Haha, well one thing that always cracks me up is the Protestant Church and their ideas on art. They don't have a very good grasp on it. The Catholic Church, before the Reformation, had an excellent grasp on it. It pissed off some people so much that when they split off from the Church, they did away with all of this artwork that the Catholic Church was so fond of funding. This, of course, has left us with A. not very much good art and B. no real attempts to do anything about it. A lot of big churches or churches which are "seeker friendly" do pay the big bucks to hire a "media director" who is trained in either video arts or some form of media. It is their full-time profession.
If unfortunately, this does not fit the bill of the church, both financially and stylistically, usually any "art" done in the church, I suspect, was put together by well meaning retired women who used to like art, yet doesn't really have much talent or someone who learned a little bit of Photoshop in a community art night class and is eager to make use of their small bit of knowledge.
I'm blessed that the art program I was in through college was not only technically based, but had a strong emphasis on the philosophy behind art in general (the philosophy of aesthetics) and philosophy behind art for worship. This should lend perfectly to creating art for the Church. Unfortunately, it's just such a huge task. The average everyday Sunday church attender, just as they're used to pre-digested Biblical lessons, (yeah. The average christian doesn't know their Bible from Adam... yes. I just made that joke.) they're also used to pre-digested artwork. That's how you get these sort of monstrosities.
I mean... here you have a lovely winter scene... White Christmas... someone may have taken that picture. It looks nice. But we see that someone probably just downloaded it from the internet and then they threw a bunch of wrecked cars onto it to make a moral lesson. It. Makes. Me. Sad. The only moral lesson I'm learning here is how NOT to Photoshop garbage onto an otherwise nice picture of trees.
This is a harsh judgment, and I almost feel bad writing it except for the pang of truth that goes with it. I don't think many people who create art for public worship are trained in art. This needs to change, my friends. Art and God, to me, are inseparable. God is, first and foremost, an artist (at least to me.) God created everything (how this was accomplished is widely debated, but I'm not going into that here). And God is constantly creating. I believe God has a strong hand in every creature on earth. He knit us together in our mother's womb. He has a HAND in each day, each sunrise, each unseen blossom, each insect, each fish in the ocean, each cow in the field. All of that is His work. Conceptually, I'm sure for every million miracles of creative genius we see daily, there are billions of works that He has not yet finished or finished and we will never see in this life, or even the next.
It's more than appropriate, when you think about it, that Jesus was a carpenter. He spent his life building things with his own two hands. Jesus was a true craftsman.
Not only that, but God is a masterful storyteller, writer, advertiser, mathematician, philosopher, lawyer, physicist, engineer, chemist, psychologist, doctor... any (honest) profession you can think of, God has done it. (Any dishonest profession, God witnessed and created the beings that carried it out... so...)
I'm off topic. Anyway, I was trying to say... there needs to be a revival of Christians in the art world. I'm seeing traces of it. I saw a show recently that was devoted to spirituality, and it had a lot of Christian themes to it. It made me excited.
Let's get some more funding for Christian art out there, folks. Let's get those good artists doing good artwork for God.
If unfortunately, this does not fit the bill of the church, both financially and stylistically, usually any "art" done in the church, I suspect, was put together by well meaning retired women who used to like art, yet doesn't really have much talent or someone who learned a little bit of Photoshop in a community art night class and is eager to make use of their small bit of knowledge.
I'm blessed that the art program I was in through college was not only technically based, but had a strong emphasis on the philosophy behind art in general (the philosophy of aesthetics) and philosophy behind art for worship. This should lend perfectly to creating art for the Church. Unfortunately, it's just such a huge task. The average everyday Sunday church attender, just as they're used to pre-digested Biblical lessons, (yeah. The average christian doesn't know their Bible from Adam... yes. I just made that joke.) they're also used to pre-digested artwork. That's how you get these sort of monstrosities.
I mean... here you have a lovely winter scene... White Christmas... someone may have taken that picture. It looks nice. But we see that someone probably just downloaded it from the internet and then they threw a bunch of wrecked cars onto it to make a moral lesson. It. Makes. Me. Sad. The only moral lesson I'm learning here is how NOT to Photoshop garbage onto an otherwise nice picture of trees.
This is a harsh judgment, and I almost feel bad writing it except for the pang of truth that goes with it. I don't think many people who create art for public worship are trained in art. This needs to change, my friends. Art and God, to me, are inseparable. God is, first and foremost, an artist (at least to me.) God created everything (how this was accomplished is widely debated, but I'm not going into that here). And God is constantly creating. I believe God has a strong hand in every creature on earth. He knit us together in our mother's womb. He has a HAND in each day, each sunrise, each unseen blossom, each insect, each fish in the ocean, each cow in the field. All of that is His work. Conceptually, I'm sure for every million miracles of creative genius we see daily, there are billions of works that He has not yet finished or finished and we will never see in this life, or even the next.
It's more than appropriate, when you think about it, that Jesus was a carpenter. He spent his life building things with his own two hands. Jesus was a true craftsman.
Not only that, but God is a masterful storyteller, writer, advertiser, mathematician, philosopher, lawyer, physicist, engineer, chemist, psychologist, doctor... any (honest) profession you can think of, God has done it. (Any dishonest profession, God witnessed and created the beings that carried it out... so...)
I'm off topic. Anyway, I was trying to say... there needs to be a revival of Christians in the art world. I'm seeing traces of it. I saw a show recently that was devoted to spirituality, and it had a lot of Christian themes to it. It made me excited.
Let's get some more funding for Christian art out there, folks. Let's get those good artists doing good artwork for God.
