Article about Museums and Disputed Art

A Cleveland Newspaper has a fascinating article about the acquisition of ancient art objects and the tactics that some countries are using to force the return of art with disputed ownership.

Nataional Gallery Woodcuts Exhibit

The Washington Post features an article about the ongoing exhibit of woodcuts at the National Gallery. In addition to discussing the merits of the collection, the article also conveys an appreciation for the art of woodcuts.

Review of The Beauty of God

The good folks at Reformation21 just published a review I did of The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts. This is a fascinating collection of essays on the arts from a theological perspective.

New from the Art World

From the art world, news that a painting by Leonardo has been recovered, and drunk vandals ripped a Monet painting.

Modern Art Meets Its Match

In July, Ms. Sam Rindy, an artist, who was “so overcome with passion” for an immaculate white canvas on display at a French museum, that she kissed it⎯leaving a red, lipstick smudge. The painting is by artist Cy Twombly and is valued at more than $2 million.

Rindy made a statement saying that “this red stain is a testimony to this moment, to the power of art.” She said later that she was attracted to the canvas and had wanted to make it more beautiful. She was arrested and is awaiting a court date in August.

In the modern art world where gesture and audacity are everything, one would think that she would be applauded rather than vilified. However, it is also a reminder than despite foundationless aesthetics, the art establishment still values the work of some over others. They can’t have their cake and eat it too. Hats off to Ms. Rindy for reminding us that the Emperor of Art is wearing no clothes.

Why I Like Catholic Authors

The following is one of a series of re-posts of lost blogs. However, this very topic has once again raised its head in discussion around our house. If we're doing our jobs well in instructing the next generation, I hope to see serious reformed artists developing soon.

I’ve discovered that I am enamored with twentieth century Catholic authors. The common thread I see in their works is a palpable sense of sin, guilt, grace, and redemption. One does not often find such themes in “Protestant” authors because of several factors.

Who are the serious Protestant authors? Surely not the pulp fiction of contemporary evangelical mass media—enter stock characters, state conflict, convert main character after almost succumbing to tragedy, life is good. This falls more into the category of propaganda instead of literature. Are there serious writers who reflect their Protestant beliefs through their literary art? Frederick Buechner comes to mind, but then he always seems more Catholic in his sensibilities than Presbyterian.

Catholic authors tend to weave symbols and ideas through the narrative. Blue skies in Flannery O’Connor usually mean that the grace of heaven is about to be revealed and someone is going to die. Outward deformities reflect stunted or distorted souls in her works, and when she says the sun sinks like a giant host, one cannot look at a red sunset or the Eucharist the same way again. Like the little girl who has the crucifix imprinted on her cheek by an enthusiastic hug from a nun, one cannot leave these works without being marked, challenged, and changed.

I think one difference between Catholic and Protestant authors is that these Catholics don’t wear their faith on their sleeve. It’s not a polite tale to be told, but rather a grid through which to understand all of the world. A sacramental view of the world is highly apparent in the works of G.K. Chesterton in which characters are captivated by the elements of God’s creation that surround them. They look for the sacredness of things and discover remarkable designs, motifs, and patterns.

Where are the reformed novelists in our age—wordsmiths who can craft a compelling tale that doesn’t preach but that assumes the elements of the faith as part of the warp and woof of the narrative? If we are concerned about all of life and the application of worldview in the arts, why are we so stunted in the area of quality literature? The ironic thing is that these elements that make Catholic writing unique are the very areas where a vibrant reformed faith should excel. A total world and life view should include the understanding of symbols, signs, and ideas, of artistic and literary concepts, the works of the past (even the pagan ones) that can color and shade, and the application of the faith in all the areas of artistic production. Perhaps J.K. Rowling is closer to the mark than is usually given credit.

Maybe we’re just too disconnected from the Catholic literary tradition of the past or maybe we fail to see the biblical and theological connection, as well as value, in works such as Chaucer and Austen, Scott and Buchan, Donne and Shakespeare.

Obviously I do have theologically differences with Catholic authors, but I’m fascinated by their themes of sin and redemption and in the hope of recovering and appropriating this literary richness. Art and beauty is never a replacement for the Word, but I do believe that all beauty is God's beauty and reveals the character of God.

