Intimations of Divinity

For class on Wednesday we attended the exhibit at the Museum of Art called 'Types and Shadows: Intimations of Divinity." It wasn't the first time I had been to the exhibit, but I definitely saw new things this time around, and I think I'd even like to go back to study more the things that I noticed on Wednesday.

First, the very object of the exhibit is remarkable to me - that our specifically Mormon culture so celebrates art. We seem to understand how art - and all symbolic representations - can lead us to God. Last semester in my French culture class, we discussed the beginning of the Gothic art and architecture movement and read the writings of Abbot Suger, the movement's founder, and Pseudo-Dionysis, an early Saint that he often quoted. These two men believed art to be an essential and enlightening part of religious worship with 'anagogical' - that which leads us to God - character. They believed that God, as the "father of all lights," created all material things, and that thus all material things reflect him, and art's job was to celebrate that light. On the other hand, Saint Bernard disliked art because he felt it distracted from worship. We Mormons tend to agree with Suger and Pseudo-Dionysius, and embrace symbolic representations and explorations of divinity and divine character. I love this, because through symbolism, we are taught 'line upon line.' This is the principle I was trying to get at when I said that new things came to me the second time I saw this exhibit, and that new things will come with the third: God uses symbolic teaching methods (art, Myth [capital M intended, but not explained here]) because it allows for varying and progressive interpretations, and enables man to push beyond the constraints of the temporal to access the divine.

Okay, that was all super theoretical and probably unclear, but what I basically mean is this: God uses symbolism - and in this case, art specifically - to teach us because it's multifaceted. Different people can understand one work in multiple ways, and learn equally valuable things from it. One person can also grow to understand more of a work of art as they study it, and as they have more different life experiences. As for the temporal to the divine, I like what President Packer says in his book The Holy Temple. Basically, he explains that temple ordinances and rites are symbolic, because the spiritual is used to explain the spiritual, and the symbols of the temple are a conduit to from temporal to spiritual.

Second, specifically to this exhibition, my favorite piece was actually not any of the ones we discussed on the tour, but the Brian Kershisnik painting entitled Resurrecting. I love Kershisnik's work - it's all so light-hearted. Resurrecting is again, just that. The painting depicts people joyfully jumping out of their tombs, and a mother running to scoop up her baby into her arms, both newly resurrected. The simple gladness this painting expresses makes me smile every time I see it.