The Art of Dominion and the Dominion of Art
A series on music's essence and role: pt. 5
Welcome to this issue of our newsletter (a 4-minute read)! We are considering the creative activity known as music, first by examining what it is NOT, then by discussing God’s creativity and ours.
God calls humanity to subdue and have dominion over creation—to work to bring order to chaos for the purpose of flourishing. So that’s what humans should do, whether we’re clearing a kitchen counter or polishing plastic discs into lenses.
And that’s what artists are called to do. Art is a human activity. So the goal of art and the process of making art is also working to bring order to chaos for the purpose of human flourishing.
Consider the following examples to clarify the point!
A painter works to bring order to chaos for the purpose of flourishing. She takes oil paint and a stretched piece of canvas fabric and goes to work. She separates and names. Applying her oil paint with a brush to the canvas, she creates a landscape, separates the sky from the ground, and names it “horizon.” Then she fills that sky with clouds and birds and fills that mountainside with happy little trees.
The creative activity of painting allows nature to flourish—the oil and canvas are now more valuable and useful than if they had simply been allowed to flow down a drain or tossed into the garbage. Painting allows others to flourish as the finished work delights and inspires those who view it. And thus, it glorifies the God who created a world in which painting is possible.
A sculptor works to bring order to chaos for the purpose of flourishing. She begins with a block of stone that has no form and forms it. She uses a chisel to chip away bits of it, separating the statue from the block. She separates and she names. She might separate the block from the sculpture and declare that this is the head and that is the hand.
How might a sculpture contribute to human flourishing? It might belong to a museum where people come see it, contemplate it, and become inspired. Or it might be placed in a public space where it brings a sense of memory or liminality to a park or to a public space.
Consider a more abstract form of art, like dance. A dancer works to bring order to chaos. It takes effort to tame human limbs so that they move in a coordinated way. Dancers work on their limbs, ordering the angles of bend in their knees and the timing of movement in their arms. It allows others to flourish when people fill a theater for a ballet to watch a group of people who have worked together to bring order to chaos and their bodies with angles and jumps and lifts and flexibility beyond what the human body naturally possess without the discipline and art. And so it delights and inspires watching people.
Next consider how linguistic arts fit this paradigm. The theater arts represent subduing for human flourishing.
Script writers bring order to chaos when, out of the chaos of all possible words (and worlds), they work through drafts, edits, and table reads to produce the final draft.
Next, the set designers take that script and make a set for the actors to use. The beautiful, skillful, intentional visual design inspires the actors and audience alike.
Then on those crafted sets the actors labor to memorize lines and blocking, and interpret relationships, motivations, and interactions.
All this effort is spent for the flourishing of the cast and crew, but also for the audience. If the audience isn’t flourishing, the artistic work has been in vain.
Next week, we talk about music and how it fits into the paradigm that we have worked through.
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