Art and Authenticity, Part 3

A small cache of art was recently dug out of the soil of Berlin.  The pieces were survivors of the Nazi’s war against “degenerate art,” unremarkable in anything other than the fact that it was secreted away to save it from destruction.  Sixty-five years after the horrors of the Second World War we have learned, yet again, that art imitates life.

In their quest for a perfect society the Nazis sought to eliminate undesirable people.  But they had to go much further than that and eliminate undesirable thoughts.  The only way to do that was through the elimination of expression outside of a narrow band.  Art was twisted to become propaganda.[1]  All art that was not propaganda, then, had to be degraded and eliminated.

The Nazis did not simply throw the art out in the middle of the night, however.  That would not have accomplished anything.  What they did instead was display the art for all the world to see, then make everyone complicit in the art’s destruction.  This was the inspiration behind the book burnings.  It did no good to simply ban books.  That just makes finding and reading those books worthwhile.  There’s a certain voyeuristic thrill that comes from reading that which should not be read or seeing that which should not be seen.

This is why the pen is mightier than the sword.  Art cannot be destroyed by an external agent and remain destroyed.  Art can only be destroyed from within.  It is only when we want art gone that it disappears for good.

But even that isn’t really enough.  Not everyone who participates in the book burning really wants to be there, after all.  Some, most maybe, will only be there because they had no choice.[2]  Something, then, must replace the art that has been removed.  Enter propaganda.[3]  Remove art, place propaganda, and wait for a while.  People will eventually simply forget.

Of course you don’t need a fascist takeover of the government to create this scenario.  If you simply create a subculture that sees itself as somehow different from the larger culture, then convince them that the larger culture’s art is somehow degenerate you can get people to symbolically burn their own books.  And they will call themselves courageous warriors of the counterculture while they’re at it.  Then all you need to do is start churning out your own propaganda and you can capture an entire group of people and get them to do their bidding.  If you’re good, you can also make a quick buck selling shoddily made crap.

This, as much as anything, is why I continue to find the article about The Line and its artist-in-residence fascinating.  See, in turning an artist loose on its world, this church risked losing control of its message.  Art, as I’ve already said, is by its very nature subversive.  It should leave us with more questions than answers.  Those questions aren’t necessarily interpretative in nature, either.  The most important question that art leads us to ask is and always should be, “Why?”

“Why?” is a ravenous beast of a question.  “Why?” is never fully sated.  “Why?” is a dangerous question to permit people to ask, let alone encourage.

“Why do I like this piece?” becomes “Why do I like or dislike anything?” becomes “Why am I this way?” becomes “Why is the world this way?”  “Why do I consider this beautiful and this ugly?” becomes “Why do we call this the ideal not this?”

“Why?” encourages us to seek to understand the very mechanisms of our world.  “Why?” then has the power to topple those mechanisms which do not stand up to scrutiny.  Authoritarian systems are, by their very nature, incapable of standing up to scrutiny.  As such they cannot withstand “Why?”  They therefore must eliminate any and all avenues which invite the question.

Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity in America is a strongly authoritarian subculture.[4]  As such, the unfettered artist is the enemy of those who wish to maintain order and control.

This is how we reach the very first comment on the original article:

Yeah, this is all over the New Testament: “Artists ought to be central to any church body, because they can reinforce these unseen truths in people’s souls. Guerra is well aware of his responsibilities as an artist and does not hold their power lightly.” The Gospel Coalition is becoming less & less of a media outlet I turn to as a pastor. Nicely written article, however.

Concern troll, it should be noted, is concerned.[5]  Here we see the entire smorgasbord of internet-based stupidity.  He begins with an argument from assertion, proof texts his entire argument with a somewhat-out-of-context quotation, and finishes with an appeal to authority and tosses in a backhanded compliment to not seem totally dickish.  Although I will say that the comment itself is a lot, well, more grammatically correct than the trollish garbage in the corners of the internet I usually haunt.  So a hat-tip to the Gospel Coalition for that one.

Later on another commenter says, “I couldn’t ditto enough. I mean really, where is the Biblical emphasis on this artistic push within the church?”

