Art. (?)

I've been thinking A LOT about art and faith recently. How does art function in proclaiming the beauty of faith? How can I tangibly wrap my brain around these things? How does one judge good art from bad art, art as propaganda from art as proclamation? How does one judge the integrity of a piece of art? I struggle with a lot of "Christian art." I will admit that I to often judge a lot of it without appropriate thought, because a lot seems simply propaganda or simply, well, bad (I've been convicted that this is far less the case than I think).

I believe so strongly in the merit of art. It has been used to call me back to truth so often (as Milosz might say). It's often beauty in some form of art that reminds me of the intense beauty of the creator and creation, that makes me see how impossible it is for there not to be a God. I need these reminders. I need Monet and Kandinksy, Milosz, Wilbur and Kenyon, Lewis, Nabokov, Tolkien and Mckillip, Satie, Debussy, Over the Rhine and Radiohead. (to name but a few of the million of artists that have influenced my life.)

In these random thoughts I've been missing my books and missing the easy access to English books. I particularly want to re-read Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water. I've been searching for some sneaky way to read it online, but to no avail. Instead I ended up with a plethora of quotes from her that I felt compelled to share. So, instead of rambling on I will merely paste these quotes below. They may appear random, but I swear they all fit together quite nicely in my head.

"Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth."

"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, not even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist."

"It isn't easy, it does take an incredible amount of discipline, you don't just write just when you feel like it or you're not going to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration comes to you while you're writing rather than before....For me the discipline of writing and the discipline of prayer are identical, in that I have to let myself be got out of the way because that's not a do-it-yourself activity, and listen....When you write, don't think, write. You think before, you think after, you don't think during. When I'm praying, when I'm truly praying, I'm not thinking, I'm not speaking, I'm shutting up, so perhaps if God has something to say I can hear it. So writing too is an act of listening, listening to what has to be said."

"In art . . . we are helped to remember some of the glorious things that we have forgotten and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure . . . ."

-Madeleine L'engle from various and sundry works.

Waiting

I feel as though my life thus far has only been a preparing, a laying out of instruments, sterilizing scalpels and stethoscopes and lathering my chapped and waiting hands in the sudsy water of the maybe while the world pins me onto its surface and time bends to enfold us mere mortals. And I hope that these gatherings, the collections of facts and figures, my acquired, though feeble movements, will be used.

Kandinsky

I'm not sure what it is about Kandinsky that keeps bringing me back to him again and again. Maybe it is because he was a synaesthete, maybe it is because he loved music, maybe it's because he was Russian, maybe it is because he recognized art as a pointing towards something else, something more, maybe it is a lot of things. Whatever it is I just so adore his paintings.

Of late I have felt myself highly incapable of explaining myself via words. Each time I try I merely walk away frustrated and desperate. I blame this partly on learning French as English gets pushed to the back of my mind all jumbled and feeling abused and my skills in French just barely at a young child's level (on that note I have a profound new appreciation for how frustrating it must be to be a little kid). During this I have found myself painting so much more, painting like a fiend, painting like my life depended on it. Even that though does not always seem enough to express the millions of hesitant thoughts crowding at the front of my brain, preventing me from sleeping and attempting to strangle me with each of their seemingly immediate needs (pesky thoughts). Kandinsky helps. I wish I could say why, but these painting seem to express my thoughts, thoughts that feel important to express (why? I don't know).

That is all.