On Christian Art

Extract

If the art of painting exists for its own sake, if painting is nothing more than a sensuous arrangement, or (as the modernists would put it) an “organization” of line, colour, rhythm and mass, and if there is no underlying ethical or religious principle that finds its way from the artist's mind to the painted work, then of necessity the speculations and conclusions contained in the following essay are valueless. As a basis of agreement it may be acknowledged that art has no conscious concern with morals, and that the painter who has the deliberate intention of expressing an ethical or moral concept by means of his art is handicapped from the start. We may agree also that the satisfying quality (which we call beauty) of a painting depends upon quite other elements than those that belong to moral worth, and that the ethical outlook of the artist cannot and does not affect the aesthetic perfection of his work. All this we may concede. But it would be unreasonable to infer from this that his ethical outlook does not nevertheless find expression in his work, whether he will it so or not. A pious person may produce an execrable or negligible work of art, but at least the piety will be apparent in it. A hedonist, of a robust and vigorous habit of mind, may produce a series of works of great aesthetic perfection, but in the sum total of his works his hedonism can hardly fail to appear. All art is self-revelation.