Just as Bob Dylan proved that one need not have a traditionally well-tuned voice to be considered a singer, Nam June Paik has proven one need not stay with conventional forms to make art.
In fact, it is no longer necessary (or even desirable) to make art that is either beautiful or useful, comprehensible or relevant to anyone but the artist.
There was a time when artists like Leonard da Vinci said that art was about taking one's lessons from nature because nature is the master of the artist; art is about nature. From the Renaissance to today, the fine arts in the west have moved from being associated with the natural world and beauty, to an artist's personal exercise of entirely inward, psychological, and personal expression.
By the time Picasso came on the scene in the twentieth century, (as he states it), "Art is about everything but nature." Nature has no say at all about what art is or should be. Art, to Picasso, was concerned entirely with the internal landscape of the human psyche.
There are reasons why this has happened. These ideas are primarily the results of dramatic shifts in the philosophies in the west. One would need to take an art history or philosophy course to understand these changes clearly, but suffice it to say that art is so different today that it does not resemble the art of the Renaissance in almost every way.
Art today has become entirely the expression of the artist, plus an existential brian-state of the viewer and nothing more. It is a bio-chemical experience without meaning, without virtue and without God. It is frequently anarchistic and cynical at it core. It does not believe in the exsistence of truth or of meaning beyond the personal truth or meaning one gives to it, or receives from it. There is no "big-picture," just an infinite array of "little-pictures," having neither certainty nor hope.
Artists "in the know" are not unaware of this radical shift, but the general public is still in the dark. Confusion and incoherence is the general condition of western culture toward the arts today. There is less continuity, less agreement, less community in the arts today than at any other time before. Considerations once thought important, such as decorum and depiction of the sublime, have been so thoroughly rejected by contemporary artists that one would be laughed out of town to even imply that an artist has a responsibility to either these ideas or to their audience, or to their culture, or to their patrons. This is a core element in the debates that rage over monies spent on and for the National Endowments for the Arts.
Where once the Church was a major patron of the arts, supporting art and artists alike, the past one hundred years has seen precious little activity of the Church in the arts. I don't know of one important artist in the twentieth century who claimed to be a Christ-follower. There may have been, but I don't know of any. If you do, please let me know. I would genuinely like to know about them.
With all due respect for those who have purchased a certain style of painting with which to decorate their home, please do not mention Thomas Kincaid. He is not a serious artist in our culture, and never will be, not on the same level as a Picasso, a Goya, or a Leonardo. Kincaid is merely a commercial artist who sells tons of decorative paintings produced on a production line (much like a car factory), which are designed to exploit the sappy emotions of the generally art-illiterate public for the sake of his own personal profit -- and he is famously successful at it. This is not a criticism as much as it is an observation. Take it for what it's worth. But I must make a distinction between that "sentimental" stuff and the kind of "serious" art that transforms cultures, survives the test of time, and does more than titilate the fickle art-fad-consumption of the masses.
Most of the art produced in the twentieth century, according to art historians and art commentators (see Michael Woods', Art of the Western World, and others), tell us that twentieth century art depicted not only the purely psychological qualities, but also that which was violent, brutal, erotic, cynical, often hopeless and fearful; projecting human alienation, angst, despair and decay. These are not my evaluations; they are the evaluations of people who claim to be in the know. Neither he nor I would laud such content, but it is there nonetheless. It was what was in the psyche of western civilization, and it was mirrored in the bloody wars and civil strife of that century. There was good resons for that century to have such depictions in its art.
Hans Rookmaaker, an art historian who wrote the book, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, ( read more at http://www.wheaton.edu/learnres/ARCSC/collects/sc18/bio.htm ) tells us much about the art of the twentieth century from this point of view. I commend this work to you. Read it. You will be amazed at what Rookmaaker says. You may even disagree, but you will not be able to refute the validity of what he says without a good deal of thoughtful consideration.
Today, there are many Christ-followers who are emerging as this centuries new "Creatives," and some of them are making some tremendous strides in the contemporary art world. I am glad about this. Believers in Jesus ought to be intensely engaged in ever category of the culture, minus sin (e.g. entertainment, but never as sex-workers; artists, but not anarchists). There are limits to the activities of believing-artists in the arts, just as there are limits to believing-contractors in the building trade. This should not surprise us - BUT - those limits do not hinder the work of the Christ-following-artist at all. God does not need sin, nor does he employ sin, as a means of working in this world, even though he often allows us to be instructed by the destructiveness of sin -- yet he himself is never its author.
All of this to say, gone are those dark days of the twentieth century when Christ-followers were held out of the art world by both churches and curators -- or walked out on their own. Thank God. Today Christ-followers are engaged in all of the arts in our culuture, and working hard at it every day of the week.
From painting to film, from the performance to music, believing artists are fully engaged and making their mark. Many of them are deeply serious about the arts, about engaging the culture and about the incarnational ministry of Christ through their work. Others, unfortunately, are still wandering around, dazed and confused by the insanity of the last century. Some have not yet sorted it out, and some probably never will.
The Church too, or some of it, is still in confusion about the arts, but that is changing. It is my firm belief, and hope, that Christ-followers involved in the arts will find new ways to do thier art, will invent new forms of expression and communication, and will develope new skills with which to express their creative work. There are infinite possibilities by which an artist today can affect the culture for good (and for God), and can produce new kinds of ministry to the world; things no one has yet seen, but it will require courage, resources and persistance. May God grant us the courage, the faith, and the patience to put our money where our mouth is with regard to supporting the re-emergence of the arts in the Church. We all will need to open our purses and wallets and start buying art, attending performances, and supporting artists of faith, if their ministries are going to succeed in the coming century.
There is a truly amazing thing happening in the arts among believers, and there is an amazing thing happening in believers among the arts right now. I can't wait to see what new forms of ministry will appear in this century through "Creatives" who are faithful to both their God and their art.
Photo/Dale Guldan
