Refractions Volume 22:Operation Homecoming: Epistles of Injury

Operation Homecoming: Epistles of Injury
Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 22




I recently found myself at New York’s Symphony Space, listening to the voices of soldiers. As a National Council on the Arts member, I was representing the National Endowment for the Arts for the release of “Operation Homecoming” (Random House, edited by Andrew Carroll). The N.E.A. gave returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq an opportunity to write down their war time experiences in workshops lead by Pulitzer winning Vietnam era writers. With actors highlighting the evening, (Matthew Modine, Joan Allen, and, most memorably, Stephen Lang) and sitting next to one of the soldier/writers, I had a strange and uncomfortable revelation: a revelation that surely had been bubbling up in me in recent years -- How much of the world’s art and literature is linked to wartime experiences?

The writings of soldiers, or writing about wars in general, has indeed defined our literature and the arts, from Homer to Dante to Hemingway. If you remove works of art that do not in some way relate to, or respond to wars, our cultural landscape would be full of holes (think of Picasso’s “Guernica”). Perhaps that's what Jesus meant, when he warned us “such things (wars) must happen.” He did not validate wars by saying this, but he wanted to make sure we understood the inevitability of them: that our inner malaise will surely be translated into greater conflicts. But to have the Prince of Peace tell us that wars must happen is more than troubling. Must we be haunted by wars as part of God’s plan of redemption? Must art exist as primarily funerary?

In modern times, Rothko, Mondrian and other 20th Century masters wove the horrors of the atomic age into their work, as if to visit Hiroshima over and over again. Rothko gave that post-Atomic glow an ethereal transcendence even as Mondrian stubbornly, and valiantly, insisted on the order of grids against the approaching chaos. In both cases, they were exiled to New York, because of the dark specters of evil marching into their homelands. Surrealism (as the recent MOMA/National Gallery exhibit showed) screamed against the insanity of fear birthed in the trenches of WW1. These artists are often remembered for their anti-patriotic rants, or at best being ambivalent observers, and most definitely being anti-establishment. It is ironic that they are now seen as the establishment in the institutions of museums and academia. But the best of arts still can rise above the institutions and establishment that gave permission for them, or the conflicts that they escaped. The arts speak into a void, creating a moment of clarity, a pause in the frenzy.

Then there are the J.R.R. Tolkiens and C.S. Lewis of the world, whose front line experiences gave birth to the most resonant, faith-filled literature of our last century. Tolkien imagined through the dark trenches, surrounded by dying friends, and chose to speak directly against his own fear by naming one by one characters and places of imagined reality that would later form the basis for The Lord of the Rings. Lewis too, injured in the war, later recounts that his journey from atheism to faith was paved by his sense of loss, inconsolable violation (“the problem of pain”, he called it) that he felt in his bones. Having gone through such horrors is no guarantee of a recovery of faith, but it does suggest that faith and culture are linked to the crisis that surrounds us.

T.S. Eliot would have found this dialogue not so unfamiliar. His war-time journey to write the “Waste Land” could also describe our survey of Darfur and Afghanistan. In the “Four Quartets,” he describes “The unimaginable Zero Summer” of the atomic devastation but ends hopefully in the “still point of the turning world”, producing a rare articulation of the heart’s navigation from fear to love. But today, in the shadows of our current chaos in Iraq, and bullet holes in an Amish school still fresh in our minds, such sentiment can come across as too optimistic and even unkind.

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I read recently that most of early Christian art (at least the examples that have survived) were funerary in nature. Apparently, even in the world of faith, art is obsessed with death. Surely, it would be the darkest of confessions for any artist working today to admit that his/her visions are driven by the haunts of war and death, and, like Dante, that imaginative reality is filled with a vision of purgatorio. On the contrary, our recent contemporary art scene is rushing to escapism, lacking in engagement with the present darkness, and even without the disciplined skill to describe the horror. So such a confessional would seem welcome in today’s climate of superficiality. Pausing to listen to the writings of soldiers in “Operation Homecoming,” though, I have begun to see a glimpse of a new kind of realism.

These men and women chose to write staring into the abyss: to record both their fears and hopes, in this time of certain chaos, grieve over lost lives and opportunities; but they also speak well of their pets and ordinary sun-lit days. Theirs is a stark realism, observing the life surrounding the turmoil, wrestling against the fading memories of loved ones, comrades, and the stenches of war. So many of Operation Homecoming pages are filled with emails, which like radio dispatches, they will remain deeply etched in our minds as immediately potent. These are voices that are directed toward our private spheres, but now allowed to be make public: They deserve our hushed attention for their honest grappling with inner turmoil. Their accounts are true “Survivor” tales but without any shred of sensationalism. Told sometimes gingerly, sometimes in expletives, the soldiers seem to dwell, after a while, in my consciousness as my imaginary neighbors, people whom I might encounter in my street, or kick a soccer ball around with. I am surprised at how much humor fills these pages, not the sanitized kind, but the raw, grimy kind that belongs in beer halls and late night comedy shows. Refreshingly free of showmanship, in our glitz-filled cultural universe, their writings serve more than to recount the war: they speak into our lives with authenticity, and remind us somehow that, despite it all, humanity can still reign in a cruel kaleidoscope of fear called war.

There are poignant lessons, of a soldier writing home as he flew over Iraq, a geography lesson that span some 3000 years. “Have you heard of Mesopotamia?” writes Lieutenant Colonel Cohoes to his sons, “ Two great rivers of the word, the Tigris and the Euphrates, flow together here then empty into the Persian Gulf….King Nebuchadnezzar (I can’t say it either) build the hanging Gardens of Babylon about 2,600 years ago.” Of course, in the reading that took place at Symphony Hall, Matthew Modine could not pronounce “Nebuchadnezzar,” either.

There’s an account of a soldier of Korean descent who recounts his adoptive American father and grandfather fighting in their wars. Echoed throughout the book is generational lineage to wars, that it is not an isolated experience to one generation. Then there is Christy De’on Miller, in an essay she called “Timeless,” a single mom/soldier mourning over the loss of her only son, Aaron:

At times I believe I can learn to live a life without my son. After all, I must. I am certain there are other mothers who have lost their boys – car accidents, war, illness – who can shop for dinner at the local grocer’s without the macaroni-and-cheese boxes suddenly causing them grief. Moms who can roll sausage balls without tears; perhaps the festive food would even cause a smile. But the memory of him is planted in everything around me. Inside of me. So much is gone. Him, or course. But so much of him has been lost, is fading, breaking down. His blanket, his watch, his uniform…

The writings amplify the details of life, not just theirs, but ours. They let us into the writers’ worlds, to share in their grief, their loss, and their confusion.


