Monday, February 9, 2009

art for art's sake

during the weekend i had several conversations with my brother in law about the role of art in a christian's life. well, maybe about it's place, rather than it's role. he's a musician, so i was somewhat surprised by his rather vehement protest of "art for art's sake"

tonight i sit and listen to my wife play one of her songs for a group of new artist-friends, and i see that it brings out all that is best in her.

flowers are useless. would you want to live in a world without them? useless beauty. look at the world god made, the aesthetic extravagance, the excess.

the sara groves song "why it matters" touches on this. "like a statue in the park of this war-torn town, and it's protest of the darkness, and this chaos all around. with it's beauty, how it matters, how it matters."

i'm just not sure how art works outside the christian worldview, but then, that's why i'm a christian, right? the conceptions of meaning, purpose, and beauty are all radically different from another religious/epistemological vantage point.

"and god saw that it was very good" ... couldn't that have been translated "that it was beautiful"?

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