Flying Quilts

As a painter coming from a fine arts background I’ve always resonated with the craft of quilt making, so it was with great pleasure, if only for a short time, the wall between art and craft came down like a house of cards. This past week 650 red and white quilts, somewhat resembling playing cards, where visually stacked on top of one another in circular formations to create pied-color rooms in the vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory.

The installation, Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts or as I like to call it, “the flying quilt show,” conveyed a museum-like seriousness through its dramatic lighting and grand physique, yet the affair was whimsical, celebratory, and a homage to the collaborative work of women, past and present. This week the Park Avenue Armory did not displayed high art, or low art, it simply held art. For the installation touted what art does best, it made the mundane monumental.

Pieced together by hundreds of handmade quilts, the exhibition represented the particular, the collaborative, and foremost, it honored relationships. The majority of quilts were created by groups of women looking to celebrate a rite of passage for a community member. Knowing the initial impetus for these quilts deepened the meaning and scope of the show. Represented were hundreds of women, their marriages, childbirths and life stories, patched together and quilted in red and white. Through the grand scale of the Park Avenue Armory, the foundational, yet overlooked things in life were finally honored.

And here is where I tie in the gospel parallel of transformation. Just as Christ’s redemptive work ennobles, artists can pick up this God rhythm, take up the ordinary and celebrate it. Through Jesus’ actions in the world we can praise the small, the quiet, and the humble things of this world. The triune God also bids our work to be collaborative, communal, a celebration of the infinite variety of relationships we hold in our lives.

Piece together some art for the glory of God,

--Maria

Art Illuminates: A Lenten Reflection for the Artist

PROLOGUE

We must never imagine that art is wholly subject to the fallen mind. On the contrary, the fallen mind must be lifted up in taking in the art. Art can offer us a taste of the kingdom come and illumine our hearts and minds in view of the renewing work of Christ.

ACT I

Because of the gospel, the artist can delve into the deepest grime of fallen man’s mire to illuminate God’s hidden glory through the power of expressive mastery. This assumption of imminent glory is predicated by the incarnation: that God has visited man in His mire. The reality of this truth has radically changed the material world in which the artist seeks to work. Therefore an artist who works in view of this reality may enter into a particular context with hope to see Christ’s own hand at work. In this way, Christ is the master of all who aspire to create.

ACT II

Yet, if Christ is master of the artist, then artists must also receive His most striking and paradoxical distinction, that of the servant-king. For Christ did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, but made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. Therefore, as we are encouraged by our own God-likeness, being made in the image of God and possessing His power to create, we also identify with Christ as the humble servant of all. In laying down His life, Christ demonstrated the sublimity of His own expressive mastery. In the gospel, divine love is the central subject of God’s masterwork. Creation becomes the object of His love and Christ’s life, death and resurrection are the potent vignettes of this hyper-radical performance-art piece of cosmic proportions which will culminate, of course, in the glorious return of the servant-king. Behold, I am making all things new!

ACT III

Art that is created in view of the gospel is sacramental. It invites the divine presence. It seeks to transcend and yet be embodied in the physical. This transcendent embodiment is rooted in the Christian hope, the redemption of our bodies. If our bodies are to be redeemed, then we also have hope that life in the body may also be redeemed. Therefore, the sacramental element of art—transcendent embodiment—extends even to the material elements of one’s trade and the disciplines of mastery. Light, color, sound, stone, skin, bone, breath, pen, paper, laptop…all are included in the sublimity of this hope of redemption. Most joyously, we realize that the artist herself, through the hope of the gospel, is swept up into this work of Renewal. The performance which is now in previews is awaiting the opening night. In the gospel, the artist becomes broken bread and poured out wine through the wringing and emptying of her own soul, releasing the storehouses of hidden glory. For is not God at work in our hearts to restore us?

EPILOGUE

It is not merely in the letters on the page, the mixing of the paint, the pointing of the foot, the distinction of the brand, the delivery of the lines or the structure of the story, but the artist himself in body, mind and soul set apart for this breaking and pouring out in sacramental service. To what end? So that no stone shall be left unturned in declaring and realizing the Renewal of All Things through Christ!

Kenyon

New City

In the book of Revelation John is shown the bride of the Lamb exemplified as a brilliant city coming down from heaven. This is not a city fabricated from steel and poured concrete. Instead we find purified gold, excavated stones, cut jasper, emerald, and sapphire. Its gates are colossal pearls plucked from the deep. This city holds an overwhelming material presence and bids us to use all of our senses.

Why this solid, tactile description? Are we, the bride, the Holy City, called to be a magnificent material presence— beckoning touch to ascertain its reality? Like John, let’s be carried away by the Spirit to behold such a visceral image of what we are to become. For in our present state we are raw material in need of being purified, excavated, cut, purged and plucked. Our rough surfaces and extraneous burrs must be smoothed away to reveal true beauty.