Here was another revelation, then, after listening to the account after account of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and their families that I, too, lived in a war zone. A different, milder version for sure, sanitized and packaged better. Photos of the bright new facades of “you can have it all” condominiums, to be completed in 2010, tell us that we are all better in downtown Manhattan. Their airbrushed architectural renderings are what a friend calls “architectural porn”. But nevertheless I live and raise my family in a place called Ground Zero, and reading the book opened my eyes to see the invisible collateral of a war far away shadowing us everywhere. Yes, even if there is no visible war around, there are less visible battles going on everywhere.

There are visible scars in culture though. The battle is about the imaginative territories of hope against fears, the sacrifice of love against a misplaced devotion, the anger of revenge against forgiveness. It is a battle that rages in the minds of youth as they negotiate the labyrinth of a techno frenzied universe, sharing a communion of broken promises. When the manifestation of such collateral damage ambushes us, like in the pastoral Amish landscapes recently, or in Littleton, Colorado in 1998, in a high school named after a delicate wild flower, we are astonished.

John Hewett, the development director of the N.E.A., and who also happens to be an ordained minister, told me a poignant story recently. When the evil struck the sleepy Amish community near Lancaster, when a gunman/milkman systematically shot girls one by one, there was a hidden story, in what he called “A Miracle Nobody Noticed.” He wrote:

I’m convinced most of us get through most days without thinking about God much. I was having one of those days a few weeks ago, until I heard about Marian and Barbie Fisher, two of the ten girls in the West Nickel Mines Amish School. Marian, the oldest, was 13. Her sister Barbie, who lived, is 11. When it became obvious what was about to happen that ghastly morning, Marian turned to the killer and said, “Shoot me and leave the other ones loose.” “Shoot me next,” Barbie said. “Shoot me next.”

Two children willing to lay down their lives for their friends. Wonder where they got an idea like that? That’s another miracle nobody noticed



Perhaps a new renaissance will be birthed out of the “mouths of babes” like these: “shoot me and leave the other ones loose.” Or it may flow out of a grieving mother/soldier like De’on grieving for Aaron, a Marine who lost his life protecting his wounded comrades. Perhaps we will see that whether we are soldiers, or housewives or Pulitzer Prize winning writers (or all of the above), we need to realize that we are not home, at least not yet. That’s the only faith that can compel us to say: “shoot me.” The girl did not complain that “this is unfair,” or argue, “this is unjust:” she just said “shoot me.”


Such fragile, but heroic, voices in the face of violence can easily be ignored, or simply not audible with our doomed ears. It certainly did nothing to stop a milkman from unloading his anger by pulling the trigger. Perhaps such otherworldly gestures look as pathetic, or beautiful, as the string quartet that played on as the Titanic sank. But I submit to you that here, in a miracle nobody noticed, is a bugle call also directed towards us artists. It begins in a belief that our lives are to be lived for others. Arts should let “the other ones loose” from the bondage of decay, apathy and loss. To the extent we are able to do that, to that degree we will see a new language of expression that is not self-centered, but self-giving and generous. Yes, I believe that art can, and ought to, exist apart from wars. But in only place where this has been the case in the history of the world, a place called Eden where a poet named Adam dwelled, is today hidden inaccessibly beneath, or above, the rubble of Iraq.

Operation Homecoming gives us authentic voices that seek be a responsible steward of their experiences. Why would that simple gesture seem so foreign and refreshing? Has our culture become so cynical that we no longer have the capacity to listen without having a wry, critical distance? Or has the media become so profit driven and sensationalistic that they no longer can mediate information responsibly? Because the soldiers have faced certain death, and stood over the rubble that might have crushed them, but having lived, they owned the experience, and chose to tell the tale artfully and carefully. If we all live in a war zone of some kind, should we not do the same? Words alone can impregnate promise or despair in such a precipice: the arts can inspire or despise humanity.

In Jesus’ realism of “these things must happen,” he was also reminding us that our sacrifice, either for just or unjust reasons, would not be the last word. Our efforts, however noble, will not end the cause of injustice. But we are all given a call for self-sacrifice nevertheless. None are exempt, not even a pacifist thirteen-year-old secluded as far away from Iraq as humanly possible. And Jesus knows, first hand, what it means to die an unjust death without picking up a stone, or a spear. Instead, he continues to breath life into us in our funerary songs. By listening to these soldiers/poets, though, we may even begin to feel that life-breath, a hint of a culture of self-giving. Despite the anguish, De’on writes with the same quiet surrender of the Amish sisters :

My faith doesn’t equal that of Job’s. I question. Why has God cut the fruit from my vine? Taken the only child that remained? Left me with no hope for a grandchild? I‘m certain there can be no more. No more children.

And yet I have no particular animosity for my son’s killer. He’s a nameless and faceless combatant to me. Should I ever have the opportunity to meet him, I hope that I’d forgive him. To me, the buck stops with the Father. His power stings at times. But He’s listened to me; perhaps He’s even cried with me. And yes, I do know what I’m talking about here. It’s a belief, man. Aaron’s words. You either believe in God or you don’t. Yes, I’d forgive. I do forgive. There is absolutely nothing I’d do to keep myself from spending eternity with God and Aaron.

Our path back to Eden is blocked, but there is a way in to the feast of the selfless. Only in these words of forgiveness, utterly stripped down to the core of faith, can echo the Timeless, or the Time-ful, promise of an Easter morning. That is our true Homecoming. Even if the condition is unbearably chaotic, or simply cruel, these authentic voices refracts in our fear dominated cultural landscape, mediating how we can choose to face a new day, and breathing certain hope into our stricken hearts.

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1/13/07 post script: Go and see "Pan's Labyrinth" (though not for children). The movie deals with themes of war and imagination, with echos of eternal longing. A must see.

