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"Art and Alienation: Reoonciling the Two Cultures" by Nancy Pearcey
The modern age holds a sense of alienation toward the arts and artists. When did the artist and the arts become alienated and irrelevant?? A great deal of 20th century art criticism says art has nothing to do with the current worldview.
Worldview --> art gives us concrete images of our cultural worldview.
Then she took us through a fascinating art history lesson -- the following Reader's Digest version doesn't do it justice in the slightest:
Medieval icons = symbolic sermons. There was a hatred of the material world. During the Renaissance, the icons became more expressive. Then during the Reformation, art was often depicted ordinary people and trade works. The counter-reformation led toward the Baroque style, indicating that God can be present in and through the material world. Then came the Englightenment: if the universe is a vast machine, everything is determined by natural laws. A very machinistic worldview. Then Romanticism, a very organic worldview. Untamed, quasi-pantheistic.
Bottom line -- art was influenced by the changing definitions of truth. What has happened to the concept of truth in modernity? Art began to be alienated when it became disconnected from the concept of truth. The modern age is marked by the shattering of the unity of truth.
During the Age of Enlightenment -- science was thought of as the only form of truth. For the first time, it became socially acceptable to question Christianity. Christianity and the arts were put on the defensive. Rationalists said if the arts don't lead to scientific knowledge, what good are they?
Aristotle said the arts are more true than history. History is only about individuals; art is about humankind. Only in the modern west does the ideal(?) of art have nothing to do with spirituality.
Nancy Pearcey is a Francis A. Schaeffer scholar at the World Journalism Institute. She was seriously amazing. She has a book out called Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity.
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Posted by AB on 3/17/2006 | 1 comments
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