Why Art Matters

A Call for Christians to Create

Alastair Gordon

• Éditeur: IVP
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789742374
• Sujet: Teologia e religione
• Sous-sujet: Letteratura e arti nel cristianesimo

In a world of turmoil, art matters more than ever. Art can bring about political action, even social revolution. Art reminds us of the things that really matter. It lifts our eyes to eternity and show us the importance of the here and now. With illustration from contemporary art and reference to theatre and film, this book shows the importance of art for all, not just the professionals. Creativity helps humans to flourish and reflects the character of a creative God. This is a book to return to time and again for inspiration and encouragement. Illustrated by author Alastair Gordon, Why Art Matters encourages us to embrace creativity at home, church, in play and professionally in the creative arts and industries.

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If thou of fortune be bereft,

and in thy store there be but left

two loaves, sell one, and with the dole,

buy hyacinths to feed thy soul

John Greenleaf Whittier

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Art matters because beauty matters. We have heard it said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is to say, beauty is subject to personal tastes, preferences and experiences. In the past, beauty has been associated with the unquenchable virtues of goodness and truth. In a classical sense, beauty involved a harmonious assembly of shapes and forms, yet in the Dionysian tradition it was more about lavish abandonment and the glorious negation of rules. Today, some might say that beauty is a social construct or a human invention to describe the finer things in life or serve as a conduit of power.

In such a medley of meaning it seems impossible to characterize beauty, but perhaps we don’t have to. Here I would like to discuss a few possibilities, without everything being pinned down, for exploring why beauty matters.1 While we may struggle to define it, most of us agree that beauty is a good thing. We might disagree on what it looks like, but we all want it and like to surround ourselves with things we perceive as beautiful. As William Morris famously put it, ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’ Even now, as I write that sentence in my studio, I wonder which of the two I am!

BEAUTY, GOODNESS AND TRUTH

The Bible has several words for beauty. One of them is nāwâ, which means lovely. The prophet Isaiah says, ‘How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news’.2 In the Song of Solomon, the teacher says to his lover, ‘Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments, your neck with chains of gold.’3 Here, beauty is related to a desirable person or object: a beautiful ornament, a lover or even a landscape.

Another term for beauty in the Bible is the Hebrew word ṭôb, which means good or true. It wins the beauty contest of the Bible and we see it 562 times. It crops up in 1 Samuel when we read about the future King Saul, who was very good and true. Later, the prophetess Esther was known all over the land for her goodness and truth. It features in that verse we read a moment ago from the prophet Isaiah, but this time it takes a rather surprising form: ‘How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news,’ but the prophet goes on to say, ‘who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”’4

When the Bible talks about beauty, it most commonly equates it with goodness. This moves beauty beyond the way things look to a deeper, more resonant understanding of the word. Saul and Esther didn’t just look good; they were good. In the same way, when God said of his creation, ‘It is good’, the Bible translates it as ṭôb, meaning beautiful, good and true.

When we talk about things that are beautiful, we are really talking about things that are good, which may help us to see the difference between a surface appreciation of beauty, which is open to personal taste and preference, and a deeper understanding of beauty, which resonates in eternity. Here, it is possible for something to be both ugly and beautiful. Even ugly things could be part of this harmony in the world. Umberto Eco points this out in his book On Beauty, where he writes, ‘Beauty . . . also springs from the contrast of opposites, and thus even monsters have a reason and a dignity in the concept of Creation . . . alongside [evil], good shines out all the better.’5

In a previous chapter I referred to Tolkien’s creation myth in The Silmarillion, where we read about Melkor’s disruptive song in the otherwise harmonious chorus of creation. The symbiotic relationship between beauty, truth and goodness is also disrupted by the fall. Just as Melkor’s corruptive melody brought discord into the creation song of Middle-earth, so sin has broken the harmony between goodness, beauty and truth. Living in a fallen world means that we now experience ugliness and evil as everyday reality. What we know to be true is so often evil and not good. That which is evil in the world is made to look beautiful, and we find ourselves attracted to things that are ultimately to our detriment. In a similar way, we find it easier to think about how we look from day to day than to ask the more probing questions about the goodness of our character.

