Saturday, February 14, 2009

beauty for beauty's sake

this one's a follow up on my conversation with rory, so brother, i'm actively inviting comment.

i've been musing more and more about our conversation on "art for art's sake," and while i was initially rather surprised at the vehemence which my brother opposed the idea of art for art's sake, given the amount of time he invests in what i would call exactly that, i think that i begin to see the difference in meaning, and i am retreating to a defense of "beauty for beauty's sake."

what i am essentially espousing is that god pushes back the darkness and the ugliness of a fallen world, a stained and broken world, and gives us an echo of what was intended and what will one day be again, and that we see that echo in loving relationships and the beauty of the natural world. i believe that one sense in which we are created in the image of god is that we, too, create aesthetically, and that this is a fundamental act of war against chaos and pain and darkness and falsehood. in a very real way, the answer for the "why" of creating beauty in all it's forms is simply "because it wasn't there," and that's enough.

i think that much of the confusion comes in over what art is anyway. if the definition of art is vague, then a phrase such as "art for art's sake" is simply doomed.

that's a topic for another entry though. much of what passes for art today is actually psychological research, which i find quite humorous. I actually value both, but i wish we could keep them straight.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah! We're totally on the same page here. I think Rory's seen a lot more non-beautiful "art" than the rest of us :)

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