Another says, “Tim’s tone is rather sharp, but he has a point – all the way through I was asking myself, ‘Where does the NT vision of the church fit in here?’ The church is to go and make disciples, not to use a ‘tight church-planters budget’ to fund something which is great in itself but is not at the core of the churches mission. The church is to make disciples and then I hope and pray those disciples that are artists will make great art to the glory of God.”

Then there’s this one:  “That all sounds very clever, but what’s your biblical basis for bringing these things into the corporate gatherings of the church? Paul seemed to expect the early church to hold these things together without an artist-in-residence – in fact we don’t even know if they used musical instruments to accompany their singing! There is a gaping hole of relevant NT data in this article and discussion that no one seems to want to address.”

Now, this is all a part of a larger discussion of the role of art in the church.  There were plenty of comments that defended the role of art in the church as used by The Line.  However, I want to highlight a specific thread of the conversation.  It is stated and re-stated in the comments thread that the New Testament says nothing about the role of art and, therefore, art should not be given a central role in the life of the church.  Those who state it basically create a tautology of the notion, too.

For them the entire role of the human being is to make other human beings believe the same thing they believe.  This is a common refrain in Evangelical circles and, really, the logical end result of American exploration of hyper-Puritanism.  It’s also fundamentally stupid.  If it weren’t for the fact that I know that world intimately I would assume it’s all part of some cynical plot to destroy the church by making Christianity look like a terribly drab and boring thing to do.

Human civilization is built on two things: art and beer.[6]  In order to build a civilization we need to have a common goal and a common language.  Beer (agriculture in general, really, but people figured out beer at least as early as they figured out bread) is the goal and art is the language.  Art then communicates all of those things that are necessary to get along and understand each other.

I could point out, too, that there was this fellow named Jesus who Christians claim to follow.  When people came up and tried to get Jesus to tell them how to be his response was, inevitably, “You want to know what the Kingdom of Heaven is?  Well let me tell you a story.”  Art.  The answer to the question was not a sermon, but a tale of a man waiting for a wayward son, an unfortunate traveler, or an absentee landlord.

To respond to the idea of art with the question, “But where does the Bible talk about that?” is to admit that you do not read the Bible.[7]

It also means that you have to look out at the world and say, “I have nothing to offer you.”  Because if you’re going to tell me that you want a world that has no place for art, you’re going to tell me that you want a world that has no place for people.  You’re also telling me that this eternity you promise will be of no particular value.

What is an eternity if there is to be no art, after all?

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[1]This brings up a problem.  In seeking to create a working definition of art I termed it, “That which exists to illuminate the human condition.”  In bringing this idea up in the last post I also pointed out that it’s both too limiting and not limiting enough.  In drawing a distinction between art and propaganda I have added another level of complication through the question, “Does that mean that propaganda is not art?”  I would say that, yes, propaganda is art, but it is art twisted.  Rather than being descriptive, as art often is, propaganda is prescriptive.

But this, in turn, adds another level of complication.  Because it does not take more than a moment’s thought to realize that art concerns itself with ought as much as, if not more than, is.  Greek and Roman statuary, for instance, is concerned with the ideal.  It spoke of glory, of triumph, of arête as a way of saying, “This is what it means to be great.  This is what all should be.”  So does this mean that the statuary becomes propaganda and, therefore, not art?  Absolutely not.

The difference, I believe, is in that distinction between descriptive and prescriptive.  Art, even that which encourages pursuit of an ideal, is aspirational.  Propaganda is not aspirational.  Instead of saying, “Let us try to reach this level,” it says, “You must be like this.”  The goal is to make life mimic art and not the other way around.

[2]During the fights between iconoclasts and iconodules that raged across the Byzantine Empire there were periodic icon smashing parties as the iconoclasts gained the upper hand.  When the iconoclasts were kicked out the icons were then re-allowed.  Previously “destroyed” icons would miraculously reappear back at the churches where they belonged overnight.

[3]And I believe I’ve just rendered the first footnote obsolete two sentences.

