This is an excerpt from my sixth and final painting in my series. It is one of the largest at 4.5 x 7 feet... and it's almost done! You can click on "My Sketchbook" under my profile picture to see the rest!
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Now that hockey season has started, I plan to get a lot more reading done. I need not worry about being distracted by TV, for it will be on TSN for the next six months or so! But I'm not complaining, perhaps I'll get more done this way. And there are certainly opportunities for quality time sitting on the couch beside my husband - he watches hockey, I read a book... or blog.
I read a review in the Herald on Artists, Citizens, Philosopher: Seeking Peace in the City by Duane K. Friesen and ordered it the next day. It seemed like something that would be up my alley - so far I've enjoyed it (though I skipped ahead to the chapter entitled "Artistic Imagination ad the Life of the Spirit"). I've written a few "yes"'s, put boxes around a few names and phrases but restrained myself from writing "preach it" in the margin (for fear that I will eventually lend this book out). I am generally agreeing with Friesen so far, and he's brought up a few points that definitely warrant a blog post or two.
There is one or two issues that Friesen raises that I would have some questions about, and I hope will raise some discussion. In the first pages of this chapter, he write about God's mandate to humanity to "order" the universe...(this made me think of Randy's Sunday school class and his ideas about the "first great commission")
Whether or not one believes that this command echoes God's creative role in making order from chaos, we do create order in a variety of ways without thinking that we are responding to any kind of mandate. We order words, letters and symbols in order to communicate. We build homes, infrastructure, and city plans in order to provide spaces for living and for community. In the visual arts we order colors, lines, and patterns. Or in music we order tones, rhythm, and harmony. Friesen suggests that art (or music or poetry) are, for the requirement of creating order from chaos, akin to human language. They are made from symbols, and are meant to communicate (and indeed, there are many studies that show a correlation between images and language development in small children). Like one would learn a foreign language, to understand (or to make) art requires time, effort and study; an investment that for many seems like a waste of time. But the idea of art as language does not end there.
To think of the arts as an array of symbolic systems seems a bit too simple for me - and for Friesen as well, though he and I may have some differences in semantics. I think of my own processes... certainly many of my decisions are made in order to communicate meaning to the view, but many of my decisions are also made for purely aesthetic or practical reasons - and many of my decisions are justified later on - even though I didn't plan the meaning in advance. The process of making art is not at once exactly like writing a sentence, as quoted by the author's friend, artist Rob Regier, "Act can precede thought. There is no correct formula for sequencing eye, mind, and hand. Thought or reflection can occur before, during or after the gesture."
Perhaps the term "symbols" is not the best description of the type of communication that art encompasses. For me, understanding and making art is less about interpreting or creating symbols and more about the act of seeing. I agree with Friesen's idea that art is a part of ordering the chaos, I'm just not certain that symbols can adequately encompass the arts or language for that matter.
I was glad, however to read Friesen's thoughts on the commonly held belief that the arts communicate feeling, whereas language communicates ideas:
"The 'life of feeling' is too narrow an understanding of the arts. The arts express how we feel, but they also link our feelings to how we perceive reality, the world in which we live. Aesthetic forms of expression- poetry, story, drama, painting, sculpture, dance, and music - express, nurture, and enrich the human spirit. The arts feed the soul of human beings and are as important to our wholeness as bread and water."
I'm so glad to read a book on a theology of culture that so encourages artistic discourse as one of the prime vehicles for cultural engagement. I often feel very discouraged and isolated about my own giftings - realizing that to make a career out of such things is a rare and difficult path. Friesens words encouraged me and spurred me on. I hope in relaying some of his ideas I can encourage others too.
Labels: art, books, culture, faith
