In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1.1-2)
The trouble with a classicist he looks at a tree
That's all he sees, he paints a tree
The trouble with a classicist he looks at the sky
He doesn't ask why, he just paints a sky
The trouble with an impressionist, he looks at a log
And he doesn't know who he is, standing, staring, at this log
And surrealist memories are too amorphous and proud
While those downtown macho painters are just alcoholic
The trouble with impressionist is The trouble with impressionist is
The trouble with personalities, they're too wrapped up in style
It's too personal, they're in love with their own guile
They're like illegal aliens trying to make a buck
They're driving gypsy cabs but they're thinking like a truck
The trouble with personalities is
The trouble with personalities is
I like the druggy downtown kids who spray paint walls and trains
I like their lack of training, their primitive technique
I think sometimes it hurts you when you stay too long in school
I think sometimes it hurts you when you're afraid to be called a fool
The trouble with classicists is
The trouble with classicists is
(lou reed, from songs for drella- a fiction
which is a musical and lyrical tribute to andy warhol)
we are trying to describe infinity in finite terms
we are trying to describe holiness in fallen terms
we are trying to describe perfection in fatally flawed terms
we are trying to describe transcendence in descendant terms
got it.
so to subject the character of God to the defaults that people often have towards something like abstract expressionism and troubled, dysfunctional and in all ways lost characters like the artist jackson pollock is problematic at best...
kurt vonnegut, in his inspiring book of neo-art-historical fiction Bluebeard describes a scene between an older, more established artist (compared earlier on in the book to a taxidermist who 'stuffed and mounted and varnished and mothproofed supposedly great moments, all of which turn out to be depressing dust-catchers, like a moosehead bought at a country auction or a sailfish on the wall of a dentist's waiting room') and an impressionable young padawan who wants to be a great artist someday...
After Dan Gregory at our first meeting ordered me to make a super-realistic painting of his studio, he said that there was a very important sentence he wanted me to learn by heart. This was it: "The Emperor has no clothes."
"Let me hear you say it," he said. "Say it several times."
So I did. "The Emperor has no clothers, the Emperor has no clothes, the Emperor has no clothes."
"That was a really fine performance, " he said, "really topping, really first rate." He clapped his hands appreciatively.
How was I supposed to respond to that? I felt like Alice in Wonderland.
"I want you to say that out loud and with just that degree of conviction," he said, "anytime anyone has anything good to say about so-called modern art."
"O.K." I said.
"It's the work of swindlers and lunatics and degenerates," he said, "and the fact that many people are now taking it seriously proves to me that the world has gone mad. I hope you agree."
"I do, I do," I said. It sounded right to me.
"Mussolini thinks so, too." he said.
(sorry, the link i copied and pasted here was broken by the blog template...
you'll just have to go out and buy the book like i did...)
still, when we look behind the mythologies of these stunningly original thinkers and the stereotypes arising from their difficulties with regular day to day relationships, circumstances and life, we are treated with a stunning metaphor that works on many levels... even many of the insults and accusations match...
i was reminded of God recently while watching one of my favourite biopics: Pollock.there is a scene which is almost hypnotic, in which the painter gazes upon the canvas, deciding how to best place the essence of who he is; an image- his image- upon the canvas in a way that articulates who he is, not just his ability to create. viewing this film, i was challenged to consider to just what degree the comparisons can be faithfully made between the creation, intentions and involvement of God in life and the approach taken by the one particularly misanthropic artist.
(we just need to remember the earlier bit about the unlikes greatly outnumbering the likes, lest we default to a misanthropic God... although many of the insults and accusations hurled at God also match, i believe that they are more indicative of humankind's misanthropy, not God's. this is probably a tangent for a whole nother blog...)
in Possibilities I, published in New York, Winter 1947-8, jackson pollock describes his process:
My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk round it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.
It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.
Narration Spoken by Jackson Pollock in the above posted Film by Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenberg 1951:
The method of painting is a natural growth out of a need. I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
Sometimes I lose a painting. But I have no fear of changes, of destroying the image, because a painting has a life of its own. I kind of let it live.
(http://www.adherents.com/people/pp/Jackson_Pollock.html)
***
interesting that an adbar on the website from which i pulled the transcripted monologues above is inviting website visitors to purchase a 'how to paint oil' dvd on which a 'top world realist' teaches a 'simple method ANYONE can learn. i wonder if the realist's name is dan gregory...
see, my experience with art lessons was less than inspiring. however, my experience with worship lessons changed my life.
Q: What kind of teacher is God?
Q: How does God best express what God desires to express through us?
Q: How does God ready us for this expression?
i remember sitting in a seminar where the writer of many rich and meaningful songs had agreed to try to unpack his process for the would-be worship song writers in the room. before he went into his own songwriting preferences and processes, he was very careful to remind everyone in attendance that writing worship songs or otherwise reflecting the face of God aesthetically, bearing the image of God through art must needs begin with spending time with this God, reading, praying, practicing, journaling...
through an interesting string of miracles and redeemed accidents, i had found myself, over the year prior to this session, in a small subterranean room with a notebook, a bible and a guitar. Jesus' approach to teaching method had to do with placing opportunity before me and then inviting me to engage, to explore, to extrapolate. for me, there was no method apart from opportunity and invitation. the songwriter's words certainly affirmed this, as does the teaching in psalm 25.
keith green wrote an old song based on this verse called Make My Life a Prayer To You.
jim brooks, abstract expressionist colleague and friend of jackson pollack, painting around the same time said:
I lay on the first stroke of colour.
After that, the canvas has to do at least half the work!
john michael talbot, the singing, songwriting, secular franciscan monk who modeled worship and intimacy with God for me in his body of work that i have come to deeply love over the last quarter century or so put it this way...
An empty canvas waits before the Painter
It waits to be the painting it must be
Unto this end it’s rightfully been created
To reflect the rightful beauty the painter sees
A beauty that will surely find its life within its dying
So another might be born again
And in this constant death a constant beauty created
Within a constant love that never ends
Jesus is the Master Painter
The Holy Spirit is the Master’s brush
To be dipped within the colours that portray a father’s love
That the Master’s painting might be born of us
To portray the beauty of the Master’s brush
That the canvas of our life might know the Master’s touch
An empty canvas waits before the Painter
An empty canvas destined to be hung
Within the gallery once it has been created
Will the canvas bear the beauty of God’s Son?
(Talbot, 1980)
***
Life is to be an art work…
a thing of truth
and also a thing of beauty
in a lost and despairing world.
(Francis Schaeffer)
