Early morning abstraction

It’s a bit early in the day for me to be thinking about abstraction, so I may come back later and edit this post as necessary. But certain things in this recent Trees Walking post captured my attention.

“I think it’s safe to say that much modern art (and architecture) suffers from a sterile, monolithic, boring oneness.” I’m not sure what Stephen, the author on Trees Walking, means when he says “oneness,” but I concur that much modern art is sterile and monolithic. This is particularly true of architecture in my opinion. Reading magazines like Dwell might be fun, but living in 95% of the homes they feature would be like institutionalization.

“Art (the skillful making of things to evoke beauty) is, when man does it, by nature representational, because man himself is an image of God, a representation, an imitating creature who makes by the law in which he’s made.” First off, and I probably don’t need to remind most of us of this, art is more than about making beautiful things. Sometimes I wish, personally, this weren’t the case, but creating works intended to convey specific messages or move people to certain action or record certain events (as in the case of painting and sculpture before the advent of photography) is also a valid part of the definition of art. Secondly, I agree with Stephen’s statement above, but I must elaborate on it. It seems to me, and I’ve said this here before, that creating non-representational works is a way for man to flesh out his being created in the image of God. God created out of the void. Man cannot do this in the same way; we don’t have the ability. Nor should man try to be God, a futile effort that will end you up like the pretentious Lucifer. Yet, if God created ex nihilo (and to do so is therefore part of who He is), would not that be infused into who man is? And would not abstract and non-representational artwork display this?