Art as Gift

For over a half century I have labored between the often apposing worlds of two economies: the economies of gift and commodity. The embattled land that divides these worlds is one few from either side traverses thus making their connection daunting and full of stridency. Artists tend to see their craft as a gift while business people discover what is beautiful and true and offer a way to create wealth through the exploitation of the gift. Joseph Conrad said, “The artist appeals to that part of our being…which is gift and not an acquisition-and therefore, more permanently enduring. It is the enduring nature of art making that I am most interested in.

Can one acquire a gift by their own will? (many in American Idol would seem to act as if they could or can). Being an artist today is so enmeshed in the search for belonging and identity. But if you could acquire a gift through your own personal will would it be considered a gift at this point?

Many an artist has a daunting gift placed upon them early in life. Mozart was composing at the age of four. Candid conversations with artists often uncover the awareness of this giftedness and its benevolent bestowing. Even D. H. Lawrence was aware when he commented, “Not I, not I but the wisdom that blows through me.” If we would apply the idea of divine bestowment upon the inner nature of creativity and giftedness, why then would we not apply some kind of spiritual worth to the very creation of the artist, i.e., the painting, the song, the poem? Could it be that our own divine worth as human as a gift to humanity resonates with the art as gift exchange?

Holidays are always magical times in that we begin to anticipate the gifts that will be coming our way. Birthdays tend to generate the same exhilaration as we prepare to be blessed by those we love. It is clear that Christmas is a metaphor for what Christ brought into the world. He is the Father’s gift and in many ways we model that literally in our own gift giving. Could you imagine paying your friends and loved ones to buy you gifts for Christmas or your birthday? Of course not as those days are days where you are redeemed and atoned for. It is about blessing you and you in turn bless others.
Lewis Hyde, whose book generated much of these musings, said, “...the way we treat a gift can sometimes change its nature.” How many times have you commented on a painting on someone’s house to discover its creation was a loved one who had passed on and the painting then became very “special?” What makes this gift special is its attributes. We decide what something is worth. Even beauty is ultimately attributional

Churches have long honored certain objects and have deemed them sacred or near sacred. Where are the gifts of art that in ages past filled our churches? Have we unwittingly commoditized the spiritual dimensions of art as gift and how can we revitalize that sentiment and posture? Much like Hyde, I do not mean to totally deny the ability of art to be commodified. But can a gift be merchandised and if not where are the gifts of art in the Church?

In recent years I have come to define myself as a creativity coach. This is an odd moniker and one that most people question upon seeing it on my business card. Throw in spiritual direction and ethos experience designer and you’ve got a confused world on our hands. So I heartily agree with Hyde and many artists when they articulate, “Labors such as mine are notoriously non remunerative in a society dominated by market exchange. How is the artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an age whose values and market values and whose commerce consists almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities,” queries Lewis Hyde.

I have met many artists over the years who do labor under the weight of their calling to be an artist. This is due in part to their unwillingness to create under the shadow of triviality and shallowness. An artist’s service to their gift in some ways demands a degree of submission to gift integrity thus making capitulation to market forces highly improbable if not impossible. But the artist works out their giftedness and salvation as it were under the canopy and cultural contradictions of capitalism. How does one live when an undisciplined acquisitional spirit is allowed to run rampant? How does one carefully guard the integrity and the spirit of the gift such that it continues to bear the fruits of beauty truth and goodness? And if art is made as gift, how can it embrace its very purpose in being if it is not given as such?

I think the Church as community holds some of the answers to these questions. To some degree I am calling art “gifts” because of their sacramental ability to form and inform the inner world of the soul. Why do the gifts of the inner life lack public currency amongst Christians? What does it say about us and to us that we have allowed much of our sacred objects to be bought and sold at such cheap prices and in such tawdry ways? I contend there is livelihood of the Spirit that is missing in today's creative world where Christians are attempting to mine the imagination’s gifts from the inner world. Are there ethics of gift exchange intrinsic to the ethos of Christians and are we neglecting those experiences and demands in our current creative climate?

How do we define wealth? What makes us wealthy? Some might say abundance while others might say the possession of things of worth. Others might see wealth as objects that have history, meaning, and belonging embodied in their creation. What we value in a specific culture informs our material things as being of worth or worthless. Could we be undermining the very worth of certain artistic renderings when we buy and sell them to one another? Some might ask then how would artists make a living? Good question and is especially pithy in a materialistic world where worth once again is often tied to the monetary value given certain commodities. Do we see something as being worth more when we pay a lot of money for it? Is it possible that this may work outside the Church but inside the Church is dangerous and belittling to the exchange of gifts of art?

