Which art is more beautiful?

By Tom Quiner

Beautiful. Transcendent.

Ugly.

I stepped into the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Museum several years ago and got the shock of my life.  The “art”, and I use the term loosely, was ugly.

It was pornographic.

It demeaned.

It was the kind of art that pulls you down into the muck.

What happened to beautiful art?  I’m talking about the kind that lifts the soul, that thrills the senses, that simply “transcends.”  It’s out there.  But most of it was created before the 20th century.

The greatest art ever created was created in the name of Christ.  After all, what can be more beautiful than Jesus Christ?

And yet the Christian world has let the secular world take over the defining and creation of art.

The time has come for a renaissance of Christian art.  The time has come for Christians to become active participants in creating and supporting Godly beauty in the name of art.

Pope Benedict XVI is leading the way.  Did you hear what he did earlier this year?  He invited artists from around the world to meet him at the Sistine Chapel.  The great singer Andrea Bocelli was there, as was award-winning film composer Ennio Morricone.  In all, 250 artists representing different disciplines heard the Pope call on them to “renew the Church’s friendship with the world of art.”

He’s talking to you.  And he’s talking to me.

He’s talking to the third-grader in art class.  Create beauty.  Share beauty.  Absorb beauty.

Think about it.  What are God’s attributes?  Truth.  Goodness.  Beauty.  Beauty is vital to the well-being of our very souls, for beauty is the reflection of God’s truth and goodness.

Let us create art that reflects that kind of beauty.

“Beauty … can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate mystery, toward God,” says the Pope.

The world will be won by beauty.