We’re doing two articles today.

Today we’re doing two articles from Islander V.

The first article is interesting in itself, but I don’t have the need to respond to it in depth. It’s an examination of how various cultures, from Rome to the modern day, portray ‘power’ in their art. I wrote a closely related article this January; I’ll let that speak for me.

Reviews: I – II – III – IV – V

The second article, written by Alexander Adams, discusses the role of the boundary-pusher artist in society. The article does not fully endorse the rebel and the boundary-pusher, but it does present an unbalanced perspective of such, at once over-romanticized and lacking the core component which makes the Lone Prophet and the lone artist into admirable or sanctifying influences.

The core problem of seeing the artist’s highest point as ‘the lone pioneer’ is that it cannot be true. Art is defined by its prioritization of beauty, and beauty exists in relationship to God, as does man. The most lonely of artists is a cripple, artistically, compared to his potential, if he does not know the Lord. This holds even if the man is, like William Cowper, at times paralyzed with despair over a perceived distance from God.

Further, the artist’s ‘loneliness’ is an artifact of unhealthiness in society and the artist, not a native part of his pursuit. Truly great art benefits from participation in a culture, in family and church and all the rest- always assuming that what is being participated in is to a significant extent healthy and holy. The artist may be lonely, but it is a harm to him and his art to lack connection to a God-honoring society. Relationships are the fundament of human life, and art, being a central part of humanity (if given to some to enjoy rather than produce), benefits immensely from relationships.

The article’s interest in the pusher of boundaries has merit, but the interest is in an unbalanced, unholy mutilation of the truth. The mere rebel against order and society is a force for social degradation. For every evil he points out (these provide vigor and verisimilitude to his complaint), he works also against good, so that even his solution to the wrong is another wrong. Nietzsche had some points, but his philosophy is a jump towards hell.

Moreover, this rebel is often not nearly as revolutionary as his aesthetic. Sometimes he’s Jackson Pollock, funded by the CIA in an effort to combat Soviet Realism with an ‘American’ art style. Often these loners rise to prominence off the back of perverse elites who see in this rebellion a method to further their power and corruption. They are rebels against the society, yes, but sponsored by the intelligentsia thereof.

The true prophet, it is true, is often alone. He is derided, without regard in his hometown (Matt. 13:57) and hated by not only the commoner but the elite (John 15:18; Matt. 14:1-3). The prophet is not alone completely, for he has God and often a remnant, but he is cut off from society. Why? Because rather than pressing ‘artistic’ rebellion and different perversities, rather than offering bad solutions to real problems, he is declaring God’s law, the one thing sinful man cannot tolerate (Rom. 1:18-25). His alienation is not an absolute fact; it is a product of his society’s sin. A prophet can be just as prophetic in the people’s embrace (Ezra 10) as alone on the mountainside or with a small group of outcasts.

Consider also the role of Saturnalia, as expressed in the article. It is an inversion of society, a release of tensions. Yet these tensions are present only because of sin in the society, except insofar as they ought never to be released. The inversion’s release is required for the society only because the society has taken an inconsistency and a sin into itself. If sanctified, the inversion would become not a release but a grievance, something to be avoided, because the order would not have built up judgement against itself which the inversion delays and (in a way) acknowledges. A city without slavery (of any sort) need not ever give the slaves mastery, for it has no slaves to be guilty of.

The lonely artist has some reality, but he is not God’s pattern. God’s patterns sees men become the most fruitful when they are in good relationship. Sometimes sin breaks those relationships and alienates the man from his life. So with Job, a poet of great skill, when the sin of Satan and of men around Job were the instruments of his loss of relationship. But the pattern, as we see in Job’s final return to relationship and in his persistent faithfulness to God (Job 42), is of the artist in harmony with God, in harmony with God’s world, and in resultant disharmony with sin. His ‘loneliness’ when it happens is a function of other’s sin, not of his own nature.

God bless.