Art and Christianity

I want to share with you about an organization that I have found to be doing intriguing work in the area of the arts and Christianity.  It is based in the United Kingdom and is appropriately enough named Art+Christianity.  Their website is artandchristianity.org.

In the “About” tab of the website they describe what they do.  They share that “Art and Christianity seeks to foster and explore the dialogue between art, Christianity and other religious faiths.  Through events, publication and consultation, we offer

• education, enquiry and exchange with regard to the relationship between art and faith
• collaboration and partnership with galleries, art institutions and places of worship
• advocacy for and advice on commissioning works of art
• awareness-raising of the diversity of historical and contemporary art in churches

I enjoy visiting their website, have found the guidelines for commissioning art to be helpful, and will one day soon subscribe to their journal.  I invite you to see what they do.

Experiencing Works of Art

          It requires time, patience and discipline to engage with artistic expressions, three qualities that our hurry-and-get-it-done-now world neither appreciates nor encourages.  To walk past a painting and pretend that we have perceived it, is to deceive ourselves.  To watch a movie while talking with friends, unless we have seen the movie before, removes the depth of experience that the filmmaker is offering to us.  To look at pottery in a potter’s showroom, without carefully feeling the nuances of the form, is to miss the joy of the work and the connection with the act of creation.

            To receive the impact of a work of art, one must engage that work, and then integrate the response into one’s thoughts and meditations.  This is nothing less than the careful discipline that any other form of spiritual nourishment requires, in order to fully receive the gift that is offered in that moment.