Do you consider yourself an artist? Whether you do or
not, future church leaders will be artists. For art is
destined to become the next "incarnation" of our faith.
See the summary below:
A NEW PROOF OF TRUTH =
A new art supersedes old apologetics and brings new
proofs of Truth. It will involve a different excellence
and a new credibility. It will point to a different way
of meaning what we mean and a new way of signifying what
is significant.
Allowed and disallowed knowledge are crossing in ways
that excite artists and upset academics. But the artists
are winning!
A future theology will be painted, sculpted, danced,
performed, crafted. . . .
ART AND METAPHOR =
Metaphor is the seed of all art. Metaphor is a tiny
work of art, a "poem in miniature." No matter its
images--sounds, objects, gestures, stories, or
words--metaphor supports the very structure of all the
arts.
We live in a metaphoric world more than a "real" one.
The postmodern world will prove a perfect haven for
powerful prophetic metaphors.
RADICAL METAPHORS =
The widest gap between past and future bears witness
to a new and fearless push toward increasingly radical
metaphors.
We are stumbling blindly and boldly toward evermore
bizarre sources of meaning.
Science will create sensual images that today's arts
can only begin to suggest. A new "tech-art" will even
extend our senses, like quickened prostheses.
CONCLUSION =
The art forms of the future will alter most of what
we've known about the art forms of the past.
Though most "religious" artists are thirty years
behind, art is destined to become the new "incarnation"
of our faith.
For more, read further:
The Future of the Arts, Part One
The Coin of the Realm
The most significant moment in art is upon us. With
astounding new forms, the arts are becoming the coin of
the realm, the lingua franca of the future. Of course,
art--and language--constantly change. But today's change
proves a singular watershed event.
What are the forces driving this change?
Any historic shift--like the present shift from the
modern to the postmodern world--stirs new visions and
rids old obstacles. And, such daring constantly breaks
barriers. Then, these broken barriers nurture new arts.
But metaphor mainly drives today's change. Metaphor is
the prophetic power in the future of language, and the
future of language is the prophetic promise in the
future of art. For, finally, metaphor is the seed of all
art.
Of course, our rush toward an oral culture (where vision
exceeds logic) feeds this promise, as well. For art is
endemic to an oral culture.
These are the forces, but what do they mean? What will
we do when we don't do what we're doing now? The church
must answer! Most "religious" artists, for example, are
already thirty years behind. What they are doing now is
what the secular world was doing at least thirty years
ago.
Useless Arts
No wonder!
Old cultural leaders with both feet firmly fixed in an
old cultural world claim "art has nothing to do with
meaning"(1). . . that it "asserts nothing"(2) . . . that
it is finally "useless."(3) Even in the church! "For
much of Christian history, educators and theologians
have expressed a deep suspicion of the arts."(4) St.
Augustine insisted that truth is always "disembodied and
purely intellectual."(5) And the modern theologian Karl
Barth agreed, "Beauty is a risky concept." Its pleasure
"should not, therefore, be associated with the serious
business of religion."(6)
Of course, we pay lip service to the "sacred" arts.
We have allowed the popular arts to cook the moods in
market-driven churches. We have valued art as decor in
the same way we value wall-to-wall carpeting. And, we
have even admired the "fine arts," though we refuse any
notion of their carrying final meanings. No matter the
contrary beliefs, seldom has the modern world known art
as an instrument of Truth.
And with good reason. Art has been forced to serve the
"reality"--the logic and science--of the modern world.
And, beyond a useless, abstract beauty, no other means
to "truth" has been allowed. So, in the absence of
sacred aesthetics or a theology of art, church leaders
have long surmised that the arts share a bed with cheap
and empty "sentiment."
As a result, meaning in the arts has long been lost to
logical "sophistication" and artless commercialization.
A New Apologetic
Not anymore. A new art supersedes old apologetics and
brings new proofs of Truth.
In a world where the doctrines of truth and goodness
struggle to survive, beauty and art still connect with
culture. While visionary youth refuse the limited
language and pious paraphrases of the past, they still
yearn to know the message of beauty . . . the meaning in
art. And, where modern minds seek reality through
scientific analysis, other minds seek ultimate reality
through sensuous art.
In short, allowed and disallowed knowledge are crossing
in ways that excite artists and upset academics. But the
artists are winning!