In Ancient Greece you might have found yourself a victim of physiognomy: that antiquated ‘science’ which assessed a person’s character and personality based on the physical attributes of their face. Put in its crudest form, if you were beautiful you were considered a good person but if you looked ugly you were shunned as evil. A man with large eyes or big nostrils was labelled a brute but a slender nose and long neck showed that you were wise. Such outdated practices might seem ridiculous today, but the study of physiognomy was influential in various forms right up to Victorian Britain. Nineteenth-century criminologist Cesare Lombroso proposed that all criminals are born with certain physical traits such as a large jaw, a sloping forehead, handle-shaped ears and a hawk-like nose. It seems laughable today to think that a criminal might receive a harsher sentence simply because he or she had a wonky nose. But the ancient practice of physiognomy reveals an evil truth that has penetrated deep into the human heart and endured through the years.

We all, in varying ways, make judgments on a person’s character based on how they appear. It might be as simple as the clothes they wear or the cut of their hair. At best it leads to a casual misunderstanding of one another. At worst it cuts to the very heart of divisive attitudes based on a person’s race, gender, age, sexuality or disability. All demonstrate the fragmented relationship between beauty, goodness and truth. Part of the reality of life after the fall is that something good can be misrepresented as ugly and something bad can be disguised as beautiful. The human heart, like Tolkien’s elves and men, has the capacity for both evil and good.

But the gospel gives us hope for this broken reality. The cross shows how God can take an ugly injustice and turn it to good, even making it beautiful as we see his self-giving love revealed. It is here, at the cross of Christ, that we see our greatest hope for the redemption of human endeavour. At the cross all things are restored back to God, where beauty and truth are reconciled through the goodness of God’s love.

MONET’S GARDEN

In the Bible, beauty isn’t connected merely with goodness and truth but also with justice. When we read of God’s justice on the cross, we sing of our ‘beautiful Saviour’. Even more, biblical beauty isn’t something to observe from the outside but something we are invited to experience from the inside. Specifically, from inside the presence of God, and this is made possible by the death and resurrection of Christ. As writer Roberta Ahmanson puts it, ‘The Bible states that our moments of being in beauty rather than outside it as observers will become our everlasting experience. The abuse of beauty that began in the Garden when Eve yielded to the temptation to disobey God . . . will be over. We will live forever in tangible beauty, inside and out.’6

We catch a glimpse of this eternal beauty in the words of Psalm 27 (niv):

One thing I ask from the Lord,

this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

The experience of beauty from within may at first seem an alien thought, yet it’s something we might catch a glimpse of, and more often than we think. I have often been curious about the relationship between painting and gardening. Indeed, some of the best-known artists of the twentieth century were keen gardeners: Gustave Caillebotte, Pierre Bonnard, Emil Nolde and Max Liebermann, to name but a few. There’s something about the experience of a wonderful garden that helps us to know beauty in a tangible and immersive way.

If you follow the stream of tourists down the River Seine to Giverny, you might stumble across the home of Post-Impressionist painter Claude Monet. His garden was rather remarkable and great fun can be had looking out for his favourite spots to paint. Both the lily pond and the blue bridge have been lovingly recreated to appear exactly as you see them in the paintings.

What struck me most about my own visit to his home was how every room in the house had been carefully designed to make the most of the light, every one with a view of the garden and decorated in just the right colour. The kitchen, painted in lemon yellow, is crammed full of Japanese wood prints and etchings. The whole effect, to me, is utterly beautiful.

There are some homes that speak volumes of the person who owns them. When the psalmist describes the house of the Lord, we see clearly the beauty of its owner, with the architecture, design and decor revealing the splendour of the King. It is here, says the...

Table des matières

• CONTENTS
• About the author
• Introduction
• NOTES