The art class of Adelia Armstrong Lutz
Artistic living completes the experience of walking in beauty. The universe presents us with an avalanche of inner and outer beauty, and artistic living is our opportunity to give back, to cooperate in bringing forth a more beautiful world. Artistic living includes enjoying the high quality recreation of the arts: we visit galleries, attend performances, read poetry and fiction, take classes, and find out for ourselves what it is to paint, sculpt, sing, play an instrument, dance, act, write, dance, or build. At their best, the arts uplift our way of living: painting, sculpture, and literature expand our capacity to perceive and understand; music cultivates our feeling. Without preaching to us, dance can uplift our posture and movement, architecture our dwelling, and drama our action and character. Charmed, we listen, read, or watch, caught up in the aesthetic object that addresses our senses and intellect. We are touched by portrayals so subtle and complex that we could never adequately put into words their nuances of feeling. In society, joy may become a cliché; but the arts are a school of feeling that frees us from stereotyped emotions.
But talk about the arts as delightful, uplifting, and beautiful is misleading as a description of much of what is classified as art. Great art may not gratify the senses because its beauty is concentrated on a higher level. But some art is ugly on the whole, an exercise of materialistic self-assertion in which technical skill and intellectual gifts are put in the service of commercial success or the desire to shock or to display a message devoid of hope. In today’s age of planetary struggle and transition, the arts present extremes of kitsch and chaos; the confusing mix of innovative expression and lostness, confuses the very idea of artistic living.
Clarity breaks through the clouds when we remember beauty’s bonds with truth and goodness, and when we look for works of art that lead us from emotion to insight. The path forward has three steps: appreciate other’s achievements, prepare your creative expression by intelligent design, and know the joy of liberated performance.
How has your involvement in the arts blessed you?
Photo credit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Adelia-armstrong-lutz-art-class.jpg
My appreciation of art is greatest in music, especially when this music produces harmony. I often marvel at the harmony produced by voices. I find that this is extremely pleasurable to me. It is a joy to listen to the harmony and then listen closely and discern the individual voices whose blending produces the harmony.
Dr Perry
I’m about to begin a short series of posts on Bach, including one on harmony. So for now, I’ll just say, once again, thank you so much for blessing us as a pillar of this conversation.
I have been much blessed in this world by being born and raised along the beaches of Santa Monica Bay, California with the blue Pacific Ocean at my doorstep, wondrous, cloud-filled skies during fall and winter, breathtaking sunsets and the seemingly eternal horizon which gladly takes all troubles from any and everyone who comes to its shores. It provides a place for everyone and offers endless delights of goodness in watching families – especially children playing in the sand and water (regardless of season) with such exuberance – who come and enjoy it with me.
The Bay comes with ready access to nearby mountains with many trails through sycamore lined canyons, grassy mesas and stark mountain tops, all within a few minutes drive. The many cultural venues in nearby Los Angeles afford all the opportunities that Jeff alludes to including performances of the very harmonizing voices Dr. Perry writes about.
Out of these experiences and the development of my spiritual life, I have come to know God through beauty and goodness. These experiences and knowledge have led me to feelings of deep appreciation which then give way to thanksgiving and finally surrender to the overwhelming sense of worship.
I now live on a small farm on a gravel road a couple of miles outside of a small town (pop. 164) in the Coast Range of Oregon where endless peace and quiet, abundant beauty and wildlife (and of course, the stars and skies) continue to invite me to celebrate God and my relationship with him as one of his much-loved children.
And my faith teaches me this is but a shadow of what is to come.
Thanks so much for your comment. I’m struck by your delight in the families who come to share the ocean wonders with you. One of the most common functions of a foray into nature is to find solitude–a break from the social stuff.