The Nature of Art: What Does It Actually Do?

Article II in the Christian Aesthetics series

Why do we enjoy art? Most people would say that they appreciate art in some form, but why is this the case—what function does any art actually serve? As discussed in the previous article, the purpose of art (Christian or secular) is neither solely to teach (i.e. “doctrine”), nor solely to provide a pleasing aesthetic experience. Both are certainly important, but neither provides a sufficient explanation for how art affects humanity as it does. 

Instead, from a Christian perspective, all art acts to ultimately direct the soul of the viewer towards God by way of the attributes it creatively evokes, most notably the transcendental categories of truth, goodness, and beauty. By this definition, art does not merely inform the viewer of theological truths, but rather draws their thoughts viscerally towards the qualities of God. It does not just present a pleasant object to view, but rather calls the thoughtful viewer to contemplate a beauty more transcendent than that of the artwork itself. 

Truth, first, is the most concrete of these attributes good art should embody—and the most obviously tied to the notion of “Christian art.” For art to be “true,” it must transmit in some fashion—whether by intention of the artist or not—to the person interacting with it an experience of something true that corresponds to the nature of the created world, to moral doctrine or to common human experience. C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, for example, is “true” both because it contains biblical truths, and because (far more significantly than what some might call its “unrealistic” fantasy elements), it depicts things that are true to the best of human experience: courage, loyalty, and sacrifice, among countless others. 

It is key to note, too, that this definition of truth in art hardly excludes non-religious art: in some cases, a secular but well-executed artwork portrays a truer perspective on the human experience (and, indeed, a more convincing—albeit unintentional—perspective on questions of morality) than a more “religious” but agenda-driven work. As a test of this, consider Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, an undeniable classic and masterpiece that contains much truth about reality and the human experience. Despite this, its author was a rationalist deist by the end of his life, and therefore far from intending to inject “truth” into his writings, at least as defined in a Christian sense.  

Next, this concept of truth and correspondence to reality relates closely to the idea of “goodness” in art. This connection exists because art cannot achieve its aim of directing the soul toward God merely by being “true”—granted that evil does exist in the world, an artwork could theoretically depict only horrific, morally abhorrent elements, and still be technically “true to reality” in some sense. Therefore, in addition to truth, art must exemplify goodness to fully realize its goal. Goodness, in this sense, represents a state of orderliness—that is, the artwork in question is ordered to a positive end, rather than representing elements for no other reason than that they are somehow true to reality. This orderliness most notably includes the moral order—if art evokes proper ethics, it certainly is ordered to a “good” end—but it also includes categories similar to those considered for truth in the preceding paragraph, such as correspondence to human experience. To be ordered to a good end, art is not required to display only virtues—an understanding of the good can equally be elicited by the viewer’s reaction to portrayed vices, as in the case of any well-written villain—but the artwork must nevertheless somehow evoke goodness to function properly as art. 

Finally, beauty, while probably the most commonly discussed aspect of art out of the ones considered here, is also the most nebulous. It is easy to assert that art ought to be beautiful—and indeed, artworks have been understood historically as media whose goal is to be beautiful. However, in the postmodern era, we see the exact opposite: countless creative pieces intended to be at best, provocatively random, and at worst, outright unpleasant to view (consider, for example, Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 piece Fountain, an upended urinal). Are such creations then art? 

Even if we take the more restrictive approach and deny such pieces the status of art, the issue of subjectivity still remains—many people may say art should incorporate beauty, but those people likely have equally many differently nuanced views of what “beauty” means. Morality and truth may be more absolute and easily applied in the making of art, but beauty—for all that an individual may think they easily discern it—is far more difficult to pin down and categorically define. Is art defined by beauty? Some might argue that postmodern art disproves this; others, conversely, might argue that using beauty as a criterion eliminates most postmodern works as art altogether. However, we can also chart a more nuanced middle way through this dilemma: art intended solely to be ugly or chaotic is actually quite rare, and most “ugly” pieces actually employ provocative appearance as a sort of intermediate end—they are admittedly intended to be aesthetically displeasing, true, but only as a means to some further, more positive ultimate end, such as the viewer’s reflection on a certain problem in society. In this case, such “purposefully ugly” pieces are in fact “beautiful” in a limited sense—not so much in form or appearance (and in this regard, they do remain less beautiful than more aesthetically pleasing works), but in terms of their essence and overall effect. Under this definition, then, the only works excluded from being art on the grounds of beauty are those whose ultimate and only goal is to be ugly, random, or visually unpleasant—of which there actually (and thankfully) turn out to be relatively few. 

Truth, goodness, beauty: such elements—and the intention to portray them—are what define the function of art. The definition that results from these is broad, but not unbounded. Many artworks, even secular, postmodern, and “accidentally true” works about which Christians have had their doubts in the past, fall within its scope; however, it does draw hard lines at the glorification of vice and the portrayal of disorder and ugliness as ends in themselves. Art works to embody these transcendent attributes—whether by design of the artist or not, whether through doctrine or human experience or any kind of beauty—and in doing so, aesthetically draws the viewer towards a visceral experience of those same attributes in their most transcendent form in God.

This article is part of a series. For more articles in this series, see below.