There are no crosses in Makoto Fujimura’s paintings. No images of Jesus gazing into the distance, or serene scenes of churches in a snow-cloaked wood.
Fujimura’s abstract works speak to his evangelical Christian faith. But to find it takes some digging.
After the 2001 terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center, three blocks from Fujimura’s home, his work explored the power of fire to both destroy and purify, themes drawn from the Christian Gospels and Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.”
“I am a Christian,” says Fujimura, 46, who founded the nonprofit International Arts Movement to help bridge the gap between the religious and art communities. “I am also an artist and creative, and what I do is driven by my faith experience.
“But I am also a human being living in the 21st century, struggling with a lot of brokenness — my own, as well as the world’s. I don’t want to use the term ‘Christian’ to shield me away from the suffering or evil that I see, or to escape in some nice ghetto where everyone thinks the same.”
Two groups come to mind with this immediately:
[url=http://www.kempercrabb.net/]Rev. Kemper Crabb[/url], a priest in the Community of Evangelical Episcopal Churches in Houston Texas, who set up his church to be a ministry for artists (he is himself a singer/songwriter). He has some great teaching series’ on Christianity and the Arts.
2. [url=http://www.jpusa.org/]Jesus People USA[/url], an Evangelical community in Chicago, which hosts a Christian music and teaching festival called [url=http://www.cornerstonefestival.com/]”Cornerstone”[/url] in Busnell, IL (end of June, early July) each year, with an emphasis on “imaginarium: Christianity and the arts”.
Thanks for posting this positive article.
There’s always room for devotional art, intended to inspire and comfort those who are already Christian. It will use more familiar symbols and images.
But Fujimura is doing something else – “reasserting” a Christian world view via art, and bringing this into view for non-Christians. God bless his efforts.
I am an artist of several stripes. i spent years thinking it was a kind of mental illness because the church I was in had no context for artists.
There seems to be an Evangelical renaissance on many fronts. I am very encouraged.
Perhaps Fujimora feels devotional while doing his paintings. But can anyone actually see something Christian, or artistic for that matter, in his art? If so, explain to me what makes his work so outstanding.
And the fact that he mixes his his paints with Japanese gold dust, or other materials doesn’t cut it as an answer.
Quoting #4:
[blockquote]Perhaps Fujimora feels devotional while doing his paintings. But can anyone actually see something Christian, or artistic for that matter, in his art?[/blockquote]
Sigh. As an artist in a non-visual medium, who may be blowing his anonymity by admitting it, I’m immediately reminded of classic lines from a film that still makes me weep uncontrollably when I see it:
” . . . but God also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.”
“You can glorify God by peeling a spud if you do it to perfection.”
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Makoto Fujimora and was greatly edified to hear him speak in public; he comes across as a truly thoughtful and deeply spiritual man. His loving and painstaking exploration of color and depth is indeed an act of worship, and the effect of his work is not unlike that of Monet’s late waterlily canvases. What he does is no less artistic or Christian than what J. S. Bach did when contemplating the combinatorial possibilities of a fugue subject or what Olivier Messiaen did in creating a new vocabulary of harmonies and timbres in an attempt to convey something of the glories of eternity. Many of us may be abandoning the Episcopal Church, but let us not abandon a healthy, theologically informed æsthetic understanding, and above all, let us not abandon Christian artists like Makoto Fujimora who are working to bring something more valuable to the Christian community and to culture at large than what is offered by the painter of “lite.”
Please visit his website:
http://www.makotofujimura.com/
He writes well about his art.
I’ve read Fujimura’s writings and found them very helpful. If you can find a copy of his “500 Year Question” (published in a recent issue of PRISM – the journal for Evangelicals for Social Action) it’s excellent.