tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34908271550316793022024-02-08T07:26:42.830-08:00Each With Our Own Brushsteve scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418170825481131805noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3490827155031679302.post-64388948661658732832011-03-02T14:38:00.000-08:002011-03-02T14:38:22.501-08:00I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles (Mona)Hi<br />
i'm posting a `work in progress'....a semi re edited version of an essay that I wrote (and got published by PRISM magazine) back in the mid 1990s. I'm reworking it for inclusion in the book `Each with our own brush'........ Here's where we are `at' so far. Bear with occasional typos and format glitches.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span>I'D WALK A MILLION MILES FOR ONE OF YOUR SMILES (MONA)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>`The question of whether or not art will change the world is not <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>a relevant question anymore. The world is changing already, in <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>inescapable ways. We can no longer deny the evidence at hand. The <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>need to transform the egocentric vision that is encoded in our <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>entire world view is the crucial task that lies ahead for our <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>culture. The issue is whether art will rise to the occasion and <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>make itself useful to all that is going on.'<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Suzi Gablik `Making Art as if the world mattered'</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the early 1970s I was in Paris, France, as part of a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">city wide evangelical outreach. Almost every day we would be out, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">passing out tracts, putting up posters for meetings and talking <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">to people on the street. When we weren't doing that, we were in <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bible studies, prayer meetings and times of worship.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">On one of the few afternoons we had a little spare time, some of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">us made our way to the Louvre museum. I have forgotten a good <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">deal of what I saw. One thing that sticks in my mind<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">is the large crowd gathered round a small painting known as `The <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mona Lisa'<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we made our way back from the museum I can remember glancing <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">into the window of a record store, and noting that David Bowie's <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">new album, `Aladdin Sane' was now out. This recollection sets the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">tone for what I want to say, because it reminds me<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of those of us who were Christians and art students at the time, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">looking for ways of bringing the three worlds of Fine Art, Pop <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">culture and evangelical Christianity together.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In what follows I try to briefly sketch out some of the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">differences that are emerging in contemporary culture in the wake <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of what is called `Post Modernism,' because I believe that an <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">understanding of these differences is vitally important to the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">three worlds I mentioned above. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">1: A Crash Course for the Ravers <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> `It is impossible to say precisely when one can speak of the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">existence of two distinct and bitterly conflicting modernities. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">What is certain is that at some point during the first half of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the nineteenth century an irreversible split occurred between <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">modernity as a stage in the history of Western Civilization-a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">product of scientific and technological progress, of the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">industrial revolution, of the sweeping economic and social <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">changes brought about capitalism- and modernity as an aesthetic <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">concept. Since then the relations between the two modernities <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">have been irreducibly hostile, but not without allowing and even <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">stimulating a variety of mutual influences in their rage for each <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">other's destruction.' (Matei Calinescu `The Five Faces of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Modernity' Duke University Press, 1987)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Calinescu goes on to map the landscape of what he is talking about.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The first modernity was <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">driven by the idea of progress,increasing confidence in benefits <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of science and technology, a marriage of reason and pragmatism, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">resulting in an `instrumental rationalism.'<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The other modernity (for which I will use the term `modernism' <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">to help cut down on the clutter)was the birth place of the avant <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">garde in culture and art. It often combined radical social ideas <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">with radical approaches to art. It set out to confront and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">challenge the cultural and social conformities that were <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">springing up in the wake of modernity's relentless expansion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Marcel Duchamp painted whiskers onto a reproduction of the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mona Lisa, he was throwing down the gauntlet to a system of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">cultural values and inherited good taste that seemed increasingly <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">irrelevant to an era rocked by social upheaval, revolution and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">war. Not only was Duchamp and those like him responding to his <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">time, but they were also opening the door for all those hard <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">questions and increasing uncertainties that were starting to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">impact the worlds of the sciences. As the `big picture' began to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">change in the areas of cosmology and physics, other pictures <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">began to change also. A revolution in ideas began to take hold <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">in areas as diverse as Cultural anthropology, linguistics, and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the philosophy of science that revealed to us both the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">complexity and the smallness of the world we inhabited. It also <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">revealed that our way of describing things (already under review <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">in the hard sciences) was simply one among many. We came to see <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">that knowledge was `personal,' influenced by consensus and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">convictions, and our big picture, controlling paradigm, or world <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">view had a particular history, and had even been shaped at some <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">levels by the language we used to describe it. This crisis in <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">our world view cast a shadow across the unquestioned assumptions <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">that drove the engines of modernity. The various attempts to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">regroup and rethink our relationship to the past, and come up <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">with a new model or paradigm for the future come together under <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the umbrella term `Post Modernism.'<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">(Artists like)Duchamp challenged the accepted notions of art with `anti art,' <b><i>not <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><b><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">only</span></i></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> opening the door for future generations who would challenge <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the conventions of artistic taste,, but (by)also forging the beginnings <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of a link between the general crisis in modernity and the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">eventual demise of (cultural)modernism.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">How and why did this happen?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The failure of modernism in the arts is linked back to at least <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">three things. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Firstly:In spite of the variety of its imaginative expressions, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">modernism in the arts was necessarily rooted in the same cultural <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">and philosophical soil as the overriding modernity it sought to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">challenge and critique. This `soil' was a world view haunted by <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">a profound dualism. In the ancient days of philosophical <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">idealism, this dualism opposed the realm of eternal truths and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ideal forms and the realm of contingent material reality. As <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">modern `rationalism’ supplanted ancient tradition, then the dualism <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">re surfaced as a split between `faith' and `reason' creating <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">separate, self contained worlds of `neutral facts' and `inner <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">values.' <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Secondly , many of the underlying dynamics that drove modernity <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">in its quest for ongoing progress and expansion ended up <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Unconsciously(?) influencing the vocational agendas of artists who <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">have made their `careers' attempting to confront and challenge <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">modernity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thirdly, modernism's attempts to confront modernity, whether <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">through `rebellious' imaginative expression, shocking anti art, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">or extreme self reflexive abstraction invariably ended up being <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">neutralized and assimilated by the gallery system and prevailing <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">critical discourse. The artists were drawn back into the very <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">system they were trying to confront..<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> How does Post Modernism differ? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> How does it retrieve(or take up??) the challenge that modernism failed to rise <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to, and what new things does it try to tell us about art at the end of modernity?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">I would like to offer four suggestions as to how it does this.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 1:It challenges, retrieves and recuperates aspects of its <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">own history. If the larger crisis of modernity is calling into <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">question the controlling assumptions of our world view, then it <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">may well be that an art history written as if those assumptions <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">were unquestionably correct and universally valid may need a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">thorough overhaul. Artists and movements marginalized by <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">`official history' may be due for reappraisal. