Originally published 9/8/16
Modern art makes me giggle. I don't know what it is about it, but it just cracks me up. Whenever I'm in a city with a modern art museum, I head straight there, in search of modern art, and my favorite guy, Mark Rothko.
We found both at the Tate Modern today in London.
Michael doesn't get it. That's ok. I don't get theology.
You have to read the info cards on the wall. At left, is really a study about how foam flows, and the comparison to life's events, and how the hardened sides and bottoms representative of the structure of being, and the cast lead version about the permanence of being.
"Looks like dung in a corner," Michael said.
The original artwork, right, was a performance piece in which two people who had never met before held each end of this bunting for several hours. they were 10 meters apart, so they could talk, but not intimately. "So in a sense their bond also establishes their separation."
And there's nothing better than a camera on an egg, left. This may reflect his "interest in Zen Buddhism as well as his interest in an environment where surveillance is increasingly present." How they got that from an egg, I don't know.
At right is called Babel 2001, and consists of radios, all tuned to different stations, which constantly changes the experience, too. This one, we kind of get. That's Michael on the left.
I don't know what art is, either. Michael kept trying to get me to explain it. To articulate what and why I feel what I feel.
Then I sit down in front of a Rothko, below, and tears come to my eyes.
Michael kept asking me what it means, why it affects me. I couldn't answer him. Because I don't know. I don't know why it makes me giggle, or why it makes me cry.
After we were perplexed at the Tate, we went to church at St. Paul's Cathedral, a 1400-year-old church across the Thames from the Tate. It was the usual Evensong service, which they have five nights a week. But today's, on the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, they dedicated a digital art installation in the north quire hallway. That means, they put a video about Mary in the back of this 600 year old church.
So the priest talked about what art is during the sermon. How cool is that? He answered the question for us.
"There is art. And we are all looking at it. Together." Fr. Mark Oakley said that.
We are all looking at it together, but we experience it differently. It affects us differently.
I thought about that in terms of our faith. We all (Christians) believe the same thing, essentially.
Christ has died.
Christ has risen.
Christ will come again.
As Episcopalians, we say that every Sunday. But how we believe it happens, is an individual belief. Not even denominational, I think. Sadly, that's what rips us apart, as humans. We all get tied up in the how.
Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’ John 11:24-27
Jesus asked Martha simply. He didn't instruct her on how she needed to believe, just asked if she did. And she just said yes, I believe.
It's a lot like looking at modern art. Sometimes we're confused. Sometimes, we cry. Sometimes, we just giggle. But isn't it more fun to do it together?
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