Art, A Natural Language

Art, A Natural Language

I am sitting in a spacious Gothic-style church where the walls are light stone and reaching. Tall, symmetrical columns form in rows meeting with pointed arches and a vaulted ceiling. Majestic windows of stained-glass are fogged over by the cold, winter night. In the front of the church a college choir is dressed in white and red. Men and women stand together, the richness of their voices fills and nourishes the room where we sit, suspended with awe. It's Christmas time, and the choir has begun singing Handel's Messiah. Suddenly, I feel a fever rising in my chest, as it grows throughout my body, it sends chills up and down my spine. This feeling is one I have often felt when in the presence of profound beauty. I am compelled, and cannot take my eyes off of the choir. As all my thoughts are frozen in one instant, I know I have engaged with beauty with every ounce of my being.
I have often thought about the joys that awaken the senses, and fill the soul with deep, satisfying beauty. The soul needs to be fed, and thrives on the pure, weighty, and metaphysical world. This is the world that is unseen, and yet, wholly real and present. The transcendental is beckoning the soul out of its despondent slumber. Art is a natural language that acts as an intercessor between the human and the spiritual realm. It awakens us to the existence of the invisible, it reaches the depths of our essence, and speaks to our senses. It opens us up to see our lack of beauty, and our need for something beyond ourselves, beyond our present reality. It stirs us out of our spineless shells and calls us to respond. The world is filled with art, it is present in every culture, every town, every home, every person. Even so, art seems like a distant concept, removed from the every day realities that require our time, diligence, and work. Art was at one time organically intertwined with the mundane, and ordinary parts of life. This was before the Enlightenment era, and the birth of Industrialization. The Enlightenment brought thinkers who radically changed the ethos centered in Christendom to one that was centered in human reason, and rationality. The original ethos looked at man in light of his relationship with the
Judeo-Christian God, while the latter looked at man in light of his abilities to advance technologies and provide answers to the sufferings of humanity. While the world was turning its focus away from God and eternity to science and rationality, art was extracted from its natural position in the world to be reconfigured to parallel the new ethos. Its God given identity and purpose were replaced with more mechanical and rational ones. Once, long ago, art was the medium in which people told their stories. They weaved baskets with designs, made pottery with symbols of their beliefs, used beads in clothes making, and left the world wondering with cave drawings. Other arts such as clock making, leather making, and woodworking, were skilled trades passed down and preserved through hundreds of generations. Art once covered floors, walls and ceilings, naturally flowing out of people's lives. Today art is compartmentalized and deified, encased in glass far away from human reach. Suddenly museums, galleries, and encyclopedias are housing works of art and classifying them. What happened to art being in the dirt of real life? Why the separation, and what has this separation done to humans? How has it changed the way we think about art? How has it changed the way we look at art? These are a few questions that every human being needs to ponder, regardless of their familiarity with the practicing art world. If the process of creating art is just as important as viewing art, why is the viewer considered in a separate class from the artist? Aren't they supposed to respond the same? Shouldn't every human be able to appreciate and understand art without going through art education? Would it make sense for God to create something for our benefit, and not give us the necessary means to enjoy it? Certainly not. God has created every person with the equipment to be able to converse with the world we are a part of.
Art in its essential nature is a creative force given by God for the benefit of mankind. The power of creation is one of God's great attributes, perhaps the one humans are most familiar with. The purposes of art are manifold, spilling into every arena of human existence. Art can act as a mirror, or a magnifying glass to examine the inner life of men and connect it with the tangible, physical, and exterior life. Art has the ability to discover or reveal truth. It acts as an intercessor between the physical and the spiritual. Within himself, man has two opposing natures constantly at war with each other. One is the original nature that the Creator has called good, and this nature has been made branded in His image. The opposing nature comes as a result from the Creator severing man from Himself, when man is exposed to evil. The nature of God, the Creator of man, is such that it cannot change, is solely good, and cannot dwell with evil. Thus man is severed from God, and forfeits his complete nature as he becomes divided into two clashing natures. Man is now a broken, disfigured image of God. When man was dwelling with God, he carried within himself an innate sense to perceive beauty and good, but once man fell, his innate sensibility to beauty and goodness was forever impaired. Therefore, this impairment is the reason why humans have trouble understanding art and the world around us.