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 2: Also due for reappraisal and evaluation are those social <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">and historical factors that influence the way we decide <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">something is art, and the way we look at it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The entire complex of gallery and museum exhibition, art <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">criticism, and all the other factors that affect how we approach <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">something we have been told is `art' are undergoing scrutiny as <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">part of the larger crisis of modernity, and as part of the post <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">mortem on `modernism.' The concept of `the artist' is also <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">undergoing critical reevaluation . Inspired genius? Cultural <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">worker? What does their art work reveal or hide about their <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">social and historical situation?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> „---------------„--------------- <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 3:In the light of the critical rethinking of our fine art <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">tradition , and radical re evaluation of our cultural history <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">what do we make of the previously held distinctions between <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">popular culture, mass culture and high art? There has always <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">been exchange between these three cultural trajectories.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some examples of popular culture inspired fine artists, or, over <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">time came to be seen as fine art itself. Some fine art has been <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">genuinely popular, and has also provided raw material for <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">assimilation into `mass culture.'<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">`Mass Culture' should be understood as an aspect of modernity. In <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the name of `democratizing' culture, it targets the `felt need' <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of a community for some kind of cultural dimension and markets <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">culture conceived of as a commodity to the lowest common <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">denominator in the spectrum of that `felt need.' This approach <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">to culture will borrow from popular culture, high art, and in <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">some cases `social relevance' to come up with a marketable <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">commodity, or marketing strategy. In spite of all the exchanges <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">that have gone on between these three cultures the boundaries <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">have always been firmly in place. Or at least they were until the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Post modernist artist and thinkers began to redescribe the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">cultural landscape. In this new landscape the moral indignation <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of Duchamp's defaced Mona Lisa gives way to the deadpan irony of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Andy warhol's silkscreened Mona Lisa. Duchamp questioned <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">cultural values in an era of social upheaval while Warhol <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">questioned the sanctity and aura of the unique art object in an <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">era of mass reproduction. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">4: Another aspect of our cultural landscape that is <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">undergoing redescription involves our relationship to other <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">cultures. While some artists have felt free to borrow from <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">artistic forms in other cultures, some museums have <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">(traditionally)put cultural artifacts on display as ethnographic <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">data that in some way supports our assumptions about cultural and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">social evolution. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">We have also tended to view other cultures in the light of our <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">own artistic preferences. As we rethink our relationships to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">other cultures we are realizing that our particular view of what <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">good art is, and how it relates to a society is just that: a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">particular view. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The collapse of modernity as a universal technological panacea <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">and the failure of (cultural)modernism to effectively critique and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">challenge the cultural status quo clears the way for a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">reappraisal of other world views and other cultures. Post <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">modernity and cultural pluralism go hand in hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Post modern cultural theory calls into question all the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">previously held assumptions about history, culture and cultures. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Accordingly, much post modern art attempts to keep its footing <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">by keeping moving. It borrows images, styles and themes from <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the newly leveled cultural and historical landscape, sometimes <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">appreciatively, sometimes ironically, in its quest to combine the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ongoing relentless criticism of the old order, with the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">celebration of the new order, or of no discernible order. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we begin to conclude this somewhat sketchy overview, we might <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ask ,where does that leave the world of `evangelical <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Christianity' in terms of the three worlds I was hoping to see <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">brought closer together?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of course Christianity suffers as a system of truth and ultimate <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">values in an intellectual and cultural climate which seeks to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">deconstruct any claims to certainty and `absolutes' and reveal <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">them as historically grounded fictions or thinly disguised grabs <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">for power. And of course, it is important that Christians risk <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">telling and doing the truth in such a climate. What is at stake <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">is not just a particular idea about high art, or even a shared <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">consensus about right and wrong. Under this kind of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">deconstructive scrutiny the very idea of the `self' or `human <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">being' may end up looking like a linguistic formulation, or a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">socially mandated fiction. Will Christians respond, though? Will <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">they step into the marketplace of ideas at the end of history, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">with a message that redeems the concept of the individual, and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">places it in the context of a community, and accountability <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">before a personal God? If the current cultural efforts of what <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">has been dubbed `the evangelical subculture' is anything to go <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">by, the picture is not too bright. Why?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">I want to suggest that much of what finds expression in this <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">subculture suffers in the same way that the rest of the cultural <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">and intellectual world suffers. It not only feels the effects of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">`the end of modernity' it also experiences a crisis similar to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the one modern art went though.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> ((Really??????))What are the similarities?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> I suggested earlier three factors that contributed to the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">failure of modernism in the arts. How do these factors impact <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the Evangelical subculture?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Firstly, this subculture is haunted by dualism. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The ancient philosophical dualism that divided the world into a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">realm of ideal truths, eternal forms and a world of appearances <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">and contingent reality still haunts much of this Evangelical <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">subculture in the guise of the `sacred/secular' distinction. The <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">more modern dualism with its split between `facts' and `values' <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">builds upon this `sacred/secular' distinction by building a wall <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of separation between emotional feeling and critical thinking. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">This dualism in both its ancient idealist/gnostic and its modern <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">rationalist/skeptical forms attempted to separate the Jesus of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">history from the Christ of faith. If we operate as if this <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">dualism (in whatever form it presents itself) is true then we <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">risk opening the back door to a version of this error. We also <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">risk setting up a conflict between an orthodox verbal confession <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">and a heretical mindset and practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Secondly, some of this subculture's idea of expression and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">effective ministry is severely compromised. Not only is some of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">our thinking paralyzed by the ancient and modern dualisms but <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">some of our thinking and doing is compromised by being `unequally <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">yoked' to some of the driving forces and underlying agendas of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the culture we are trying to reach. Those forces might convince <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">us that bigger is better, whatever works must have some truth to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">it, and the ends do, in fact, justify the means. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Thirdly, in the light of points one and two, this subculture <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">is assimilated back into the very system it seeks to critique.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">This `evangelical subculture becomes useful only insofar as it <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">helps prop us the existing status quo. Or, conversely it becomes <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">viable as a commodity, one option among many in the fragmentary <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">pluralism that follows in the wake of modernity's collapse. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">And, also in the light of points one and two as this subculture <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">surrenders the option of deep an consistent Biblical thinking and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">replaces it with an approach to the surface of scripture as <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">fragmentary and misleading as any advertising slogan or political <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">soundbite, then it ends up resembling a symptom of the very <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">problem it claims it wants to address….