Cutting edge scientists, for example, appeal to poetry.
Itzhak Bentov describes the universe as "a vibrating,
dancing organism." He says, in fact, "the universe as a
whole and we in particular are not matter, but music."(7)
And scholars join these forces, when
the novelist becomes a prophet, the composer a
magician, and the historian a bard, a voice recalling
ancient identities.(8)
Even theologians leave their libraries to mix with
musicians, actors, artists, poets and dancers. Indeed, a
future theology may never appear in text books. It may,
instead, be painted, sculpted, danced, performed,
crafted. . . .
Of course, the notion of art "arguing truth" doesn't
make sense in any excellence of logic. And the
"apologetics of art" shows a silliness beyond all rules
of credibility. But we're talking about a different
excellence and a new credibility. We're pointing to a
different way of meaning what we mean and a new way of
signifying what is significant.
After all, art delivers meaning in an entirely different
way from logical discourse. The disciplines achieving
perfection in one will not attain results in the other.
Let's get beyond this silliness.
Instead of fixed ideas or precise points of view, art
requires a nonrational sense for its power--a sense that
lies deeper than "exact" thought. Instead of locking
down final "truth," art moves with cryptic poignancy,
rich ambiguity, and puzzling paradox. And, instead of
one literal answer, art yields meaning from multiple
views and endless patterns.
Instead of cold, objective "truth," art explores
privately felt meanings. Instead of predictable
arguments, art surprises us with the unpredictable. And,
instead of step-by-step conclusions (like lawyers before
a jury), art transports us all of a sudden to new
perspectives.
The Otherwise Unknown
Art proves many vantages in its "knowing."
For art reveals the otherwise unknown. It works beyond
the edge of easy knowing. Indeed, it is the only way we
find God's creative presence in history.(9) For art
breaks through the crust of formal thinking. It sets
aside the world of untrue believing.
It is a music you never would have known to listen for.
In the art of virtual reality, for example, we see still
another "real" world. For in art we confront the
"ultimately real."(10) We see beyond the limits of a
psychological world, for art looks past both
subjectivity and objectivity. And, we see beyond man's
boxed-in isms, for true art is not the private property
of any man's creed.
We see beyond the warmed-over truth and reinvented
"wheels" of the past, for art reveals the totally new.
We see beyond the illness of culture, for art transcends
culture. And we even see beyond art itself, for art
points beyond itself.
Seeing beyond such things, "personal" vision proves
another advantage of "knowing" in the arts. After all,
all we do, we do in order to "feel" its significance.
And art serves a valid vision of this significance. It
is both intimate and ultimate. As it penetrates,
permeates and impresses us, it illuminates, seizes, and
motivates us.
It is the reality of "truth felt."
More important, art is a "transforming" knowing. Far
stronger than mere data, it recreates us . . . changes
us . . . and transforms us. Bach, for example, believed
music "recreates the human spirit." Beethoven wrote,
"Anyone who understands my music is saved." The author
Doestoevsky insisted, "Beauty will save the world." And
the theologian Tillich claimed a Botticelli painting
changed his whole life.
As the arts drop their old "decor" roles, they will form
the new apologetic, the new proof of Truth. Then,
preachers will become artists--masters of the story. And
artists will become preachers--masters of the prophetic
"Word."
A Degenerate Priesthood
Of course, I'm talking about true art, art that
surpasses art--not the abuse or misuse of art.
Art meant only to entertain--seductive, popular, and
indulgent--feeds the flesh more than it feeds the faith.
And its products and producers, with profit margins in
mind, exert power over its customers rather than giving
power. On a less harmful level, the same vendors sell
mere "decor" arts--art we can do with or without. The
music in malls and dairy farms, for example, flows
languidly with a passive and timeless reverie. But its
manipulated moods merely "milk" the shoppers as well as
the dairy cows.
More "cultured" arts dwell in refined schools where
privileged status and prevailing standards pay homage to
the great heros and triumphs of culture. At these
altars, art usually exists for the sake of art--it
points only to itself. We may be ravished by its beauty,
but we remain the same. Or, with more pride, we say,
"Art is about the artist." Art, in other words,
glorifies the artist. Yet, we can't differ between a
craftsman and an anointed artist, or dazzling skill and
a moment of true power.
