PressPausePlay from House of Radon on Vimeo.
A powerful movie asking important questions about the digitization and democratization of art.
Engaging Culture with Culture Through Acts of Creative Excellence
The Hidden Legacy of Helen Frankenthaler
“The artist’s central dogma was beauty, and beauty is protean.”
The painter Helen Frankenthaler died December 27, 2011, in Darien, Connecticut. Obituaries by The New York Times and The Washington Post construe Frankenthaler’s importance as the inventor of a “revolutionary” soak-stain technique in which poured paint unites with the canvas; a method which made possible the Color Field movement. Continue reading “The Hidden Legacy of Helen Frankenthaler” »
Christ as Sign
This is an excerpt from the book “The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth” by David Bentley Hart:
…The incarnation is the Father’s supreme rhetorical gesture, in which all he says in creation is given its perfect emphasis. Continue reading “Christ as Sign” »
The Art of “Sola Scriptura”
“Not a formless sublime exceeding and annihilating the beautiful, but an endless display of beauty, surpassing the beautiful as the ever more beautiful.” – David Bentley Hart
Sola Scriptura permeates the portion of protestant faith I have grown up within. It is a term which tends toward an epistemology that raises the written word above everything else, after all John 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is powerful, the word—both the spoken word that made everything that was made and the Word through whom life and light was given to “all mankind [as] the light [that] shines in the darkness” that cannot be overcome. But within that same tradition, the word is often eviscerated.
The Message in the Mannequin
In a conversation with a friend the other night I was struck by the idea that, though it is o.k. to sometimes have the mentality regarding art (in this case movies) as nonchalant as I like it or I don’t, how overwhelmingly dangerous it can be, if left perpetually unchecked. Art carries messages that are often more potent than spoken ones. Messages that invade and pervade us, even superseding our cognitions, transforming them and redirecting them, even shaping our desires.
This morning I ran across confirmation: a short documentary about mannequins, 34X25X36. One of the interviewees says in it:
[Mannequins are a type of] religious art. What the churches did was make figures out of wood or paper maiche, and they were trying to replicate for the people what they envisioned these saints were supposed to look like, like we replicate what the perfect girl is…Because if you really start to look at it, it is a continuation of the same thing. I can see where it could be believing in something or worshiping something because it is something that you aim for.
The whole thing is sobering. It reminds me that there is little innocent, though there is much which asks of me to think it so. Watch the whole thing below. Then be on guard.
Ennobling the Humble Padlock
I can’t help but think wow when watching this slide-show. I wonder as to what it is that, not only, makes me yearn to hold one and display one (or several), but what makes the locksmith yearn to embellish a tool of such simplicity. Walk through your hardware store and see only functionality; I just bought a padlock. Manuel Guerra sees a chance to extend the Garden of Genesis to metallurgy and locks. What if Creation were nothing but an embellishment? After all what need of Creation did God have? Was He incomplete—or so over-full and Creation His excess?
Some may argue that Guerra participates in a craft and not an art form. The distinction is a brewing debate; it is a bewildering mess. But why must we denude his embellishments and categorize it as a lesser form? Because it possesses utility? Are not both high art and craft an overflow of our own excesses and subsequently participatory in the very act of God’s creative excess? Let us keep these things in mind both as we take sides in the art/craft debate and as we create, ennoble or embellish even the most humble of things. Let us consider not just the engineering, but the spirituality of imbuing immeasurably beyond it.
Celebrating & Ennobling the Ordinary
“Just as Christ’s redemptive work ennobles, artists can pick up this God rhythm, take up the ordinary and celebrate it. Through Jesus’ actions in the world we can praise the small, the quiet, and the humble things of this world. The triune God also bids our work to be collaborative, communal, a celebration of the infinite variety of relationships we hold in our lives.”
—Maria, Redeemer Arts
What is Art & Why Do You Want to Know?
“I would suggest that we take all of these perspectives on art and consider how they apply to our own Christian life…No work of art is more important than the Christian’s own life, and every Christian is cared upon to be an artist in this sense. He may have no gift of writing, no gift of composing or singing, but each man has the gift of creativity in terms of the way he lives his life. In this sense, the Christian’s life is to be an art work. The Christian’s life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world.”
—Art and the Bible, Francis A. Scaeffer
The Music of Eternity
David Bentley Hart is quickly becoming my favorite theologian. Read what he says about Bruckner’s 9th symphony to understand why: Continue reading “The Music of Eternity” »