Should Mormons Care for Art?

This last summer, at the very time when I might have had the most time in my life to commit to writing fiction, I experienced something of a crisis of belief in art as a worthwhile pursuit.  Here I was for the first time in the real world with a little time on my hands, enjoying lovely weather in Southern Germany while my wife was finishing up her BA in German, surrounded by beautiful nature and architecture, in essentially the position to begin a my dream career (or at least hobby) in literature--and I found myself wondering whether literature was even worth reading, let alone creating.  I couldn't even read the novels I'd bought in Russia with such enthusiasm.  I did eke out a short story in the end, and that was good practice, but the wind was out of my sails and I was dubious of the worth of my project beyond self-amusement, no worse for passing the time as solitaire.  (Which is not to say I didn't love my time in Germany, because it was possibly the most magically adventurous time my wife and I have ever had!)

In part, I blame my bad feelings about on my education.  A lot of modern literary study leads nowhere--not to a dead end kind of nowhere, but the bewildering "dark and dreary wilderness" nowhere, where you hardly know north from south, and all you want is a sip to drink.

Simply resisting what I felt was a nihilistic worldview peddled by some of my literature professors as dogma drained my enthusiasm for the whole exercise of reading made-up stuff.  Also, importantly, studying literature closely revealed something about art that I had been afraid to own up to all my education: even at its best, art is a flawed description of reality and always will be.  If it's not flawed, then it's something else--scripture, perhaps.  So what good is it to spend my time with people wandering in what was generally admitted by many of my contemporaries as a roadless, forbidding, utterly exposed desert?


Although I have recovered somewhat since my initial disappointment--I can read literature and watch TV and actually enjoy myself--some of the questions raised then make me wonder.  So when I was reading a chapter out of Hugh Nibley's Approaching Zion, which will make its own appearance here shortly, I was struck by a passage that seems insightful into the question (please forgive the long quotation):

The teachings of men are two-dimensional unless they have actually experienced the third. We live in a flat, two-dimensional world with no depth or extension beyond our present experience either into time or space: "When the man dies, that is the end thereof" (Alma 30:18). Religion is supposed to go beyond that; it wants to, but it lacks confidence and so uses all the devices of art and eloquence to fake that third dimension—as we look up into the soaring vaults of St. Peter's, we marvel at the skill with which the architect and painters, in a setting of bells, music, and a splendid pageantry of robes, lights, and incense (not without some narcotic effect), seem to give us the illusion of passing into a third dimension of reality. Why bother with the devices if they have the real thing?  The futility of such contrivance appears in almost any attempt of the Latter-day Saints to achieve spiritual uplift through music, poetry, painting, drama, or special effects, all of which invariably fall short; to those to whom the third dimension is real, any attempt to enhance it by two-dimensional materials is bound to appear pitifully inadequate.  [My emphasis.]

In essence, reality to the Latter-day Saint is so awe-inspiring that art always seems to fall short.  Perhaps Latter-day Saint artists are doomed to failure by having tasted of Plato's ideal, the second-hand imitation of art seems dull by comparison.  Perhaps we, like Plato, are doomed to see art as a silly side-hobby.

Maybe it's time to head back to my non-fiction, I tell myself--scripture, history, and the like.  (In Germany, I ended up reading a biography of Goethe instead of his poetry.)  But then I think about how useful certain fiction has been in helping me form what I believe is a healthy and valuable worldview: from Dostoevsky's saints fearlessly loving in the face of suffering, I learned better what it means to follow my Redeemer and the value of patiently loving; from Fitzgerald's tragically worldly Gatsby and company I learned the inexpressible and inextinguishable sorrow of well-meaning wickedness.  The list goes on.  And these experiences have made me a better Christian in ways that scripture had not yet been able to do, because they spoke to me in a way that felt immediately applicable to my personal experience.

And yet, even then, I have to admit that scripture and pure revelation must take a higher priority.

So is art possibly a useful supplement to the revealed Word?  Is it simply a distraction best left alone by the Latter-day Saint struggling to find time and energy to follow Christ?  Or is it maybe both?  And can the Latter-day Saint actually achieve "great art," let alone art that can move all kinds of people to Christ?

Your thoughts on the subject are greatly appreciated.  Mine will of course come forthwith, solicited or not!

Next on the subject: what counts as art?  (Teaser: lots of stuff that you probably like, and less of the boring stuff than snooty people let on...)