The Spiritual Role of Art

I ran across this quote yesterday, and it really captured my attention.

"The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. … Art must transcend as well as observe; its role is to bring spiritual vision to bear on reality."

How often in our churches do we use art, whether video, drama, what have you--to be a means to an end, to make a statement, or even just to catch people's attention. I'm not an art expert by any means--it's been an area of the humanities that has always intimidated me--trying to understand the meaning in a blob of abstract paint on canvas. Know what I mean? But this statement forces me to go deeper.

I'm left very challenged to "bring spiritual vision to bear on reality" in my art calling--the spoken word.

Pete


I post here portions of the source article for your further thinking:

"The aim of art is to prepare a person for death," Tarkovsky, who died in 1986, wrote in Sculpting in Time, "to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. … Art must transcend as well as observe; its role is to bring spiritual vision to bear on reality."

Raised in the Russian Orthodox tradition, director Andrei Tarkovsky once told an interviewer, "I consider myself a person of faith, but I do not want to delve into the nuances and problems of my situation, for it is not so straightforward, not so simple, and not so unambiguous."

Tarkovsky's Sculpting in Time stands with Robert Bresson's Notes on the Cinematographer as one of the best books on filmmaking written by a director. It delves deeply into the spirituality of the filmmaker: "Art should be there to remind man that he is a spiritual being, that he is part of an infinitely larger spirit to which he will return in the end."

All of Tarkovsky's films deal with apocalyptic scenarios. He once said, "It would be wrong to consider that the Book of Revelation only contains within itself a concept of punishment, of retribution; it seems to me that what it contains above all is hope."

Excerpt from article by Eric David, CT Movies reviewer.