“Beyond a narrow, elite audience, there is a pervasive sense from the side of the public that much contemporary art fails to connect - a failure not evident throughout centuries of earlier art.” ArtSidesAudienceFailingCenturyContemporaryElitesEvidentContemporary Art Author:John Walford
“Who is one's audience, the spiritually hostile professional art world or one's visually insensitive Christian neighbour?” WorldArtChristianCultureChristianityAudienceHostileNeighbourArt WorldInsensitive Author:John Walford
“Advertizing, television and film all wield mighty powers to visually seduce us, while much fine art leaves us indifferent, confused or, at worst, repulsed. There is a desperate need for creative Christians to redeem the visual arena from both forms of excess, cutting through all the false glamour, tawdry baseness and dense obfuscation.” NeedsArtChristianFilmFormCultureChristianityCreativeCuttingWorstTelevisionFineConfusedVisualsDesperateExcessIndifferentArenaGlamourFine ArtsDenseSeducingBasenessObfuscation Author:John Walford
“Beyond the pervasive disinterest in the visual arts among the Protestant community, the core problem lies in the fact that the art world rejects on several grounds work that is in any way explicitly Christian in content and also shrugs off as naive anything that has the semblance of hope or optimism in outlook.” WorldWayArtFactsProblemChristianLyingCultureCommunityChristianityOptimismCoreVisualsRejectsNaiveOutlookProtestantsArt WorldVisual ArtSemblanceDisinterest Author:John Walford
“Put crudely, one is left with a choice between two unsatisfactory combinations: artistic integrity married to spiritual compromise; and spiritual integrity married to artistic banality-or, worse, art compromised on both counts. Neither one will satisfy those who recognize the fundamental necessity of integrity in both faith and art.” ArtTwoSpiritualChoicesCultureLeftChristianityIntegrityMarriedFundamentalsCompromiseArtisticCombinationBanalityArtistic IntegritySpiritual Integrity Author:John Walford
“The cumulative effect of the Romantic theory of creativity, as played out in the context of belief in the virtue of the avant-garde, is that while the art world has effectively freed itself from the tyranny of artistic tradition and its historic patronage system, it has ended up inhabiting an autonomous but perceived irrelevance.” WorldArtCultureBeliefChristianityCreativityVirtueEffectsTheoryTraditionTyrannyArtisticHistoricArt WorldAvant GardeAutonomousCumulativePatronageIrrelevance Author:John Walford
“As far as stimulus from the visual arts specifically, there is today in most of us a visual appetite that is hungry, that is acutely undernourished. One might go so far as to say that Protestants in particular suffer from a form of visual anorexia. It is not that there is a lack of visual stimuli, but rather a lack of wholesomeness of form and content amidst the all-pervasive sensory overload.” ArtMightTodayFormSufferingCultureChristianityParticularHungryVisualsAppetiteStimulusProtestantsAnorexiaSensoryVisual ArtOverloadWholesomeness Author:John Walford
“Postmodernism has not overcome the problems of modernism, but only compounded them with a dosis of cynicism, relativism and indifference.” ArtProblemOvercomingIndifferenceCynicismModernismPostmodernismRelativism Author:John Walford
“In as much as Christ's mission was to bring all things into submission to God, and to restore not only humanity, but also the whole creation to its proper purposes, to make straight what is crooked, and to redeem both humanity and the creation from the curse of sin, then herein can be found the possibility for a full and wholesome realization of human artistic activity.” HumansArtWholePurposeHumanityFoundChristSinCreationPossibilityActivityAll ThingsMissionsRealizationArtisticCurseSubmissionCrookedSubmission To God Author:John Walford
“Redemption in Christ should give the artistically gifted not only a new orientation and a new sense of purpose, but also a new vision of reality, seeing the world through the eyes of faith, looking at the human condition through the eyes of Christ.” WorldGivingShouldHumansArtRealityEyePurposeChristVisionSeeingConditionsRedemptionHuman ConditionGiftedOrientationThrough The EyesSeeing The WorldNew Vision Author:John Walford
“It would be a serious oversight to limit our understanding of the impact of theology to strictly religious art, and overlook its pervasive role in shaping human understanding and artistic expression thereof within any given culture-regardless of the subject matter at hand.” HumansArtMatterHandsWould BeCultureGivenUnderstandingReligiousRolesSubjectsSeriousExpressionLimitsImpactTheologyArtisticSubject MatterArtistic ExpressionOversightReligious Art Author:John Walford