Art and Jesus

Today was the start of Summit, the four day event involving dozens of speakers held on the ACU campus. This year's theme is "Aliens and Light," and with ACU's decision to open their eyes to the rest of the world (a choice seen in chapel speeches, the selection of speakers for Summit, the Cornerstone speakers and lessons, etc.), I am sure that good things will come out of this event.

Tonight I listened to Richard Beck and Dan McGregor talk about art and Christianity in a discourse titled "Leaving Eden." They had two regions of the world associated with types of art--Eden was Christian art, and Babylon was secular art-- and one event that signified what Christianity and art should look like, called Redemption.

Eden was exemplified by Logos Bookstore, Family Christian Bookstore, Lifeway Christian Bookstore, or any other bookstore that has Christian art. You know the type--the painting of a horse's face with a scripture in the bottom left corner, or any of the Thomas Kinkade paintings that depict life as a blissful existence. What Beck and McGregor exposed was that Christian art is predominantly sentimental, in that it chooses to portray life without pain or suffering, which we will experience in heaven. While this has some good with those who need console and are suffering from pain that is appeased by this type of art, it shouldn't be our main source of art. It paints life as perfect and neglects the suffering that goes on in the world. McGregor correlated Christian art with how rarely church services focus on pain or lament. Also, McGregor talked about a time in his life when he was severely depressed, and how Christian music was the last thing he wanted to listen to, because it sounded like all the people had everything together, something he did not. Mainstream Christian art refuses to depict the badness that exists and ignorantly sticks its head in a tub of cotton candy and thinks that that is all there is.

However, Babylon isn't much better than Eden. Paintings were shown, by artists whom I cannot remember, that depicted utter loneliness--people floating in a void, naked, alone. One of the paintings was of one man floating with his head on fire. While Eden art only shows happiness, Babylon art only shows pain. Which, if one had to pick between the two, I'd probably pick the latter, because so much of life on Earth is pain, as if Babylon art is closer to real life.

Then, we saw Redemption, which is art that both shows suffering, yet also has a hope in it that does not leave audiences in despair. To be fair, some of these artworks are, by themselves, hopeless. But McGregor emphasized how important it is to look at an artist's body of work as a whole, what dominates the collection and how often they depict hope. This made me consider my films, and I was shocked to realize that there isn't much hope in them. Mostly I show people dying, people getting emotionally or physically hurt, and jaded people. What does that say about me? Maybe what's in my heart is overflowing not from my mouth, but through my lens.

Anyway, one idea that I hadn't understood was the ability for the Gospel to subvert art. How it does this is when, for example, an artist drowns a statue of Christ on the cross in his own urine, and Christians respond optimistically. They say, you may have meant to offend people, but this is one of the best depictions of the scandal of God becoming human I have ever seen. It shows what we are trying to say. Now, I respond hesitantly to this idea, because I have become weary of speakers taking a film clip and tying it into their lesson when it obviously wasn't intended for that purpose. Are they right to do that? I talked to Beck afterward, and he said that once a piece of art is formed, it can be interpreted many different ways, because there is no note at the bottom explicitly spelling out what the artist intended. Art is ambiguous. But I think that films are a little more specific in what they mean, save David Lynch films. They basically spell out what they are trying to say. I guess those films are bad art, if my definition of good art is that it contains ambiguity that leads to interpretation. Maybe speakers aren't wrong to take a film clip and use it to underscore their point--maybe they are using the Scriptures to subvert the world. I guess my problem is that I think it is always clear what the artist is trying to say, when that is not the case nearly as often as I think it is. But filmmakers are always trying to say something. Aren't they?

Nevertheless, I thought the discussion tonight was worthwhile and thought provoking. A great kickoff to Summit.