These arts, pulled lose from deeper and truer origins,
wander the moral landscape with no conviction.
And--sooner or later--they prove helpless against the
demonic. Much of today's art, for example, flaunts a
stylish pessimism or an angry cynicism. Some say, "In
our postmodern era, the artists have become a degenerate
priesthood."(11)
"Woe unto those who . . . have lyre and harp,
tambourine and flute . . . but they do not regard
the deeds of the Lord."(12)
Referential Power
Still, art can speak Truth.
To begin, we live in a symbolic world. Always, "The
fundamental gestures of existence bear a symbolic
potential."(13) And in that potential, all events
"surpass their appearance."(14) In other words, we live
in a metaphoric world more than a "real" world.
Our metaphoric world is a linguistic world of "unspoken"
realities and nonverbal modes. Hidden under supposedly
arbitrary words lurk the stories of our culture in all
their glory and vainglory. And, concealed behind the lie
of modern "objectivity" hide the events of Truth in all
their closure and disclosure.
In this hidden world, language is possible only with
metaphor. If we lose the referential power of
metaphor--the ability to represent hidden realities--we
have lost truth, culture, and life itself. We have also
lost art, for metaphor and art are identical twins.
Metaphor is a tiny work of art, a "poem in
miniature."(15) No matter its images--sounds, objects,
gestures, stories, or words--metaphor supports the very
structure of all the arts.
So we can say, then, art also "speaks." It reveals,
discloses, testifies. The early church knew this. The
whole drama of salvation was played out in visual
images. Pope Gregory the Great said, "Images are for
unlettered beholders what scripture is for the
reader."(16) And a later church council affirmed, "What
the gospel tells us by words, the icon proclaims by
colors."(17)
In the same way, a future proof of truth increases the
role of our senses, emotions, and feelings, for you
cannot have metaphor without them. So a new credibility
will demand new standards of honesty and excellence in
perceiving truth through the body.
Art, then, destines to become a new "incarnation" of our
faith. The great poet Goethe warned that art is "no mere
amusement to charm the idle or relax the careworn."
Instead, it is the "sister of religion."(18) And Albert
Schweitzer echoed, "All true and deeply felt music,
whether sacred or profane, journeys to heights where art
and religion can always meet."(19)
So life, language, metaphor, art, and emotion . . . they
all speak Truth. And the language of the future will
know their sisterhood.
Starting a "Clean Slate"
But the promises of the past require radically different
arts for the future. And the art forms of the future
alter most of what we've known about the art forms of
the past. True, postmodern trends may resemble passing
fads, but we hear a rumbling in these trends that echos
historic changes. Indeed, it presages the shaking of a
whole new paradigm for the arts.
Surprisingly, this should not surprise. Art simply
resonates to deep changes in our culture . . . to the
way we think . . . to our grasp of reality. And, as we
move away from a white, European, "enlightened,"
male-dominated culture, we also discover wrong ideas
about the arts.
As a result, we feel a growing unease with the old
definitions, strict recipes, and logical limits of art.
We sense a widening distance with a one-size-fits-all,
"thinking-man's" musing. And, we question the produced,
programmed, and professional arts of an out-of-step
elderly elite.
Even arts for the masses catch our questions. More and
more we distrust the canned, commercial arts neutered of
all that prevents sales to the widest possible market.
So we are, indeed, redefining the "mass" in "mass
markets."
In this new decade of a new century, the arts are
starting with a "clean slate."
Radical Metaphors
Again, metaphor has always been basic to art. And the
paradox between the "unknown" and the "known" has always
been basic to metaphor. But now, the widest gap between
past and future bears witness to a new and fearless push
toward paradox . . . toward a radical metaphor.
Today, for example, we show a voracious appetite for
juxtaposition, enigma, collage, and just plain
hodgepodge. We have suddenly redoubled our ability to
combine diverse things in impossible ways. And we have
brazenly inflated our affinity for comparing the
incomparable . . . for placing side by side the
incompatible.
We all take part in this "extreme" game. And--in doing
so--all of us question the old orders of veracity while
stumbling blindly and boldly toward evermore bizarre
sources of meaning.
