Until the invention of the camera, people relied on artists to record the world. When photography started supplying that record in explicitly precise terms, the role of artists shifted subtly: more than chroniclers and copiers of the visible, they could now be interpreters. Photographs mirrored what things looked like, so paintings could experiment more with what things might mean.
The camera unleashed a flurry of artistic inspiration. Artists, suddenly liberated from realistic documentation, embraced many new methods and purposes. Pointillism, one of the schools of painting theory to emerge during those early days of post-photography painting, focused on the potential of enhancing visual clarity through specifically employed chaos. The Pointillists’ technique can be helpful in bringing clarity to the chaos (ironically chronicled by photographs) currently engulfing our culture.
Too close to see clearly?
Pointillists created pictures which had startling vibrancy and clear form when viewed from a distance… but which, viewed up close, dissolved into a higgledy-piggledy morass of color.
Painting using dots of uniform size and contrasting hues, the Pointillists based their techniques on optical theory of their day. Example: rather than painting a field with strokes of green, a Pointillist painted a field with dots of blue and yellow – on the premise that the composite colors would be “read” by the eye as a purer form of the blended shade.
Opposing colors – colors that contrasted directly to one another on the Pointillists’ color wheels – increased the effects of light and movement on the canvass when situated together. Orange next to blue, for example, “shimmered” from a distance. Seen from appropriate distance, Pointillists’ paintings gave the illusion not only of intensified, saturated colors but also of dynamism.
What can (only) be seen from afar
These aspects of Pointillism offer us a visual syntax for making some sense of what we are seeing in the world. Extreme contrasts, minutely juxtaposed, certainly look chaotic up close. The “shimmer” can have a nauseating effect. Ahem. But step back, and those same attributes become clarifying points that bring meaning and depth to the whole picture.
Application 1: Chaos vs. Order
Americans – and citizens of nations around the globe – seem to be unanimous about one thing only these days: their governments are not functioning in the orderly way in which governments should function. Like a Pointillist canvass viewed from too close, governments look splintered and disorienting. Of course, there are a multiplicity of opinions about why that is the case, just as there are divergent perspectives on what properly functioning government would look like. But the unanimity of displeasure and unease on the part of citizens is striking. Take a few steps back… what does it mean that humanity craves order?
The “why” Jesus offers us: God “is a God not of disorder but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33) and humanity is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26). Our recoil from chaos is built into our nature; our craving for order is, too.
“In Christ all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16 – 17)
Jesus holds us together, but disorder – counter to our nature and the nature of God – inevitably pulls us apart. Encouraging to know that our unease with disorder signifies spiritual health…
Application 2: Competing Authorities vs. Settled Sovereignty
Pointillism could not have happened prior to the invention of the camera. Only the undisputed authority of photography to record the way the world actually looks could have freed painters to experiment so boldly. Only photographs could have liberated painters to make paint itself – rather than the picture’s subject – the main focus. This is true because abstraction in the absence of concrete form has no meaning; abstraction can only interpret what is already assumed to be real. The meaninglessness of referent-free abstraction is writ large on our culture because we lack an undisputed authority.
Would-be authority figures are like Pointillists operating without the backup of photography. Unmoored from any fixed frame of reference, government figures, government philosophies, personal opinions – all are in competition at every moment. Few of these competitors are interested in the “big picture”; none of them are capable of taking authority for that big picture. The result is another layer of chaos. Why is this particular layer such a disaster for us?
Jesus explains: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Matthew 28:18) The current competition among earthly authorities goes beyond creating chaos to contradicting truth. God’s absolute sovereignty is settled, established in the beginning, in Creation, and continuing forever. “(God’s) kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and (God’s) dominion endures throughout all generations.” (Psalm 145:9)
Further, as creatures made by a Maker, we dispute the actual order of things when we deny God’s authority.
Woe to you who strive with your Maker,
earthen vessels with the potter!
Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or “Your work has no handles”?
(Isaiah 45:9)
For anyone to attempt to assert authority in the absence of reference to the truth of God’s reign is like an artist who tries to defy not only artistic conventions but also material properties – using peanut-butter instead of paint, or trying to paint on oil or water rather than paper. Not only will it not work, it cannot work!
The God of ME
As those created in the image of the eternal authority but living in a culture which denies God’s authority, we often seek to make ourselves the standard and ultimate authority. This is logical; we mistake our imago dei for true divinity. But this logical mistake births a society in which every person is his or her own God, and the chaos that follows is inevitable…
Idols and Fools
“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.” (Proverbs 18:2) The cacophony of personal opinion unique to our age of Ego-as-Idol norms clarifies that it is not our imagination – we are living in a culture of fools. Fortunately for us, Jesus “has conquered the world” and we have explicit instructions: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)
To finish with an axiom from our Pointillist instructors: before we start painting and interpreting what we see, we need the photograph – the truth of the actual thing – in view.
17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. (Ephesians 1:17 – 19)