Art, being a human manifestation, grows out of the fallen man, and embodies his double nature. Art that manifests an evil nature will use distortion, lies, unbelief, and anything which taints and corrupts good. Art that manifests goodness will be that which exposes evil as it reveals truth,faith, and purity in pointing directly to God. On what principles is art critiqued? Should these principles be based on rational conceptions of good and bad? in relation to the design and purpose of art) On the other hand, is there a form of critique that comes from a purely irrational and deeply immediate response? Should both these principles be based on beliefs concerning the design and purpose of art? If the former is true, than how does one explain art that expresses itself most significantly on an emotional or irrational level? A person could make accurate observations about a piece based on their experience with previous art pieces, and with a knowledge of technique and style, but it appears as if even so, the person is only parroting what has historically been observed, accepted, and recorded. They may be speaking some truth, but they are not exercising their innate ability to critique art with their full person-hood. If the latter is true, and assuming the person critiquing the art does not have an educated, or formal grounding in the critique of art in which to rely upon, they will have to use their 'naked' intellect to examine a work of art. On the other hand, art which is looked at with a 'naked' intellect needs the context of the culture to make sense out of the work. For example, one could examine Roualt's painting entitled “Who Does Not Paint Himself A Face” which is a painting of a clown with a dejected expression on his face. If the artist had left no title, the painting would have lost it's meaning. To summarize, things like language and cultural context are extremely important for a person critiquing art to understand the work.
A book called State of The Arts speaks of the immediate, and intuitive recognition of beauty a person can have. “When we see something beautiful, our intellects experience a flash of satisfaction and joy. Classical aesthetics understands our perception of beauty on earth as a glimpse of that total and direct apprehension of the essence of things that the angels and saints in Heaven always experience.” “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV).
Art as a natural language, communicates on many levels, the physical and the spiritual. One is the human mind, the other, the human psyche. Every human has a strikingly imperative need to communicate through this natural language. Every human needs to be moved physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally by heavenly beauty that is seen through this natural languages that God created. The interior life of a man needs to be fed, cultivated and grown. Most importantly, this life must be protected. Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” This passage of Scripture applies to the interior lives of men, the lives we seldom show, and seldom ever understand. For Christians, the inner life is eternal, and is of the utmost importance. This is evident in the work of the great European artist, Rembrandt. His work testifies to the existence of the Christian God. As opposed to Pablo Picasso whose work is a testimony to the humanism of the 20th century. The majority of the modern world places importance on a person's outer life, the physical or emotional. This has been most evident in the lack of substance found in some secular art. The question is not whether secular art is or isn't art, or even whether it's good or bad. The important question one must ask is whether the artist, and the person viewing art has developed their inner sensibility to be able to recognize things like beauty, goodness, ugliness, and evil. One can only correctly judge art on these intrinsic principles. One of the wonderful results of making and viewing art is that it is a humans intimate companion, a mirror that shows their journey on earth. It is a reflection of everything that is human, the full human experience, the inner life, and the outward journey. It is a window into the secret places of the psyche. Deep emotion can be brought out of it's uncreated form into the light to be looked at objectively. The Creator of the Universe longs to bring people close to His heart. He speaks to people through the natural language He has put into place, between humans and art. Through art people can learn to perceive the truths that God wants us to see about ourselves, and the invisible world were made for. We can begin to see what parts of our nature are broken, and what parts He is replacing with Himself. In the end, perhaps every human who God is working in will see themselves in their truest form, finely crafted clay in a Potter's steady hand.