by Michael Winters
"38” oil on paper, by Cameron Alexander Lawrence, now on view at Sojourn Arts through April 11, 2021.
After the recommendation from How You Create Podcast host Ben Terry, I recently began reading The Death of the Artist by William Deresiewicz. It’s mostly about contemporary difficulties surrounding art and money (a great resource for an aspiring professional), but early in the book he also tells a story about his introduction to seeing the world like an artist, even if he’s not an artist himself. In a dance criticism class, he came to experience a new way of seeing when his professor gave an assignment:
“She sent us into the world, to simply look at people move. Look, and describe. That course changed my life. I learned that I had never seen the world before, because I’d never bothered to, and I also learned that that is what art and loving art are about: not being a snob, not distracting yourself, but seeing what’s in front of you. Finding out the truth.”
Learning how to see and finding out the truth is a lifelong occupation. The work is never done. Looking at the surface of things, like the way people move out on the street, reveals a treasure trove of information about the true nature of things. This is God’s world and he’s made it incredibly interesting and worthy of attention. Through learning to see things as they are we get glimpses into not just surface-level truth, but even deeper meaning. As Deresiewicz outlines the history of art though, he seems to understand the revelatory quality of artistic seeing, not as a compliment to divine revelation, but as a replacement of it.
“As traditional beliefs were broken down across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—by modern science, by the skeptical critique of the Enlightenment—art inherited the role of faith, becoming a kind of secular religion for the progressive classes, the place where people went to meet their spiritual needs: for meaning, for guidance, for transcendence.”
I believe he describes the general movement of history accurately. I don’t mean to argue with that. (Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton and others lay out a similar understanding.) But for someone committed both to Christianity and to art, what are we to make of this?
As Christians, we believe the divine revelation of God in Christ, known through the Holy Bible. When Amazing Grace sings, “I once was lost, but now I’m found / Was blind, but now I see”, this gift of vision is credited to the amazing grace of God, not merely to a transformative artistic experience.
But just as artistic vision doesn’t replace and cancel out divine revelation, divine revelation doesn’t replace and cancel out artistic vision (or general revelation). We can experience both. Both are real. And when the scriptural revelation of God is combined with the revelations of his creation experienced through our senses, we’re really onto something. I believe accepting both the divine revelation of God in Christ and the revelations available through artistic seeing grant the most fully wakeful vision.
I appreciate William Deresiewicz’s understanding that art is about learning to see and finding out the truth. These are noble aims and like him, I also believe art is a compelling discipline to get us there. In the end though, art is a limited discipline, as is science or politics. Each offer valuable lenses to extend our vision, but they can’t replace divine revelation. We’re dependent on the amazing grace of God.