Yoko Ono and Makoto Fujimura

During my recent exhibit for The City of London Festival (my installation art is documented below), I had a great pleasure of meeting Yoko Ono. We were the two visual artists selected for the festival's theme of Japan. She kindly folded an origami crane to celebrate our exhibits. Video can be seen at http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=7881168191579098779&hl=en

Makoto Fujimura

All Hallow's Exhibit

The All Hallow's Installation in London this summer consisted of three Mercy Seat that used my children’s arm measurements (Ty, 17, C.J., 15, and Lydia, 13) as their “portraits.” (see www.makotofujimura.com, under "essays" for more information on my Mercy Seat series). I also floated "Nagasaki Koi" video on top of the installation (thanks to Meryl Doney, The Hayward Gallery curator who selected me for the exhibit), and also had the video imbedded in the small boat covered with Japanese paper.

I will be using the Hiroshima/Nagasaki images again for my next exhibit in New York City, "Golden Fire" at Sara Tecchia Roma from Nov. 30th to Jan. 13th.

Refractions 21: Come and See: Leonardo da Vinci's Philip in The Last Supper

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 21
Come and See:
Leonardo da Vinci’s Philip in The Last Supper

Above: Leonardo da Vinci: "The Last Supper”: Philip sits fourth from the right. The top image simulates looking from below




“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathaniel asked. “Come and see,” said Philip. John 1:46

The glass door automatically shut behind us as the guide motioned us to enter the inner chamber. We waited, and as another door opened, the cool, dry air enveloped us; a contrast to the hot, July heat in Milan. The courtyard of St. Maria delle Grazie sparkled outside in the morning sun, and I wondered if Leonard da Vinci stood upon the same rocks that I saw here, 500 years later.

Because of the Da Vinci Code phenomenon, I had received several inquiries to see if I could comment on the book and the movie, and my mind seemed to wander back to the same problem: “I have never seen Leonardo’s ‘The Last Supper’ in person…how could I comment on something that I have not seen?” Yes, I own a magnified version of the photograph of the painting (see plate B), represented in a magnificent book by The University of Chicago (440 pages of delight). And I have pondered the image as I have thought much about Andy Warhol’s series by the same title. Yes, I had seen a reproduction of Leonardo’s ‘The Last Supper’.

But I never had stood under it. So I came to Milan, Italy, to stand-under a painting.

“If you want to ‘understand’ something,” said my friend Bruce Herman, “you have to be willing to ‘stand under’ it.” Bruce, an art professor, went on to cite C.S. Lewis’ essay “Experiment in Criticism” in which Lewis, a medieval literature scholar at Oxford University, writes the following:

We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.

An Experiment in Criticism, pg. 18, 19 (Cambridge University Press)

In the essay Lewis makes a distinction between “using” art and “receiving” art. He argues quite persuasively that: “‘Using’ is inferior to ‘reception’ because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it.”

Why is it important to experience a work first hand?

If we base our conclusions on merely what an “expert” has said, or on our own limited assumptions, it merely remains hearsay. We never get to discover, and ultimately create, out of an authentic experience.

Here’s what I discovered standing under The Last Supper: the most important visual catalyst for the painting is not the effeminate John, or Judas, nor even Jesus Himself. In fact, the key figure in kick-starting the visual movement of the painting is Philip.

It is Philip’s outstretched, distressed body and his cinnabar robe that we see first in the painting’s visual theatre. The whole painting is first experienced via Philip’s body. Our eyes go first to him; afterward they traverse to Jesus, the center of the work. Jesus’ mouth is slightly opened (discovered to be so through recent restoration efforts) and his hands are making powerfully emotive gestures. Leonardo was capturing the moment of Jesus’ announcement: “I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.” (Gospel of John 13:21)

Leonardo painted in a grand, dominating scale for a small space. Even standing in the far back of the refectory, it is difficult for the eye to decipher the whole painting all at once. He painted “The Last Supper” in such a way as to force the viewer to enter the painting, physically and emotionally, and to viscerally become part of the narrative.

Only when the viewer stands under the painting can it be seen for what was intended (see plate A). Leonardo had a specific visual message to those who stand under the painting. He had a visual sophistication to carry off what very few artists could even dream to do then and now: he painted the complex psychology of betrayal. It starts with Philip, and ends in a moneybag. Invited to walk into Leonardo’s funhouse of mirrors, we are all meant to be part of this narrative, forever refracting within our own dark journeys.

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As an artist, I naturally try to identify the source of light in a painting, because I know that artists often use light to reveal what they want the viewer to see. In this painting, it would be easy to assume that the light is coming from behind from the windows, through which we see a Renaissance landscape. But the source of light in this painting actually is the face of Jesus reflecting on all of the disciples – all but Judas, who is under-painted with black, denied a brightened countenance.

The source of light points to what anchors the painting: the presence of Jesus. This is emphasized by the use of perspective, a Renaissance invention used to create an illusion of three-dimensionality in a two-dimensional space. The windows and other architectural elements create lines that end up in a single point, called the “vanishing point.” In “The Last Supper”, the vanishing point ends on the forehead of Jesus, the centerpiece of the painting. But if the painting were an equilibrium centered on Jesus, it would not create the psychological tension we feel from it. But the tension is there, and this is because Philip breaks up the visual stasis.

In any reproduction one sees in a book or a photograph (plate B), Philip’s body gets flattened. However, for a trained artist/viewer, the visual response to the actual piece is to see Philip’s body contorted, surrounded by negative spaces. The angle compresses his body and accentuates the movement of his reaction. Leonardo’s genius not only used the vanishing point to anchor the painting, but also to create waves of motion that shock us into shedding visual conventions.

If you are an artist working on a large commission, you know that looking up at a painting distorts what you paint, so you account for that by exaggerating the vertical. In other words, you make the figure taller than it needs to be. What I noticed looking up at the painting is that Leonardo did not make Philip’s body taller, but kept his body twisted, compressed and angular. That is why in reproductions of “The Last Supper” Philip’s body does not stand out.

If Leonardo did not elongate the figure, why does Philip stand out when you stand under the painting?

It took me the whole fifteen minutes I was allowed in St. Maria delle Grazie to understand what Leonardo did. And then the whole painting began to open up to me. In a true visual code, Leonardo reveals both his genius and the true message of the painting.