As Christians, and as artists, we do not disregard the material despite its flaws; we view possibilities. We wrestle, almost battle, to materially manifest ideas, distill insights. Jesus comprehends the painful process of creating, the exertion needed to dig up what must come to light. What makes the city in the book of Revelation a work of art is its thoroughly worked-over presence.

Artists, as we watch the horrors of Japan unfold, let us be reminded of John’s vision. It was the angel who held the seven bowls of plagues that took John by the hand to show him the New Jerusalem. It takes pain and process to make us more real, more solid, more beautiful. This is the nature of both Christianity and art.

--Maria

Mirror

Infrequently and unexpectedly, art can surprise us. It can feel a bit like catching a glimpse of oneself and one’s surroundings in a mirror you didn’t realize was there. Recently, I had this experience while watching Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. The succinct title reflects the film’s unmerciful directness. Separated into six episodes and almost exclusively featuring two lead characters, Johan and Marianne, the film surveys a marriage by making us privy to the critical turning points in the narrative arc.

Scenes from a Marriage offers at least two insights. The first is specific to the subject matter of the film (marriage) and the second is a broader point about the way Christians encounter art.

Let’s start with marriage. When the film begins, Johan and Marianne are presented as a picturesque married couple and the envy of their friends. This presentation appears to reflect what both characters believe about themselves--their circumstances are ideal: they are an upper-middle class couple, youthful, attractive, interesting and successful. This seeming perfection sets the stage for the central conflict.

As Johan and Marianne discuss their relationship throughout the film, Johan believes their marriage is possible because they possess the ideal circumstances. Marianne believes they share the same “language” and that this shared language enables their marriage. These beliefs become irrelevant when Johan begins an affair with another woman.

What interests me most about the narrative to this point is that most marriages are sustained and many fail out of these beliefs. Nearly as soon as Johan and Marianne articulate their assumptions things fall apart.

Love is conspicuously absent. Most of us believe in the power of love which is a kind of emotional-romantic attraction to or infatuation with the other. It’s exciting, but less exciting is the kind of love that actually holds marriages together. The latter love involves things like self-sacrifice and compassion. Many people get married out of the former rather than the latter, their partner posses an attractive inventory of circumstances and goods. Or like Marianne, they believe they share something special and exclusive with their partner. Each assumption is based on a sort of idealism, material in the former case and romantic in the latter. This film offers a rebuke to anyone who believes that their material comfort or romantic idealism will serve as the lasting foundation of marriage.

What makes this film instructive for Christians (and for all, really) is that Bergman offers an unmediated view of the couple’s split and each individual’s search for self-fulfillment. Johan and Marianne turn out to be ugly people with a huge predilection for selfishness, adultery and violence. It would be easy to judge them if you thought you were a much better person. Bergman offers no judgment. He simply shows us how rotten human beings can be to one another, especially when real motivations revolve around their self-procured and perceived happiness.

This illumination opens to a larger point I would like to make, not about Christians and marriage, but about Christians and the arts. One of the ways Christians can engage the arts is by taking the time to seriously consider work that may or may not be complementary to their faith. In doing so we may find there are works like Bergman’s that remind us of our own insufficiencies and false gods. Regardless of the intent of the author, and Bergman would certainly have disagreed with the conclusions I drew, we might find that modern art is very much aware of our contemporary spiritual poverty and personal insecurity.

This is why contemporary art has something to tell us about ourselves. It is the art of the society and culture in which we live. Both are contexts to which we are often more beholden than we would like admit and we ignore this at our own peril. In this regard, the force of the Christian narrative in our lives is largely a counter cultural one. Sometimes contemporary art with all its capacity for dissonance and the grotesque is the smelling salt we need to bring us to our senses. Bergman’s film is not a Christian one in terms of the answers it offers but I think we can consider it so in terms of the unflinching look it offers of something we call sin. When we are honest with ourselves, this unflinching look isn't simply an interesting story told by a gifted film director. It is our mirror image we come to confess each Sunday.

--Daniel

Daniel Clemens is a painter and writer participating in our seven-week study, In The Living Room

Art Matters for God's Sake

“Art Matters for God’s Sake,” is Adrienne Chaplin’s title for the next Gospel and Culture lecture and the impetus for this reflection. The assertion that art matters to God is interesting when our society tends to vilify the arts as something elitist, frivolous and impractical. Now, I have known for quite some time, art matters for my sake. Personally, art making has provided a much needed emotional space equivalent to the junk drawer most people possess. I take great comfort in knowing I can take time from my busy schedule and dump a whole bunch of emotionally charged things in one safe place. So, how, exactly, does art matter for God’s sake?

Yes, yes, there is all that beauty and poetry and stuff that draws me closer to God. Again, this is art for my sake; how exactly does art matter for God’s sake? Is it the liturgical art we offer to God in worship that matters? Or does art that matters for God’s sake take form as cultural goods? Why not both? I can think of one example where both are true, Camille Paglia in her lecture “Religion and the Arts In American” writes, “One of the most brilliant products of American creative imagination, hymnody has had a massive global impact through popular music.” Paglia goes further to remind us, “Where ever rock ‘n’ roll is played, a shadow of its gospel roots remain.” Paglia traces a root of urban black rhythm and blues back to the “ecstatic, prophesying, body-shaking style of congregational singing” that was characteristic of American revivals.

