Beauty of God II

Please see the previous post, Beauty of God I, for an introduction to what follows.

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This begins a personal summary of an interview with Makoto Fujimura which was written with great input from an unpublished project memo (dated January 11th, 2005) titled: "Makoto Fujimura: Though the Church may have left the arts, God did not."

We began our time together by watching an unedited interview with Makoto Fujimura, an ‘abstract’ artist living in New York City. The first question addressed to Fujimura was loaded with assumptions that perhaps reveal some current trends in the Christian thought of much of America’s general Evangelical population. The question posed was, “What happened to Modern Art; what are you doing to bring it back to a focus on beauty and a relationship with God?” What is revealing about current Evangelical thought here is that beauty and a relationship with God seem to be contained within certain categories (perhaps existential, ontological or epistemological) that art must approach and operate within in order to be properly focused. If art appears to be operating outside of those categories, or perhaps even if the categories in which the art is functioning are ambiguous, then the art is viewed as distant from beauty and a relationship with God. Fujimura’s response contrasts with the assumptions apparent in the question. Rather than placing the emphasis on the artist to represent beauty and a relationship with God in some understandable way, he emphasizes that the readers of art are instead to understand where beauty and a relationship with God are in the art. This perspective burdens the Christian to learn the language of the artist rather than making the artist speak like an Evangelical, like a Baptist, for example.

Foundational to Fujimura’s understanding of art is the idea that all expression ultimately belongs to God; whether we are redeemed or not, art is ultimately God’s gift to all of humanity. Consequently, it is up to Christians to learn how to read art in order to experience God regardless if the art is from a believer in Jesus or not. Fujimura says that this gift of God is operating in all the galleries, museums and studios in the world even if the artist does not know it. He admits that the artist’s imagination can become twisted and the product of expression can be tainted, but that the task of the believer is to see through the art and discern what is good. A Christian can twist the imagination back to God, not by creating a certain type of Christian art, but by discovering God in all of art.

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This summary will be continued tomorrow starting with the question, "How is it possible to discover God in art from secular arenas or in abstract or impressionistic art? "