When you visit an art museum, what appeals to you?
For me, among the various genres of art and subjects of any one presentation, I am most drawn to what is beautiful or majestic or inspiring, and is realistic and revealing of the true nature of things, or perhaps the true inner nature of things. I don’t mind the idealizing of some of these paintings. The caustic, crude, and often ugly paintings for stark idealogical messaging are generally ruled out by me, getting nothing more than a glance, perhaps with a comment about the style or messaging. These are two directions in my inclinations, but I react to various works on other levels.
Why? I can speak for me alone, but I think many would agree with me, that something beautiful, showing the skill of the artist in both precision and the capture of innuendo, is, frankly, merely satisfying. It’s point is to appreciate the artist’s skill, such as in the use of light and shadow to create mood, the expanding or the narrowing of the watcher’s focus, its balance, and a hundred other such things which one might notice when viewing it. But above this, the artist intends for you to appreciate what is depicted itself. You can muse on it rather than merely be smashed by it. It invites you in to its world for contemplation.
The reason for this? It seems to me that such art is compelling to many of us is because of the nature of God, who has created such a world. If we are lovers of God, we love his kind of beauty all the more, for nature and man are meant to image God. When such a painting is so ravishing that you might never have seen such perfection of a view on earth, though you have seen something like it — when this happens it speaks to the inclinations of the believer toward the new heavens and new earth which is anticipated. Truth, beauty, anticipation, these are my highest inclinations.
Such art these days is not in vogue and that makes me less of a true art connoisseur, which is a correct assessment, but I will love what I will love. It’s not in vogue to love Jesus either, the most beautiful of all.
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The seascape above was painted by Rembrandt