Friday, August 31, 2007

Art Link Letter

Philosopher Roger Scruton reflects on Art, Beauty,and Judgment:
Art is being privatized, with each of us striving to remain faithful to visions of beauty that we are no longer confident of sharing outside the circle of our friends. One cause of this is the democratic culture, which is hostile to judgment in any form, and in particular to the judgment of taste. The prevailing attitude is that you are entitled to your tastes, but not entitled to inflict them on me.
Tom Gilson thinks Scruton is helpful in explaining why bad art gets good treatment.

Andy at Think Christian
points to a Touchstone Magazine article about why evangelical authors aren't writing books of lasting literary value and what they can learn from Flannery O'Connor.

Joseph Torres at Kingdomview highlights the intro to an article by Dawn Xiana Moon:
We have become irrelevant.  Many contemporary Christians tend to make one of three errors when dealing with art: One, we declare anything that doesn’t explicitly proselytize, anything that depicts brokenness without redemption to be depraved or unworthy of Christian notice. Or two, we decide that the secular world really does have better art, so we copy it, boldly and without apology or thought into our own creativity. Or three, we try so hard to be relevant that we adopt the attitude and worldview of the culture that surrounds us—instead of being the proverbial salt and light, we end up as dust with nothing to offer in the way of hope, because there is only a perfunctory difference between those of us who claim to follow Christ and those who don’t.
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1 comment:

Casey Klahn said...

I stumbled in here from my own blog, and very much enjoyed reading your thoughts on art & culture.

You might enjoy my post on Vincent van Gogh's faith, from Feb of 07, entitled R.I.P. @ TheColorist.