Philip stands out because he visually breaks the horizontal plane. The top of Philip’s head aligns itself with the perspective lines parallel to the windows. The eye attends to his head, magnetically drawn to the perspective line that juts out from the horizontal line. This only happens if you are standing below the painting . But there is another figure that breaks the horizontal line which is accentuated by the head of Jesus, and that other figure is Judas. “The Last Supper” is to be read from Philip to Judas, through the body of Christ, creating several visual “v’s” and “w’s”.

In the New Testament of the scriptures, Philip is one of the Seven, the closest disciple of Christ. It’s possible that he knew Jesus and his family, and may have grown up with Jesus. Philip is also noted in scriptures for having the ability to point others to Christ. He convinces Nathaniel to “come and see” Christ in the early chapters of the Gospels, and in the book of Acts (the historical document of the early church) he continues to draw many to Jesus, including the Ethiopian eunuch who was found reading the prophesy of Isaiah in Gaza.

It is clear to me that of all four of the Gospels, the Gospel of John is the one Leonardo relied on the most. The Gospel of Matthew reads more like a legal case to clearly convict Judas of betrayal. Both the Gospels of Luke and of Mark seem to focus on Peter, his betrayal compared to Judas, and eventual restoration to become the founder of the early church. But the Gospel of John records in detail what Leonardo depicted, from John’s reclining figure to Judas’ darkness, from Thomas’ infamous skepticism to Philip’s surprise at what Jesus’ mouth had just uttered.

Leonardo was interested in one thing: the psychological depiction of a night of betrayal. John 14:8 records Philip asking a question which reverberates throughout the painting:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14: 8, 12)

Philip asks for evidence, a question that must have also filled Leonardo’s mind. Philip’s comment is one of near frustration, an insider’s exasperation, and therefore even the nature of his request assumes a close, trusting relationship. Jesus responds to the basis of Philip’s question by saying, “Don’t you know me, Philip?” In doing so, Jesus makes one of the most remarkable promises ever made to his followers (more on this later.)

It makes sense, then, that when Jesus reveals that he is to be betrayed by a close friend, Philip leaps out of his chair in disbelief. A pronouncement of a betrayal shocks the trusted the most. To this innocence Leonardo gives the most weight, initiating a shock wave that reverberates throughout the painting, and the corridors of time.

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Betrayal has always defined our lives, and since ancient times artists have given ample attention to this common human experience, in forms like Greek tragedies and Shakespearian plays. But today, we live in the expectation of one betrayal after another, of relationships breaking up, or of another political or religious leader found in scandal. Tabloid accounts of celebrities’ comings and goings amuse us, as we simultaneously bemoan and are entertained by their depth of woes.

Our culture of betrayal goes way beyond individual failures: it is a culture that has lost the belief in the good, true and beautiful. Without the a priori conscience that believes in civilization’s own integrity – that wrong can be righted, and that creativity is a gift to society – no art, and no work of our hands, can be infused with a transcendent vision. The culture of betrayal denies the potential to hope, and is determined to quickly self-destruct.

Our galleries and contemporary museums are full of such vacuous images (not to mention movie theatres and bookstores). But blaming artists is not helpful: no, rather it is more accurate to say that artists are simply reacting to, and honestly recording, the conditions of culture. They are, as Marshal McLuhan would have it, “a canary in the cultural mines.”

Artists smell the poisoned air and sing.

But Leonardo was born in a different time. He was given the legacy of Giotto and Fra Angelico. He had patronage that he could count on from the church and from powerful individuals who also assumed a certain world-view. He had geniuses as contemporaries, including Michelangelo and Botticelli, who also worked from a convention that assumed a direct connection between culture and beauty, goodness and truth.

In a sense, there was an innocence from which the artists of the time could work, but it was not naïveté. Leonardo certainly was not naïve, and he was certainly a religious skeptic. But this commission, only one of two wall commissions he had received, gave him an opportunity to work out of the meta-narrative (the Gospel story) with conviction and force. He could trust that his paintings were meant to last and speak to the generations to come. Because of corruption within the church, of which Leonardo was certainly aware and decried in his notes, and because of the loss of patronage about to ensue, this assumption saw its zenith in “The Last Supper”.

We may never recover that innocence again. In our current culture of betrayal we need evermore to see and stand-under The Last Supper. We need to seriously consider “receiving” the message, as C.S. Lewis suggests, and allowing the work to speak into our lives.

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In the DaVinci Code, the character Robert Langdon, a professor of “symbology,” finds it significant that Jesus and the effeminate figure seated on his right form the letter “M.” Moreover, Langdon believes this second figure is not St. John, but Mary Magdalene, the “bride of Christ,” dressed as a man.

Yes, there is an “M” imbedded in the painting, but Dan Brown does not go far enough in tracing its mystery.

The real “M” or a series of “M”s starting from Philip’s stretched out hand, do not end with John, but with Judas. More specifically, the shock wave ends in Judas’ right hand, which holds the money-bag, symbolically depicting the very coins that Judas would receive to betray Jesus.

Is the figure of John effeminate? Yes. But every male figure that Leonardo painted bordered on androgyny. Leonardo’s depiction of the sexual genre has never been a secret, and even a critique of such in open forums would not have surprised Leonardo. What would be shocking to Leonardo would be if the viewer did not somehow recognize the greatest message imbedded in the painting – that Judas, the seed of betrayal, is in all of us.

Most of the paintings of The Last Supper from the painter’s era depict Judas leaving the room. Yet Leonardo made a radical decision to have Judas to be part of the “inner circle,” placing him, and, by association, us, at the Table. Judas is depicted explicitly as part of the inside circle of the disciples sitting directly in front of Peter, who Christ identified as the “rock” of the early church.

Like Philip, Leonardo, wanted to point to a deeper journey. And when we stand-under this genius work, we too take part in that journey.

The Code phenomenon is not about conspiracy theories, but is rather a symptom of our cultural ills, of how easily we accept distortion and betrayal as normative and necessary. We are trained to cheapen our dialogue to fit our darkened realities.

Today our moneybags are full of flashy, counterfeit sound bites.

Christians must understand that this can easily happen in our worship as well as in popular culture. We want God to be palatable and to fit our needs and realities, instead of practicing a daily discipline. I venture to say that what goes on inside our worship may have a greater impact even upon the larger cultural condition.