And, as we could expect, bizarre metaphors show up in a
world of "multi-everything" arts. Multimedia,
multimodal, multicultural, multisensory, multifaceted,
multilayered. . . . Meanings on top of meanings, moods
on top of moods, modes on top of modes. . . .
Like a hall of mirrors, they demand our attention on
several levels at once.
"Techno worship," for example, blurs the borders between
music, poetry, dance, drama, visual art, the event
itself, and all the senses . . . all at the same time!
Given enough bandwidth, digital science can
simultaneously engage all of our senses. And it can do
this in ways to which the older arts can only hint. As
example, crossing quickly from one sense to the other,
we move beyond the old notion that the arts are sensory
specific--that "music is for the ear," "visual art is
for the eye," and so on.
This "multi-everything" world--this ambiguity of
polyphony--will only increase the depth of the message.
It will prove a perfect haven for powerful prophetic
metaphors.
Losing Our Timeline
As if it were possible, future arts will also bow before
a new time and space.
The "timeline" arts--arts that take place over time
(like music)--were heavily shaped by the linear, serial
logic of the Enlightenment. Classical symphonies, for
example, took a musical "idea," then developed it over a
timeline. That idea had to "go somewhere." It had to "do
something." It had to show a logical exposition,
development, and conclusion. And, the dramatic interplay
between carefully sequenced moods birthed the musical
classics of our culture.
Yet today, many listeners want more than clock-like
events hooked together like "beads on a string." Their
druthers should be obvious: As thoughts lose their
logical sequence, the performing arts lose their
"timeline." These arts begin to work more in "realtime,"
focusing on the moment itself. They become, in other
words, more "vertical" and less "horizontal."
Today's pop culture reflects these transient, "realtime"
moments. Recent books, for example, present endless
incoherent and isolated episodes. Leading theaters stage
random streams of consciousness. And, even the illusion
of films merely pastes together fragments of filed-away
film clips.
In music, these event-character "moments" more and more
take on the quality of immobile "paintings." These
moments differ from the music of the past where moods
followed each other like ducks in a row. Today, for
example, a whole gamut of moods--like struggle,
assurance, and celebration--can pile onto each instant,
the way paintings present complete pictures at each
glance.
Or, listen to the realtime, "ambient" music of today's
youth. Their "chilling out" music presents contemplative
"soundscapes," the way an older painting presents
romantic "landscapes." These soundscapes, however,
"stand still" more by endlessly repeated patterns than
by simultaneous moods. Such contemplation surfaces from
a going-nowhere, mood music made of short, cyclical, and
simple, chantlike phrases.
Similar examples include Taize music(20) and New Age
music.
By classical standards, many label this music a
poverty-stricken creativity. Yet, those who contemplate
these sounds say the sheer simplicity never gets boring.
Instead, it grows ever deeper, forming something within
that was not there before. These endlessly recurring
sounds give listeners the chance to become completely
"lost" in the music.
Yes, these sounds open the door to something. The
question is what? We should recall that the spiritual
realm has a fork in the road.
In summary, we are moving toward a new time and space in
the arts. But, between now and then, the performing arts
will hold the metaphoric tensions between both minutes
and moments, form and freedom, progress and pattern,
going somewhere and going nowhere. . . .
Where all this ends? Nobody knows.
Personal Art
History boldly rejects still another idea about the
arts. We have ended the notion that art exists only for
itself . . . that it parades excellence only for its own
sake. Recent history, for example, reveals less regard
for the restricted arts of the cultural elite--the
"educated" arts . . . the "mind" arts.
We are savoring a distaste for mere "good taste."
So we move, at the same time, toward a more "personal"
art--toward the importance of all participants, their
secret pleasure, their firsthand experience. After all,
art was never meant to be separated from life. In
addition, today's need for ratings and sales in the
marketplace demands an inclusive audience rather than an
elite few.
Music for a larger audience, however, doesn't require a
loss of depth or profundity. It simply demands a
revivified directness . . . a specific message to a
specific person at a specific time.
We see this in-your-face directness in the "alternative
worship" arts of today's youth. Intimate and honest,
these arts exude a risk-taking, freewheeling worship.
Their "hip-hop" ecstasies grow from a life style of rap,
break dancing, and graffiti. And their "rave" raptures
grow into a euphoric marathon of all-night dancing.
This is the art of our earliest origins.
