Household Art

The Marxist view of the arts, which pervaded Modernism, was that art should confront you with something and cause a revolution of change in the viewer and the viewer would leave the work enlightened and convinced of whatever ideal the work conveyed. In other words: Great art does not match your couch. In fact, Marx would even say that anything that does not offend the senses maintains the bourgeois status quo.

It has been interesting to see how this has played out over the last hundred years or so. (Pop Art, Dada, Minimalism being 20th century examples) and there are many artists I greatly admire from this period (Klee, Jasper Johns, Francis Bacon, Duchamp) yet I am relieved that art has moved away from this ideal over the last fourty years or so.

Postmodernism has moved away from such a dogmatic, propaganda-like view of art (though politics are still a very popular) to highly personal works almost to the point where it becomes very hard to understand unless you know a lot about the particular artist. Whereas something like minimalism sought to be very general to appear democratic, postmodern artists are very specific in hopes of being heard by the universal.

I think that some of this has been good for Christian aesthetics. I believe that if we are made in the image of a God who creates beautiful things, we will also seek to make beautiful things. And postmodern art is ok with you arranging your furniture in a way that is pleasing to the eye and calling it "art". Some may laugh, but isn't that simply using the creative power that God puts in all of us to make beauty?

So I have been beautifying the space I live in to help me worship God in my home and to gloify Him by using the creativity he has given me. About a year ago, I saw some small Ethiopian alterpieces in the Krannert art museum. These were much smaller than an alterpiece you would encounter in a church. In fact, they were meant to travel with you so you could worhsip God any where. I was struck by how they were both ornate and simple.

It inspired me to make one for my own home. I had to make it small enough to take with me when I travelled, yet large enough that it would be something I would see in my house everyday. When it is closed on Fridays and Saturdays, it depicts the crucified Christ. On Sunday it is opened for the week and shows the resurrection in the center panel. The left wing shows the baptism of Christ with God the Father depicted as the beams from above (its hard to draw a voice from heaven) and the Holy Spirit is depicted as a dove. The right wing depicts the accenssion. This piece is unfinished which is why Jesus looks like my Dad or Keith Green and the accenssion is unfinished. but I hung it up anyway, because I am an unfinished work myself and one day I will be finished and look like Christ, just as one day my art work will be finished and look like Jesus instead of Keith Green.