Could it be that the reason why we have such a divided nation, insistent on quick judgment, is because the Church does not fully know how to live and exercise grace? Could it be that the reason why we do not have a culture full of beauty is because our worship is not beautiful? Could it be that the cause of our shortened attention span in contemporary society is because the Church has not trained us to listen well?

In our culture of betrayal, we are quick to impose our own views on layers of established systems. Thus, even a work of art is to be distrusted. Rather than trying to “under-stand” the work, we stand over it and dismiss it as unreadable or worse yet, impose a critical ideology upon it without first allowing the work to affect us.

In doing so we miss out on experiencing what the work of art can offer, and consequently we do not journey into the power of genuine art. This lack of authentic encounters leads only to a vortex of distrust, fueled by the media, whose capital is fear. We are drowning in a deluge of despair, and our memories of the good, the true and the beautiful have nearly faded completely.

Sadly, today no one has Leonardo’s ability or skill to ask that complex and deeply layered question in his/her art, even with the advent of moving images. It may be argued that Leonardo was the last painter to have the ability to integrate history, theology, science and art with such mastery. Consider this: can we think of any other artist after Leonardo whose work would be a target for an intriguing conspiracy tale? No one has had the genius, the psychological complexity, nor the level of skill and patronage, not even Picasso, van Gogh or Warhol. Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly notable contributors, such as Grunewald (a topic for future Refractions), Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Gorky and Kandinsky, but none of these artists has the enormous social influence, not just in the arts, but in all human endeavors, that Leonardo has had.

Our wresting against an established system demands that the system has strength enough to withstand the challenge, and at the very least serve as a dialectical opponent. The center must hold in order for the surface tension to break. Thus even in facile intrigue there is always substance underneath. Our critique of contemporary culture must begin with that assumption. And then we must not just engage and critique from that conviction, we must create out of that center.

To da Vinci, such a foundation was immediately accessible. For him to have painted as he did, he had to be convinced of a center that holds.

So who is at the center? Where does the “vanishing point” end?

It ends on the forehead of the Savior.

And that foundation will hold, no matter how full our moneybags get, nor how little it takes for us to engage in betrayal. To Leonardo, the triangular shape of Jesus literally holds the painting in its visual movement. To Leonardo, that foundation was never in question: the question to him was the question of “evidence.”

Jesus exhorted Phillip to “believe” on the basis of the evidence of miracles. Leonardo, of all people, wanted evidence. He looked for it in the stars and sketched it in the sinews of cadavers. He sought resolution in the core of his creativity, and asked deeply phenomenological and existential questions. In other words, Leonardo saw himself at the Table, too, and, like Philip, leaping up at the comment of Jesus. Leonardo, even as a skeptic, was at once in a deep creative engagement with the Savior, and approached God with intellectual rigor and dialogue.

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In this remarkable passage of John 14, Jesus, the miracle worker, tells his disciples, in direct answer to Philip’s comments, that they shall do the “greater work.”

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14: 8, 12)

What were the “greater things” to which Jesus referred? What could be greater than raising Lazarus from the dead, an event recorded in Chapter 11?

Leonardo framed the answer implicitly in The Last Supper with Philip’s earlier words:

“Come and see.”

The greater things were in telling the world to “come and see.” Come and see a masterpiece to consider these eternal questions. And that is what Leonardo determined to undertake in The Last Supper.

The Last Supper may even miraculously outlast celluloid (or even digital) and our 15-minutes-of-fame mindset, as the world deteriorates in front of our eyes. The Last Supper, in that sense, is a perfect complement, or even an antidote, for the twenty-first century cultural landscape, exposing us for who we truly are. Even in a mere fifteen-minute encounter, the work leaves us spell bound for a moment of wonderment.

This is why we all need to travel to Milan, just for a momentary decompression, to stand-under Christ who is about to reach for that bread of communion. Like Leonardo, we may even desire to participate in that evening, in the suffering of the one and only true Artist, and follow him to the vanishing point, the source of our bright countenance.

There, witnessing the earthy vermillion glow of the Milan rooftops, we may find ourselves deeply reflecting on the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, where the Savior’s still voice continues to expose the depth of our woes and the secrets of our depravity. In Christ’s outstretched arms, we may yet find our malaise lifted, our imaginations sparked to do “greater things.”


A special thanks to Dr. John E. Walford of Wheaton College and Dr. William A. Dyrness of Fuller Seminary for their insights to prepare for this Refractions.

Next month...a meeting with Yoko Ono in London!

Water Flames and Zero Summer Exhibit at the Katzen

Zero Summer (above image, 66x88", gold and silver on Kumohada) and several of Water Flames paintings will be traveling to Washington D.C. this summer, and the opening is May 20th, from 6-9pm. The Katzen Center is a spectacular new museum inside American University arts center, and is located at 4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW (203-885-1300) www.american.edu/museum

The exhibit will continue until August 20th. I hope to see you at the opening!

For a review of Water Flames series, go to http://nyartsmagazine.com/pages/nyam_document.php?nid=1279&did=3021

Makoto Fujimura

Refractions Vol. 20: The Housewife that Could

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 20
“The Housewife that Could: Jane Jacobs of 555 Hudson Street, Greenwich Village”
May, 2006



"Designing a dream city is easy," she concluded. "Rebuilding a living one takes imagination." Jane Jacobs, (New York Times, April 26th 2006)


Jane Jacobs passed away a few days ago at the age of 89 in a Toronto Hospital. A day later, there were several flowers placed in front of 555 Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, with a note, "From this house, in 1961, a housewife changed the world."


I had lunch with sociologist Tony Carnes across from 555 Hudson Street last February, after a worship service at my church The Village Church on 11th Street. We were in a Chinese Restaurant across from this very site, looking across to the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street. “You know Jane Jacobs lived here, right?” If there’s anything I have learned here in New York City is that you want to listen to an urban sociologist. What is so significant about Jane Jacobs? Well, according to Tony, and many others, she is the mother of a movement called New Urbanism, and yes, she happened to save Greenwich Village and changed the world, standing up against behemoth of highway construction, and against one of the most powerful men to control the destiny of New York, Robert Moses. Moses, who began his illustrious career by designing the Worlds Fair of 1939, is attributed with single handedly creating the suburbia of Long Island (and the development of suburbia in general) and the birth of car culture. He was so successful that it seemed no one stood against him in power and influence.