Okay, so a whole bunch of people who fell in love with God at the same time needed to somehow express that love together. These days it’s crazy to think how our country’s musical history was shaped by worship. But it’s not really crazy when we begin to enumerate all the great art and architecture that was made precisely to draw people together to worship God. No wonder Paglia goes as far to say the “route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion.”

I guess I could continue and come up with a hefty list of why art matters to God, I’m sure you have a few things to add, too (feel free to do so). For now consider this entry as a teaser for Adrienne Chaplin’s lecture. Please join us on February 27, 1:00pm at Hunter College, to take into our own beings—to reflect on, why art matters to God. Who knows, maybe this event will lead to that renaissance Paglia was speaking of?

Our Future Is Now

Sometimes believers work hard at being spiritual, forfeiting the reality of their humanity. Jeremy Begbie, on the other hand, believes it is by the Spirit we grow more authentically human (Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise, p. 118). The resurrected life of Christ brings meaning and hope to our bodies—to being human. This hope, according to Gordon Fee, is empowered by Jesus’ resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which stamps believers with eternity (Fee, Listening to the Spirit in the Text, p.140). As Christians we basically live life geared towards the eschatological—a life imbued with our final outcome—an age when we’ll continuously glorify God in our full Spiritual bodies. According to Fee the early Hebrew believers understood this new age as the life of the Spirit—a fulfillment of a long awaited promise. Artists, we are privileged to live a life filled with the Spirit, looking ahead towards eternity.

What does this mean for artists working in the 21^St century? We must commit to human flourishing. Spiritual renewal is tied to cultural renewal. Having a relationship with Jesus, through the Spirit, enables us to see the world the way God sees it. But it is not enough to keep these visions in our heads. Nicholas Wolterstorff insists “that there is in man a deep dissatisfaction with merely holding in mind his religion.” There is a human longing to make our convictions concrete through song, sculpture, or drama (Wolterstorff, Art in Action, p.145).

It is our job to project through our creations a world that includes the reality of Christ’s glorified wounds. Spirituality can bear the marks of pain and suffering only because they already live with Jesus in the eternal realm. This is true beauty.

Love Jesus, be spiritual, make art.

Maria

Exploding Destiny

When Christ, Who is Your life, appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory -Colossians 3:4

I love what some of the great theologians have said about Paul’s radical claims of hope for our lives and destiny in view of the gospel. Reflecting on Colossians 3:4 John Calvin writes, Here we have a choice consolation -- that the coming of Christ will be the manifestation of our life. John Wesley, the great Methodist theologian, sounds almost astonished as he writes,The abruptness of the sentence surrounds us with sudden light. Our life - The fountain of holiness and glory. Shall appear - In the clouds of heaven. Wesley seems to echo Christ’s own words in John 7:38 when He winsomely remarks, Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow out of him. What could Jesus possibly mean when he says that if we believe in Him we will become some kind of spring or fountain of life?

In George C. Wolfe’s play The Colored Museum, Junie Robinson, known as The Soldier with a Secret, attempts to describe the look on a dying man’s face. He says, All the hurtin’ that was gonna get done to em and that they was gonna do to other people was right there clear as day…but when He died, all that hurtin to come just left his face…He finishes the eerie soliloquy by speaking directly to the audience with a whisper: I know the secret to your pain.

What George C. Wolfe is hinting at in this vignette is that the only way to be free of all of the brokenness of this world is through death. And he’s right. But Paul in Colossians 3 says that if you believe in Jesus and the hope of the gospel then you are already dead to this world and you have a life that is being kept safe for you with God. Colossians 3 shows us that Christ is the source of all the good that will ever come from your life or that you will ever taste in this life, though for now it is only a taste. Haggai 2:7 calls Him the desire of nations. In the Psalms King David sings, As the dear pants for water so my soul pants for you… and …My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. David realized that all of his greatest desires in life were actually longings for Christ Himself.

As artists, we are fortunate to taste Christ’s beauty and glory in relatively small portions here and there through making and enjoying good art. But the hope of the gospel is that if you believe in Christ, then one day not only will pain and death have no power over you, not only will you be in the presence of the source of all goodness, but you yourself will become a source of the ultimate light and glory. At once, in His presence, all our longing for Him will be so overwhelmingly satisfied that we ourselves will burst forth in an explosion of New Life, a detonation of generative potential.

How can we as artists live and work in view of this great hope? Can we, through the power of the gospel, create flares and bursts of the coming explosion when we will be made new? God hasn’t given up you or your art, He intends to make you more prolific than you can imagine…In the gospel, you have an exploding destiny.

Kenyon