<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> How do we change? How do we move beyond mimicking the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">symptoms of Postmodernism, or merely reacting to some of its <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">effects? How do we engage with and respond to some of these ideas <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">as Christians, and how, ultimately do we link all this back to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">art? I want to wrap this up by asking if there is anything <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">we can possibly learn from the Post modern position? I am going <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">to make some suggestions based on the four points I made about <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Post modernism and art history earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 1: I mentioned `deep Biblical thinking' above. This is <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">necessarily preceded by close reading. A close reading of the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">gospels reveals a social world in which, from a Roman point of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">view, nothing was sacred. One could believe in as many or as few <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gods as one liked, debate customs, culture, fasting, food, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">clothing and ceremonial law, so long as one remembered, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">at the end of the day, all kidding aside, Caesar was God. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Gospels also reveal a world in which, for the Religious authorities, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">nothing was secular. The revealed Law was interpreted in such a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">way, and channeled through an infrastructure of Rabbinic <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">commentary and tradition, so as to impinge on most areas of an <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ordinary person's life. The Gospels reveal hoe Jesus set in <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">motion a series of events that questioned the foundational <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">assumptions of both these world views, while at the same time <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">retrieving and recuperating those elements of society who were <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">pushed to the periphery and marginalized by those world views. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> „ <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 2: We can begin to understand how the New testament might <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">be relevant to our attempts to analyze the power centers and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">established worldviews in our own day. Is it possible to train a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">more analytical, critically distanced eye upon church history? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">What would we learn about the development of this institution? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">We saw earlier that social, historical and economic factors have <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">some bearing upon the role art plays in our culture. How have <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">they impacted the growth of the church, with all its forms, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">different emphases of ideas, doctrines and ceremonial practices?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 3:As we retrieve a New Testament worldview that balances <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">`holism' with sharp analysis, and start to lay bare some of the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">influences and agendas that impacted some of developments in <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">church thought and practice, then some of the previously held <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">distinctions between `sacred' and `secular' (just like the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">distinctions between high art and popular culture) undergo deep <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">revision. I am going to suggest that we have to do a couple of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">things. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Firstly we have to balance a deepened appreciation for <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">what the New testament actually teaches about those two <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">spheres, with a more exacting critical analysis of the underlying <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">social and historical factors that led the church community to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">declare certain things `sacred' and `secular' at different times <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">in its growth. Secondly, we have to remain sensitive to how <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">these categories function in cultures different than our own.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> 4: If, as Swedish Minister and writer Olov Hartman says, the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ideas of `sacred' and `secular' were nailed to the cross with <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Jesus Christ, then in my opinion, we should read the account of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the second Chapter of Acts <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">as a decisive deathblow to any notions of a single, definitive <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">`Christian culture.' Everybody there heard something they could <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">understand, regardless of their linguistic or cultural <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">background. True worship and proclamation found culturally <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">plural expression, and laid the foundation for us to retrieve the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">concept of cultural pluralism, without succumbing to any form of <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">relativism in the area of Truth. The early church did this by <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">anchoring the many culturally distinct expressions of the faith <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">in the historical and social particularity of Jesus of Nazareth. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">For the church to speak effectively into a culturally diverse, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">cosmopolitan situation, it had to be built upon the foundation <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">of a leader and teacher who claimed to be the embodiment of God, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">and also the definitive demonstration of God's intention towards <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">His creation. This leader and teacher was not only born into the <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">human family, but also willingly underwent adult <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">baptism/immersion into a particular community, in a particular <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">historical and social situation. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">We Christian artists and thinkers should pause here, and <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">reflect. we often refer `the incarnation' when alluding to our <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">own struggles to make or justify our art. We often talk about <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the graciousness of God, who revealed his power in weakness, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">taking on the limitations of human form. We use this allusion to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">undergird our own struggles with giving material expression to an <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">idea. We are used to drawing upon the mystery of `the two <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">natures in one person' to somehow anchor our own concerns with <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">the relationship between form and content in an artwork. If we <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">are going to have anything to say to the postmodern condition we <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">need to move our understanding of incarnation, and our <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">understanding of art past the questions of form, content, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">humanity and divinity, and move into the questions of history, <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">community, context and reception, questions that necessarily come <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">to the surface when we consider the Biblical story of the True <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">god who chose to become a particular man, in a particular culture <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">at a particular juncture in history. Anything less, is merely a <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">sophisticated version of the `Christ of Faith/Jesus of history' <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">heresy I allude to above.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Can we as Christian artists and cultural workers overcome this <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">implicit dualism in our own thinking in order to (in Ms Gablik's <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">words) `rise to the occasion, and make ourselves useful to all <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">that is going on?' <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">This question is still with us, and like the Mona Lisa's <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">mysterious smile, it threatens to haunt us for some time to <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">come. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;"><br />
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</div>steve scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418170825481131805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3490827155031679302.post-75249392470855651402010-11-30T15:31:00.001-08:002010-11-30T15:31:29.315-08:00Love Will Tear Us Apart (again)<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">LOVE WILL TEAR US APART (AGAIN)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When the routine bites hard/ and ambitions are low/ and the resentment rides high<br />
But emotions won’t grow/ and we’re changing our ways, /Taking different roads<br />
Then love, love will tear us apart again</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> ( Ian Curtis/Joy Division)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One of my recent `finds’ on `YouTube’ was an amateur<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>video clip from a concert in which U2 joined Arcade Fire for a cover version of Joy Division’s `Love Will Tear Us Apart.’ I was attracted by the raw immediacy of the images from what I guess is a phone with built in camera <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>held up among the swaying, jostling audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was also struck by the way the audience sang along on the chorus, giving the song an almost anthemic feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This struck me as a useful way of beginning these reflections on faith and technology. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of these images, images shot during a concert in Madrid and beamed to me here in Northern California via the internet, I got a strong sense of solidarity and connectedness conveyed to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a bittersweet experience, listening to Bono and audience make something very joyous and anthemic out of such a melancholy song. I spent a few more minutes online and found radically different cover versions of the same song, performed by a variety of artists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a good example of the way in which themes, images and artwork are subjected to re interpretation, and reappropriation in new contexts. It happens all the time….especially in our culture of late or post modernity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, for me, it is the original Joy Division version that gives me an authoritative `read’ on this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>song. I came way from watching the 1970s video clips of that band, fronted by the late Ian Curtis, with a sense that I was watching something unravel before my eyes. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Actually, I had gone onto YouTube in quest of a different song. I was tracking down various examples of David Bowie performing `All the young Dudes.’ I found several, and again, in some of the more recent concert footage, I saw audiences caught up, and singing along almost joyously with the chorus of a song , that, in its original `context’ struck me as a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rather melancholy reflection on the death of 1960s idealism. Here again was an example of a pop culture artifact in which radical re interpretation creates a context for enthusiasm and nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I had just begun at Art School in the 1960s when<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a counterculture with new ideas about reality, belief, politics, art and life exploded into public awareness at this time. Some of these ideas<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>were rooted in spiritual exploration; others were grounded in deconstructive skeptical analysis. Artists and musicians as diverse as David Bowie, the Who, The Beatles (etc) began to draw together elements of `high’ and `low/pop ‘ culture and collage them together in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>post modern pastiche as a way of exploring and commenting on these ideas. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of these ideas, birthed in a different time, and communicated by a different technology, nonetheless have a profound impact on some of our discussions about faith and life today. As I look at a U2/Arcade Fire cover version of a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joy Division song, literally `phoned in’ by an enthusiastic fan, I remind myself that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Beatles album `Sergeant Pepper’ was recorded on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a couple of analog four track recorders slaved together in the studio. As I listen to `All the young Dudes’ I remind myself that some viewed this song as a melancholy reflection on the failed idealism of `All you need is love.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In spite of this failed idealism, I have suggested above that some of the ideas have lingered, influencing some of our current conversations. I see a resemblance between the exploration of the expanded ideas about `art and life’ and our expanded ideas of church and mission. The Twentieth century was rocked by scientific, social and political revolution as well as corresponding<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cultural ones, and I feel that some of our discussions about the nature of the church are unfolding in the shadow<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of those revolutions. The way some of us talk about redefining the relationship between church/mission and world reminds me of some of the conversations I used to hear about overcoming the barriers between `art’ and `life.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let me touch briefly on three examples. Someone like Avant Garde composer John Cage wanted to change the way we listen to `ordinary sounds’ and silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought that listening in the right frame of mind was a step towards recognizing there are no barriers between art and life. Cultural and social theorists like Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, on the other hand, describe our experience of `real life’ as a market driven illusion. We live in `the society of the spectacle,’ and the `realm of the simulacra.’ They are proposing that our experience of `real life’ is something socially structured, and grounded in the all embracing logic of the image. Then again, German performance artist Joseph Beuys tackled the art-and-life issue in a completely different way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Beuys proposed his theory of `social sculpture’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he undertook a body of practice that included<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sculptural objects, drawings, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tree planting ,live performance, interviews and blackboard lectures, all with the express intent of awakening<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>people to their own latent creativity<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in order to create real world social transformation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>. While, in retrospect, some might say that Beuys and his project was flawed with the same kinds of utopian thinking that we touched on earlier, I find his work to be more stimulating as I reflect on the way some of our discussions about art in relation to life are faintly echoed in our conversations about some of the emerging forms of church and `mission’…<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nonetheless, when I take an admittedly partial, biased and superficial stroll through books, articles, wikis and websites to do with all things emergent and missional, I never trip over the name Joseph Beuys. This perhaps, is understandable. It is a bit of a leap from<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a round table conversation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>about new emergent forms of mission<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to living in a room with a coyote for three days (`I like America, America likes me’) It is quite a jump to go from dissecting the obsolete forms of the Constantinian /Christendom paradigm to sitting in a gallery with<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>gold leaf all over your face and whispering stuff about art history to a dead animal in your arms (`Explaining pictures to a dead hare’) However,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when Beuys suggested in an interview at the time (1964) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that he thought that the dead hare<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>stood a better chance of understanding and appreciating what he had to say than some of the people walking through the gallery, he made a point<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that I think hits dangerously close to home today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Someone else I never see mentioned is Thomas F. Torrance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This omission is much more bewildering than my previous example. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Torrance has written extensively, comprehensively and lucidly on the history of scientific discovery, and the changing shape of approaches and ideas in the realm of the sciences. Not only has he cogently demonstrated the relationships between adopted `scientific’) worldviews and resultant theological formulations, he has also drawn parallels between the cosmology and worldview of the early church and the newer discoveries in physics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His `ancient /future’ approach suggestively links Patristic thought with Post Einsteinian ideas about time and space. Our ideas about God, Torrance argues, are influenced by the kind of box we try and put Him in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Torrance asks us to take off the conceptual straitjackets fashioned from obsolete, Newtonian ideas, and linear `instrumental rationalism’ and head (kind of) back to the future. In short, the guy is the Nazz of the paradigm shift. He does much of the heavy lifting in exploring and describing the kind of reality some of our newer ideas about the nature of church and mission spring from. However, I bring up Torrance not just to draw attention to the conceptual groundwork he has done on our behalf. I want to mention an earlier monograph of his called `The concept of Grace in the apostolic Fathers’ This brief work, originally published in the late 1940s described a rather sad `paradigm shift’ in the early church. He describes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>how the idea of `grace’ as the personal quality of a gracious God was emptied out, and replaced with the idea of `grace’ as an abstract and malleable <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>quantity….something<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that would need to be channeled<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>through sacramental and institutional frameworks….guarded and administered<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by `special’ people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, Torrance’s patient dissection of this root problem in some areas of earlier church thinking and practice has direct application to us, whatever model or paradigm of church we subscribe to. I am not, for one minute, discounting Torrance’s monumental contribution to mapping the conceptual ground out of which all things `emergent’ move and have their being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am suggesting, however, that his writings on the changing understandings of `Grace’ also speak to us today, and further, bring us<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>closer (much closer) to what the Apostle Paul was talking about<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when he `beseeched’ the church at Rome<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to be `transformed by the renewing of (their) mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">PAUL<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When the apostle Paul wrote to these Christians about `renewing their minds,’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the 11<sup>th</sup> and 12<sup>th</sup> sections of his letter to this church, he spoke into a very specific<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>historical situation. Jewish Christians were returning to Rome (having been told to leave in 49 AD by Claudius, I believe.) When they got there, they found a flourishing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>community of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>non Jewish<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>believers. Paul found himself addressing a delicate `cross cultural’ situation in which Gentile believers with no background in Jewish custom or law were acting as if they were `superior’ to those Jewish believers who still emphasized some traditional practices. Paul acknowledged, and argued comprehensively that both groups were `saved by Grace’…..but <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he also allowed that some of the Jewish Christians were still `weak in conscience’ when it came to the food laws, and were still in process towards<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>experiencing the full liberty that God had granted them in Christ. Paul wrote<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to the Gentile believers who believed that God had made an end of the law `in Christ’ and was therefore `done’ with Jewish concepts and traditions and pointed out to them that God, in His grace, had `grafted the `wild branches’ of the Gentiles into the true vine. If, however, these Gentiles became complacent and arrogant, God could break them off, just as He had done with the `natural branches’ of Jewish stock (Romans 11:17-23). Paul regarded the arrogance, `high mindedness’ and `spiritual one upmanship’ of some of these Gentile believers in relation to their `weaker brethren’ as nothing more than `conformity to the world,’ and accordingly pleaded with them to radically change their thinking and behavior(Rom 12: 1-4) This `renewal of the mind’ that Paul<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wrote of had little to do<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with forms of ecclesiology,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>systems theory, quantum physics,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plato, Constantine, Christendom, centers, margins and the like, and plenty to do with real world relationships between<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>groups of believers drawn from different cultural<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>traditions.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe you have read this far, and are wondering what this possibly has to do with issues of faith and technology. Perhaps, if you will allow that Paul qualifies as an `Apostolic Genius’ you will also allow that he<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some relevant insights into<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what the core issues are, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>regardless of our form of worship or conceptual model of `the Church.’ If we fail to grasp the relevance of these insights for our own time and church paradigm, then I suspect that when we think of faith and technology in the future, we will largely be celebrating how easy it is to go online and plug back into some kind of virtual celebration that weaves together a sense of solidarity with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia as we sing along and celebrate the way things ought to be, the way things could have been.<o:p></o:p></span></div>steve scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418170825481131805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3490827155031679302.post-82763172773759617812010-10-26T22:11:00.000-07:002010-10-26T22:11:10.547-07:00When the kissing had to stop.<div class="MsoNormal">This is the draft version .....<br />
<br />
When the Kissing Had to Stop: Converse Dialogues with Balinese Art<br />
<br />
An Asian proverb says `If you want to learn about water, you do not ask the<br />
fish...". It is hard for a convert to be objective about the process they<br />
are going through. Skeptical observers of the conversion experience<br />
invariably ask "to what, from what, and for how long?" I try to keep these<br />
things in mind as I talk about my experiences in Bali and Java. I also keep<br />
in mind some of the traditional art forms we associate with that part of<br />
the world: shadow theater puppets, masks, and elaborate dances sometimes<br />
performed in a `trance state.' Hopefully, the hard questions and my strong<br />
attraction to some aspects of the culture will bring some balance to these<br />
remarks.<br />
<br />
The traditional approach to arts and culture in Bali seems very different<br />
to the `museum and gallery' approach in the Fine Arts which we have in the<br />
West. Due to the intertwining of several intellectual and cultural<br />
developments in our culture, we have separated art from many other aspects<br />
of life. We have tried to protect the aesthetic dimension from the different schools</div><div class="MsoNormal"> of thought that wanted to analyze truth and `reality’ in linear terms. In doing this, </div><div class="MsoNormal">some say that we have cut beauty, truth, morality and utility adrift. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
In Bali, by comparison, there is no word for `Art.' It is said that the<br />
Balinese try to do everything beautifully, or artfully. Wooden masks and<br />
the leather shadow puppets are carefully carved and painted. Performances,<br />
from rudimentary village ceremonies to complex music and drama, are<br />
precisely and gracefully handled. Every ritual, from simple rice offerings<br />
