Reckoning Christianity and Art

With every year I grow older, I fall more and more in love with visual art. I can’t escape it. Colors show up in my music, they fill my mind as I sleep and they have become the focus of much personal study. Moving to New York City, I knew that my wife and I were in for a treat. Despite COVID-19 breaking out just a few months after we moved here, I have been blown away by the visual art that surrounds me. That alone is enough to justify our move here. Whether it is graffiti on a street corner or a mural inside a subway – there is color everywhere. New York is dirty. But it still has some charm. In particular, I love to visit art galleries. I have seen beautiful Rothko’s and Pollock’s. I have seen Monet and Manet. Picasso and Van Gogh and so on. I have seen moving and heart-breaking art created by those incarcerated here in the U.S. However, my favorite art gallery we visited was the Waterfall Mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was filled with peace and beauty. I particularly fell in love with the work of Makoto Fujimura, a painter who uses Japanese techniques to express his innate devotion to Jesus Christ. I sat staring at a painting entitled “Tears of Christ,” and for the first time I felt something special that I did not know previously. I am of Christian faith and anyone who knows me on a personal level knows how much the Savior means to me. My wife and I have built our lives on the bedrock of His suffering and resurrection and we seek His face often as we go throughout our busy days. However, with a few exceptions, I have grown stale in my appreciation of Christ-centered artwork. Music especially has always surrounded my religion and while I do find comfort in some of our hymns and childrens songs, for the most part the aesthetic does not reach me as deeply as say, Beethoven does.

But here I was staring at this piece entitled “Tears of Christ” and I was blown away. It was fresh and original. It was not dated. It was not conservative – it was bold and daring, yet honored and reverenced the Great I Am. For so long I felt torn. We live in a time where art has adopted cynicism and has abandoned belief systems. That is not to say that this art is devoid of light. In fact I would say that much of it taps into what I would call the Spirit and expresses the hope of a better world. I have found that my aesthetic heart resonates with the strides these artists are making. It is real and it is daring and it is vulnerable. However, I have found that this art often only asks questions and it rarely gives answers. “Why must we suffer?” “Where is the justice?” “Where can I find hope?” In my experience it seems like these artists see the void of human suffering but lack a clear definition of how to learn from it and overcome it. In this way, I feel unsatisfied. I believe that this is one of the roles of an artist - to connect to the world in its suffering. But I also believe that the artist contains a sacred duty to reach into the afterlife and bring back the light it has to offer.

There is art that tries to answer these life questions. I particularly hear it in music. However, I must admit that I rarely connect to it aesthetically or even doctrinally. Too often, this Christ-promoting art ignores struggle and discipleship and conveys a message of instant gratification and happy days ahead. It is not that I think Christ cannot make us happy or meet our needs promptly – it is that I believe Christ sometimes has bigger plans in mind. He wants us to have joy and that joy cannot fully occur unless we partake in the bitter cup and suffer with him (Romans 8). The result is the following: art that ignores pain can often come across as trite or shallow.

There is much current art that promotes Christ that does indeed recognize the difficult path of discipleship and the blessings that follow. But still, aesthetically speaking, does not entirely touch my soul. This is of course a personal opinion, for I know many who find comfort in it and I am grateful for that. I can only speak for myself, and I say that artistically and musically it is not enough for me even though I whole-heartedly agree with the doctrine and Spirit.

So here I sit in between two worlds. One in which lies the colors and timbres that speak to my heart but is moving away from belief and faith, and another which doctrinally aligns with my soul yet lacks the unique artistic spark that I crave. I have often chosen to follow the first option and I have quietly referenced a maker, but have been too afraid to make my beliefs publicly known. But after seeing the art in the Waterfall Mansion I felt something. I realized that it was possible to express adoration for Christ in fresh and invigorating ways. In fact, I realized that Christ was the true artist and that committing to Him would not lead to restrictions but freedom and new paths leading to new artistic destinations. I not only saw answers being asked, such as “Where is peace?” I saw answers, such as “He is risen”.

Suddenly I saw the history of the world. I saw all the art that has praised the divine. I thought of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. I thought of Messiaen and his Quartet for the End of Time with its heart wrenching final movement honoring the immortal Christ. I saw Michelangelo and the ceilings of heaven and Da Vinci’s Last Supper. I saw Van Gogh’s depiction of the weary and afflicted and the beauty of the night. I heard Bach’s divine counterpoint. I thought of the prose of Emily Dickinson. In a world stricken by pandemics, tension and grief, I thought, “If Christ was the subject of such revolutionary art in the past, why can’t he be so now?”

I am not saying that great Christ-centered art has not been happening in the present day. I am simply documenting my artistic journey back to Christ. While morally and spiritually I have always strived to be on the team of the believers, with every passing day I am more committed to artistically contributing to that team in a more direct way. For personal and important reasons, I will often continue to refer to Christ subtly but I will not be afraid to make Him the foundation of my art and connect with His direction and sublimity.

It might not be popular to believe in a god at this present time in the history of the world – particularly among intellectuals. But the world is in turmoil and I have found peace in Christ, and in my own unique way, I will try and channel the true maker of beauty - the Great Jehovah, the Alpha and Omega, the Son of the Living God.