{"id":14070,"date":"2017-09-14T19:31:30","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T02:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14070"},"modified":"2017-09-14T19:34:40","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T02:34:40","slug":"created-to-create","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/created-to-create\/","title":{"rendered":"Created to Create"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I taught US History to high school students, I pointed out to them what I had learned in my art history classes \u2013 that art is a mirror of what has just happened or is currently happening in the world. That\u2019s why many artists aren\u2019t appreciated until long after their death, when we finally realize what they were trying to tell us.<\/p>\n

I was raised by artists, am an artist myself, and have raised a new generation of artists. The art of my life is mostly music and literature, but visual art has played a significant role in over five generations of my family. So my first thoughts when reading Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue<\/em> by William Dyrness, were that I wish he had included the voices and reflections of more currently active artists, and that I wish he had produced an updated edition that includes the past 15 years, which has shown a \"\"<\/a>dramatic change in how we view, appreciate, and consume art. (For the purpose of this discussion, the word art<\/em> encompasses all of the arts, not just visual art.)<\/p>\n

Dyrness is a fantastic art historian and his understanding of the concepts related to visual art and the history and development of fine art are impressive. I do wish he had begun a bit sooner in the book to discuss the dialogue of art and worship, but he does eventually get there. What I feel he does particularly well in this book is to advocate for what art DOES and why art is crucial. Dyrness lists three things in particular that art does for us that I believe highlight the entire discussion of why the human spirit would whither without the presence of the arts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The arts in some way contribute to human flourishing;<\/li>\n
  2. Art is intended to challenge people\u2019s perceptions;<\/li>\n
  3. Art can deepen a person\u2019s understanding of the world.[1]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Whether it is high art, pop art, or commercial art, the world and human faith is reflected in the pages of literature, lyrics of music, and the photographs, paintings, sculptures, or other visual media of an artist. It is not so much, as Dyrness suggests, that the culture has turned its back on Christianity in art, but that Christianity (especially Protestantism) established itself as the gatekeeper to reflections of faith, eliminating the visual arts, as well as many forms of music and literature. When I was in Rome, I wandered through basilicas and cathedrals, imagining the devastation felt by the faithful when Reformists painted over or destroyed works of art. In their zeal to remove idols, they removed the visual stories that affirmed the faith of the saints and sinners of the community over and over again.\u00a0They removed a piece of the imago dei<\/em> from the community of faith. Art is not meant to simply deepen a person\u2019s understanding of the world, but to also increase our understanding of God. The Creator and the created share the need for beauty and creativity. In art, we begin to understand the longing for beauty that God possesses. Even in \u201cugly\u201d art, the thing we are repelled by is often the thing that hides in us in \"\"<\/a>contrast to God\u2019s beauty. This is how art challenges our perceptions. Discord, darkness, even offensive language challenge that part in us that leans toward darkness. Minor keys, shadows, and words of grief call us into mourning, while major keys, light and laughter call us to joy. As much as I love the preached Word of God, without art it struggles to break through to my soul. The authors in Scripture knew this as they wrote in poetry and prose, using word pictures to reflect God\u2019s glory.<\/p>\n

    It is the decidedly Greek influence of the separation of the physical from the spiritual that has caused such a difficult dance between Western faith and art. To separate the body from the spirit is to fracture the whole person. To attempt to separate our human souls from the beauty and challenge of art is to give us license to consume art rather than allow art to change us. As art loses value, so does humanity. Dyrness says that art contributes to human flourishing. Cavanaugh tells us that the disregard for human flourishing breeds commodification and consumption.[2]<\/a> In this commodification, people and art become things to consume rather than reflections of the Creator. We think nothing of asking a musician to provide music for free, to ask a visual artist to \u201cdonate\u201d a mural, or to include another person\u2019s hard fought words in our sermons without credit, then ruthlessly erase those commodities when we grow bored. We whitewash the stories of God\u2019s people from the walls of our cathedrals.<\/p>\n

    I believe that art is prophetic, which is perhaps why we in the Western church try so desperately to lock it\"\"<\/a> into place if we allow it to wander into our churches at all. One day, while listening to my grandfather\u2019s church choir practice (I think I was about 10 years old), suddenly my very stoic grandfather gasped and stopped the choir. He asked the organist to simply play the chord they had been singing and to let it ring. With his eyes closed, he asked the choir to listen and imagine what God was doing in the heart of that composer at the moment the chord was written. This was so out of character for my grandfather, that I have never forgotten. When I look at a photograph, hear a song, read a poem, study a sculpture, or feel a rhythm, I catch myself asking, \u201cWhere are you in this, God?\u201d THIS is what art can do if we invite it into our lives and allow the Spirit to work through it.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [1]. William A. Dyrness, Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue<\/em>, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 18.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [2]. William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian <\/em>Desire, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When I taught US History to high school students, I pointed out to them what I had learned in my art history classes \u2013 that art is a mirror of what has just happened or is currently happening in the world. That\u2019s why many artists aren\u2019t appreciated until long after their death, when we finally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,64,370,289,486,489],"class_list":["post-14070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-cavanaugh","tag-commodification","tag-dyrness","tag-visual-faith","tag-worship","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14070"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14078,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14070\/revisions\/14078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}