41. The Neutral Space of Beauty

In this episode we track the development of art as opening up a space of mystery and intrigue that comes to be a neutral space for unbelief to land in the Romantic era.

While at first the arts largely captured inherently beautiful things and expressed them in the appropriate public context, the context was first removed and later the subject, such that art could then just be beautiful and about nothing in particular.

Further, we posit that the next development has been that art no longer even has to be beautiful. But if beauty is something that naturally leads us to God, what does all this mean for the missionary in this space?

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (352-360)

-The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron