The Importance Of The Visual Arts

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Introduction A diverse range of human activity in creating visual or performing artefacts out of the artist’s expression and imaginative creativity is often called as visual arts. Today’s world is filled with these visual arts and yet we are blind to it and unaware of its impacts on us. I see visual art as a powerful medium of evangelization in today’s context. Church always gives preferences for artistic beauty in some way. But integration of these visual arts in the liturgy and using these visual arts as powerful means of communication is something the church has discovered new. The growing awareness of the church towards using visual art such as scenic elements has opened the doors for opportunity toward impacting individuals. What if we …show more content…

One way is by training our sight. As theologian Stanley Hauerwas reminds us, "We do not see reality by just opening our eyes." Our sight is broken and therefore requires training to see God's world rightly. As an act of the imagination, the visual arts can enable us to see the world, for example, not as opaque to God's presence but as charged with it. C. S. Lewis writes, "My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others." All of us need this help. The visual arts, by fixing our sight on concrete objects—canvases, sculptures, installations, architecture—invite us to look at the world as it is or maybe as it shouldn't be. At times they urge us to see it as it might …show more content…

A good work of art asks us to look slowly, repeatedly. Often it will even implicate us in the subject matter in view. A good work will encourage us to focus our attention on one thing at a time, plying us with questions like "Are you really alone? Or are you surrounded by an invisible communion of saints?" "Is that man your neighbor?" "Was Jesus white?" By questioning our habits of sight, the visual arts can train muscles of attentive perception. In sum, to see reality rightly, our eyes need to be disciplined, and the visual arts come along and serve this purpose well, including in the context of corporate worship (community). Five Ways of Formation by Visual Arts: The formative aspects of visual arts can be best explained if real life instances are taken into account. W.David O.Taylor gives us the five ways in which the visual art forms us based on his personal

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