Even if Beauty Does Save the World, is That the Artist's First Concern?
ALWTEIA
By Daniel McInerny
Of the bounty of delights in Father Robert Barron’s outstanding new documentary, Catholicism: The New Evangelization, which debuted Wednesday night on EWTN, one of my favorites was the segment on art and beauty. From a seat at The Eagle and Child, the Oxford pub where J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and others met to read and talk over each other’s work, Father Barron explained how Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings used fiction as a means of manifesting the beauty of the Faith. [link]
Key points, via @alphaomegarts:
By Daniel McInerny
Of the bounty of delights in Father Robert Barron’s outstanding new documentary, Catholicism: The New Evangelization, which debuted Wednesday night on EWTN, one of my favorites was the segment on art and beauty. From a seat at The Eagle and Child, the Oxford pub where J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and others met to read and talk over each other’s work, Father Barron explained how Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings used fiction as a means of manifesting the beauty of the Faith. [link]
Key points, via @alphaomegarts:
- Art is not a tool of evangelization in the literal sense.
- Evangelization is not at the core of an artists work. The aim is artistic excellence.
- The Christian artist however is always Christian and as such must also evangelize.
- Tolkien said that the Catholic symbolism of The Lord of the Rings was unconscious in the drafting, but conscious in the revision.
- Tolkien therefore developed the Catholic symbolism in the revision of his work, but he did so without forgeting the demands of his artform.
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