I was in college when I was first introduced to modern art. I don’t remember which museum I was visiting, but I keenly recall one painting that a group of hip-looking art students was clustered around while muttering nonsensical jargon.
Once I nudged my way around the observers, I saw what all the fuss was about. Well, I saw it, as in I looked at it, but I didn’t understand it. It’s been a decade, and I still don’t understand it. The “painting” they were captivated by featured a horizontal purple line bisecting an otherwise blank canvas. That’s it — just a straight purple line.
Once upon a time, art actually had to be good to be considered art.
According to the plaque next to the “artwork,” the artist wanted to capture infinity.
I love the concept of infinity. It speaks of galaxies bursting in starlight, oceans that plunge to unfathomable depths, or perhaps sunbeams fracturing storm clouds with golden radiance.
But a purple line? Is it a stretch to say Buzz Lightyear had a better grip on infinity than this artist?
My mom, who is an excellent oil painter, has an even better story about the modern art world. A few years ago, she decided to go back to school and get her art degree. She lives just a short drive from one of the most prestigious art schools in the state, so her path seemed set. But one semester is all it took for her to drop out of the program.
The most celebrated art at the school, she told me, wasn’t just talentless — it was downright disturbing. One installation that was so prized by the professors that it was put on display showcased a red-spattered pedestal sink filled with faux human teeth and a pair of pliers. A mirror with the word “smile” written in (she hopes) red paint hung above.
The school, by the way, had no shortage of extraordinarily talented young artists. They just weren’t lauded like the ones who specialized in the strange and grotesque.
You know, once upon a time, art actually had to be good to be considered art. And before that, it had to point to something greater than ourselves.
What spurred this seismic shift where suddenly absurd simplicity and morbid depictions of self-torture are not only considered art but are celebrated as tours de force?
I ventured off into the ether seeking answers.
But first …
I’ve anticipated the question I know many of you are asking: Well hold on, isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?
I used to think so because that’s what the aesthetic experts say, the modern ones, anyway. But who’s trusting “experts” these days? Now, I put more stock in my gut. And my gut tells me that it’s man’s hubris that tells him he’s the arbiter of beauty and that what we call “aesthetics” is far more objective than we’ve been told.
After all, aesthetics, at their core, are divine in origin. God, beauty’s source and essence, set the standard long before He created man and gave him, as an imager, an inferior ability to create. Scriptural accounts of the heavenly realm paint mesmerizing illustrations of celestial splendor beyond imagination.
The heavens open before Ezekiel, and he sees God’s sapphire throne radiating rainbows (Ezekiel 1:26-27). John has a vision of God glittering like a gemstone on His throne that emits an emerald halo of light (Revelation 4:2-3).
And then, of course, in Genesis 1, God creates the natural world, which despite millennia of human meddling, is still visually stunning — at least the parts we haven’t destroyed yet.
But even after He was finished creating the spiritual realm, the Earth, and man — the crowning jewel of physical creation — God still had more to say about beauty. There are numerous examples I could cite that capture His clear aesthetic preferences, but none, I think, so persuasive as the instructions He gives David for His temple, which Solomon built.
In accordance with God’s commands, “[Solomon] overlaid the inside with pure gold. He paneled the main hall with juniper and covered it with fine gold and decorated it with palm tree and chain designs. He adorned the temple with precious stones. And the gold he used was gold of Parvaim. He overlaid the ceiling beams, doorframes, walls, and doors of the temple with gold, and he carved cherubim on the walls” (2 Chronicles 3:4-7).
There was “no pragmatic reason” or “utilitarian purpose” for all this ornamentation, wrote American theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer in “Art and the Bible.”
“God simply wanted beauty in the temple” because “God is interested in beauty.”
These are some of the ways God set an aesthetic standard for humans to emulate.
What’s interesting is that we actually tend to agree that this standard is a good one. The most obvious example is nature. I dare you to find someone who doesn’t marvel at mountains, starry skies, and melting sunsets. Extensive research in evolutionary psychology has also found that symmetrical faces with balanced proportions are universally considered more appealing. The same can be said for certain musical notes and colors.
The best case for the objectivity of beauty, however, was made by architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander. In “The Nature of Order,” he outlined a simple but powerful experiment: He showed participants two contrasting images (e.g., a colorful slum vs. a stark modern home, a Persian rug vs. a plain rug, a Gothic window vs. a modern square one) and asked them to choose which image had “more life” in it and made them feel “more whole.”
Overwhelmingly, the participants — regardless of age, culture, and background — agreed on which image it was. (P.S. It wasn’t the designer house, the plain rug, or the modern window).
My friend Ren Miller, who’s studied and written about Alexander’s work, summarizes it like this: “There is more agreement on what beauty is when people see it rather than intellectualize about it. … An agreed-upon hierarchy of beauty exists.”
As it turns out, mankind can’t help but prefer vivacity over sterility, harmony over dissonance, life over death. It’s almost as if he were created to be drawn to things that are good — “good” as in they are an outflow of the only One who is good. Funny how that works.
That’s not to say we all want to feature the same kind of artwork in our homes, though. Certainly, there is great variance in what humans find beautiful, but that diversity still exists within the scope of what God has already created and called good. Our personal preferences are not a negation of these foundational aesthetic principles.
