WORLD's Daniel of the Year, Makoto Fujimura, restores art's good name among Christians and gives Christians a good name in the arts | Mindy Belz
Past the Saturday brunch-goers and overladen shoppers, beyond where old women pull leashed Bouviers from flower beds and lean young moms stride behind jogging strollers, Manhattan's historic Chelsea district gives way to what looks like the wrong side of the tracks. Near Pier 60 on the Hudson River hip Chelsea devolves to industrial Chelsea, with loading docks, transport and storage holds, and the stray Jehovah's Witness hall.
But not so fast. Sea-green plexiglass has replaced some roll-up doors. Cement-block shells of buildings sport engraved plaques bearing the latest names in high art. Here the newest galleries in the art capital of the world snap up warehouse space, transforming the district much the way artists and collectors took over SoHo and Greenwich Village before.
Abstract art and the Bible
Biblical aesthetics are grounded in "creation," in which the artist is doing something analogous to God | Gene Edward Veith
Cultural conservatives tend to cast a dim eye on abstract art, insisting that true art should "look like something." But nonrepresentational art has roots deep in the Bible.
According to the Ten Commandments, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them" (Exodus 20:4-5). This commandment forbids idolatry—striking at the essence of all humanly constructed religions then and now—but it specifically mentions making a "likeness."
This does not forbid all representational art, since God soon after commands that He be worshipped in a Tabernacle adorned with images of cherubim, almond blossoms, and pomegranates (Exodus 25). In the Temple, God commanded making representations of lions, palm trees, and bulls (1 Kings 7:2-37).
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