made at a roadside shrine to the elaborate temple dances inviting the gods<br />
to descend, is part of this dynamic continuum. Social, cultural and<br />
spiritual practices seem to interpenetrate in a way which holds the<br />
personal, social and cosmic worlds in dynamic balance. Furthermore, the<br />
cultural forms and imagery draw heavily upon the lush surrounding nature for inspiration.<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
Is it any wonder that naturalists, explorers, and anthropologists have come<br />
here in days gone by and declared Bali a paradise? Or that artists, writers<br />
and musicians have arrived to celebrate the idyllic quality of Balinese<br />
life and culture, as they found it? They have also gone on to mourn the<br />
culture's inevitable change and decline, blaming everything from<br />
Eurocentric cultural imperialism to the growth of the tourist economy.<br />
Which makes one wonder: did the 'real Bali' ever even exist?<br />
<br />
So, back to our skeptical questioner. Are we converting `from’ the sterility </div><div class="MsoNormal">and bankruptcy (as some would see it) of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>our Museum based and increasingly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>market driven art world? If so, in the light of the lamentations<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of some of those </div><div class="MsoNormal">who have discovered Bali…..can we be sure of what we are converting to?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Before I go on , I would like to say that in spite of the marked<br />
differences between our `museum-based' approach to the arts and the more<br />
contextualized approach associated with cultures like Bali, both approaches<br />
have produced wonderful art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However…on with my personal testimony.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My personal encounter with Bali came about as a result of two International</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Christian arts conferences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These conferences drew<br />
people like moths to a particularly enticing flame. Artists came literally<br />
from all over the world to share their faith, their visions and their<br />
struggles. And what better place than Bali to do it in? We could observe,<br />
`up close,' a culture in which art, life and spirituality were still<br />
interwoven. We could interact with Balinese Christian art makers and dream<br />
our own dreams of what such an integrated approach to culture might look<br />
like once suitably redeemed and transformed. Personally, I left both<br />
conferences `fired up' with the potential I caught a glimpse of there,<br />
making my own side trips to Java to gain a little more exposure to these<br />
cultures which so attracted me. However, in my travels and my subsequent<br />
reflections I was haunted by questions. Was this the real thing? How could<br />
I be sure?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
In Jogjakarta I purchased the book Bali 1912 , a collection of photographic<br />
prints made from the glass slides taken by anthropologist Gregor Krause in<br />
the early 1900s. Perhaps here, in these crystal clear black and white<br />
prints of temples, children, waterfalls and faces, I would find `the real<br />
Bali.' But even here, was I looking at what was `real' or was I up against<br />
the selective framing and the acute focus of a sympathetic, but paternal,<br />
observer?<br />
<br />
Perhaps the `real Bali' is not so easily documented. Not only does nature<br />
and culture weave together to paint a picture of integration, but so do the<br />
visible and the invisible dimensions of existence. To speak of the 'real<br />
Bali' is to speak of its underlying spirituality. An important aspect of<br />
that spirituality, for many, is the trance state. Would I find the `real<br />
Bali' here, in those practices centered on going into trance or `entering<br />
the other mind?'<br />
<br />
I had the chance to observe some things firsthand, and heard and read about<br />
others.<br />
I watched Balinese priests writhe on the floor, seemingly intent on<br />
lacerating themselves with sacred knives. I know that in some villages<br />
young girls perform the fabled sangyang dedari trance dance, allegedly<br />
possessed by the spirits of `heavenly nymphs.' But even here we should ask</div><div class="MsoNormal"> about the tangled relationship between the<br />
observer and the observed. Who is truly in trance here? </div><div class="MsoNormal">Is it the priests and the young girls caught in the spiritual dark side of.</div><div class="MsoNormal">the 'real Bali' or is it us, hypnotized byour own unfulfilled wishes, hopes and dreams? </div><div class="MsoNormal">If we are the ones in trance,is this trance state merely a byproduct of our </div><div class="MsoNormal">unexamined assumptions about beauty and art, or some form of `cultural imperialism'</div><div class="MsoNormal"> attracted to the exotic orientalism of this culture? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Or is there something deeper?<br />
<br />
The Balinese shadow puppet drama weaves together God, </div><div class="MsoNormal">clown figure, history and myth in a way that some Balinese feel</div><div class="MsoNormal"> is more `real’ than the audience watching it..</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Perhaps, in a similar way, our longings to<br />
know and experience the `real Bali' may be a truer indication of those<br />
unanswered questions and unrealized aspirations lying close to the core of<br />
our being--truer than all the heated sermons about `cultural imperialism'<br />
and `Orientalism.'<br />
<br />
Perhaps its is something closer to the analysis of some aspects of Romantic<br />
Love offered by Denis De Rougemont in Love in the Western World. De<br />
Rougemont argues (among other things) that when we "fall in love" we in<br />
some ways project our "felt needs, hopes and aspirations" in a somewhat<br />
idealized form onto our prospective partner. They become "the answer" to<br />
our question. De Rougemont and Anders Nygren (Eros and Agape) both write<br />
about the Eros-driven experience as a distorted parody, rather than a<br />
possible parable, of Agape love. Is something like that driving us? Is our<br />
entranced infatuation with some aspects of Balinese or other exotic<br />
cultures simply an idealized projection of what we want and feel we need to<br />
find in art, life and society? . Is it little more than a mask to hide our </div><div class="MsoNormal">own nagging sense of incompleteness?</div><div class="MsoNormal"> How long before the mask comes off? (asks our skeptical questioner) </div><div class="MsoNormal">and what happens then? <br />
<br />
When Christian artists gathered together on Bali for a time of sharing and<br />
discussion, we all broke bread together in a eucharistic<br />
service heavily influenced by Balinese cultural forms. <br />
Painter and puppeteer Nyoman Darsane performed a dance and broke<br />
through layers of Balinese tradition by removing his mask before inviting<br />
us to join him in the rest of the dance and the communion celebration.<br />
<br />
The floor of the church was taken up by a huge Cross of interwoven<br />
fruit and flowers. This cross was emblematic of what drew us all together<br />
in our common faith. It also spoke of the redemption of these natural<br />
elements and cultural forms, and gave us a foretaste of their eventual<br />
transformation and renewal in Christ. In this cross--and by implication,<br />
through THE cross--utility, function, beauty, truth and goodness are<br />
reconciled........I do believe that we in the west can learn<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a lot about </div><div class="MsoNormal">art and life from cultures as integrated as the Balinese one appears to be….</div><div class="MsoNormal">However, whatever the `real Bali' is beneath our Romantic projections</div><div class="MsoNormal"> and their mythic constructions<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--it is but a dim and distorted mirror image of the kind of</div><div class="MsoNormal"> integrated and transformed reality<br />
that is only possible because of, and through, the Cross. <br />
<br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>steve scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418170825481131805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3490827155031679302.post-36192417156722045212010-10-26T22:05:00.000-07:002010-10-26T22:05:13.450-07:00conversionWhat I'm posting here are writings, transcripts of talks etc from the last 20+years ....some published some not....some reworked or still in process.Eventually I want to gather the materials together into a `companion' volume to `Crying for a Vision' and `Like A house on fire.' The addition that follows (When the kissing had to stop) began life as reflection on `conversion' for a newsletter put out by CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) some time in the early 90s. The Bali conference it refers to was in 1989, and (other) insights from this conference and subsequent experiences in Bali and south East Asia informed some of the material in my two books mentioned above.steve scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418170825481131805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3490827155031679302.post-27163118978695857802010-10-12T15:03:00.000-07:002010-10-12T15:03:32.767-07:00<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 46px;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">WORKING IN THE GAP<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When the preacher told me that nearly everything I did was a sin,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">dancing in particular, I said I didn't know why he was so down on<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">dancing. There is dancing in the Bible. It’s an important part of<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">life. I said I didn't feel dirty when I was dancing-when I'm<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">dancing, I’m dancing. And then I got the lecture: When some people<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">see you having a good time, you might lead them astray because<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">they might think your intentions are different. That's when I<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Left the church. I said, I can't lead my life figuring out why<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">when any time I'm enjoying myself, it's bad.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robert Rauschenberg.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">During the summer of 2006 I was at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena for some classes in my degree program. One weekend I took the Metro into downtown Los Angeles to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the `combines’ exhibition by Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008) `. This was a show of Rauschenberg's mixed media pieces from the 1950s and 60s, and I spent several hours learning about the different ways this <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>artist built bridges between painting and sculpture, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>individual artistic mark<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>making <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and found objects and images. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rauschenberg has been described as being on the cusp of several of the important developments in recent modern and postmodern art. He is seen by some as a `transitional figure,’ moving on from (older) abstract approaches to art making, to something more<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>engaged with the poplar imagery of the surrounding culture. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explored different kinds of mixed media, including theater, dance and performance at different times throughout his career. The work on display in the `Combines’ show drew upon his media experiments of the 1950s and early 1960s. Not only did it hint of more radical experimentation to come, it also carried traces of what the artist had put behind him.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The filmed documentary accompanying the exhibition made several references to Rauschenberg’s Fundamentalist religious upbringing and his early aspirations to be an evangelical preacher. Rauschenberg very publicly left his fundamentalist religion behind, but we can sense a more inclusive sense of moral and social purpose in his art work and also his efforts to use the arts in promoting inter cultural dialog. When an interviewer asked him to state his goals he replied that he wanted to be someone `working in the gap' between art and life. (Rose<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1987)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rauschenberg was responding in part to the previous generation of abstract expressionists. These artists attempted to pursue and express the Romantic Sublime in what they painted, and in some cases, how they lived. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His combinations of found objects and popular imagery seemed a far cry from such an endeavor…He found value in ordinary things and cast off objects…and he hoped to create poetic `meaning’ out of their juxtaposition. .. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his mixed media art he combined <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his personally made marks and images with found objects, and pictures in ways that seemed humorous at some levels, and yet wistful at others. I thought I even felt traces and heard whispers of Biblical themes in some of these combinations and juxtaposed surfaces in his art. Even the famous (or infamous) Monogram' piece from the late 1950s, with the Angora goat that Rauschenberg `rescued' from a thrift store, and installed on a platform with paint on its muzzle and a rubber tire around its middle seemed to resonate slightly (sadly? angrily? satirically?) with the kind of imagery the younger Rauschenberg might have encountered in `Sunday School' reproductions of `Christian Art' from days gone by. In several recent presentations and talks about modern art, I have suggested such connections by projecting an image of Rauschenberg’s `Monogram' next to that of a painting called `The Scapegoat’ by British Pre Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt (1827 –1910).<br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
