Several weeks ago, three friends of mine and I were in the car on our way to a formal dinner. We were all excited about the night ahead of us. The conversation was fascinating, yet the music my friend had chosen gnawed at my ability to pay attention. Frankly, I hated it. Fixating on the rain outside the window, I launched into an internal diatribe indicting the music as criminal.
“The singer-songwriter’s mawkish, overly-breathy vocals overlay an obviously unoriginal chord progression,” I thought to myself. “It’s all just patch worked together from the works of better artists. And the lyrics, ugh! Perhaps if I had ingested poison and urgently needed to vomit, I might find his sickly-sentimental lyrics to be of some use, but he is obviously…”
“What’s wrong, Jonathan,” my friend interrupted. We were at a stop light, and my friends were all looking at me.
“Oh, um… Nothing. I just… Hey, are you guys into this music?”
“Uh, sure. I don’t care. It’s fine, I guess.”
“Yea, I like it,” another friend offered.
“Oh, ok. I mean, I don’t really like it. I actually think it’s pretty bad,” I said.
“Well, I mean, that’s your opinion, man. I think this music is fine. Why do you think it’s bad?”
Great question. I felt like a snob. I mumbled some dismissive response, and then resolved to search for a helpful definition of “good taste,” if such a thing actually existed. I am indebted to several volumes for this post. First and foremost, I have found Frank Brown’s Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste to be profoundly illuminating. It must be said, however, that Brown endeavored to study taste in order to reflect on the potential religious value of certain kinds of artistic exploration that do not profess to be Christian at all.1 Yet he successfully covers a secular evaluative rubric as well.
Brown begins by making the claim, “It is my own judgment that, in an era in which imagination, sensory experience, and embodiment have become more theologically respectable, reconsiderations of taste might well contribute to new theological understandings of faith, community, and spiritual growth.”2 Later, Brown claims that there is something “mischievous” about ignoring the aesthetics of religious practice, or in settling with tackiness, and that “artistic discernment and aesthetic imagination are potentially vital to faith at every stage.”3 He offers some example questions: does it matter if churches are beautiful? Should they be artistically adorned, requiring discipline and taste? Does it matter if something is aesthetically deficient?
Brown claims that the church ought to cultivate what he refers to as “ecumenical taste,” and it is in this claim that I began to better understand my rejection of my friend’s music. This task involves developing forms of perception, enjoyment, and judgment of art, or in Brown’s terms, apperception, appreciation, and appraisal.
Apperception
Apperception involves exercising taste in perceiving whatever is artistic or aesthetic. Brown offers a clarifying example. He describes how his dog has heard every single note of Bach’s Cantata 140, and how the dog remains unable to actually listen to the piece of music for its aesthetic qualities. Humans, however, can perceive a work of art in the sounds. Apperception involves seeking to understand why Bach chose certain musical phrases in particular areas, and toward what aesthetic end the music is actually driving. Varying from culture to culture, apperception can be an incredibly enriching experience to expand one’s capacities to listen well to the art of other cultures. Brown warns that a lack of perceptive faculty leaves one lacking “taste” in art and aesthetics. Was I lacking the “taste” necessary to understand the aesthetic function of my friend’s music?
Appreciation
Brown’s category for appreciation involves discerning what is delightful and meaningful in art and aesthetics. This category introduces the refreshing possibility for “defective taste”. “If I cannot take holy delight in fields of purple flowers,” Brown explains, “my taste is apparently defective, and my religious sensibility as well.” I might claim that I do not enjoy the music of Katy Perry, and no one would bat an eyelash. But if I were to claim zero enjoyment in the music of Bach, many people would wonder, “What is wrong with him?” A lack of appreciation of clear and vivid examples of beauty is indicative of something wrong, and not of a purely subjective opinion. Immanuel Kant expressed that taste has the urge to make a claim that is universally valid.
Appraisal
The final ingredient in developing good taste builds upon apperception and appreciation: aesthetic judgment. We all appraise aesthetic experiences. Perhaps we don’t make claims that “this piece of art is better than that,” but we all select certain aesthetic objects toward which to draw people’s attention. “You have got to listen to this song!” or “The sky is so beautiful today!” are examples of aesthetic appraisal. We cannot help it, and it is necessary to intentionally train and develop this skill. Brown explains this category from the church’s perspective, explaining that appraisal means identifying points in life and worship where aesthetic aims and religious aspirations (or aversions) are wedded to one another. In doing this, one can see how spiritual growth can have a properly artistic and aesthetic dimension subject to criticism, cultivation, and education.
Therefore appraisal is not the same as appreciation. It is common for us to enjoy a work of art more highly than we would evaluate it in critical terms. For example, we all experience nostalgic appreciation, and even what we might consider “guilty pleasures”. I have secretly maintained my love of the band Ace of Base, despite being aware that their music is quite bad. Yet the musicality is strangely entertaining to me, and it brings me back to my primary school days when my friends and I would go to under 15s discos.
