Word Weld

Art is a strange subject. It is considered sacred to many people. Most people, in fact. Art can do no wrong, it seems. Perhaps not even that. It seems that art is beyond right and wrong. Art is the Great Amoral, in that nothing that is done in the name of art is beholden to any moral law. Even religious people and institutions are of this opinion, and not just in recent years, but in the murky pages of history also. Famous art critic Herbert Read once said:

“Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings; art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim – the ideal good; art has quite another aim – the objective truth… art never changes.”

Irving Stone, a 20th century biographical author, opined:

“Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.”

Is this true? As a Christian, can I accept that art is merely an expression of feelings, that it is a source of objective truth, and that morality can in no way be applied to anything that is deemed “art?” What does God and the Bible have to say about art, if anything? Is there “right” art and “wrong art?”

I’ll skip the rest, since if you read the title of the article and you have read my others, you probably have guessed what I am going to share with you about art: art is not amoral. We are told constantly that it is, but let me submit to you that true art, just like true marriage, true morality, true science, true religion, true education, and so forth, is under attack in our society. However, with art, this has been going on for a while, whereas some of the other attacks have been going on only in the last hundred or so years. You see them everywhere, after all: nude pictures, nude statues, graphic violence or disturbing scenes or techniques shock people, yet we are quickly told, “It’s only art!”

That was essentially the defense offered by Kathy Griffin after she held a photo shoot with a severed Donald Trump head, wasn’t it? The photographer even made the statement,

“…when you make art, you can do anything you want.”

How true it seems that is. Still, there was a lot of outrage about the Griffin fiasco. Conservatives and even some liberals were saying it was horrible and terrible, while most liberals were defending that it was ok since there had been violent displays against Obama when he was in office. I won’t get into that, it is very telling that the “art defense” was used to protect what Griffin did. Is it good enough?

Art has been defended throughout the centuries from the nagging of moral responsibility. After all, nude statues date back to the Greeks (who were, as we all know, well known for their moral purity). Nude paintings were not long after, until now we are at the point where something does not have to be chiseled from stone or painted on canvas. Now, all that is required is that we call it art, right? This leads to some moral questions that Christians especially need to ask themselves seriously, and be ready to be painfully honest about the answers.

Jesus plainly says:

“But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” – Matthew 5:28

So, looking at a woman to lust after her is the same as adultery to God. Now, I think it is safe to state that looking at an unclothed or partially unclothed woman is infinitely more likely to produce lust than looking at a fully clothed woman. After all, many men find themselves stimulated by mannequins (and I’m not talking about men with fetishes, I’m talking about ordinary men) or things merely shaped like women. Men are easily stimulated by the female form, as God designed us to be. Yet, naked art is defended, even by Christians, who seem to be coming from the “art is amoral” point of view, that it has no morality and is intrinsically neutral no matter what it portrays. But that could not be further from the truth. After all, if a man is stimulated by the sight of an unclothed mannequin, how much different is a mannequin than a sculpture? And here is the zinger: if even photography is considered art, and a photograph of a naked woman is protected as art, what is the difference between said photo and a photograph from a porn site? Because I submit to you that the only difference is the label.

Music is not protected either. Music is considered an art form, yet music can produce everything from strong emotion to mental instability. The concept of music, like the concept of art, is morally neutral, but everything that is art is not morally neutral. A painting of a beautiful woman could be considered morally neutral, but a painting of the same woman nude would cause it to be immoral, in the same way that there is nothing wrong with a woman standing in front of her house, but there is something immoral about her standing naked in front of her house. Now, granted, it is more difficult to make immoral music (apart from with the use of lyrics) than it is to make immoral art, but that does not mean that all music is moral so long as it doesn’t have bad lyrics.

We have to learn, especially as Christians, that almost everything in the world can be used for evil, and art is one of the most dangerous tools of evil because people assume it to morally untouchable. Even science, often touted as amoral, has given us such horrors as abortion and “gender reassignment surgery,” besides what it has done to our food and the vaccine industry.

Art has become a Trojan Horse, which sits snugly and comfortably into whatever fortress (be it liberal, conservative, or Christian) that it comes to rest within, and disgorges all manner of vile evil, protected by the ironclad barrier of “it’s art!” Well, we can call it art if we want, but God still calls it sin. Pornography is the same in a photograph, a video online, in an art gallery, or on an ancient Roman statue. It’s all picturing the same thing, and has the same effect on human beings, even if they pretend it is different. The same is true of violence “art” of Kelly Griffin’s variety: horrific violence is horrific violence anywhere it is portrayed, and the truth is that someone holding up a severed head of someone they hate is, according to Jesus in Matthew, the same thing in God’s eyes as murdering them. Why? Because as Jesus also said in Matthew:

 ^“But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.” – Matthew 15:18-20

Twentieth century philosopher and journalist Albert Camus once made this statement:

“In a world that has ceased to believe in sin, the artist is responsible for the preaching.”

We need to be circumspect in how we view art, be it photography, painting, sculpture, writing, music, or any other venue that uses that label, because God does not qualify sin based on how it is presented. Remember Paul’s (really God’s) words:

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
– 1 Thessalonians 5:21-23