Encountering the horrific and the transcendent in art

Art becomes a safe place to process the chaos and the trauma of a fallen life. It provides a way to contain those things which are difficult to comprehend or beyond our ability to come to terms with. This, of course includes, not only the traumatic or the profane, such as death, suffering or heartbreak, but also the transcendent as well; joy, ecstacy, compassion and mystery. By this understanding, art becomes an immediate place where both artist and viewer may encounter the ultimate mystery. God himself.  

Through creating and beholding art, we can engage elements of the transcendent and of the terrible. For both God and suffering inhabit a space beyond our full comprehension. Art, then can be a vehicle of theology, therapy and psychology. Art touches each part of our inner lives in a holistic manner.

When trauma happens in life, there is no certain end or outcome. There is no moment of warning nor chance to get a panoramic view of the situation. It springs upon a person unaware. There are no immediate boundaries from its influence, nor place we may draw our understandings. Therefore, it's presence provokes fear and dread. But when we deal with gruesome and horrifying elements within art, say a portrayal of a bleeding soldier, or the fear of a dark, creaking house in the woods, we can get our minds around the unknown, if even for a moment. We can place borders around it and view it from behind a glass wall, say as we would a roaring lion in a zoo.

In the same way, the worship arts allow us to do the same with those transcendent characteristics of God, which otherwise exist outside our bandwidth. How can we understand abstract concepts such as omniscience or omnipresence without the aid of illustration? 

In a film or a story, we know there is a certain end and a certain progression to get there, no matter how dark or disturbing the journey may be. It is contained. It ends within two hours. Likewise, in a poem or a painting we are reassured, there is an edge to the canvas, a period at the last stanza. 

Photography may be the best example for it gives us one single moment to take in without interruption. It stops time and allows us to suspend the perpetual motion of our human life. It allows us to pause, meditate and comprehend what the limitations of our human experience doesn't allow us to digest. Like the sun standing still in Joshua's sky, we can gain victory over those things which would otherwise torment our thoughts without resolve. 

Art making allows us to form representations of behaviors and situations without engaging their actuality. Exploring large or difficult themes in art enables us to process these realities without the ramifications of actual experience.

In stories, in drama, in portrayals and depictions, we are able to witness these darker aspects of life from an observatory distance. This would seem to be the motive behind many of the children's fairy tales which deal with often gruesome and fearful situations. It introduces the fallenness of our world in a fictional setting. It can be approached in such a way that we aren't overtaken.

Perhaps, in this I'm saying there can be a redemptive purpose for horror, for the strange and for unpleasant topics in art. Even the bible itself contains stories I would never read to my children before bed. But, do they not serve a redemptive purpose for our spiritual journey?

Engaging art in this sense makes us into ghosts haunting the landscape of the embodied world.