Art and Culture

Something I’ve been considering a lot these days is the relationship between art and culture.

It’s a conversation we had back in my college art history classes—how movements such as Dadaism were thought to reflect the culture’s dismay. In actuality, many modernist movements actually pushed the culture into the artist’s dismay and skepticism rather than the other way around. It’s a strange phenomenon, but when an artist had a powerful patron, their message could drive its way into the intelligentsia and then be passed down into the education system and into the culture. 

Throughout the twentieth century, the church harshly criticized without understanding these movements, whether they were in painting, music, television, or literature. Christians rejected the arts in droves. Multiple avenues of media were left vacant and guess who fed the popular culture and the souls of young people with it… not Christians. At least, not often enough. 

Good art is like a bulldozer. It cannot be argued with. It just is. It stands as a demonstration of its own message. This is true for both Christian and non-Christian art. So if our message fails to go out, is it because our culture doesn’t like us? Or is it because we aren’t speaking to what is really needy and desperate in the hearts of the humans around us?

Tolstoy and Dostoyevski were highly circulated even throughout the Soviet Communist anti-Christian periods. People couldn’t get Bibles, but they could get the gospel through Dostoyevski. Likewise, the Beatles tore into a mostly-Christian American culture and popularized Eastern religions, offering alternatives to those who were seeking spiritual enlightenment. And in another odd turn, sci-fi nerds everywhere still quote Gandolf and connect with the God they don’t know in The Lord of the Rings. 

This article is a simplification of a complex series of movements. However, the main point is, whoever controls the arts gets to speak into the hearts of people. But if the art is profound enough, the powers-that-be will not prevent it from blasting its way into the mainstream. 

Encourage your Christian artists, writers, creators. They are your bulldozers. Your big guns. They are perhaps one of the few inroads for truth left to infiltrate the lies and darkness of our times.