1 of 4

Living amidst a high-tech culture, surrounded by digitally replicated images, ironically we have lost the ability to be attentive viewers of traditional paintings. Though today we have the ability to see more—just at the click of a mouse—we actually perceive less. Christians, as it turns out, have the most to lose, because the visual art of past centuries carries in potent form a substantial legacy of Christian beliefs and values. Loss of meaningful access to this rich heritage is yet another way of choking off the voice and witness of Christian wisdom within the wider culture. What is perhaps equally lamentable is that most Christians will scarcely notice this form of cultural demise be cause they themselves have long since lost interest in these visual treasures of their own heritage. Indeed, are not modern Christians known as people of the word?

If any written words might persuade such Christians—and others—to also look beyond words, then John Drury's illuminating and persuasively illustrated Painting the Word: Christian Pictures and their Meanings is a strong candidate for that task. Drury makes a compelling case for the need to learn how to engage the Christian art of the past, and, in so doing, succeeds in captivating the attention of the reader/viewer as he leads us deeper into the images he illustrates and discusses. His vividly illustrated text is therefore a model of what it advocates: the cultivation of careful viewing skills and the rewards this brings, when applied to Christian art. It can enlarge our understanding of the central themes of Christian belief and, in so doing, motivate our actions.

Given the propensity of modernists—and most of all Christian modernists—to trust words and view images as deceiving, many may be skeptical that much is to be gained by attending to images. Some years ago, Margaret R. Miles, in her book Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture (Beacon Press, 1985), argued for the ways that art and architecture of the past shaped religious understanding and ethical values much as media images influence attitudes in modern society. She also argued for the value of the visual arts as a form of historical documentation, offering a complementary and at times contrasting viewpoint to that preserved in written forms of documentation. In arguing for the complementarity of image and language— and thus for the validity of the artist's work and calling—Miles embraced the Romantic notion of art as an address to the affective and emotional side of human experience, in opposition to the Enlightenment faith in reason, as articulated by language.

For his part, Drury takes a rather different tack. He advocates a form of criticism—both biblical and art historical—that combines the detached and historical mode of the Enlightenment with a poetic mode of Romanticism, so hoping to combine the subjective power of the latter with the objective precision of the former. Furthermore, in defining the artist's role, Drury sees in the central belief of Christian faith, the Incarnation—the Word made flesh—a primary metaphor of the artist's task: to embody truth in visible form. The artist takes invisible things—"thoughts, feelings, theology"—and makes them accessible by means of sight, thus a "sort of transubstantiation," as when, in the words of John's Gospel "the Word was made flesh … and we be held," which Drury sees as a resonant motto for artists.

next page... |  1 of 4

share this page