The Relentless Cult of Novelty

Former Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in describing the emptiness of art education in the academy, addresses the foundation of higher education's rejection of traditional subject matter in favor of nihilistic, avant-garde approaches that are focused solely on technique. He calls it the "relentless cult of novelty," whose underlying quality is a "deep-seated hostility toward any spirituality" and enslavement to anything "new."

"This relentless cult of novelty, with its assertion that art need not be good or pure, just a long as it is new, newer, and newer still, conceals an unyielding and long sustained attempt to undermine, ridicule and uproot all moral precepts. There is no God, there is no truth, the universe is chaotic, all is relative, 'the world as text,' a text any postmodernist is willing to compose. How clamorous it all is, but also -- how helpless." (quoted in The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior, by Stephen Garber, IVP 1996)

Even as an art lover who has appreciated many forms of abstract art, I have stood in front of certain modern art exhibits (I won't say all, and I am not generally indicting moderns art) and have struggled with the clamor of which he speaks -- the noise of clashing techniques for the sake of technique, the dominance of irony, and expression not rooted in any belief system, floating without connection to anything substantive or capable of making a positive contribution. They are indeed helpless to contribute anything. The one, overarching value of "new, newer, and newer still" is actually a form of enslavement -- and here is an irony for you since irony is so highly valued -- since the academy has rejected tradition, so much of art is cut off from memory, leaving new artists to themselves to explore age-old issues (Solomon was right - there really is nothing new under the sun) all the while thinking they're being new or novel.

No, I'm not thinking of doing a degree in art education. I am just noticing how dependent great art is on story. The grand story. Without that, all we are left with is expression. This is true not only of pictorial art but of literature as well. The great English mystery writer and theologian Dorothy Sayers favored the poetry of statement over the poetry of search. Search is so often a black hole of longing and yearning, sucking everything into it, while statement is, by definition, a deep well which is rooted somewhere, which has a point of view -- as Bakke says, a view from a point -- and which seeks to give something.

There's a homeless man sitting in the shade of a tree across the street from my living room. He's drunk, taking drags on his rolled cigarette and shouting occasionally something about Buddha. If I were to paint him in the style of one of the modern artists in a gallery I visited last week in Cambria, I would focus more on the application of paint than on the subject. I would paint him in isolation divorced from his context, or I would invent one, placing him intentionally next to Christians emerging from Sunday school. But if I painted him in the style of Van Gogh, or sculpted him in the style of Rodin, I would hope to learn his story, focus on his inherent dignity, and explore how it connects with the larger story of creation, fall and redemption. Perhaps I would attempt to depict how God's image was imprinted on the man. The lie is that there is intrinsic value in the novel, the new, the newer still. The truth is the value comes from how what we create connects to the story of God; that connection forms the foundation for making a positive contribution.

Turns out, this is true not only for art but also for everything else we would attempt to make: a household, a ministry, a relationship, a family, an impact on our city. Each of these things draw their value from the way they relate to the story of God. It's our job to make the connection, rather than chasing after the elusive god of novelty -- whether its a "new" ministry model, the "latest" home design, the "newest" fashion, an "updated" love life, or the hot-off-the-press- must-have theology.