What Is Art For?
Modern art for the most part is ugly. But I must provide a qualification upfront to say that there are exceptions to the rule; there are some people out there who are in the trenches, carrying on the old traditions, but everyone can agree that the rule is not unwarranted. The arts have dwindled now for well over 100 years.
Everything has lost its form, shape, and value. Art, generally speaking, has lost its deep connection to the broader part of the culture. Because of the eccentric and unforeseen turns, art does not travel as far anymore.
This is largely attributed to one fault: art, which was once outward focused, has turned inward. That which was attentive to the world is now attentive to the self. My wife and I like to compare pop songs from 40 years ago to today. The difference is clear; you have one ear that is focused on the joys, love, and the like, and you have another that is depressed, focused on their problems, and wants to display all the inner turmoils of the artist.
What Is Art For?
Art today is not made with its true meaning in mind: to train your eyes and ears to see and hear true, beautiful, and good things. It is made with the ever-so-vague and self-instructed definition of inspiration.
Is inspiration all bad? By no means! But what is art for? It is for what I have already stated in that it trains your mind, eyes, and soul to look outward. We are creatures that are made to know God, the world, and ourselves. This central knowledge cannot be known when we are too busy looking into the endless abyss of our dark, twisted, and complex selves. We must be tethered to the truth that is outside and higher than ourselves.
Form, shape, order and harmony point to the structure and sounds of creation. For our whole person to satisfied, we must have a reliable teacher to show us how we may see creation in the way it was meant to be seen. If we embrace this as the purpose of art, then we are not far off.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Since the arts are now focused on ‘self-expression’, what are we to do?
One option I have seen is to support modern artists in hopes that it will improve; but if we are being honest, bad behavior does not get better when it is clapped and cheered. This is like a parent cheering on their child when they paint the walls because at least they colored in the lines this time.
The most chosen option is ignoring modern art all together. Most of us couldn’t tell you what’s playing on Broadway right, or who wrote the best selling fiction book of last year, because we know that whatever is going to be produced is going to be inferior, we aren’t going to pay attention to it. We simply just don’t care. So the arts are therefore monopolized by the mediocre.
There is a third path that is rarely chosen or even thought of. What if we just imitated the best of the path and carried on what they did? I mean that we take the sounds, forms, harmonies, and shapes that they worked with to make something new. New art does not have to be new in origin, but can however be something done differently. With this strong option, we are not left to the same repetitive sights and sounds of the past, but at the same time not casting off all restraint as it carries on the old tradition.
Let us make new paintings and sculptures that have hints of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio in them, and songs that have subtleties of Beethoven, Brahms, and Debussy. But in these echoes let us chart new courses and territories that these forefathers could only have dreamed of, and in them direct our gaze to the beauties of God, the world, and humanity.
This is so good. Thank you.