the following was posted by Donnie Copeland, Assistant Professor of Visual Art.
I just returned last week from Bethel University in St. Paul, MN where I attended the 2009 biennial CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) conference. The conference was a 3-day event with speakers from a variety of walks including, among others, Miroslav Volf, Makoto Fujimura, and Daniel Siedell. Beyond the general sessions, the conference offered attendees a variety of tracks focusing on scholarship, spiritual formation, art education, gallery and museum practices, and a final track, rather popular, offering a reflection on culture, art and art practices that took as its model Walter Brueggeman’s critical model for understanding the Psalms. Additionally each morning began with corporate worship, led by a very enjoyable Brian Moss of Seattle, Washington (http://prayerbookproject.blogs.com/prayerbook/). All this was interspersed with great people to converse with and get to know at meals and coffee breaks. Especially enjoyable was the Late Late Show, which invited artists to share from their portfolios in an informal setting. We had 3 evenings of these sessions which went on until about midnight. I would do it all again.
Daniel Siedell shared the following in a brief lecture one morning at the conference. I found these comments on his blog, http://dansiedell.typepad.com/blog/, and thought I should share them with you.
Great Culture?
By Daniel Siedell
I just returned from a thoroughly enjoyable experience at the CIVA conference hosted by Bethel University. Among my responsibilities was to offer some remarks on the theme of the conference, which was Culture? What follows are the remarks I read.
Most Christian commentary on culture reminds me of the scene in Moliére’sTartuffe when Monsieur Jourdain discovers, much to his delight, that he has been speaking prose all his life and didn’t even know it. Yes, we North American Christians have indeed been making culture all along. But is it great culture? What follows are three very short vignettes that may serve as icons for us to contemplate as we reflect on art and culture at this conference.
It was Aleksandr Tvardovsky’s habit to lounge about his apartment in his bathrobe while he read from some of the piles of manuscripts that littered his living quarters. As editor of the liberal magazine Novy Mir in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, Tvardovsky was well known as a poet as well as a staunch defender of his literary magazine’s independence. One morning he came upon a manuscript. After reading the first few lines he stopped, put it down, took a shower, shaved, put on his best clothes, and drove to his office, where he finished reading it. What was the manuscript? It was, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote it in secret in the late 1950s.Tvardovsky was so moved by it that he convinced Khrushchev to publish it and it appeared in Novy Mir in serial form in 1962. Due in part to Tvardovsky’s support, Solzhenitsyn a few years later will win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It is easy to see how Solzhenitsyn is the hero of the story. He risked his life, not only by committing his words to paper but sending them out into public. But we must not forget the editor. Tvardovsky recognized the greatness of the manuscript and, at significant personal risk, fought with the State and its censors for its publication. He lived surrounded by culture, by manuscripts written by intelligent and creative writers. Yet it took him just a few minutes to realize that in Solzhenitsyn he was reading something great. We need Solzhenitsyns who will have the courage not merely to write for the dresser drawer, as the Russians called it, but for the public. But we also need Tvardovskys who can recognize great artistic and cultural achievements amidst the clutter of cultured mediocrity that saturates our lives. Are we capable even of recognizing great art, great culture?
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