Article excerpt

“In refusing to acknowledge the reality of any experience that is not scientifically provable, the scientific world view has condemned much that is vital to culture and creative growth. To see things in this alienating way may be the particular compulsion of the modern Western mentality, but it does not necessarily reflect the way things really are. Although we may value technological power more than sacred wisdom, scientific rationalism has so far failed to prove itself as a successful integrating mythology for industrial society; it offers no inner archetypal mediators of divine power, no cosmic connectedness, no sense of belonging to a larger pattern. Science, in the twentieth century, has had little to say about spiritual values, nor, it would seem, has art.”

So wrote artist and critic Suzi Gablik in a 1984 article called “Julian Schnabel Paints a Portrait of God” (The New Criterion, January 1984). In the essay, Gablik (author of Has Modernism Failed? and Conversations before the End of Time: Dialogues on Art, Life and Spiritual Renewal) looks at how modern and postmodern artists have struggled with living in modern and postmodern societies in which there is no public vocabulary for the sacred.

Related reading and listening

Links to posts and programs featuring Oliver O'Donovan:

Links to posts and programs featuring Adam K. Webb:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark Bauerlein:

Links to posts and programs featuring Felicia Wu Song:

Links to posts and programs featuring Joseph E. Davis:

Links to posts and programs featuring Thaddeus Kozinski:

Links to posts and programs featuring Craig M. Gay:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark T. Mitchell:

Links to posts and programs featuring Karen Dieleman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Tim Clydesdale:

Links to posts and programs featuring J. Mark Bertrand:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mathew Levering:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark G. Malvasi:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kirk Farney:

Links to posts and programs featuring Bradley J. Birzer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Ralph C. Wood:

Links to posts and programs featuring Paul Heintzman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Gil Bailie:

Links to posts and programs featuring Zygmunt Bauman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Matthew Lee Anderson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mike Aquilina:

Links to posts and programs featuring Bishop Robert Barron:

Links to posts and programs featuring Frederick Buechner:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jeffrey Bilbro:

Links to posts and programs featuring James A. Herrick:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andrew Wilson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Susan Cain:

Links to posts and programs featuring Marilyn McEntyre:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andrew Spencer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Albert Borgmann:

Links to posts and programs featuring Catherine Prescott:

Links to posts and programs featuring Maggie M. Jackson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Garret Keizer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andy Crouch:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kyle Hughes:

Links to posts and programs featuring Philip G. Ryken:

Links to posts and programs featuring Eric Miller:

Links to posts and programs featuring Landon Loftin:

Links to posts and programs featuring Barry Hankins:

Links to posts and programs featuring Quentin Schultze:

Links to posts and programs featuring Paul Walker:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jason Peters:

Links to posts and programs featuring Alexander Lingas:

Links to posts and programs featuring Fr. Damian Ference:

Links to lectures and commentary by Ken Myers:

Links to posts and programs featuring David Cayley: