Art is Captured Beauty
Art is captured beauty. I see beauty when I look at the golden pallete of a sunset, or the silhouette of my wife, or the landscape when hiking in the woods. However, that is not art made by the hands of mankind, those are signed by the Lord. Human artists are simply trying to be like the first and greatest artist—God. He is the only one who truly creates, while we take the supplies that God has already created and creates something beautiful still, but aided by God. When I look at the paintings of Rembrandt or the sculptures of Michelangelo or listen to the songs at church, I am experiencing captured beauty. Artists have the uncanny ability to bottle up beautiful things in a way others cannot. Sculptors can discern a bust out of a boulder. Musicians can hear the melody out of a mess of noise. Graphic designers can picture a logo out of an ink blob. They are artists.
Unlike the postmodernist, I do not think all things are subjective, including beauty. The phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is true to an extent. Some things are simply not beautiful because we live in a broken world. Sin has corrupted our sense of purity and pleasure. Therefore, I think most of the collections of postmodern art is not beautiful, but chaotic. Perhaps some would say that there is beauty in the chaos captured, but I do not think that is inherently beautiful. Yes, I think the chaos is provoking, but it is half the job. Art is capturing the beauty. The artistic one in this scenario would be the one who could interpret the mess and make sense of it all. That is what is truly beautiful–making order out of chaos.
Capturing beauty can happen in many ways. Through poetry, through prose, through paintings, and through photography. It is making order out of chaos. There are hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, which is chaotic. But when someone orders them with rhyme and reason, then it becomes poetry. Or a blank canvas and a pallete of paint. Without someone taking the orderless mediums and then applying structure and purpose to them, then it will not produce a beautiful painting. Art is when chaos is ordered and beauty is captured.