Why hideous modern art then?
So if beauty is fairly objective, how, then, does that square with society’s celebration of modern art, which is often characterized by morbidity, nihilism, irreverence, and fragmentation — the very things humans have an innate aversion to?
In my last article, I pondered the potential advantages of welcoming aesthetics back into the low Protestant church, where they’ve been outright forbidden or strictly limited for the past 500 years as a result of the Reformation, which, for all its profound contributions in regard to democratizing scripture and exposing corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, overcorrected in its position on art — especially as it relates to the movement’s iconoclasm.
Scottish historian Peter Marshall called the Reformation an “artistic holocaust.”
“Wherever the Reformation triumphed, it ruthlessly destroyed a priceless artistic and cultural inheritance,” he wrote.
But it did something else, too. It forced the church to release the reins on art. And over time, secular society picked them up. Of course it did. Whenever the church goes silent on any matter, certainly other voices will rise to take its place.
This is what they said in chronological order:
The Scientific Revolution (16th-17th centuries):
Reason trumps reverence; science beats spirituality. Beauty is no longer an act of worship but an act of empirical study. Art shall mirror physical reality, not invisible spirits, celestial throne rooms, and chimerical prophesies. What we can see and touch — that is what matters. Sever art’s divine moorings; anchor it to something we can measure.
The Enlightenment (late 17th to 18th centuries):
There is no divine mandate. Rationality, reason, and morals are the virtues of man; he holds the universe on his shoulders, not some obscure deity in the clouds. Forge ahead with intellect, burying superstition and religious tradition as the relics they are. Let art return to classical antiquity when rationality, balance, and order prevailed. Let it tell the story of enlightened man and his vast wisdom through marble heroes, portraits of society’s elite, and manicured landscapes. Embrace the secular, abandon the sacred.
The Industrial Revolution (late 18th to mid-19th centuries):
You see! — Man is supreme. Look at what he’s built: the steam engine, the telegraph, mechanized production — all products of his genius! Let art reflect industry’s gritty might and titan strength. And make it a commodity for the masses. Who needs potters when factories grind, carpenters when assembly lines crank, spinners and weavers when steam-powered mills roar? Churn it out. Let the people gorge.
Modernism (late 19th to mid-20th century):
Now, see, these wars — the death, the brutality, the uncertainty. Who escapes? Better to embrace. There’s no one coming to save us. Create as all goes dark. Let the canvas be a vehicle for the darkness in and around you. Scream. Mock. Rebel. Intuition, emotion, and thought alone guides the artist’s hand.
Postmodernism (mid-20th century to current day):
Everything’s a joke now. We’re all just cogs in a machine grinding ourselves to dust in this meaningless void. Have a little fun before it’s over. Tell your truth. Anything goes. No, really — anything. Art is whatever you want it to be. Gruesome? Sure. Cynical? Absolutely. Silly? Why not? Sanctity, tradition, and objectivity are long dead. We’re in the wasteland now.
Out of the wasteland
It is in this artistic wasteland we find ourselves now — celebrating purple lines and bloody teeth in a sink. But when you look at the aesthetic zeitgeist of each cultural wave following the Reformation, are you surprised? I’m not.
It’s almost mathematical: God’s vision of beauty – the church’s voice + the world’s ever-increasing darkness = total artistic debasement and collapse.
Art is crucial in God’s cosmic story.
I don’t mean to suggest that every one of these secular currents was all bad. Undoubtedly, each era had its bright moments and brilliant minds. I don’t mean to suggest that all post-Reformation art has been worthless, either. That would be absurd. Beautiful works (not all religious) have emerged from every age — even Modernism and Postmodernism — the periods that birthed these strange, warped creations I’ve been condemning.
Yet, none of this changes the truth that art’s sacred anchor is gone — 500 years gone. Are we better for it?
You know my answer.
But can beauty actually become an ideal again?
I hope so. This cold machine-world we live in desperately needs the softness and warmth beautiful art offers. Unwinding half a millennium of aesthetic secularism is no small endeavor, though. But if I had to suggest a starting point, I would say that we ought to fix what broke in the first place: the church’s voice.
Her silence needs to end. She can speak up by reclaiming art as part of God’s plan — and as part of the church.
Art is crucial in God’s cosmic story. Anyone who protests that would do well to remember that the Bible begins with an act of creation. Not only were humans part of that design, but they were also imbued with God’s ability and hunger to make things, meaning the act of creating was meant to continue.
Sadly over time, sin and darkness mutated humanity’s creative bend. You saw the drift. The more the West distanced itself from God and truth, the more twisted and alien the works of our hands became. And all this while, the Protestant church, especially her “low” branches, was quiet.
What would happen if she weren’t quiet anymore? What if artistic tradition was revived within her walls so that a world starving for depth and meaning might behold genuine beauty and wonder what other soul-nourishment lies there?
Romantic composer Gustav Mahler said, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
I think that’s often true. Rekindling the sacred art of old isn’t about nostalgia or even reverence. It’s about preserving the spirit and energy of an age that was keenly aware of art’s divine origins and the role it plays in God’s kingdom.
Five centuries of silence left us with blank canvases and bloody sinks. Either the church speaks or the wasteland claims us still.
Christianity, Christian, God, Art, Modern art, Aesthetics, Faith