ART NEEDS NO JUSTIFICATION?<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I vividly remember Hans Rookmaakers' public lecture at the Royal college of Art in London in the early 1970s. He was critiquing trends in modern art and society, but also taking time to skewer what he perceived as the maudlin excesses of much religious art. To illustrate his point, he projected an image of a religious painting from the Victorian era. This was `The Light of the World,’ one of the more famous paintings by the artist I mentioned previously, William Holman Hunt. In this painting, the Christ figure is holding a lantern and knocking on a door to a rustic cottage. This image, according to Rookmaker was a visual catalog of the problems in `Religious art'... It was cloyingly sentimental, it was overly illustrative and `preachy’ it was little more than a maudlin sermon set down in line and color. . To be fair, Rookmaaker directed his most trenchant criticisms not so much at the artwork itself, but the uses the believers had made of it since. This painting, popular in the mid 19th century, had , over the years, acquired an almost sacred aura in some pious circles and could be seen in reproductions in the homes of many of the faithful, and perhaps illustrating the Sunday school lessons read to their children. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If Rauschenberg redeemed a throwaway stuffed animal in his avowed attempt to bridge the gap between art and life, then, here, according to Rookmaaker a Christian church exhibited a failure of imagination in its choices of art worthy of the name `Christian'. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, in Holman Hunt’s `The light of the world’ was a painting,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> hijacked from its late Victorian context, bubble wrapped in sanctimony and put to work in helping the `truly spiritual’ avoid both art AND life. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">TO THE DEFENCE<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In its day, however, this painting ultimately proved to be very popular with the British public. It even went on tour. Nonetheless it was not without its critics and detractors. Those who despair of genuine cultural engagement among Christians today can take comfort in the fact that this painting was attacked by wooden literalists who wanted to know why `The Light of the World' needed to carry a lantern. The eminent art critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819 –1900) wrote a detailed letter to the London Times in 1854, defending the painting, and the skills of the painter. Ruskin wrote at length to make clear the spiritual and moral significance of the imagery and the symbolism of the artwork, while also giving due praise to the artist’s unerring eye for natural detail, and his skill in depicting it. At one point in his impassioned defense of the work, Ruskin writes <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">`I believe there are very few persons on whom this picture, thus justly understood, will not produce a deep impression. For my own part, I think it is one of the very noblest works of sacred art ever produced in this or any other age.’ (Ruskin /Herbert 1964)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In case we suspect that Ruskin was unduly swayed by the spiritual temper of the times or biased in favor of this artist we should note that he could be quite severe when turning his critical eye upon other pieces of the artist’s work. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the `Scapegoat’ painting I mentioned earlier Ruskin wrote <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">`This picture regarded merely as a landscape, or as a composition, is a total failure. The mind of the painter has been so excited by the circumstances of the scene, that like a youth expressing his earnest feeling by feeble verse (which seems to him good, because he means so much by it), Mr. Hunt has been blinded by his intense sentiment to the real weakness of the pictorial expression; and in his earnest desire to paint the scapegoat, has forgotten to ask himself first, whether he could paint a goat at all.’ (Ruskin/Herbert 1964 op cit)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">SO…WHO WAS JOHN RUSKIN?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Victorian art critic and social theorist John Ruskin is perhaps best remembered for his incisive analysis of the complex relationship between spirituality, culture and the marketplace in Victorian Britain. He offered a sustained and powerful critique of the economically driven social and cultural agendas of his day He lamented the declining artistic standards and the disintegration of social and personal values. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All this was occurring, according to Ruskin, in the shadow of the industrial revolution. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tried to counter these trends by arguing for true(r) standards of beauty, while promoting and defending the artists and arts movements he felt had genuine merit. He also framed many of his conclusions about art and society while looking at the world around him through Biblically informed lenses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ruskin’s ideas about art and beauty have been influential at different times throughout the last century,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and his ideas on society and economy profoundly resonated with thinkers as diverse as William Morris, Mahatma Gandhi, Tolstoy and Arnold Toynbee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has been said that the first British Labor party to gain seats in Parliament were more familiar with Ruskin’s treatise on economics (`unto this last’) than they were with Marx’s `Das Kapital’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">However, some of Ruskin's ideas on art and society also took a more practical bent on occasion. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He once took a group of Oxford students, including Oscar Wilde and Arnold Toynbee, and attempted to connect two small villages on the outskirts of Oxford by digging and creating a road. Ruskin wanted to expand the student sensibilities beyond rowing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>boats and cricket matches....He also wanted to demonstrate `the nobility of labor' to these young men, and also the inhabitants of the villages. (Wilde 2003) While it is easy in hindsight to detect a certain ‘paternalistic’ tone in Ruskin’s approach and rationale, we have to keep him in the context of his times, and remember that his larger analysis of art and society was both astute, and comprehensive. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether he was trying to connect two villages by building a roadway, or writing about art and society in an age of declining values, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John Ruskin was also someone who attempted to `work in the gap'....but in a way very different to Robert Rauschenberg.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">BUT IS IT ART?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While Ruskin’s insights and ideas were<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and are regarded as valuable, they did not prevent what he described as ` gathering storm clouds’ from casting their long shadows over the closing years of that century and contributing much to the confusion and darkness in the next. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of the social and conceptual revolutions of the twentieth century reverberated through the cultural expressions, both in the form of trenchant social analysis, and also in the various forms of avant Garde artistic expression. Settled concepts of tradition, progress, life and art were turned upside down by a number of intellectual and social revolutions, and horrendous international conflicts. Some artists attempted to creatively acknowledge<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the horrors of the twentieth century by offering outrages of their own. It was as if artists were attempting <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to rethink<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the purposes of art in the increasingly darkening shadow of `life.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some wanted to repair what they felt was the organic relationship between art and handicraft. Others wanted to suggest that abstract form and raw material were the only viable content for art in an image saturated, alienated society. Others tried to tear down the barriers between art and life, moving from confrontational theater, mixed media `happening’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and out into different kinds of performance that attempted to purify art even further<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by moving away from reliance on the gallery system, away from even working with artistic<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>materials, and closer to exploring ideas in a social and public context. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I was at art school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I found myself in the middle of some of these historical breakthroughs and emerging trends in modern and postmodern art. It was here I first encountered the work of Joseph Beuys. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">German Performance Artist Joseph Beuys, (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">1921</span></a>, - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">1986</span></a>,) might have had no trouble including Ruskin’s road digging exercise under the umbrella term `Social Sculpture.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Beuys found a way of `working in the gap’ that benefitted broadly from the modes of analysis that Ruskin and others put into motion, and also from some of the mixed media explorations and practices, traceable through the avant Garde art makers of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century…and evidenced in a different way, incidentally, in the mixed media combines of Robert Rauschenberg.. Beuys wanted to expand the idea of art so that it tapped into everyone's creativity and (latent) capacity for critical thought and social analysis. He dubbed his experiment `social sculpture' and some of his art events included lectures, discussions, performances and tree planting, all with the somewhat utopian intent of critically engaging a creatively awakened `public' in a shared attempt to bridge art and life. Beuys built upon the work of the critical theorists who dismantled the machinery that linked truth and power, as well as its corresponding market driven, sentimental `mass culture’ (Kitsch). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beuys, unlike some, did not view `art' as this privileged, self referential sphere or platform from which the artist attacked this dominant (false) rationality with pure art..,. Beuys, and some others after him, wanted to rebuild a more direct relationship with the public, and try and suggest to that `public’ that they could be informed, critical agents participating in their own transformation. However, just as we might detect paternalism in Ruskin’s efforts, some have found an impractical utopianism in some of the work and ideas of Joseph Beuys. Nonetheless, Beuys, in ways very different to Robert Rauschenberg, and John Ruskin, attempted to `work in the gap.’(Beuys 1990)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">CONVERSATION PIECES<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These things were at the back of my mind as I spent about an hour in the MOCA bookstore after several hours in the Rauschenberg `Combines’ show. It was here that I began to read through a book called `Conversation Pieces’ by Grant H. Kester. (Kester 2004) This book describes and analyzes some of the different ways that some recent artists had attempted to re imagine and reconstruct a relationship with a public. Later, I ended up buying a copy of the book. As I read through this book, it took me on a journey from the `self referential’ and `self contained’ art world in the gallery and museum to the attempts by some to use the arts in different kinds of community settings, such as hospitals, prisons, or with at risk groups. The author then mapped<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a further shift from those approaches to art-use in community to an approach in which `art’ is not `for’ a community, but in some way comes into being and is given shape<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because of the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>critical and interactive presence<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of a proposed community.. In some cases, the community itself is called `into being’ or is proposed by whatever it is the artist initially puts into motion. `Art’ gets redefined and reframed, as a community is engaged as participants, critical thinkers, and co creators. In all cases, the artist, is not the sole final arbiter of `the artistic value or meaning’ of the resulting work. That `meaning' arises out of the relational networks formed, and the issues explored in the context of this expanded definition of `art.’ Accordingly <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the artwork itself expands and overflows neat media specific or even clear cut conceptual categories. Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija organized a gallery show that consisted of him cooking a Thai meal for the visitors. He also initiated a large scale project that involves community living on land in Northern Thailand, meditating, engaging in creativity…a piece that involves natural systems intertwined with cultural systems intertwined with real life. Perhaps this can be seen as a model of social sculpture, and certainly a utopian one….but it is also as down to earth as road digging. Another artist, Felix Gonzales Torres, built <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a provisional `sculpture’ in a gallery( in one case, bags of candy) that grew and shrank as interested individuals took parts of it away, and the artist replenished it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In another example, an artist like Loraine Leeson worked with specific communities in East London, creating mixed media images based on interviews and dialog with female (migrant/immigrant) Asian clothing factory workers who in many ways find themselves `representing’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but caught between overlapping cultures. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She has also worked with older original working class residents of a particular London neighborhood and engaged them as participants in describing, preserving and honoring their memories. In these cases…a meal,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an expanding and shrinking sculpture of candy,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or the use of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mixed media to valorize and commemorate<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a community’s lived experience, we can see it is not a question of artistic form, `product’ or choice of media<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>underscores this approach, but a commitment to a kind of social engagement<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in which the incidental documentation, (everything from a display of dirty dishes and pots<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to posters of digitally composed mixed media images) is present, but complementary to the relationships formed in `real life.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A key example Kester cites is the work of Stephen Willats, who in his book on `art and social structure’ (Willats 2000) very consciously describes the desire to move `art’ out of its self referential loop, and into conversation with local community, not in a patronizing or condescending way, but in a way intent on critically and aesthetically engaging the community in how it sees itself, and what it would like to change about its living situation. . Willats organized a team (The West London super Girls) and sent them door to door with questionnaires, got interested parties to sign up and commit to filling out a series of worksheets, and compiled a dossier on particular localities. The results were exhibited in local libraries, and generated a secondary round of interest, as well as creating new networks of affiliation and connection among neighborhoods. To an extent this resembles Beuys’ Social sculpture, not least because it takes an approach resembling a bureaucratic local government survey (or like Beuys and his classroom and blackboard) and uses it in an emancipatory, almost playful way.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Kester (and others who have written on this subject) uses examples like this to move our thinking from the gallery, past a passively recipient community, and out into the idea of a public sphere that makes room for a genuinely critical engagement. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even in these few examples, we can see, that this approach to art not an extension or variation on a stylistic or an art historical `problem’…..except the perennial problem of how to find new ways of working effectively in the gap between art and life<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nicolas Bourriaud, theorist, and author of `Relational Aesthetics’ (Bourriaud 2002) sums it up like this<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> `Every artist whose work derives from relational aesthetics has his or her own world of forms, his or her problematic and his or her trajectory: there are no stylistic, thematic or iconographic links between them. What they do have in common is much more determinant(sic) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>namely the fact that they operate with the same practical and theoretic horizon: the sphere of interhuman relationships. Their works bring into play modes of social exchange, interaction with the viewer inside the aesthetic experience he or she is offered, and processes of communication in their concrete dimensions as tools that can be used to bring together individuals and human groups' (Bourriaud 2002)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">However, this approach is not without its limitations and blind spots. Critics of `Relational aesthetics’ suggest<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that some of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>its thinkers and practitioners<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>leave themselves little room to actively criticize the dominant social order, because they have adopted<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>much of its open terminology (networking, empowerment etc) in their attempts to frame an expanded theory of `form.’ (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Svetlichnaja 2005</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Also, the ghosts of paternalism and utopianism potentially haunt the fringes of some of these approaches as well, in spite of the best efforts of the artists. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It may well be that the vulnerabilities and the duplicities of the art system are fair game for the critically reflective practices by artists like Joseph Beuys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps they are appropriately sidestepped by some proposing alternative structures and re imagining of `art' as an expression of the relationships and networks within a critically awakening or engaged community. But could it be possible that `art’ as it is more traditionally understood, and `framed’ in an institutional context still has untapped potential? Does <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the gallery experience and the contemplation of art (as `Art’) offer <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anything</i> in the (genuine) public interest? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Polish psychologist Mihaly<span style="color: black;"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Csikszentmihalyi says that it does. He</span></span> has written on the potential benefits of the `aesthetic experience’ comparing it to his descriptions of the experience of `flow’. In this `flow’ experience people are beneficially immersed in an activity (like sports or music or…) for its own sake rather than with an agenda or specific outcome in mind. They are caught up in the experience of liking what they do. (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) The psychologist goes on to suggest that the (similar) act of contemplative immersion when we view an art work might be considered beneficial in its provision of psychological integration and restoration of the person. This in turn would bring value to that person’s involvement in the larger community. Art experienced as art has the potential of fulfilling its restorative and critical role. (Csikszentmihalyi 1991)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">REDEEMING THE MUSEUM?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Curator and art theorist/historian Daniel <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Siedell <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>would agree with this, and goes on to suggest to us that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there might be theological and historical reasons for this being true. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Siedell suggests that the early church’s use of images in the form of icons might have something to tell us about how to approach art. He also suggests that a greater appreciation of the historic traditions of the Church…notably those associated with the Nicene expression of faith might throw some light on how we can think theologically about looking at art. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I have explored these ideas, I have tried to frame the artist or writer within their own context in order to suggest some clues as to how they formed their perspective. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rauschenberg fled a fundamentalist upbringing, but also responded to the art of the previous generation with his mixed media constructions. Rookmaaker was commenting on modern art, but also critically reflecting on the religious mindset <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of those that clung to the imagery of Pre Raphaelite painters like Holman Hunt. Daniel Siedell is writing in response to art/culture social theorists (Like Rookmaaker) who `use’ individual artworks as part of their dissection of a larger social and historical temper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Siedell is proposing, instead, that there can be as much value in contemplatively looking at an art object or installation in an institutional setting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To make his point further Siedell contrasts the overly diagnostic or even didactic uses of art in some church circles with the approach to images and icons in the early church. Just as there is a context and frame of reference for the icon and the receptive attitude of the worshipper, so there is also a number of factors to keep in mind when contemplating the modern art object. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the examples he describes in his book `work’ as an artistic totality, partially in the light of what we come to know about the ideas, process and materials involved in the making of the work. Siedell is asking us to have a spirit of receptive hospitality in our approach to some modern art. He also suggests that this open and receptive approach to the art object will be strengthened <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as we explore<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the deeper layers of our Christian heritage. (Siedell 2008)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> In summary, perhaps we could take a more contemplative/receptive attitude in front of the artwork, as did the early believers in front of Icons. Perhaps some artists could distance themselves from the role of paternalistic or utopian social critic and learn something from the humble attitude of the early icon makers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Siedell would agree with Csikszentmihalyi<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>concerning the benefits of looking at art to both the individual and the community but would also ask us to include a larger sensed continuity with the Christian Tradition<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in our<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>understanding of community…. perhaps something akin to what the writer of Hebrews<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>intended in his reference to `a cloud of witnesses.’ (Heb 12:1)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Siedell is proposing this larger conversation of the faithful because, as I suggested above, in his opinion, some of our more recent attempts to think about art and faith have led us into some blind alleys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He points out that the emphasis on art and imagery as an adjunct to verbal and print communication<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is a legacy of our Protestant tradition, and might cast a shadow over our initial attempts to contemplatively<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>look at an art object (`…but what does that tire around the goat <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mean?</i>?’) <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While the author <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>would not ask us to blindly embrace Rauschenberg’s stuffed goat, he would not have us (alternately) attempt to simply boil the poor creature down to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a sociological or theological footnote.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And while it would be similarly reductive to merely break the `aesthetic experience’ down to a list of its social and psychological benefits, I think it is possible to suggest that between the insights of Mihayi Csikszentmihalyi, Daniel <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Siedell, Grant Kester and Nicolas Bourriaud we can find good reasons for looking for creative ways of `working in the gap’ between individual contemplation and transformed community relations. Art can help. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">POST PRODUCTION.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But we now live in a media saturated, globally connected `village.’ Is this a good or a bad thing for artists according to thinkers like Bourriaud? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In his recent writing he acknowledges the strains of critical theory that led thinkers like Guy DeBord and Jean Baudrillard to describe a society of alienated consumption held together by the glue of imagery and spectacle….but he refuses to view this as a cul de sac. Today’s artist, if I understand Bourriaud correctly, tacitly acknowledges there is no primary or privileged relationship with `nature.’ All signs and imagery are `second hand.’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He uses the term `Post Production’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to describe this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>socially constructed reality….as if it were a giant film set or media event (think `Truman Show’)Also, just like a film or media event, people collaborate in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>helping it all to work meaningfully. Today’s artist acknowledges this media saturated condition, and understands that `meaning’ arises out of interactions and networks of response within<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the community. Such an artist uses signs , images and communication systems with the same generous, open ended generative approach as an open source computer programmer, and the same tacit awareness of DJ who mixes and `mashes’ sound samples from different discs into an overall sonic event.