Arts

  • Outbreak of the Divine

    Discovering deep meaning in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

    Vögelin's emphasis is on how every human soul undergoes experiences of the divine. In his 1966 German work, Anamnesis (from Plato's Greek word meaning "recollection" or "remembrance"), translated into English in 1978 (now included in Volume 6 of the 2002 ...

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  • Taking the Wide(r) Angle

    Theologian photographer, Christophe Potworowski makes the church newly visible in the world.

    Photography sounds easy. You see something you like, you click, and there you go. Yet most of the time, we end up photographing not what is in front of us but what is in our minds. We make reality fit our preconceptions: "This would make a great picture, it...

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  • God for Artists and Artists for God: Part 2

    I believe there are artists who are gifted and called by God. Just as pastors, technicians, educators, engineers, and athletes are called to contribute in their unique way to God's kingdom, so are artists. There are those who can taste, smell, see, hear, and feel things others of us can't. They have the insight and skill to clarify when things are confused, as well as the ambidexterity and courage to confuse things that seem clear.

    In the first part of this series on "God for Artists and Artists for God" I suggested that the nature and purpose of art and the vocation of the artist is one that is give...

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  • God for Artists and Artists for God

    Or, so it seems for much of society, and for much of the church. It seems that art is expression, but science is knowledge—expression is fun and all, and occasionally worthy of attention or mention, but knowledge is worthy of recognition and funding. Your mother smiles when you tell her you want to be a doctor; she asks questions when you tell her you want to be an poet.

    We don't prize artists like we prize scientists.

    Or, so it seems for much of society, and for much of the church. It seems that art is expression, but science is knowledge—expression is fun and all, and occasionally worthy of attention or mention, bu...

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  • A Little More Ration for Fashion

    Yet something is missing. Something fundamental.

    There is no dearth of reflection and response from the Christian community on film, music, or food. We have great organizations, institutions, magazines, programs, and conferences that address these issues. We are well attuned to the fact that we should be ...

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  • Small becomes all

    In addition to being able to say truthfully how much it influences influencers, he was clearly pleased by the significant dollar value of advertising revenue it generates each year. It's an understandable reflex. There is a tendency to associate "niche" publications positively as specialist, selective, coterie catering, or negatively as small, obscure, audience averse—a Royal Family philatelist semi-annual, for example, whose cover stories target the demographic excited by postage stamp images of the Queen with one eye half closed.

    Late last week I was chatting with the editor of a Canadian think tank publication who sounded apologetically proud of how well his magazine is doing.

    In addition to being able to say truthfully how much it influences influencers, he was clearly plea...

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  • Pick Up Your Brush

    While Richter doesn't have a single cohesive style—though he returns to certain techniques over and over—he does have a single force behind his work that fascinated me. From the very beginning of his work, Richter has always been dialoguing with the past. The second room in the exhibit is dedicated to work that Richter produced after seeing a touring show of French bad-boy artist Marcel Duchamp, he of the urinal titled Fountain.

    Last Thursday I was at the Tate Modern in London for the highly-lauded retrospective of the work of Gerhard Richter, the German painter. Born in 1932, Richter has been working for nearly five decades in a variety of mediums and styles—from colour grids to h...

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  • Heaven is Chesterton meeting Steve Jobs

    Apple's iPad is a small and easy thing. Apple's iBooks is a small and easy program. Put them together and you are able to get, as I discovered during Christmas, more than 7,000 pages of G.K. Chesterton for a mere $1.99. From Heretics to Orthodoxy, from the Crimes of England to the Innocence of Father Brown, The Club of Queer Trades and the magisterial essay on Dickens, it's all there and, of course, all good.

    Great progress is best measured, I think, in the splendour of small and easy things combining to make the good available to all.

    Apple's iPad is a small and easy thing. Apple's iBooks is a small and easy program. Put them together and you are able to...

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  • The Globalization of Graffiti

    The road from countercultural to mainstream is always pockmarked with ironic hypocrisies, but the high art brand and consumption of dissenting disempowerment must be one of the richest. And like many American past-times, it is a medium which is being reinvented and reinvigorated as it travels the face of the globe.

    It is as though Coca-Cola, as it spread across the globe, turned out to be a great nutritional drink." —Blake Gopnik, Foreign Policy

    The collapse of American graffiti, ...

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  • Come

    Photographer Conor Sweetman prompts the viewer to reflect on Pope John Paul II's Letter to Artists in April of 1999.

    Light illuminates shadow. The ancient hall beckons, "Come." The door obscured under the brilliance of light. Photographer Conor Sweetman's frame brings to mind the verse,"In the quiet you will find Me." The beauty of the hall is featured so as to prompt the...

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