No wonder. The agelong quest for the secret intimacy
between beauty and meaning has turned suddenly into a
headlong rush toward senses and emotions. As a result,
pop culture citizens are now ardent collectors of felt
meanings and emotional kicks.
And, we haven't yet seen the final fruit! For science
will revision our senses. It will create sensual images
that today's arts can only begin to suggest. The freedom
to probe a "biological" art--grounded in feelings and
emotions--will find new and amazing sensory expressions.
In fact, a new "tech-art" will even extend our senses,
like quickened prostheses.(21)
And it will provide more depth than any previous art.
Interactive Art
Another seismic change in the arts bursts from the new
"interface culture." It brings a tidal wave shift from
passive spectators in the arts to active players in the
arts. And it reveals itself to us through Cyberspace,
which, again, "reveals itself to us only through . . .
interface design."(22)
This interface design "is the great symbolic
accomplishment of our era."(23) Cyberspace, after all,
is an immensely disordered realm ruled by invisible
forces. It requires the sensuous gestures--the
"interface"--of icons, links, and metaphors to imagine
this infinity and to restore a feeling of order. And
these symbols run exactly parallel to the sense-making
interface in both religion and art.
In short, the Internet "interface" is art:
(The Internet) is now emerging--chrysalis-style--as a
genuine art form . . . as complex and vital as the
novel or the cathedral or the cinema . . . (it is)
perhaps the art form of (this) century.(24)
That's the reason digital gurus often resemble priests
and prophets. For they are the "artisans" of an
interface culture. And that's the reason all postmodern
citizens are born to prophesy. For the new world of
interface requires indigenous, interactive, Internet
arts--warts and all.
"When I think about the gap between raw information
and its numinous life on the screen . . . the whole
sensation has a strangely religious feel to it."(25)
(Watch for "Part Two" at this web site.)
© 2002 Thomas Hohstadt
ENDNOTES
1. The British philosopher Harold Osborne, editor of the
British Journal of Aesthetics, quoted in Religious
Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning by
Frank Burch Brown (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1989) p. 26.
2. R. G. Collingwood, quoted in Louis Dupré, Symbols of
the Sacred (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) pp. 72, 73.
3. Paul Valery, quoted in Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in
Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980)
p. 3.
4. Frank Burch Brown, "Characteristics of Art and the
Character of Theological Education," Theological
Education, Volume XXXI, Number 1, Autumn 1994, p. 7.
5. Brown.
6. Patrick Sherry, Spirit and Beauty: An Introduction to
Theological Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, l992)p.
21.
7. Itzhak Bentov, in his book Stalking the Wild
Pendulum,
http://www.monroeinstitute.org/voyagers/voyages/hsj-1995-winter-remembrance-bullard.html
8. William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take
to Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of
Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981) p. 4.
9. We find this idea in Plato, Aristotle, Dante,
Spenser, Handel, Haydn, Kant, Jaspers, Ricoeur,
Whitehead, Dewey, Heidegger, and countless other artists
and thinkers.
10. Louis Dupré, Symbols of the Sacred (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2000) p. 71.
11. Thompson, p. 248.
12. Isaiah 5:11, 12; AMP.
13. Louis Dupré, Symbols of the Sacred (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2000) p. 122, 123.
14. Dupré.
15. Lewis Edwin Hahn, Editor, The Philosophy of Paul
Ricoeur (Chicago: Open Court, 1995) p. 281.
16.
http://www.sacramentis.com/articles/text/misc./wipc2.html
17. The Eighth Ecumenical Council, discussed at the
above web site.
18. Arianna Stassinopoulos. After Reason (New York:
Stein and Day, 1978), p. 157.
19. http://www.musicofthesoul.com/through_the_ages.htm
20. Taize is a village in France with an ecumenical
community gathering. Their simple, chant-like meditative
music, mostly written by the monk Jacques Berthier,
appeals especially to international youth.
21. Derrick de Kerckhove, The Skin of Culture (Toronto:
Somerville House Publishing, 1995) p. 86.
22. Steven Johnson, Interface Culture: How New
Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
(New York: Basic Books, 1997) p 19.
23. Johnson, pp 212-215.
24. Johnson, pp 212-215, 238-242.
25. Johnson, pp 212-215.
This article used by permission of the author.
Twenty Time-Tested Tactics for Improving Your People Skills