John Ruskin’s “The Nature of Gothic”

I am always challenged by Ruskin’s moral analysis of art, architecture, and craftsmanship. It is no wonder that he exerted such a profound influence on all the arts.

Ruskin likens the redundant task of factory workers to a slavery of the soul in which they are forced to execute the same job over and over, and “in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely subjected to the intellect of the higher.” The practical side effect of this is that men are reduced to cogs and unable to develop as true human beings. In contrast, Ruskin writes:

But in the medieval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul. But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly, contemplating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God’s greater glory. Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame…

And therefore, while in all things we see or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success. But above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to noble issue; and, still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellencies, because they are mingled with rough faults.

He later writes:

You are put to a stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise in perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energies of their spirit must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul’s force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned: save only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity.

Art for Lent

For the season of Lent at Parish Pres, we are using different selections of etchings on the cover of the bulletin all by Albrecht Dürer—the great artist of the Reformation.

Dürer was born in 1471 in Nuremburg. The son of a goldsmith, at the age of thirteen, Dürer apprenticed with his father, and by the age of fifteen, he entered another apprenticeship with a local painter and wood cut artisan. By his early twenties, Dürer earned his living as book illustrator, and after a visit to Venice, he returned to Nuremburg and established his own workshop. By the turn of the century, Dürer enjoyed widespread acclaim and commissions for paintings as well as great demand for his printed works. In 1511 he published two versions of the passion story—the Large Passion and the Small Passion because of the size paper used in the printing process. His artistic interest was vast, and he excelled in many different forms and subject matter from self-portraits, to nature and animal studies, to biblical themes.

Dürer was a follower of the Reformation. When he heard that Martin Luther had been arrested, he exclaimed, “Oh, God, is Luther dead? Who henceforth is to expound to us the holy Gospel with such clarity!” One of his greatest paintings, The Four Apostles, is considered by many to be a symbolic representation of the Reformation and its principal proponents. Dürer spent the last years of his life publishing his theoretical writings on art, and he died on April 6, 1528—just before his fifty-seventh birthday.

During the season of Lent, each week features a different illustration from the Passion story. So as we progressively move through Lent, we are also progressively moving through the episodes of Holy Week.

For the first Sunday of Lent, the depiction of Christ washing the feet of Peter reminds us of the humility of Christ—the theme for the sermon that morning. Last week the etching of the Last Supper was a reminder of the nature of true worship in Spirit and in Truth. This week, the Agony in the Garden focuses on Christ’s prayer for believers and the miracle of the incarnation in that God was made flesh in order to fulfill the Law and be the propitiation for our sins. Subsequent images will move us through the rest of Holy Week culminating in the crucifixion on Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning.

Originality as Unbiblical

Craftsmanship, and not originality, was the emphasis in the arts prior to Romanticism and the Enlightenment. Certainly an artist was praised for imaginative ideas, but the value of those ideas rested in how the artist treated and developed those ideas and crafted them into something profound. The quality of the idea was dependent on its suitability for development.

An artist striving to be original by necessity ignores or rebels against the history and development of their art. This denial flies in the face of the biblical ideas of learning from the past, passing along wisdom, and respecting the clouds of witnesses who have gone before.

An artist motivated to be original, by definition, is more interested in personal glory than the glory of God. The impulse to be different for the sake of being different has no place in a biblical concept of the arts.

Scripture does not deny the opportunity to be creative, but the emphasis and purpose is far different than our concept of originality. Craftsmanship, as an artistic trait, is much more in line with the biblical notion of the arts—and a far more difficult endeavor requiring the exercising of wisdom and ability. The idea of taking various materials, gathering them, remolding and blending them, and ultimately enlarging them is the bringing of order inherent in craftsmanship—an opportunity to act as a sub-creator.

One need only to evaluate the twentieth century art which used originality as its basis to see how far originality takes true art away from a biblical standard.

Questionable Creatures

Pauline Baynes’s newest book is a fascinating exploration of a bestiary—both visually and in her descriptions. My review of the book for Reformation21 is posted here.