[4]Oh, dear.  I seem to have Godwined myself…

[5]There’s nothing that I love more than when someone gets all in a huff and threatens to stop visiting a website because they talk about things that the concern troll doesn’t want them to.  Is there any way of not seeming like a jackass when you say, “Do what I say or I will stop patronizing this website that I do not pay to read?”

[6]I am not joking.

[7]I totally felt like Mr. Fred Clark right there.

Comments

[bluefrog]

The Church shouldn't concern itself with art? What? The Church has always concerned itself with art. The earliest Christians were considered a danger to the Roman State and worshipped in secret, so they didn't have churches; but have the art objectors never seen pictures of catacombs? The Christian dead were buried with images on Christian themes almost from the beginning. Have the objectors never seen the fantastic mosaic floors in early Christian churches? The walls generally do not survive, but surely early Christians did not build plain boxes around such beautiful floors. Pictorial art has been in the Church from the beginning, not to mention storytelling, music, dance, and all the other forms of expression and instruction. Evangelicals truly lack history.

[Geds]

Yeah. I don't get it, either. I mean, I could make an extremely strong case that there shouldn't be church buildings due to the lack of mention in the Bible. I could make an extremely strong case that we shouldn't live in a capitalist society due to the lack of mention of profit motive in the Bible (and, y'know, that strong tilt toward communal living). But art?

As best I can tell, though, it's been decided by a certain subset of Christianity that there's nothing worth looking at in terms of church tradition that existed before the Puritans. So since the writers who were put in to the New Testament weren't exactly interested in art, it meant that art doesn't matter. Tradition, after all, gets in the way of reading the Bible all literally, by which they mean, "The way a bunch of really imaginationally limited jerks read it."

[jessa]

Like your contrast of art as descriptive and prescriptive, I was thinking of contrasting art that prompts us to ask questions for which we had always assumed the answers as a given versus art that gives us answers to questions we weren't interested in asking. Either way, art injects something into our awareness that wasn't there before. If it causes us to ask a question we never asked before, we can still totally decide that the answer we had taken as a given is still the right answer, without bothering to really consider the question. (I would characterize that as an intellectually lazy approach to the world, but totally legit.) The prescriptive art that answers questions we weren't interested in is much more demanding; it says, "this is what is," it sets itself up as an authority. There is no danger in that propaganda-art because there really is only one proper interpretation whereas question-provoking-art does not demand one particular interpretation, since it does not prescribe any particular answer to the question.

Perhaps current Evangelical Christians no longer understand the parables as art, but as object lessons, because they have been relying on pastors to interpret the Bible for them, and those pastors have closed off the questions offered in the parables and turned them into object lessons. (Hmm... I seem to recall Evangelicals excoriating Catholics for doing this same thing when the masses were illiterate. Except the problem now isn't illiteracy, but intellectual laziness.)

Rambly thoughts, not necessarily any firm conclusions here.

[Janet]

I know I'm late to this party, but it took some time to organize my thoughts on the subject. On the topic of defining art: I have come to think of art as a dialog between the artist and his materials. In this conversation between creator and creation, it is important for the artist to heed what his evolving art reveals, and to respond appropriately. The artifact that results is not so much a transcript of the dialog, but a record of the resolution reached through the artmaking process. The artist who fails to listen when his art speaks will dominate the exchange, and what results is worthless kitch. The artist creating propaganda dictates to his materials what message they must carry. As you have mentioned, this is a vile corruption of art--the difference between a parable and a sermon. The best art is revealed when the artist listens intently to the art as he creates it. He lets the materials guide the thread of converstation, and learns from what they tell him. His own input remains subtle, so that the work appears effortless. Thus Michelangelo could discribe sculpting as "liberating the figure from the marble that imprisons it." The figure did not exist as an inspired vision in his head, but as an intrinsic part of his interactions with the stone; his role was to discover and reveal it. At the farthest extreme of this continuum is the passive observation, no longer as artist, but like John Muir first entering Yosemite Valley, a man on a journey of spiritual discovery, worshiping in nature's own cathedral. At least, that's the best definition I could wring out of a four-year degree program in fine art. It turns out that art is subversive enough to consistently evade definition, one art movement at a time. Thank you for this series of posts.