The world has a disordered view of art. This should not come as a surprise as we live in a fallen world, a world that is less than what it could be, less than what God intended it to be. Somewhere back along our history our first parents turned away from God, losing the grace He had given them. They made a decision to follow their own will rather than God’s.
The result was a loss of grace for the entire world and we see that reflected in the world of art. The world sees art in a disordered way, but how could it not when the artists themselves have a disordered view of art? Artists have lost the sense that the artistic vocation is a vocation of service, not a vocation of self indulgence.
We have seen the extreme of this disordered view in such works of “art” as a crucifix suspended in a jar of urine and a painting of the Blessed Mother composed of elephant dung.
The latest example comes from the library at Rutgers University, a school supported by taxpayer dollars. The library recently displayed a work of “art” that consisted of a corpus, the crucified body of Christ, fixed to a dartboard with darts.
We cannot speak to the artist’s motivation for such a work because the school refuses to disclose the name of the artist. Not that it matters, art that needs to be explained is failed art. The only clue we have is the title of the piece thumbtacked nearby, “Vitruvian Man.”
So apparently the artist intended a visual play on images with Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing.
The library has since removed the work, not because it is sacrilegious, but because the university concluded “that the policy and process the Libraries use to select artwork for exhibitions was not followed.” You can read the entire statement here.
The artistic vocation is a vocation of service, how could we have fallen so far?