ART AND FAITH

Genesis 4:17-26 begins the pattern of genealogies found in the rest of Genesis whereby the ungodly line is described first (vv. 17-24) and then the godly line (vv. 25-26). In v. 17, Cain, in complete defiance of God's command, proceeds to settle down instead of wandering. Not only that, but he founds the first city and names it after his son as a prideful way of securing his legacy. This is a hint that the fruits of civilization will be at odds with God's will for some time to come, until ultimately God redeems the idea of the city in the New Jerusalem.

In the short descriptions found in Genesis 4:20-22, we meet the respective fathers of large-scale farming, the arts, and sciences. We could thus view these verses as another example of God's grace in using Cain's sin to shape human civilization. That is probably not the intent of these verses, which it is doubtful we are to see in such a positive light, especially since these three men not only come from the the line of Cain, but their father Lamech is even worse than Cain was.

In looking at these three foundations of “civilization,” we are all well aware of the dangers posed by the desire for unlimited wealth or by technology run amok. But there is little said in the Bible or in church regarding the dangers posed by the arts. However, just remember that Jubal was also the father of gangsta rap, soap operas and slasher films. Even the “harmless” higher arts contain their own inherent dangers. In contrast, we often think that the arts just reflect what is going on in the world at the time.

But Francis Schaeffer (Art and the Bible) is not the only one who feels that the general acceptance of a new philosophical trend by civilization is preceded by a trend in art which paves the way for it. So now is the time for a brief lecture on the history of the visual arts. As I quickly go through the various trends in art, don't jump to the conclusion that I am against almost all art movements. Actually, I have dabbled in several of them myself. Fortunately, God can redeem man's sometimes misguided attempts at creation, and all the various styles of art I will describe have been, and will continue to be, used for God's glory.

The prehistoric drawings of animals and hunters found in caves such as that at Lescaux have been interpreted by scholars in a number of ways. But one theory seems to be the most believable: using them as a form of magic to gain success in hunting, and thus an attempt to control nature supernaturally. This can be seen especially in the hunting scenes. It is easy to dismiss these pictures as casual grafitti, but many of them are found in almost inaccessible portions of the caves, indicating that the drawings held a great significance for those who drew them.

The next trend is where the image itself, whether two- or three-dimensional not only represented some higher power, but was and still is itself worshiped in pagan circles. Even the Greeks and Romans for all their sophistication glorified their gods in statuary. And they also used art to glorify their leaders, some of whom were also worshiped as gods. The early Jews, on the other hand, have left us virtually no traces of art. Why would that be?

“You shall not make for yourself an image, whether of anything in heaven above, or on the earth, or under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Deuteronomy 5:8)

We generally treat this as one commandment and translate “image” as “idol” to reflect the reason against making such an image. But it can also be taken as two separate commandments: don't create any art that portrays something existing in reality, and don't worship such images. The furthest the Jews went was to allow some images of plants. For example, some coins from one of the Jewish revolts against Rome contain the picture of a pomegranate branch. But in most Islamic art even today only geometrical patterns are allowed, as can be seen in any of their architecture.

Moving ahead a number of years to the Byzantine era, we can see that art actually took on an important spiritual component for Christians. In this early Christian environment, art began to be put to use as an aid to worship. The holiness and other-worldliness of the subjects is stressed by the non-realistic, stylized renderings and the extensive use of gold in these icons, used by the Orthodox branch of Christianity. There are four possible problems with art portrayed and utilized in this manner: (a) it is all too easy for the icons themselves to be worshiped; (b) they reflected a faulty theology in which those other than God are revered; (c) they rely on the dubious argument that the holiness of a person can actually be transferred to the representation of it, and therefore the image itself can be venerated; and lastly (d) Christ in these icons is pictured as a totally unearthly being with little human characteristics (again reflecting a faulty theology). The misuse of iconography in the church gave rise to the Iconoclasts (717-843 AD) who went around destroying images used as part of worship. They appealed to the Second Commandment against making images and worshiping them. The counter argument, which finally won out in the church, relied on the fact that God appeared on earth in visual form in the person of Jesus. As Paul says in Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation.”

A step in the right direction was taken during the Late Gothic period when artists such as Roger van der Weyden in “Christ Appearing to His Mother” began portraying Jesus in a more realistic manner as fully human as well as divine. And to some extent, these artists also began restoring Mary to her proper position as subservient to Jesus rather than primarily as “the Mother of God.” (I must apologize at this point for not including pictures of all the pieces of art I mention here. They can all be found, however, on the internet if you are interested. However, as a poor replacement I will point to a few examples of my own art found on this blog.

This spiritual progress in the arts didn't last long, however, because during the time of the Renaissance, humanism began to take hold as a trend away from God. Look at “Christ in the House of Levi” by Veronese. Now at least a biblical subject is portrayed and Christ himself is at the center point of the painting, but it is still hard to pick him out in the midst of the large crowd around him and the grand architecture of the building he is in.

