Christianity & Culture....

.........the on going discussion.

Monday, April 03, 2006

In Retrospect.....

So…..for a large part of March, we had to do a book study on My Name is Asher Lev. It is a good book, because it raises the question of when art or just a creative mind becomes dangerous or controversial to a community. For Asher, drawing is one of his greatest strengths and it is also his passion in life. Throughout school, one of the things he does is daydream and draw. This passion in his life will soon over take him, making him steal paint on one occasion and draw a picture of the Rebbe (A key figure in his community) on Chumash(Torah, Pentatuch, first five books of the Bible) on another occasion. Asher is overzealous with his work. Now obviously, passion overtook Asher in his quest to draw and in this case it was dangerous to the community, not particularly just these two incidents, but when he becomes older and experiments with different types of art that can be controversial to a very uptight society.

Naturally, artwork can become dangerous, it can be very controversial. It expresses our emotions in ways that plain words cannot say. But the question that I want to ask all of you is…should we express our creative minds whether it is through poetry, movies music, etc even though we know it will be controversial, not necessary to the public, but to the church?
What do you guys think??? Or how about other people who makes controversial art, should we watch,read, hear, whatever or should we advoid such people???

1 Comments:

Blogger Jon said...

This reminds me of a film I saw not to long ago (I will only reveal its title in person). I would not recommend this film to pretty much anybody because of its vulgarity, violence, and dark content. However, it was one of the most artistically brave and challenging films I have seen. Though much of the content made me question viewing it, the ending made it worthwhile (though, for many viewers they probably didn't get it and were left on the edge). Point is, it was 'dangerous art' and yet I found a valuable commentary on culture and selfishness in the celuloid. Like Asher's 'Crucifixion,' it was artistic genius that most people should probably just avoid.

Wed Apr 05, 11:39:00 AM PDT  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home