Art Reflects Society

I’ve been thinking a bit lately on how art reflects society. It seems that we have so much celebration of art that is unlovely and indeed perverse and it’s a damning indictment on our society today. I remember seeing We Are All Flesh by Berlinde De Bruyckere (literally two horse skins with heads removed hung from the gallery roof) in the Art Gallery of SA soon after it was first installed and I was horrified (& I think confused!) that this monstrosity  was allowed to hang amongst the master painters who so carefully created their beautiful works of art with a skill that had been honed over years and years of practice.

A while ago, I took my girls to the SA Art Gallery and we meandered along the ground floor enjoying the amazing works of art by some, very clearly, skilled artists. My personal favourites were the impressionists who used colour and light to give us ‘impressions’ of their subjects. For me, these paintings captured an emotion as well as a moment. Hans Heysen is one of my favourite painters because, apart from being an Aussie, he manages to capture the golden sunlight of the morning as it shines on the gumtrees. Classic Australiana and something I see in real life in the area that I live!

At the time we visited the gallery the artwork for the Ramsay Art Prize was being displayed, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to have a look at some modern art. Well…we were so disappointed! Not one single piece of art work came anywhere near any of the masters downstairs. In fact, I wouldn’t even call the vast majority of it art! No skill displayed, no beauty, just a vast smorgasbord of ideologies that were crass compared to the beauty downstairs. So…we quickly disappeared back down stairs again to the sanctuary of the masters, soaked in their skill and beauty and left!

Again we were disappointed when we visited the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. This time there were rooms and rooms of ideologically soaked works lacking in skill and most of which I wouldn’t even consider art. We couldn’t even find any of the masters (except those who were already perverse in their day!)

Where has society sunk to that we deem this kind of art work acceptable? The total lack of skill, mastery…beauty.

So all this to say - let’s bring beauty back in all we create. God is the author of beauty. You just have to look at nature around you - the vast array of colours in both the flora and fauna, the beautifully shaped trees, the sunsets and sunrises, the night sky. So much beauty on a canvas painted by the ultimate Creator. Let’s celebrate that instead! And let’s create beauty in all we do.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Philippians 4:8