HQ

What makes a work of art valuable? I don't just mean the price that is paid for a work of art but what makes a work of art good and how good a work of art is. In order to answer the question, Christians often appeal to God's artistic works in nature. Francis Schaeffer writes: “A work of art has value…because a work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the creator.” This sounds good, but what is the argument here? If it is something like this: All God’s works are works that have value Some of God’s works are creative works  Therefore, all creative works are works that have value …then it is invalid. Just because all God’s works have value, it does not follow that everyone’s creative works have value. Schaeffer goes on to say the following: “an art work has value…because man is made in the image of God…and…man…has the capacity to create.” So maybe he means to say that the value of what we create is because we are like God. The ar...

In his controversial essay,  On Moral Fiction,  John Gardner argues that art is “essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy.” He argues that truly great art shows the story of humanity; it takes the random experiences of life and shows their worth: “Life is all conjunctions, one... thing after another, cows  and  wars  and  chewing gum  and  mountains; art—the best, most important art—is all subordination: guilt  because of  sin  because of  pain.” Ever since a certain artist nailed a urinal to a wall and called it fountain, much art has subverted this idea. It is now more concerned with fragmentation, disjunction and the doing away with any idea of human nature related to a guiding narrative. If there is no story to humanness, then there is precious little resource for deciding what is of moral worth. Instead we see the collapse of morality into its medium. Morality us...