Appraisal is a judgment of how a work of art might be worthy of a community’s collective attention. I certainly wouldn’t express to my friends, “Oh man, you have got to listen to that latest Ace of Base album.” It simply is not worth the attention of my community. “At its highest,” Brown explains, “taste – as seen especially in the sense of beauty and in the sense of sublimity – enters into the sense of God and the sense of the good.”4 He goes on to explain that certain dimensions of theological and spiritual maturity (Christian formation) cannot be attained apart from a cultivated aesthetic imagination and a mature taste. It is here that we can begin to see how well Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste couples with James Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom. Aesthetic imagination directly feeds our formation as people. One must ask, “what is the breadth and depth of the imaginative vision? Does the work elicit or cultivate what Immanuel Kant reduced to what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful?” Brown states that this exercise cannot be done in isolation. “… This is not just an individual judgment, or a matter of personal preference,” he explains. Appraisal must be “a function of whole communities of taste and faith.”5 “Good art” is not art that people happen to like or purchase. “Good art” is art that, when it is liked, it is liked for good artistic reasons. These reasons, Brown explains, should be commended to a wider community, a community who can participate in the apperception, the appreciation, and the appraisal of art.
No criteria can adequately spell out whether my friend’s music was good or bad. But his music is not beyond the critical response of a community who should be interested in evaluating the artwork’s efficacy in capturing and expressing what is good, true, and beautiful. Oh, I’ve got him now!
Christianity must be interested in accommodating and encouraging artistic excellence. The most immediate example is that the Bible itself requires cultivated taste in aesthetics. Calvin Seerveld, in his book Rainbows for a Fallen World, maintains that, through the Bible, is God speaking to us directly and intimately through the wide variety of literary art.6 The person untrained in literary taste will be insensitive to the subtle nuances of the many narrative sections of the bible.
“The Bible is not a collection of atomic, bullet like proof-text to be shot at people,” implores Seerveld. A training in how to read literature informs how to understand plot and character development in so much of the Bible. Those who do not understand paradox and irony will miss out on the profundity of Jesus’ parables. A familiarity with poetry will cause the Psalmists’ passions to come alive as we participate in their poetic form. Taste in the literary arts is indeed necessary in order to allow the bible to penetrate more deeply into our hearts. Training in the literary arts is an act of “keeping in step with the Spirit.”7
Christianity must encourage aesthetic taste that can be disciplined in such a way as to evaluate uninspired art as well. It must seek to become inclusive and yet discriminating; appreciative and yet critical. Brown provides twelve principles that can guide discussions of aesthetic taste as they arise in the development of a Christian relationship with the arts.
- There are many kinds of good taste. In view of cultural diversity, an open (yet critical) mind is necessary.
- Not all kinds of art are equally valid in the context of the tradition of a worshipping community. In the context of worship, for example, taste must extend beyond likability, and it must evaluate how appropriate the art may be.
- There are various appropriately Christian modes of mediating religious experience artistically – from transcendent focus to immanent focus, or even from instructive focus to meditative focus.
- Every era and cultural context tends to develop new forms of sacred music and art. Training in the history of art can inform us of what’s going on.
- Because every aesthetic style calls for a particular kind of attunement, no one person can possibly be competent to make equally discerning judgments across the board. We must avoid the impulse to do so.
- It is an act of Christian love to seek to understand what others value in a particular style or work.
- Disagreements over aesthetic value can be healthy and productive. Because these disagreements touch on sensitive matters and often reflect or embody religious differences as well as aesthetic differences, one must be careful and gracious in this act.
- The reasons why an aesthetic work or style is good or bad, weak or strong (and in what circumstances), can never be fully expressed in words. Yet critical discourse is still helpful.
- Aesthetic judgments begin with, and owe special consideration to, the community or tradition to which a given style or work is indigenous.
- The overall evaluation of art used in worship needs to be a joint effort between clergy, congregation, and trained artists and musicians, taking into account not only the aesthetic qualities of the art itself but also the larger requirements and contours of worship.
- While relative accessibility is imperative for most church art, the church also needs art that continually challenges and solicits spiritual and theological growth in the aesthetic dimension. This is art that the Christian can grow into but seldom out of.
- Almost every artistic style that has been enjoyed and valued by a particular group over a long period of time and for a wide range of purposes has religious potential. That is because life typically finds various and surprising ways of turning religious. As Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”
When seeking to train good taste in aesthetics, one must recognize that there are multiple kinds of intelligences and talents. Howard Gardner, in his study Frames of Mind, argues that, because of this, the arts should be considered domains for genuine education and learning. They exhibit various mental and imaginative powers that must be cultivated to be truly fulfilled, while simultaneously feeding into other advanced modes of knowledge. Seerveld states “Artistic painting and sculpture… have a different set of formative elements defining their existence, as art products, and one needs to learn how to read such artistic elements in order to understand that kind of genuine knowledge, knowledge characterized by the quality of suggestion and allusion.”8
Later, he exclaims, “… the arts are urgently needed in our day.” The bible requires these exact mental and imaginative powers. Brown reasons that Christians ought to, therefore,
“See art as both a subject and a means of disciplined religious practice and strenuous education – indeed, higher education, including theological education itself.”9
So was it productive to indulge my aesthetic snobbery that began in the back seat of my friend’s car? Absolutely. I will refrain from making a final judgment on the actual piece of music. Yet I hope this study will equip us, as aesthetic creatures in an aesthetic world, to better evaluate the worth of the art we are immersed in.
- Brown , 219.
- Ibid. , 9.
- Ibid. , 230.
- Brown , 4.
- Ibid. , 153.
- Seerveld , 89-91.
- Gal. 5:25
- Seerveld , 79.
- Brown , 255.
Jonathan H Dockery 