Glorify God in Art

Last week I attended an art show sponsored by the Canton Institute of Art. The majority of the works were realistic expressions of the world and life. My favorite was a watercolor of a village at dusk. It was calming and meditative. It reminded me of having seen the paintings of the Dutch Masters a few years ago when they were on tour. The Dutch Masters, heavily influenced by the Reformation in northern Europe, painted for the glory of God. They painted God’s world as it really exists.

Then today I received a photograph of a fresh snowfall on fields. The beauty of the photograph is directly related to the reality of the world as God has made it.

These experiences make me realize that God’s world possesses unsurpassed beauty. This reality expressed through art is what makes it meaningful.

Philosophy and art have always been twins. Philosophy, the way leaders in society think, forms the culture. Art then becomes the expression of the philosophy and the culture. If the society is, well, bankrupt of Judeo-Christian values then the art will reflect it.
In the last century most, if not all, moral restraints were removed from art. In music, “rap” lyrics speak of rape and other assorted sordid practices; in visual art, Robert Mapplethorpe’s homosexual representations - and the works of others - openly flaunted every measure of good taste, not to mention morals. When even the standard of good taste is violated, one must assume that art, and society, have gone about as low as possible. I might have written “gone to the dogs”, except that I have too much respect for dogs. The rejection of absolute morals and the secularization of our society has produced art that, while called contemporary, is often ugly and, frequently, downright repugnant.

There is a point in time when contemporary art as we know it began. In 1913 at the International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York City, critics and patrons were stunned at Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase #2”, a completely new style of work by the cubist painter. It is a good thing the work was named, or no one would know what Duchamp was trying to express. Due to the attention given this work and sensing the change in cultural values (in prior shows, such work would not have been admitted), the race was on. Now artists became “contemporary”, competing to see who could come up with the most extreme and strange interpretations of modern life.

That competition may now be slowing. There is a swelling opinion among art critics that it has gotten out of hand. The bizarre has become the norm, and this does not bode well for galleries and funding.
But this style of art does say something to us. It says, “Society has lost its way. We as a people have lost our values, purpose, sense of awe and destiny. And we are going crazy as a result.” I use the term “crazy”, but the Biblical word is “fool”, as in “The fool has says in his heart, ‘There is no God” (Psalm 14:1). If art is a reflection of the culture, and it is, then what are we to make of it when every standard of decency is violated, when religion is mocked, when respect for others is ridiculed? Doesn’t it say that our society is bankrupt of morals and the traditional values that have built a strong nation? Have we become a nation of fools?

By contrast, the paintings of the Dutch Masters, the village at dusk and the photograph of freshly fallen snow over fields are refreshing to the spirit and express the beauty of God’s creation and that may be found in life.

If you are an artist, or an aspiring artist, please consider these suggestions. Forget about impressing your peers with your avant-garde style. Separate yourself from the craziness of the world of geopolitics. Instead of attempting to be novel and provocative, how about concentrating on balance, color and unity? How about looking for real beauty in the creases of an older person’s face, an infant’s innocence or a mountain’s grandeur? How about less subjectivism and more objectivism? Maybe, just maybe, your art can influence philosophy rather than the other way around. Maybe you can, through art, help rescue society from the craziness of atheism, humanism, evolutionism and the other isms that are unraveling society and individual lives.

Like the Dutch Masters, the village at dusk and the photograph of freshly fallen snow -

Glorify God in art.