“If the artist can perceive a ray of the supreme beauty among the many manifestations of the beautiful, then art becomes a way to God.”
The Purpose of Art
Why does the human person create? Why does the artist make art? On the surface, art seems unnecessary. It is not needed to feed us, or clothe us, or house us, perhaps that is why it is one of the first programs cut from our schools. If it is not necessary for our survival, what is its purpose?
Art can be used to server several purposes. It can be used to heal, to comment on contemporary society. Art has been used to bring people together in a common cause, and it has even been used as a weapon of propaganda. But what is its primary purpose. Why do some of us feel compelled to create?
Over the centuries the Church, through several popes, has actually answered this question several times.
The Church needs artists just as it needs theologians, philosophers, teachers, and storytellers. God continues to give people the gift of creativity because every generation responds to the faith in different ways. The Church needs artists to continually produce “new revelations of the divine” as Pope Saint John Paul II put it. New epiphanies that speak to each generation in a way that goes straight to their heart.
At Pentecost, the Apostles preached the Gospel to people in a language that the people understood by heart. They did not need an interpreter. They did not need the message explained to them. Like the Apostles at Pentecost, artists speak in a language that everyone understands.
Beauty
The work of the artist is intimately linked with Beauty. We are not speaking of the aesthetics of a beautiful person or a beautiful building, we are speaking of the transcendental Beauty that is a part of all things.
God is Beauty and all of His creation bears His mark just as a painting bears the signature of the artist.
When an artist is inspired by the Beauty of Creation or the Beauty of God, which is to say the same thing, then the artist feels compelled to create. The result is something which communicates the splendor of God. The artist bears witness, he interprets the beauty and harmony of God’s creation.
While art may be used for many purposes, its primary purpose is to celebrate what is True, and Good, and Beautiful. The purpose of all art is to lift mankind out of his finite life in order to contemplate the infinite. The more that art accomplishes this the more it succeeds in its purpose. For this reason the more that artists live their faith the better prepared they will be to speak the language of beauty.
This does not mean that art must deal solely with religious subjects or confine itself to the liturgical space, but it reaches its highest achievements when it does so.
Pope Pius XII considered the Christian artist as a “chosen one, because it is proper to those chosen to contemplate, to enjoy and to express God’s perfections.” -Pope Pius XII, April 8, 1952
Saint John Paul II, in his Letter to Artists, said that the vocation of the artist is Beauty. Philosopher, theologian, professor, and author Alice von Hildebrand said, “The artist’s aim should be to create beauty. If he fails to do so, he is a bad artist.”
To create works of beauty, even work that is imperfect or does not quite match the vision of the artist, is to bring Heaven to Earth.
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt saw art as a sacred bridge mediating between Heaven and Earth. He saw the artist as a Bearer of the Beautiful, an intermediary between God and man. For Liszt, the work of the artist lifts man out of his fallen earthly life and makes him yearn for that place where he may walk side by side with the Divine source of all that is beautiful.
The artist shares, in a particular way, a spark of God’s own creative power. For J.R.R. Tolkien, this made man a sub-creator and his art a sub-creation. The sub-creation is composed of representations of real things that allow us to speak (if we’re the artist) or hear (if we’re not) some Truth about the sub-creator, the greater Creation, and the Creator. The artist and his work are tools to help us better understand God.
Christian artists continually seeking God. They seek God in nature, in humanity, and above all within themselves. Their task is show the harmony between the human and the Divine, the finite and the infinite, the physical and the spiritual.
To this end the Christian artist makes a lifelong study of our relationship to God as revealed to us by His Word, enshrined in the Holy Bible. The Bible reveals to us God’s plan for our salvation and the artist must have a deep knowledge of scripture in order to speak to the heart of the people.
John Paul II encouraged artists to live their faith in a profound way in order to bring about new epiphanies of the Divine Beauty that is reflected in Creation.
The gift of artistic ability is a gift from above. The source of its inspiration is the Holy Spirit who guides us in all things. God allows Himself to be glimpsed through the work of the artist who longs to reunite fallen, but redeemed, mankind to His Creator.
“If the artist can perceive a ray of the supreme beauty among the many manifestations of the beautiful, then art becomes a way to God.” -Pope John Paul II, February 18, 2000
Pax vobiscum