To know God falsely, says Tony Woodlief, is to write and paint and sculpt and cook and dance Him falsely:
Perhaps it’s not poor artistic skill that yields bad Christian art, in other words, but poor Christianity.
Consider, for example, some common sins of the Christian writer:
[. . .]
Sentimentality: Like pornography, sentimentality corrupts the sight and the soul, because it is passion unearned. Whether it is Xerxes weeping at the morality of his unknown minions assembled at the Hellespont, or me being tempted to well up as the protagonist in Facing the Giants grips his Bible and whimpers in a glen, the rightful rejoinder is the same: you didn’t earn this emotion.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s warning against cheap grace comes to mind, a recognition that our redemption was bought with a price, as redemption always is. The writer who gives us sentimentality is akin to the painter Thomas Kinkade, who explicitly aims to paint the world without the Fall, which is not really the world at all, but a cheap, maudlin, knock-off of the world, a world without suffering and desperate faith and Christ Himself, which is not really a world worth painting, or writing about, or redeeming.
June 9th, 2011 | 10:21 am
Well.
I agree with his list of “common sins of the Christian writer [or artist].” Even though many of them are just as common among non-Christian or even anti-Christian artists.
Bad theology *can* lead to bad art. But someone with impeccable theology can create bad art.
Unless he’s saying that its the AUDIENCE’S bad theology/woeful catechesis that’s really responsible for bad Christian art.
Which is a better insight, I think.
June 9th, 2011 | 11:17 am
I thank thee, O God that I am not like other Christians, you know the rubes that watch “Facing the Giants” and read the Left Behind Novels. I understand the Christological implications of Gran Torino and read only books that depict complexity and suffering in the appropriate measure. I have never allowed my preschoolers to watch Veggie Tales, instead we listen to audio books from approved lists (and the occasional episode of the Prairie Home Companion). My brow is furrowed and my concern is raised for the mediocre state of Christian art in our land. My eyes roll when a predictable plot device is revealed or a story has a one-dimensional happy ending. I thank thee that my theology is buttoned up with all appropriate boxes checked.
Someone should reference G.K. Chesterton’s essay, “In Defense of Penny Dreadfuls” or even C.S. Lewis’s – An Experiment in Criticism (or Alan Jacobs long discussion of this in his biography of Lewis “The Narnian”.
One other thought…(OK, two)
“Sentimentality, like pornography”? Really? The latest Jeanette Oke page-turner is on a level of pornography…right. And earned passion? Did I miss the day in Art Appreciation Class when they taught us to calculate the Earned Passion quotient?
Woodlief takes a valid point (that the mass market audience flavor of much Christian fiction and film leads to some pretty mediocre results and portrays at best a two-dimensional view of reality) and jumps the shark into pretentious judgment. There has always been a market for mediocre art (even in the church). Every Christian writer hasn’t been Flannery O’Conner and every Christian musician hasn’t been Bach. There is actually a place in the world for maudlin entertainment. Chesterton argued (pretty convincingly) that they serve a valid cultural purpose. My advice…if you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
June 9th, 2011 | 1:58 pm
And yet somehow the maudlin entertainment of Chesterton’s day still managed to beat ours cold (I’ve been a nominal fan of G.A. Henty’s “penny dreadfuls” since I was a kid – he’s not art by any stretch, but he’s usually pretty fun) Maybe the cultural virtues of his day tended to result in good stories, no matter how poorly told, whereas ours are wanting?
June 9th, 2011 | 2:01 pm
I sense a lurking misconception here that equates great art with “seriousness” as in long faces and difficulty. But quite often it has been the opposite. With notable exceptions, the plastic arts have generally tended toward good-humored lightness, as has dance. It all depends on the artist’s goals, you know, and Christian artists might have various goals, too, whatever their theology.
June 9th, 2011 | 3:09 pm
One of the problems is that God can become an implicit character in the story. The author presumes to act as Providence; to define the actions of God according to the author’s plot. It’s the ultimate Deus Ex Machina. Appeal to such a device makes the story seem false and forced. Instead of forcing the Christian worldview into the story, it must be assumed the way a man assumes the existence of air. You shouldn’t need to point it out, but its absence should be instantly noticeable.
At some level, I think this is caused by the virtual eradication of the Christian worldview from the contemporary art world. People are so starved to see it, they gratefully accept coarse depictions of it. They just appreciate not being invisible for once.
carl
June 9th, 2011 | 9:26 pm
If someone makes a bad house, do we accuse him of having a bad theology? No, he is just a bad craftsman. Same with art.
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