"All Art is Moral" -- Aaron Menikoff

All art is moral.  This has become an accepted maxim.  Everyone today is an expert in the culture wars.  We all know whether we are watching Hollywood’s latest flick or Madison Avenue’s hottest promotion that an agenda, a worldview is being sold.  So there is nothing surprising here.  However, it was D.H. Lawrence in his essay on the American author Walt Whitman (see Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature) who made this point with chilling clarity:  “The essential function of art is moral.  Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation.  But moral.  The essential function of art is moral.” 

Lawrence read America’s popular nineteenth century authors: Hawthorne, Poe, Longfellow, Emerson, Melville and concluded, “it is the moral issue which engages them.  They all feel uneasy about the old morality.”  He reveled in their rebelliousness.  “Sensuously, passionally, they all attack the old morality.”  But these authors, Lawrence argued, attacked the old morality with dull swords; they offered nothing new.  It was Walt Whitman who broke the mold, who was, as Lawrence put it, “the first heroic seer to seize the soul by the scruff of her neck and plant her down among the potsherds.”  In other words, Whitman boldly denied the immortality of the soul.  Lawrence was right.  We read in Whitman’s famous poem, “Of Myself,” this classic line, “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love/If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.” 

Lawrence was shocked and pleased by Whitman’s dramatic prose, by Whitman’s doctrine of the flesh.  He passionately paraphrased Whitman this way: “’There!’ he said to the soul.  ‘Stay there!’  Stay there.  Stay in the flesh.  Stay in the limbs and in the belly.  Stay in the breast and womb.  Stay there, Oh, Soul, where you belong.”  Lawrence understood Whitman to be teaching a new doctrine devoid of the need for salvation:

It is a new great doctrine.  A doctrine of life.  A new great morality.  A morality of actual living, not of salvation.  America to this day is deathly sick of saviourism.  But Whitman, the greatest and the first and the only American teacher, was no Saviour.  His morality was no morality of salvation.  His was a morality of the soul living her life, not saving herself . . . It is the American heroic message.  The soul is not to pile up defences around herself.  She is not to withdraw and seek her heavens inwardly, in mystical ecstasies.  She is not to cry to some God beyond for salvation.

So much of what we hear, read, and see is a continuation of Whitman’s “new great morality,” intended to crumple our souls underneath our boots and keep them there.  It is designed to make us think that this life is all there is—and America is deathly sick of it.  We want something more from our art—and I’m using “art,” with Lawrence, in the broadest sense of the term.  It ought somehow to convey the transcendence of God, the reality of a new heavens and a new earth, the reality of a God who demands and deserves honor, the immortality of the human soul. 

The message of art for Whitman, for Lawrence, is simple: this is your only life, so follow your soul, be true to yourself.  The great challenge facing Christians is to make a counterclaim in our writing and painting and music and sculpture.  We are called to argue in diction and form and color that there is a sovereign, everlasting God and that His creatures—made in His image—are immortal and accountable to Him.  Christians are called to pick up the pen and the brush because art is not neutral, it is moral.

Comments

[Greg Blosser]

I enjoyed the article. My undergraduate degree is in fine arts and my graduate degree is in theology, so I have a special interest in conversations regarding art and morality. I whole heartedly agree that art is moral! But not merely in the world view that it explicitly communicates, but also in it's aesthetic embodiment as well. In other words, even as a poet (for instance) may argue against a properly Christian worldview with his words and, the very beauty of the words, chosen and arranged as they are, negate the message communicated by them. And perhaps the inverse is true as well? All of that to say that maybe aesthetics is moral. Or perhaps aesthetics and morality are sister subsets of the same mother: Shalom

Just kind of thinking out loud here. What do you think? Check out my url link and read a recent post from my blog on similar topics.

[Aaron]

Thanks, Greg, I'm very interested in reading your stuff and I agree that the art communicates something not only via diction -- word choice -- but aesthetics. I was in a PhD seminar reading an essay by Jonathan Edwards on the nature of true beauty where he discussed symmetry as a better reflection of God's holiness and beauty than a lack of symmetry. It made me wonder--is it sub-Christian to be attracted to abstract art? Sounds like you are the expert . . . what do you think?

[Greg Blosser]

Personally, i find it a little difficult to take Edward's view on symmetry all that seriously. As a hack theologian, I gladly defer to Edward's towering genius, but as an artist I must say "bah humbug". Even the human face is only approximately symmetrical. Photos altered to show a human face with precise symmetry look grotesque and distorted to our eyes. While I agree that the beauty and balance of symmetry does reveal something of God's beauty and glory (William Blake's The Tiger is coming to mind now) I would not say symmetry is a "better reflection" of God holiness and beauty.

As for abstract art, I know there is a line of thought among Christian thinkers that abstraction is somehow a lesser or lower form for artistic expression and we're all suppose to look longingly back at the periods in art history when "photographic precision" was the ideal. (We homeschool our kids. Try finding a Christian homeschool art curriculum that doesn't glorify representational art at the expense of more abstract forms. Doesn't exist!) But I think this is because not many of us are equipped to "read" an artwork the way an artwork is meant to be read. Abstract art has the potential to be every bit as Christian and God-honoring as representational art. The problem is, it takes a little more work, a little more training, a little more skill to "read". So I do belive it is a bit less accessible than most representational art, and that the original hopes for abstraction to yield some sort of universal language of truth in art has failed. But have you ever stood in front of a giant Rothko for a few minutes and really taken it is? It's moving. It communicates. Rothko (for instance) moved toward more abstraction throughout his career. He is most famous I suppose for his giant swatches of color. But even with these Rothko maintained his insistance that "It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing" So the problem isn't that abstract art fails to communicate (at least not good abstract art). The problem is that we are ill equipped to read it. Even abstraction is "about" something.

Makoto Fujimura is a contemporary painter (and a believer) who is doing great abstract work. One critic says this "the idea of forging a new kind of art about hope, healing, redemption, refuge, while maintaining a visual sophistication and intellectual integrity is a growing movement, one whichu finds Fujimura's work at the vangaurd".

I have trouble saying this art form is inherently sub-Christian or whatever. I recommend checking out Fujimura's website and reading some of his essays and the reviews of his work.

http://www.makotofujimura.com/

I realize this is long and you may have to edit it down. That's fine. I get carried away!

Peace,

Greg

[Aaron]

Thanks, Greg. I recently talked to a friend of mine studying Edwards at Oxford. He is a big fan of Edwards and a big fan of abstract art. He isn't sure that Edwards would have been critical of abstract art. He wondered aloud to me how strictly Edwards would have defined symmetry. So, for example, is there symmetry to be found/seen in a mountain range? This is the type of symmetry that is natural but not exact. This is the type of symmetry that may even exist in some forms of abstract art -- but may be harder to find. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and look forward to reading those essays you pointed me to. Thanks!

[Carla]

The sky is falling
the heavens have slipped
"How strange!
I wonder if this was predicted?
Flakes of sky collected at my feet
I'm scared to look above
The gravel below roars in terror
. . . a curious numbness
. . . "Help. I've fallen off my pedestal
. . . . and I can't get up

My heart is made of iron,
and my soul is unpolished wood.
My hands are made of tinsel,
but my feet are made of lead.

My frail hands keep dropping my heart;
it falls to the floor.
My bitter soul dries and cracks
and longs to be ashes.

God waits for me
behind a plate glass curtain
He beckons me to come,
so He can make me live again
. . . But ever time I try to go,
. . . . . I keep dropping my heart . .

[Olivia DeVries]

Hi Mr. Men.
This is Olivia! I finally came to see your blog! I really enjoyed reading what you have to say...(outside of Adler!)
Olivia

[Aaron]

Olivia,

Thanks for checking out the post. I'm glad you left a comment, and I look forward to reading your writing--out of class--one day soon!