Running to the top of the art museum stairs

Continuing on our artist's journey, specifically in Barbara Nicolosi's session in the Transforming Culture symposium...

Barbara talked about the terrain of the artist, namely what is beautiful. She relied on Aristotle's definition of beauty, which has three parts: wholeness (meaning nothing's missing), harmony (meaning related to one another in complementary ways), and radiance (meaning something is communicated that is profound, beyond language--I understood this to mean beyond language used in propositions and explanations--and personal).

She also defined what beauty is not: "cute, easy, benal, silly, sweet, facile, non-threatening." Not to say that there isn't a place for Precious Moments and silly youtubes, but those are not what the artist is obsessed with. The artist is obsessed with what is truly beautiful.

It occurs to me, then, that beauty and Truth approach each other with these ideas. That beauty is not necessarily what is pleasing to the eye but what draws you closer to Truth. That, to some extent (and to differing extents) we have to work at it both as artists and as audience. That beauty, being obsessed with beauty, is an act of victory over the Curse.

I've been doing the Colossians study with Soul Per Suit, and here's what I wrote to the group yesterday based on my reflections and meditations:

Life is about undoing the Curse. People try to extend their lives, read self-help books to fix relationship, garden and plant, fight injustice. These are good things, but they're not enough. The curse can only be destroyed in Christ, and now, in this new life (which, as Paul said, is being restored to the Imago Dei that was corrupted at the Fall), we have victory over the Curse. We're not trying to undo it--Christ has done that--but we're learning to live in that victory. Christ, who is our life, is the opposite of the curse, which is death. We're returning to harmonious relationships by submitting to each other and being kind, merciful, humble, gentle, and patient. We're living out our defeat of death by bringing justice to the oppressed. Our gardening and art and cultivating and relationships and recreation, everything, is done because of and through that victory over he curse. Sometimes we dothe same things we did before, but this time, we're doing them in victory, knowing that we're participating in God's kingdom work, not ours, knowing that He has a future that returns the earth and everything in it to beauty (Rev. 21-22). Sometimes we're doing the opposite of the things we used to do when we were trapped by the curse, throwing off the vestiges of death--grasping at things other than life and the fullness of life. We thought those things took us to life through power or security or whatever. But they didn't.

Art is part of this. As artists, we participate in God's redemptive work, which not only undoes the Curse, but if you look at Revelation 21 and 22, takes us somewhere better than from where we came. I imagine that without the Curse, we would've cultivated the Garden, enjoying our work, discovering, creating. He continues to cultivate us, and because of that, we join Him in His creative work.

I'd do well to remember this. I don't know about you, my fellow artists--painters, sculptures, playwrights, novelists, graphic artists, musicians, actors--but fear overwhelms me at times. Am I good enough? Is my work good enough? Of course it's not. Of course it's never as good as what I expect, as what I have in my head. Case in point: I wrote a short story. In my head, it's brilliant. But it comes out on the page as rubbish. I've gotten extreme reactions to this story. I don't know what to do with it. And I conclude that I'm insufficient. Someone said of Miles Davis when Miles was a rookie musician (was it Dizzie who said this?) that he's brilliant, but he didn't yet have the chops. He couldn't yet do what was in his head.

Sorry, digression. What I mean to say is that in the midst of all these fears, I need to remember that I live in Christ's victory.