Is Art Artificial?

“We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”  – Pablo Picasso.

A long time ago a couple of philosophers got in an argument: Plato said that Art was the worst, because it was a distorted copy of the physical, which itself was considered by him just a bad copy of higher perfect truths. Aristotle disagreed, saying that material was the real stuff, and that Art brought us to higher truths by pointing to ideals.

Scripture weighs in on this by saying that everyone has a sense of the ideal our their hearts. “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”  Ecclesiastes 3:11. We all know that Heaven is real – even if we refuse to accept it with our minds – our hearts cry out for it all the time. We are always longing for the perfect ideal. Some of us deal with it with hope, others with ambition, and others with cynicism. Some point to heaven, some try to build heaven on earth, still some try to deny heaven altogether, or to say that they’d just prefer hell.

Musical Artist and professor Jeremy Begbie says that the beauty we perceive in Art is a foretaste of heaven. This implies that good art points upward and speaks truth in doing so. A critic could say that art is a material distraction, something that could become an idol, should never be trusted. A cynic would say that the art is just material (and that this is all that there is) – pointing at nothing – a lie.

Whatever path you might choose, there will be signboards along the way. There will be material delivering a message about the ideal (there will be art). What we keep our eyes on, and how we relate to the signboards will determine a lot about the attitudes we develop (and out attitudes will determine a lot about where we place our eyes as we travel). How we look at art and beauty, and how we seek truth, can be a powerful influence on how we value ourselves, our efforts, and others and their work.

How does the media influence our perception of the ideal? Is art artificial? What can we do to see truth and ideals? How can we know when we are being lied to about ideals, and how can we know when we are being pointed in the right direction?