(Bourriaud 2007)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elsewhere, he describes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>today’s art maker as a `Radicant’….someone who in their artistic practice <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>redefines ideas of rootedness, not so much in terms of historical origins, but in terms of being rooted and engaged by the context she or he is moving into. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This `new world’ Bourriaud and others argue compels us to rethink not only our methodology, but also our relationship to recent worldviews and ideas. Twentieth Century Postmodernism and related <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ideas about multiculturalism (is?) now being described by some <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as simply a late, dying phase of modernism…and in some cases, a subtle disguise for <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>certain kinds of cultural imperialism. (Bourriaud 2009). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for the twenty first century artist, all that stuff is history. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> `Finally, once the millennial clock has turned its back on the twentieth century, just maybe we’ll be able to put postmodernism into its proper perspective as the inevitable endgame of modernism. That in itself is an exciting prospect, for once (post)modernism is finally laid to rest we can really set about asking the question: what comes next?’ Keith Patrick (`Contemporary Visual Arts no 26’ ‘)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">WHY <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ARE</i> WE STILL HERE?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The French artist Paul Gauguin (1848 –1903 ) abandoned a life of middle class conventionality in order to find and paint<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an earthly paradise in the South Sea Islands. Nonetheless<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>one of his most famous paintings is haunted by the questions about identity and purpose that he first heard framed during his childhood religious upbringing. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">`Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?’ <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Here in the twenty first century, this side of a number of failed apocalyptic predictions, and somewhat beyond the stormy debates about post modernism and multiculturalism that rocked some circles in the 20th Century, we might still be asking those questions….and this additional one `Why are we still here?’ <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are here to be what Andy Crouch calls `Culture makers.’ We can imagine new practices in the arts, and new practices in the life of the Christian community, in the light of present opportunities and freshly discerned futures. Whether we are making objects for reflection and contemplation, or working in communities to envision and enact transformation, we are called to the mission of `making culture.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In making his plea for us to become `culture makers’ Crouch describes four ways in which the church has reacted to culture in the past. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am going to use<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crouch’s observations <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to help sum up<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some of the things I have been trying to say throughout this article. <br />
<u>Separation:</u> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we can see from Robert Rauschenberg’s early religious experience, some sections of the church wanted nothing to do with `culture’ as it was corrupt and of the world. These sections of the church tried to avoid contamination by steering clear of culture altogether. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Analysis:</span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> For others (or perhaps, next…) analysis replaced wholesale avoidance. People like Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker gave sections of the church fresh eyes with which to look into the underlying dynamics of the society around them. …as discerned in the art forms and expression of the day. Some of us <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>look back now, and wonder if the exegesis these thinkers made of these cultural forms was a little too reductive. Others of us are learning that there is more to making good art than analysis and ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Embrace:</span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> What some find ironic is the emergence of a Christian `pop’ subculture in the shadow of, or running slightly behind the `culture of analysis’ that Crouch describes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, this is Crouch’s third category of church reaction; The religious marketplace . This enterprise <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>might have started as an attempt at <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a genuinely redemptive /missional embrace of popular cultural forms. Unfortunately<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>now seems more like an attempt to market identifiably religious content<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>forms approximated from the `real ‘ marketplace, and sanitized for the Religious consumer (where are those thrift store stuffed Angora goats when you really need them?) The irony consists<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the coexistence of this culture of market driven religious `product’ and the culture of analysis. All that theory was somewhat reductive in its handling of the real world, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>did not prevent the growth <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the market driven religious one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Drift:</span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This zone<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is inhabited by<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>people burned out by the first three responses. They are disdainful of the `legalism’ of the first, suspicious<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the `left brain’ nature of the second, dismissive of the transparent manipulation and wretched taste of the third, and therefore simply<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>`drift with the tide’ when it comes to cultural consumption. Their spending viewing and listening habits are just like every one else’s. (Crouch<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2008)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crouch critiques all four `positions’ and proposes that we are called to proactively make culture. Crouch asks that we fulfill our creative calling to make culture and I believe it would go against the spirit of what Crouch is asking for to insist our culture making take a particular shape. I believe that museum space, gallery wall and potentially transformed community all have something to offer to our understanding of what kind of culture we can participate in making. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are all looking for new ways of working creatively and redemptively in the gap between art and life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps we can blend the generous approach of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nicolas Bourriaud’s open source computer programmer with the inventiveness of the DJ remixing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>found <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sound sources, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>further combine it with some of the devotion and humility of Daniel Siedell’s early icon makers. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is a good thing to learn to see transformed and empowering<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>relationships within a community as beautiful, and worthy of celebration, while also learning to appreciate<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the harmony of color, line and material<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the quiet space of the museum. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Perhaps we can gain something from the whimsicality of a Beuys or a Rauschenberg, while at the same time<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>be energized<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by the comprehensive thinking, and the down to earth practice of a John Ruskin. There are still plenty of paths to be cleared, and gaps to be bridged. And finally, perhaps Ruskin’s trenchant observations about Holman Hunt’s `The Scapegoat’ will keep us from confusing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mere good intentions with genuinely creative <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>expression.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">CODA:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The artist Robert Rauschenberg died last year. As I was working on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this article, I went online to see if<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there might be anything else about him that might be relevant to what I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was thinking about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found this reference<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a 1990s magazine interview.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 200%;"> "I don't ever want to go," he told Harper's Bazaar in 1997 when asked of his own death. "I don't have a sense of great reality about the next world; my feet are too ugly to wear those golden slippers. But I'm working on my fear of it. And my fear is that something interesting will happen, and I'll miss it."<o:p></o:p></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" /> </span> <div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">SOURCES<o:p></o:p></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Beuys, Joseph. <i>Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for the Western Man </i>New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bishop, Claire, ed. <i>Participation </i>Documents of Contemporary Art: MIT Press, 2006.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bourriaud, Nicolas. <i>Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World</i>. New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2007<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">———. <i>The Radicant</i>. New<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>York: Lukas and Sternberg<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2009.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">———. <i>Relational Aesthetics</i>. Paris: Presses du réel, 2002.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Crouch, Andy. <i>Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling</i>. Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. <i>Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience </i>HarperCollins, 1990.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Rick E. Robinson <i>The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter</i>. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 1991.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Herbert, Robert, ed. <i>The Art Criticism of John Ruskin </i>New York: Da Capo Press, 1987.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kester, Grant H. <i>Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art</i>. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Purves, Ted, ed. <i>What We Want Is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art </i>S U N Y Series in Postmodern Culture. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rose, Barbara. <i>Rauschenberg</i>, Vintage Contemporary Artists. New York: Random House, 1987.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Siedell, Daniel. <i>God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art </i>Cultural Exegesis. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic and Brazos Press, 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Svetlichnaja, Julia. "Relational Paradise as a Delusional Democracy<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">- a Critical Response to a Temporary Contemporary Relational Aesthetics." <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">BISA Conference,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">. University of St. Andrews,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">St. Andrews, Scotland.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">, 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tomkins, Calvin. <i>Off the Wall:Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World of Our Time</i>. New York: Doubleday, 1980.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wilde, Oscar. <i>The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde</i>, Collins Classics: HarperCollins UK, 2003.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Willats, Stephen. <i>Art and Social Function</i>. Second ed. London Ellipsis Arts, 2000.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br />
</div>steve scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418170825481131805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3490827155031679302.post-75201151460910503502010-10-12T15:00:00.000-07:002010-10-12T15:00:29.082-07:00Intro to `Each with our own Brush' and an entry.Hi<br />
what goes into THIS blog are the materials, some archival (80s/90s and beyond)...some published, some unpublished, some still `in progress' that will eventually make up the next collection of materials on the arts (read profitably with `Crying for a Vision' and `Like a House on fire' ...both available on Amazon)<br />
What follows in a recent essay (09) called (for now) WORKING IN THE GAP.steve scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418170825481131805noreply@blogger.com0