In 1961, Robert Moses met his match. During a hearing at which he announced his plans to open a highway into Washington Square and through Greenwich Village, Jane Jacobs and several housewives stormed the hearing. Moses was irate, saying, "There is nobody against this—NOBODY, NOBODY, NOBODY, but a bunch of, a bunch of MOTHERS!” (http://www.kunstler.com/mags_jacobs.htm)

Today, many attribute Jacobs with having defeated Moses, in this modern version of David and Goliath. New Urbanist James Howard Kunstler writes:

One can say pretty definitively that she won the battle and the war, though the enormous inertia of American culture still acts as a drag on a genuine civic revival here. By the mid 1960s, her interests and writings broadened to take in the wider issues of economics and social relations, and by force of intellect she compelled the cultural elite to take seriously this untrained female generalist -- and wonderful prose stylist -- who had the nerve to work out large ideas on her own. Naturally, her books are now part of the curriculum.

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_jacobs.htm

Jane Jacobs wrote a book called 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' as she and her housewife friends battled Robert Moses. The book became a foundational text for those who challenged the conventional notion of urban growth and progress. She argued for diversity of close-knit streets and buildings, and for dense populations to increase commerce and community at the same time, an urban concoction that even provides safety. Suburbia, a legacy of Moses, would, by contrast, pretend to provide safety and protection, but, according to Jacobs, ultimately isolate and dehumanize. She is often asked if her ideas came about by hanging out with intellectuals at White Horse Tavern. No, she would answer, I could not afford to go there. She merely could observe, with her curious eyes roaming the streets of Greenwich Village from her window, the intricacies of street life, both ugly and beautiful. What she saw there, though, was not a scene of destruction filled with gangs and prostitutes. What she saw was a city life teeming with dialogue, neighborly attention and fermenting vibrant cultural mix that would fight the dehumanizing elements of our increasingly segmented modern culture. More importantly, she imagined a better city, as her motherly gaze looked over her streets as she wrote, and as she raised her children.

You might question…Safety? How could the chaos and brokenness of city life provide safety? Jacobs’ answer would be something like this: it would be difficult for a Columbine High School-type incident to break out in one of NYC’s schools today, however dangerous and tenuous the dilapidated schools can be. City life limits crime simply because there are more eyes to keep watch. And besides, it would be very, very difficult for my teenage boys to hide a cache of automatic weapons in their 100 square foot bedroom. Urbanity forces us to be dependent on each other and deal with our neighbors. Urbanity forces us out of our comfort zones and may even expose our dark, sinister plans.

Besides, do we not question today Moses’ insistent vision for “progress” and the expansion of highways, as we max out our credit cards purchasing gasoline in our four-dollar-a-gallon culture? Should we not pause to listen to a housewife named Jane Jacobs?

I became involved in this dialogue over the legacy of Robert Moses verses Jane Jacobs when IAM invited Jonathan Bradford of Grand Rapids, Michigan to speak here in New York City a year ago (hear free podcast on IAMNY.org in a week or so) As I volunteer on the National Council on the Arts, and get to know the NEA design director Jeff Speck, who is, as an urban design expert, overseeing the Mayor’s Institute, I am constantly reminded of the power of design to directly affect our quality of life. In this arena of New Urbanism, arts do overlap, literally, with our lives. Our cities are our artwork, and her designs can either make us more human or less human. Whether one agrees with the pro-growth model of Moses or the organic vision of Jacobs, this imaginative battle of how we are to see our cities continues today.

As I walked with my soon-to-be teenage daughter on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village recently, I had to give a nod to Jane Jacobs’ instincts. Bleecker Street is today the most sought after cultural nexus and originator of new commerce, far more influential, in my view, than the hyper commerce sites like Columbus Circle mall. Why would fashion designers like Marc Jacobs seek out tiny spaces on Bleecker St? Why would Saturday Night Live comedians celebrate Magnolia Bakery, also on Bleecker St., with their ode to the Chronicles of Narnia (one of the most sought after pod-cast videos on I-Tunes)? Why would Japanese magazines feature stores on Bleecker St. to the extent that if you walk on Bleecker in early May, Japan’s Golden Week holidays, you would think it’s a street in Shibuya, Tokyo, filled with so many Japanese? Where would my creative second son, C.J., go to get his left handed acoustic guitar? (Matt Umanov on Bleecker…because “they have guitars that really sing.”) And where can you run into, seemingly every time I walk on Bleecker, a friendly pastor of a storefront church, appropriately named the Neighborhood Church (next to Matt Umanov)? And most importantly for that beautiful spring day, where do you find gifts for a friend’s birthday, especially for a twelve year-old Lydia that cannot be bought anywhere else? Bleecker St.

Jane Jacobs was right. The city is best when buildings are diverse and small, where we can enjoy diversity of class, backgrounds and ages, mingling together in compressed streets. Today, such an environment is so needed, and endangered; it is fast becoming a destination site for tourism, as well as a place of commerce and a family friendly despite the high rent. Whether one agrees with Jacobs’ many irascible perspectives (and she was prolific in that, as well), she did forge a context for how a creative city can be imagined. Today, whatever is done around America in favor of creative neighborhoods, we all owe a nod of thanks to Jacobs.


It is noted that when Jane Jacobs would do her dishes or walked about the local streets one would hear her audibly debate with Thomas Jefferson, and, as a second alternative, Ben Franklin. This exercise was not a joke to her, but a serious interplay among generalists of equal statures across the schism of centuries, navigating the complex pluralism of our time. Similarly, anyone today walking about New York City, or any other urban mazes of the day, would need to, and want to, hold debates (and perhaps wash dishes, too) with Jane Jacobs, a determined housewife imagining a better city with her Remington typewriter. Feisty and irreplaceable, the sound of her typing echoes in our neighborly streets, refracting the dense, fiery heart of our humanity.

I am glad Jane Jacobs won the battle to save Greenwich Village.

Refractions Volume 19: Fra Angelico and the Five Hundred Year Question

It all started again when I visited the Fra Angelico (1395-1455) exhibit at the Met last December*.

Behind the splendor of the Christmas cresche, I entered the back hall of the Met. Surprisingly, there was no line (as opposed to the van Gogh drawing exhibit – 45 minutes). But there was a hushed gathering of many, moving about in the darkly lit halls.

I entered the halls and the golden aura of a diminutive Virgin Mary painting greeted me, with her azurite robe, and the Christ child’s supple body, reflecting her humanity -- a simple work full of weighty colors. Then I had to close my eyes, after a few seconds of pondering the saturated surface. I realized this was too much to behold, all at once. As I staggered about looking for a blank wall to stare at, almost feeling ashamed to be in the presence of such greatness, I had a “500 year” question pop up in my mind.

What is the five hundred year question? Well, it’s a historical look at the reality of our cultures, and asking what ideas, what art, what vision affects humanity for over five hundred years. It’s the opposite of the Warholian “15 seconds of fame.”

Contemporary art does not encourage such thoughts. Except for a few notable exceptions, like video guru Bill Viola or the minimal zen of Agnes Martin, contemporary artists want to compress time, rather than stretch time. We are immersed in a visual culture that squeezes life into 15 second commercials with instant gains. Chelsea galleries are full of art that screams for attention, as if to say they are the twenty first century version of Willy Loman. “Attention, Attention must be paid to such an art,” gallerists dressed in their designer fashion calls out. Rather than profundity, they pine after instant recognition and fame. Just like Willy, we peddle our goods to find significance and survival, all the more as the grey world all around us passes by.

Meanwhile, artists who labor to develop their craft, artists who are committed to a longer view of their art, suffer. I can name many mid-career artists, in their 50’s who deserve much attention, but galleries do not pay attention to them, and give fresh-out-of-art-school artists solo exhibits. But of course, they are replaced the next year by the next round of twenty year olds.

Nothing wrong with twenty year olds, by the way: Fra Angelico was one, but that’s the year he entered the Dominican order. That’s where his gift was discovered, in the long lasting tradition of art. He was trained as an apprentice, and his first notable piece was a visual echo of Lorenzo Monaco, which suggests that he studied under him.

If Fra Angelico was born today, he would have a hard time finding anyone to teach him their craft, to be apprenticed, let alone to join an Order. The church would not be the first place a creative genius would look for to be trained in art. That statement alone reveals how much Christians have abdicated our responsibility to steward culture.

If you spoke with people staggering about in the Met with me, having a similar reaction to looking at the glory of Fra Angelico’s paintings, you may find them to be Enlightened secularists who also grieve today over the fragmentation, the loss of a spiritual anchor in the contemporary art scene. They may be even atheists who by the very essence of their denial may have to appreciate the sheer weighty anchor of Fra Angelico paintings. Atheism demands a language of belief to wrestle against. Fra Angelico’s paintings are undeniably Christian to the core. Enlightened secularists would be staggering because the spirit has left them. Atheists stagger because they have lost the defining opposition. I stagger and grieve because, as a Christian, I realize I do not see anyone on the horizon who could create and paint today who would rival Fra Angelico’s angelic weight.

In short, we are all staggering about, or should be…those who have eyes to see. That is precisely how we should react to Fra Angelico and the five hundred year question. We stagger because we have lost even our ability to ask that question.

-----------------------------------------



So I took the subway home and I Googled “1500” :

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001221.html

The Tudors ruled the early Renaissance, having ended the War of the Roses in 1484. In 1503, da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and Michelangelo created David. Not a bad start. The Sistine Chapel, and The Last Supper, of course, would follow.

Christopher Columbus was sailing to sites unknown, trying again to get to Asia. Magellan noted the global shape of the earth. Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis on the Wittenberg door (1517). And very significant for me, Tohaku Hasegawa, the Michelangelo of Japan, was born (1537).

I closed my eyes again, and the angels of Fra Angelico re-invited themselves in.

Would we see another Renaissance in the days to come? Would we have another chance to steward our culture, without losing our identity and faith in the process?

You might be saying “gee, how can we think about 500 years from now if we have the capacity to blow ourselves up a thousand time over…aren’t you being a bit optimistic?”

Recently, I had a conversation with a Japanese art student. She asked me “How can you paint if you know that you may not be around ten years from now?” The look on her face told me that she was deadly serious. Japanese youth grow up, apparently, with the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after all these years.

So I guided her to the ages that led up to 1500’s, and I shared with her about the period of world history in which Fra Angelico painted.

It was not a cozy time in history. The stenches of Black Death hovered all over Europe and Asia. Remember that the plague killed a half, yes a half, of the population in Europe. The swords of assassination were drawn (striking the Dukes of Surrey and Exeter, and then the Earls of Kent, Huntington and Salisbury for Richard II ), the church was in turmoil (two Popes resigning, and one being excommunicated in the span of four years). The Ottoman Empire invaded Constantinople, ending the Byzantine age, through Muslim invasion. No, it was not an age to have hope, or to think of the next five hundred years. In fact, the list of events seems to have remarkable echoes of our times (the first entry of the following web site is Baghdad being “sacked” -- http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=15th+century&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&linktext=15th%20century)

So how did Fra Anglico manage to paint these indelible images? Perhaps the more pertinent question is: “To what hope did he cling to in such a dark time?”

After my third visit to the Fra Angelico exhibit, I allowed myself to drink deeply of that hope. It is not only the hope of an individual genius, but also of patronage, of society and the church. Then I realized, in order to create today, in fact, in order to live today, I desperately needed Fra Angelico in my imagination: when the Angelic faces would fill my heart as I pondered Aquinas in my mind. I would consider the life of St. Francis (who appears over and over in the Met exhibit), the saint/artist of two centuries past who ushered in the resplendence of the Renaissance via his humanity, re-gifting creativity and theatre back into theology. I wondered if, had I painted with Fra Angelico, I would hear about the dangerous teenage heretic in France named Joan of Arc (executed 1436). Perhaps then, I would turn to the last panel of my own “The Last Judgment”, and paint her face (secretly) as she danced up the stairs of heaven, her rich cinnabar robe with golden calligraphy, a design fit for a Queen. (http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Fra_Angelico/images.asp)

Can such Eternity refract through our earthly visions? Can my children’s world birth generations of geniuses, as did Fra Angelico’s heirs, whose splendors would fill the Earth, as well as Heaven?


