Beautiful Things

This blog post is a reflection of the first 3 chapters of Deborah Sokolove's book Sanctifying Art.

Each person experiences art in different ways. We have our visceral reactions to art, good or bad. What if we looked again, kept looking putting our judgements aside to see the multiple ways in which art is experienced by others. 

"There is nothing that does not participate in the beautiful" -St. Thomas Aquinas 

I know not everyone can walk into a museum and stand in front of a painting for hours or even want to go to a museum at all. I went to a museum a few months ago and saw a Impressionist painting that was stunning. I would look at it far away, close up, at every angle, I saw the movement in the painting and it was breathtaking. I'm sure plenty of people walked by that same painting and said, "Oh that's nice" and moved on. Which is what I did to a lot of the art throughout the museum. 

Each piece that is displayed or created participates in what is beautiful. In American 20th century churches many are looking for either what is practical with a great nod to aesthetics so to introduce art that is not aesthetically pleasing brings groans. But artists do not always think in the same way as others, "when artists speak of aesthetics, they are not usually speaking about beauty, but of relationship (harmonies or otherwise) among the various elements of artwork, and how those relationships express ideas or emotions." (p. 45) 

In the church I am currently working we have a few artists that have created pieces for our space. One artist is a sculptor and he created a piece that sits in our fellowship hall. Below is a picture with one of our parishioners. Many people walk by it and tell others they don't understand what it is saying. Many think it is ugly but they love the person that created it. After reading Sokolove's chapter on beauty and aesthetics I was thinking about how I need to keep thinking about this piece and see the new beauty of the art.

We cannot dismiss art because it doesn't look like our idea of what art is, otherwise we will miss out on something incredible. Something new is happening in art and with God as we look at art in our worship spaces or anytime we gather. There are times when art offends, and sometimes that is its purpose. But sometimes art is speaking beyond our preconceived notions of what art was, is, could be, or should be. 

I was struck by the story that was mentioned about  Robert Graham's Our Lady of the Angels. That someone saw this statue and called it ugly. When I looked at it I saw a beautiful depiction of Mary that is indistinct of a particular ethnicity or gender bias. The way the statue was situated where what was below and above evoked so many meanings is powerful. When we close ourselves off to beauty that is beyond aesthetics then we close ourselves off to the possibilities that art, in any form can bring us.

I want to close this with two thoughts.

One is from St. Augustine: "Do Beautiful things delight because they are beautiful or are they beautiful because they delight?"

And the other is from a contemporary worship band Beautiful Things by Gungor. With this quote about God. "You make beautiful things 
 You make beautiful things out of the dust 
 You make beautiful things 
You make beautiful things out of us"

Whether it is art, nature, or even the people you encounter. God sees all things as beautiful, and thanks be to God for that.