Ars Gratia Artis: Participation in the Creativity of God

Having just seen the Gary Cooper court speech of "The Fountainhead" yesterday, I thought it might be necessary to add something. Man exists, not for his own sake, but for God. Man is indeed beholden to the things of this world, but under God, not as a slave of men or of any other base end. God, and God's perfect will is man's purpose.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtymi7

Consider, in light of the secular humanistic "art for art's sake," on which that speech is based, what the book of Exodus says about artists. There are three essential elements.

1. The artists themselves do not plan what might be worthy of God and beautiful. Humans are not capable of inventing this on their own. It is rather God himself who discloses to Moses the shape of the [sacred tabernacle], right down to the details. Artistic creation reproduces what God has shown as model. It presupposes the inner view of the exemplar; it is the conversion of a vision into a form. Artistic creativeness as the Old Testament sees it is something completely different from what the modern age understands by creativity.
Today creativity is understood to be the making of something that no one has made or thought of before, the invention of something that is completely one's own and completely new. In comparison with this, artistic creativeness in the book of Exodus is seeing together with God, participating in his creativity; it is exposing the beauty that is already waiting and concealed in creation. This does not diminish the worth of the artist, but is in fact its justification. For this reason it is also said that the Lord "has called by name'' Bezalel, the principal artist for the construction of the sacred tabernacle (Exodus. 35:30): the same set phrase or formula is valid for the artist as well as for the prophet.

2. Furthermore, artists are described as people to whom the Lord has given understanding and skill so that they can carry out what God has instructed them to do (36:1).

3. Finally, the fact that every artist's "heart was stirred" (36:2) belongs here as a third component."

From "'Sing Artistically for God': Biblical Directives for Church Music", 1990 in Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord, New York, Crossroad, 1997, 102-103.

P.S. Gary Cooper, a notorious and recidivist adulterer, finally converted to the Catholic faith (of his wife and daughter) to acknowledge the good God had always done for him: “I’d spent all my waking hours, year after year, doing almost exactly what I, personally, wanted to do; and what I wanted to do wasn’t always the most polite thing either. … This past winter I began to dwell a little more on what’s been in my mind for a long time [and thought], Coop, old boy, you owe somebody something for all your good fortune. I’ll never be anything like a saint. … The only thing I can say for me is that I’m trying to be a little better. Maybe I’ll succeed” (The Hollywood Greats by Barry Norman).