-pitying weakling. He was a Jew, a carpenter, and strong. He took into his own heart, for our sakes, that pain which brings wisdom through the awful grace of God." --L'Engle, Walking on Water...



"Stripped of religious and moral values, many contemporary artists who are self-conscious and creative, knowing that they are, but not knowing the why, see themselves as results of a cosmic accident. Much postmodern art, fiction, poetry, music, drama, and film represents the result of this unknowing and the fragmentation, cynicism, and personal chaos that result from it.

The tragedy is that so many Christians , in their revulsion at the perverse aspects of such art, shun all art, even that which may spring from a God-honoring imagination or a Christocentric consciousness. The other 'Christian' alternative is a conservatism that responds only to 'kitsch', a sentimental art of the Hallmark greeting card variety that cheapens true sentiment, turning it into sweetness and light or mere moralistic propaganda -- no teeth, no guts, no muscle, no reality. No real Christianity either, if we consider the Creator's work a our powerful, radical model.

But 'kitsch' is easy. It is as accessible as a Thomas Kinkade painting, and as stereotypical. It is manipulative and narcotic, and by contrast it makes true art seem difficult or complicated. For true art is not all sweet reasonableness. It may project outrage, or make a creative statement as hyperbolic as Jesus' 'if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; if your right hand causes you tos in, hack it off and throw it away.' Such an image is meant to jolt, to shock, to sting, to push truth into our awareness in ways that show the freshness, originality, and surprise of the Creator." --Luci Shaw, Beauty and the Creative Impulse