Yes, Yes…. I know it has been a while. And though I am not back by popular demand (ha,ha), I am bursting with thoughts and questions that I feel I should blog about as a means to clarify my own thinking and to ask some questions and see what answers pop up.
Currently I am thinking about the role that images, art, music, play in creating culture and the Christian (esp. Lutheran) necessity to both participate in and maintain a distance from wider culture. And I am not just thinking about a secular/religious split, but more about what it means to take being a Christian seriously in a manner that allows us to both enjoy beautiful things in the world while seeing them as what they are: not expressions of ultimate truth nor true models of how we are to live (as only Christ is such a model).
Basically, if you are thinking that I am hinting at the idea of “aesthetics” then you are on the right track. Thinking about aesthetics led me to do a Ph.D, and I am increasingly realizing that this dimension of our life together is what still is of interest to me.
Today, I just re-looked at “Art in Action,” a classic of aesthetics. Written by Nicholas Wolterstorff, it thoughtfully strives to think about a Christian aesthetic rooted in the Calvinist tradition. Aesthetic here functions as a noun, as it in rule or tool to think about the role, function and use of art.
His overarching aim is to critique the post-Kantian idea that art is about contemplation, rather than a wide variety of other uses (economic, moral, religious, etc). Art is universal and is used by people worldwide as an element of a variety of actions, actions that both say something (as in a claim) and effect something (as in informing a viewer). Any understanding of art must be placed within this performance of meaning in order to understand the phenomena of art.
From his Calvinist perspective, he places art as action within a broad theological frame. Specifically, God as creator and redeemer has given humans a vocation: to be responsible (to the degree that sinful humanity can be) to master, order and create a culture and world that befits humanity and God. With responsibility as the push, the pull is the end of human existence: shalom, peace, joy and delight. God as the active redeemer in history calls us to be active agents working for God’s redemption, and art is a part of this bending towards peace.
Art is a material act, meaning it takes creation and masters/orders/recreates it. An artist is thus responsible for aesthetically creating an expressive and fitting piece of art that serves its intended end. In particular, art projects a world, one that calls us attention to the reality of the actual world (at best). Art has an instrumental quality: its success is how well it uses aesthetic dimensions to reveal something. Though abstract, I think what he is saying can be understood as follows: if a painter wants to express sorrow, the aesthetic dimensions (color, tone, form, content, unity, completeness, coherence, etc.) must fit the sorrowful content. And though he thinks aesthetics includes subjective taste, he thinks that these underlying principles of expression/fittingness/mastery are universal. So good art then leads us to experience our world anew.
Theologically, aesthetic action is then a component of God’s redemptive action in the world. As our end is for peace/shalom, art that delights, for instance, is a reflection of this divine work. Further, art goes beyond “high” or “fine art” to include human action broadly understood. Examples he includes are the city and liturgy.
So where does this lead us? We are then free to see how art in action covers a whole range of human activities. And by being free as such, we can participate fully in artistic action and thus God’s redemptive work. The Christian aesthetic that he develops requires that each of us see art as part of our vocation of divinely inscribed responsibility, a recognition that art is part of a wider striving for human wholeness and integrity, and that it is always a limited
activity as only God in Christ is the ultimate truth.
This Christian aesthetic also includes a critique of aesthetics within the Lutheran tradition (which he calls “Protestantism” and really is a critique of Paul Tillich). Tillich views art as expressing a universal inner religious impulse: art asks about “ultimate reality” or an “ultimate concern”. Wolterstorrf is critical of this view as he thinks that the claim that humans have an inner religious impulse is not “irresistible” meaning not a stable enough ground to base an aesthetic. Rather, a theology of humanity’s divinely given vocation/end can best lead to a Christian aesthetic.
Though I basically agree with his aesthetic norms, it is this critique of the Protestant inner impulse that has me ruminating. Couldn’t I also claim that his theological/vocational basis for aesthetics is a matter of faith and thus relativizes his aesthetics more so than this inner impulse idea? Isn’t this view of God more resistible than the idea that humans do have an inner impulse to ask meaning and limit questions? Also, what about “scandalous art,” say of Serrano’s Piss Christ or Cox’s Yo Mama’s Last Supper? Are these elements of vocational responsibility?
Basically, I think the biggest issue that I am wondering about is the practical dimension to his aesthetic (and aesthetics/rules/axioms in general). My church has TV monitors in the sanctuary. They were put up without much congregational input, which led to some later conflicts. It isn’t clear to me how his aesthetic would help us determine whether or not to put up the TV monitors, as they certainly do impact the aesthetics of church and worship.
I guess I am thinking about such really practical aesthetic issues and the difficulty of determining general yet specific enough norms to guide us as we make decisions as communities of faith. Shouldn’t that be the point of aesthetics? How do you see it?
The photo is the Lambertseter Kierke Altar Piece by Tor Lindrupsen (1997).
No comments:
Post a Comment