A similar example from the Northern Renaissance can be seen in Pieter Breughel's “The Census at Bethlehem.” I think you would be hard pressed to locate the Holy Family in all the crowd. But that may actually have been purposeful in indicating the humble origins of Jesus' birth. A more recent example of the same concept is found in my post “The City: Part II (Nineveh).” In this collage it is difficult to locate Jonah in the middle of the great city of Nineveh, and yet he will have a great impact on saving all the inhabitants, just as Jesus did later.

Art becomes increasingly ornate during the following Baroque period under the Catholic painters as a reaction to the more realistic Northern artists who were predominantly Protestant. In addition, Baroque art began to serve the political interests of the time. For example, Rubens produced a series of 24 paintings, all glorifying Catherine d' Medici. In the painting of her birth ("Birth of a Princess"), she is even pictured with a halo on her head and there is river god in the foreground. Painters in this era continued the trend by producing works of art that were solely for the honoring of man and even, as in Caravaggio's picture of card sharks, showing some of the seamier sides of life.

But even that can be appropriate at times, as in my collage (“Parable of the Prodigal Son”) showing the Prodigal Son wasting his money.

The next major trend in art came during the Romantic Era. Artists increasingly turned away from religious subject and more toward the wonders of the natural world. In the painting by Thomas Doughty entitled “Romantic Landscape with a Temple,” even man as the image of God has almost completely disappeared. All that he leaves behind is the memory of a ruined pagan temple.

Then we come to impressionistic art. This movement can be said to have been anticipated by the English painter Joseph Turner who in his later paintings dissolved even nature into formlessness (as in his "Landscape with Water"). It is almost a return to the original chaos of Genesis 1:2. Under the Impressionists such as Monet, the trend increasingly was to dissolve matter into mere points of light such as in his last water lilies paintings. A similar looking painting by a contemporary Christian artist named Mark Lawrence is called “Turn Pain into Purpose.”

This trend was followed by the aptly named Post-impressionism. Here a preoccupation with light continued. In the hands of an artist such as the pointillist Seurat, an attempt was made to actually design a scientific system to determine which dots of color should be put next to others in order to evoke a particular emotion by their placement. You can see his method more clearly if you ever look at one of his paintings close up in person. However, this “scientific” method was totally incapable of producing anything other than static images with no life in them. Just look at the running dog in the foreground and the running girl in the background of his most famous painting “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.”

This is a good time to remember Luther's famous quote: “The devil should not be allowed to keep all the good tunes to himself.” And the same principle holds in art as in music. For example, one modern example of pointillism is a portrait of Jesus by Rob Surette actually constructed from map pins. It is in my mind more successful than Seurat's attempts.

Right before WWI, artists especially such as Kirchner and Nolde in the Fauvist and German Expressionist movements started to use jarring colors and flat surfaces to express the violence and chaos of the time. I realize that many Christians today have a great deal of trouble appreciating modern art movements. Part of this problem may arise from the question as to how biblical it is to depart so much from depicting reality as God created it.

Francis Schaeffer addressed this issue by quoting from Exodus regarding the decorations that God outlines for the high priest's robe. “And beneath on the hem of it, you shall make pomegranates of blue, and of purple and of scarlet round about the hem thereof” So in a way, God was the earliest modern artist.

Regarding German expressionism, the same artistic technique of using bright colors to express an emotion was used by later artists such as Georges Roualt and Marc Chagall in their religious paintings, and can also be seen in the contemporary painting by Tanja Butler entitled “Nativity with Candles.”

The Cubists such as Georges Braque ("Still Life with Music Scroll") and Picasso also began working in the early 1900's. In their paintings reality was fractured into geometrical shapes and planes of color. Man is now out of joint and displaced in space. I have used this technique to do portraits of Solomon (see my post on “King Solomon”) and King Saul to demonstrate their moral breakdown toward the end of their lives. And at least in the early cubist pictures, one can still discern the original subject.

Later artists such as Piet Mondrian took cubism to an extreme. In the majority of his paintings he limited his palette to primary colors and used only horizontal and vertical lines. Most people would probably label these as very sterile and boring pieces. Francis Schaeffer points out that Mondrian's paintings were meant to be hung without any frames. In that way, they were to be viewed not as paintings at all, but as a new reality to replace God's creation entirely.

Just as the cubists lost man in space, the artists in the Futurist movement attempted to show that man didn't exist in the present but was lost in time as well. Futurists worshiped power, energy, and movement, and so it is no surprise that most of them were active in Italy right before Mussolini came to power. An example by one of the founders of this movement, Luigi Russolo's “Dynamism of a Car” can be viewed on the internet.