Makoto Fujimura

Other links:

http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=220




*Actually, the seed of the 500-year idea was planted deeply in my heart when James Romaine, an art historian, and I were speaking soon after 9/11. “This is a once in a life time moment in our history: it could even be once in a five hundred year moment.”



Image: Azurite Light, 2006, 30x30"

A.R.T. Introduction

Image by Pamela Moore, "128 Cooper B"


Dear Refraction Readers:

For the upcoming International Arts Conference’s 15th year anniversary conference, “Artist as Reconcilers,” I am preparing the following series of essays about art called “A.R.T.: Awareness, Reconciliation and Transformation”. Here is my introduction section. The whole content of “A.R.T.” will be initially be available to IAM members only, so if you are interested please join IAM membership ($40 annual) via www.iamny.org (go to the conference section).

I will continue with my Refraction essays, free for all, again in March.

Makoto Fujimura


What is A.R.T.?

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Little Gidding, The Four Quartets

About A.R.T. (Awareness, Reconciliation and Transformation)

Introduction:

I write this in order to encourage artists and to help facilitators of the arts understand their role in cultural stewardship. While About A.R.T. is an effort to broadly describe what Art is, it is not by any means a complete definition. I am drawing upon my own experience as an artist and what I find myself teaching to others. I do believe that these principles are helpful to understand the role of creativity in our lives, and to contextualize our creative activities in society. I am ultimately interested in a dialogue that move toward a stewardship of creative gifts, and how we may as a society see artistic roles, and creativity in general.

I also write here to begin a dialogue among church leaders and Christians who desire to understand the arts. While this dialogue is not directed only to a Christian audience, I do speak and write as one, with all of the worldview assumptions attached to that pre-supposition. I make this premise because in all of the recent effort to define the importance of the arts, and critique of art and arts education, I have noticed writers such as John Carey (“What Good Are the Arts?") and James Elkins (“A Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art”) specifically describing their worldview as strictly secular. I find their discussions helpful, although I find that presupposition often breaks down in their own turfs as their ideas evolve, and they may not be as consistent in their worldviews as I am trying to be for mine. Nevertheless, I do think it is important to start out with a premise. I am not a secularist, so I have certain presuppositions that frame my discussions. I do believe that creativity is a gift of the Creator. And because of my theological framework, I believe that such a view of the arts will produce more diversity, more content and more color to all of the arts, Christian or not. We are created to be creative: and we have stewardship responsibilities that come with that gift. The more we find fittingness in the God given responsibility, the more freedom we will find in our expression.

It has been noted that we have entered the Creative Age. The Information Age, for us Americans and other non third-world countries, is over. India and China, and other countries have taken over the role of dispersing technology and executing productions: the only resource that we have that cannot be outsourced is our creativity. Thus, we are at a crucial moment in history in which we are witnessing a paradigm shift in culture, a shift that may be as significant as Gutenburg’s invention of printing. Just as the invention of prints caused many shifts in cultural values, the Creative Age, with her accompanying technologies, will usher in principles that formerly were considered unimportant for the everyday needs of the society. Some have called this time “post-Human” as our boundaries of creativity begins to have serious ethical and moral boundaries. Before Modernism, artists depicted flowers as flowers, asking “How do you depict a flower?” Modernism asked “What is a flower?” and Post Modernism followed with “Is there a flower at all?” And in post-Human time we ask, “Can humans combine their DNA with a flower?” In other words, we are at a point in which what we create and what we imagine will not merely be virtual, but are actualized into reality, and quite possibly, into our DNA.

If Gutenburg brought books to us, this age brings CG technology, virtual realities, and DNA manipulation. So do we study the sciences to find answers and guide our path? The sciences cannot reach into the supernatural, nor into the mysteries of our realities, because they are bound by natural, measurable data. Art on the other hand should and can reach into the very heart of existential mysteries sciences cannot tackle. But we need to have a clear understanding of how art functions, in order to begin to understand this role. Art of the past, it seems to me, is a great place to calibrate our place in history, and press our existential marker into the shifting tide of culture.

Some have moved away from the study of the classical and traditional in favor of erasing boundaries of the past. But we have found ourselves anchorless, without any agreed upon boundaries at all, ever so fearful of the future as a result. I believe that what we can learn from Rembrandts and Shakespeares of the world is even more significant today because they give us hope in turmoil, and therefore give us a picture of mediation to this age, in the power of technology today. The sciences and technology need this trans-historical dialogue on the arts, because arts determine our cultural values, and determine what the culture sees as beautiful and true.

Recently I spent some time visiting friends who work as insiders in Hollywood. There is a significant effort, I found, among the industry experts to create a more principled way to develop creative content, movies and the new media. After the success of Lord of the Rings, and now Narnia, we desire for more Lewises and Tolkiens to come out. These creative resources are not birthed out of a vacuum, but over generations of commitment to nurture and value creativity. The church has been mostly reluctant to take the lead in cultural production, fearful that those who enter Babylon will come out tainted by her, unable to speak for her values. And since there is still a vacuum in culture that the church abdicated to general culture, even if we desire more Tolkiens and Lewis, the church, in her present status, will be the first to reject them as misfits.

In order to have meaningful dialogue in this condition, we Christians must reevaluate our definition of creativity and art. On one hand, Biblical literalists and separatists (such as the “Left Behind” authors) may insist on that all of what is discussed in art must be literal interpretation of Christian stories, an approach which forbids certain art to exist at all. On the other we have secular purists who desire art to be left alone to the “good” desires of our hearts, self reliant and (in most cases) necessarily alienated from society. My approach in A.R.T. is neither of these routes. In order to lead, and teach our children to lead, Twenty First Century with creativity, we must speak in to our culture to value art and steward her with proper boundaries, and lead with a sense of responsibility. At the same time, we must realize that art is neither a mere tool to be used for ours or other ideologies. A.R.T. must ask deeper questions: what I have began to call “a five hundred year questions.” What we create matters: all art products cast their vision of what the artist consciously or unconsciously desire for the world to become. We are, and will become, what we imagine: and if we do not understand both the power and the danger of our imaginative powers, we will not begin to birth meaningful, and hopeful works of inspiration.

Makoto Fujimura

Next chapter, “Awareness,” will be released after the conference for members only.

Image: Pamela Moore, "128 Cooper B", mixed media on paper, 30x36 inches Please go to www.fujimuracontemporary.com for more information on this painting