The Christian Imagination

I just started reading Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture, by Makoto Fujimura.

The book is a collection of essays from his blog, also titled Refractions.
The layout is visually appealing, with paintings shown along with the text, but the heart of the book is the essays. They have a depth to them, and read like one who it going on a journey while sharing what he’s seeing and learning. There are some multicultural themes, as he draws from his Japanese heritage and life in New York City. And of course, he sees the world as one who is both a creative artist and a follower of Christ.

From the introduction:

In my studio, I use ground minerals such as malachite and azurite, layering them to create prismatic refractions, or “visual jazz.” Via my art I hope to create a mediated reality of beauty, hope, and reconciled relationships and cultures. As a founding elder of the Village Church, I have found that mediation of any kind is never black-and-white but prismatic and complex too. In order to find hope, even in the midst of the broken and torn fragments of relationships, in order to begin to journey into the heart of the divide, we must first wrest with the deeper issues of faith. We must be willing to be broken ourselves into prismatic shards by the Master Artist, so that Christ’s light can be refracted in us.

I’ve been reading through Taking it to the Streets this year. It’s a great book about how to live out faith as an artist, and gives some awesome examples of artists being incarnational on the streets of their city.

One story I found very cool is that of John Bjerklie, who started attending a Bible study targeting the homeless of New York City. He was invited to lead the Bible study through art, which he had done for five years at the time the book was written.

One of the things that I always did that helped me in my growth as an artist was I would read the Bible and I’d try to draw. So with the homeless people, we read the Bible and try to draw, I mean it’s about as basic as it gets. We would say, “What’s the picture that comes to your mind?” And then we’d sit down and we’d try to draw it, and it was just mind-blowing what would come out. (Corbitt & Nix-Early, 133)

That is amazing on so many levels, and profound in its simplicity. He also put together a Christmas calendar yearly featuring drawings from the Bible study members. All profits went to meet the needs of the homless group members.

Corbitt, J. Nathan & Nix-Early, Vivian. Taking it to the Streets. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. 2003.

The following presentation was given at TED by Larry Lessig, author of Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. I am still processing what he said, but he does make some good points. The presentation is about 20 minutes, and includes the 1-minute Jesus “I Will Survive” remix, and the George Bush/Tony Blair remix, which may offend.

Amazon has the following description of the book, which has some similar themes to the presentation:

Lawrence Lessig, “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era” (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can’t do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.

The Aesthetic Elevator has a post referencing this Wall Street Journal article. It’s a condensed version of a commencement speech by Dana Gioia titled The Impoverishment of American Culture: And the need for better art education. Gioia is Chairman of the NEA and an internationally known poet.

Gioia makes the case that American culture used to place more emphasis on a broad range of the arts, both in mass media and in education. Now, he contends, the emphasis is on pop culture with a strong alignment towards entertainment and money.

The quotes I like:

The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture’s celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young. There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child’s imagination, and we’ve relinquished that imagination to the marketplace.

But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing–it puts a price on everything. The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.

Most American artists, intellectuals and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

I love the second quote above. I once heard a talk by Dr. Elaine Storkey that sounded very similar. This is from the chairperson of the NEA! As a Christian, I thoroughly agree, we need to resist our culture’s determination to put a price on everything and put everything into a nice little box where we can understand it and control it. Consumerism and Materialism are gods we like to pretend don’t exist. It becomes all the more difficult when so much of American Christianity has aligned itself so directly with Capitalism and the so-called Free Market. The problem isn’t with the systems, but rather, how much we identify with the systems. Sometimes we end up shaping our theology around our culture, rather than the other way around.

Gioia also says we need to do more to develop student imagination and creativity within our educational system. Absolutely.