Art is a language. Certain philosophers contend that language precedes reality. In other words, before we speak it, we are unaware of its “really realness.” If a certain part of our speaking and naming is truncated and diminished, could then certain parts of our being be retarded or crippled or non existent? This is why we artists are at our very core story tellers and namers much like the original Adam.

In recent years a small group of us came together around the idea of restoring beauty. ORB, or the Organization for the Restoration of Beauty was created for the sole purpose of recognizing and empowering acts of beauty truth and goodness through the means of artful gift giving. One of the ironies of this emerging enclave was its originating city-Nashville. Nashville, along with LA and New York has always been a bastion of commerce when it came to the arts and especially music. Thus, a group designed to question that ethos by its very nature has an uphill climb. Undaunted we trod forward knowing that for all of us, enduring works of art, although commodified at some point, appeared to be innocent to some extent in their creative origins. How could we help foster a new ethos of creativity where the imagination and the inner world won out over commerce and merchandising? The more we explored the possibilities, the more we discovered an underlying disenchantment that was close to a boil. Buoyed up by the Internet, many younger artists were now able to by pass the art broker who arbitrarily ascribed the value of the gifts offered up. When this broker or wholesaler was taken out of the picture, a new renaissance of art making now had chance to emerge. Praise God.
For years I heard from many in the music industry that the masses always needed to have things dumbed down. Whether it was beauty or worship, give them the Cliff’s Notes. Can real art be Cliff’s Notes version of life? I think not and most artists would heartily agree. For anything of worth to endure, there must be some quality about it that transcends the banality of its time. Being able to step outside your own skin and the skin of your culture (to some extend – no one can do this completely) gives the artist a posture of knowing that is truly experienced and embodied. In ways art making is hyper-immanence that finds itself hidden in transcendence. It is in the gift of God’s only Son that God reveals both His otherness and His willingness to take on our embodied flesh and inhibit it. That is what creation is all about. That is what creativity is all about. Gibbs and Bolger in the book entitled Emerging Churches tell us that, “the urge to create is not ego driven but rather arises out of a theology of personhood and community identity.” Indeed we are discovering that the modern self is myth and that an authentic self is always communally constructed and formed. We become ourselves as we come together with others. The two are simultaneous. Although we are subject to the fall, God’s creation was still good and His image is still imprinted in all things through what the Scripture calls common grace or prevenient grace ( for all you Bible majors) Creativity itself is a gift of worship.

The Language of Art Making

Art as gift is a certain way of speaking. In the context of faith and spirituality, it offers the artist the ability to truly be prophetic as some truths and sentiments are by their very nature confrontational or at the least not going to be popular. If everything’s worth is ultimately seen through its ability to be mass marketed, we will not challenge the masses with issues of spiritual formation that by their very nature are hard to swallow for all people. Lives of simplicity and slowness are not engagements most people in western societies even want to consider. Yet their voice must be heard. How do we build a platform for the voices that by their very nature may be sifted?

Economies of the Creative Spirit

Like Hyde I am most concerned with the gifts that come with power and grace and speak commandingly to the soul. Those offered in fear, spite, rancor, or greed are not my interest here. Whatever we have been given is to be given away again… a principle of gift giving. It is the sharing of art that brings delight. The struggle for artist in a modern or post modern technocracy is the McDonaldization of creativity and consumption. Modernism has tended to focus on efficiency, calculation, predictability and control. This of course presents some real challenges to creativity and a gift. We see this today in American Idol, the ubiquitous nature of My Space, You Tube and other conduits of conversation that tend to raise up the most banal and trivial and then create a place where that spirit is duplicated in mass. The aesthetics of "art making as gift" reframes this cultural force and roots its identify in community and service as well as devotion. These become the philosophical and heartfelt postures from which art making derives its purposes and meaning.Although the fall often pushes us towards misdirection and misplaced motivation ( i.e. self expression as a right, endlessly expressing minute reflections of the self as if interesting redeeming on and on…) Read Suzi Gablick’s work on the death of modernism. Still the urge to create and give that expression as gift remains in our souls as the key that breaks a code. As Christians we see, the kingdom of God as the creativity of God. ( Doug Padgett) We move beyond seeing life as a consumptive rite of passage and more as all gift.