Then the Dada movement came, led by Marcel Duchamp, who denied the worth of all previous art by painting a mustache on a copy of the Mona Lisa. He became even more infamous by exhibiting “ready-mades” such as bicycle wheels and a urinal as his version of art. Is it art? He would answer, “It is if I say it is.” But even ready-made objects can find a use in Christian art. I once made a construction by fusing together two wooden shoe molds and adding some scrap metal to illustrate the concept of repentance, which means literally “to turn around.” (See my post “Repentance”)

The next major art movement, Surrealism, was my favorite and actually had a long prior history with artists such as Hieronymous Bosch in the 1400's. He applied a realistic painting style toward totally unseen and only imagined subject matter, such as in his rendering of hell. I produced a tribute to Bosch seen in my post entitled “Hell.”

Another precursor of the surrealists was the largely untaught artist Henri Rousseau active around 1900, who in his “The Sleeping Gypsy” portrayed the subject of man's unconscious thoughts. This trend grew under the influence of Sigmund Freud. Man was still the subject of this art. But this time, it was his sub-conscious, unfiltered thoughts and desires pictured, with little attempt to make any sense out of them such as in Max Ernst's “The Barbarians.” Other collages by Ernst were composed of a jumble of realistic elements that didn't really belong together in real life, but are more appropriate to a dream world. This style, however, can be appropriate to a subject such as the Book of Proverbs which mixes up a number of verbal images that don't seem to fit together. My pictorial representation “Proverbs 17” is one example.

Some of the surrealists even tackled biblical subjects. The several painting by Giorgio de Chirico depicting the Prodigal Son returning to his father are excellent examples. And the most famous surrealist of all time, Salvadore Dali, spent the last years of his life painting religious subjects such as the Crucifixion and The Last Supper.

Op Art began with Victor Vasarely somewhat in the pointillist tradition, using the scientific principles of optics to create geometrical paintings that bordered on optical illusions. The geometrical order of this movement lends itself to illustrating portions of the Bible that are highly structured. For example, look at Psalm 119. As you probably know, it has 22 sections, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And each section contains eight lines, each one beginning with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In addition, each group of eight verses in a sub-section contains eight synonyms for God's law. My oil and collage work entitled “Psalm 119” can be seen on this site. In it, each row represents a different letter of the alphabet and each synonym present is given a different color. So you can get an idea of the order put into the psalm.

Meanwhile, the Pop artists continued in the Dada tradition by realistically rendering ordinary objects such as Andy Warhol's famous soup cans or cartoon strips by Roy Liechtenstein. The tongue-in-cheek effect was either, depending on your point of view, to elevate the ordinary to art or to make fun of high art entirely. Jasper Johns in the same movement painted simple geometrical objects like flags and targets with a lot of paint texture and often including commercial stencils for letters or numbers. I utilized that style in the acrylic piece shown in the post entitled “Jasper Johns.” If you read the letters in it, they are seen to repeat the seven “I am” statement regarding Christ that are found in John's Gospel.

In the 1940's and 50's, abstract expressionist artists such as Jackson Pollack almost entirely abandoned references to the physical world. These paintings arose solely out of the artist's inner feelings. In that way, they were really more spiritual creations so that the technique could also be applied to works that were acceptable for contemplative viewing even in a Christian setting. One example is the Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston with his minimalist paintings on the walls. Rothko was quoted as saying, “Pictures must be miraculous.” He strongly influenced a contemporary artist who probably has the highest reputation of any Christian artist today. Any guesses as to who that is? No, it is not Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light.” It is Makoto Fujimura, and you can see many of his pieces on the internet. One is entitled "Pentacost," and other than the flames, there is nothing resembling reality here. Another of his oils pictures the theme of "Grace." You can see just the hint of a cross in that one. I have to admit that abstract expressionism is one art movement that I personally have trouble appreciating, but even I enjoy Fujimura's works.

In recent years, artists tend to utilize a mix of the various styles I have mentioned. Many paint or draw in a semi-representational style in which reality has been stripped down to a minimum of lines that still manage to convey human personalities and feelings. As an example, look at any of the oils or watercolors by my personal favorite, the Swiss artist Paul Klee. And if you look at the simple pen-and-ink sketches of his, you can see his influence on another Swiss artist with whose works you may be more familiar. Her name is Annie Vallotton, and she illustrated The Good News Bible, also called Today's English Version.

So what Jubal started was a trend in which God was replaced in importance by man made in the image of God; then man's place was subordinated to the rest of creation; which was subsequently replaced by light, chaos, the sub-conscious, science, and the artist himself. The end of this downward spiral came with artists who either felt that their works constituted a new reality which replaced God's creation entirely, or those who mocked the whole idea of art itself as meaningless. This whole process sounds very pessimistic and is reminiscent of the Israelites and their despair during the Babylonian Exile.

This is described in Psalm 137, which begins in this way:

“By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there we hung up our harps.

For there our captors asked us for songs,

and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,

“Sing us on of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?

But that is exactly what each one of us is called to do. And in the arena of art, numerous creative Christians today have learned how to incorporate the methods of artists throughout the ages to communicate God's word. We live in Exile in today's society but are called to sing God's song using whatever gifts we have to those around us who may have an entirely different culture and mindset than we do.

This is why Paul said, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. ..To those outside the law I became as one outside the law...so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” (I Corinthians 9:20-22)