We usually don’t realize it but art and history often are interrelated. Autocrats and dictators, however, are quite aware how art, sometimes, not so subtly, can become an instrument of propaganda. Even so, some classic pieces of artistic propaganda are worth saving. The art created by the WPA from the Depression is but one example.
Ukrainian modernist art is another. Created primarily during the 1950s, most of this art is in the form of statuary and architecture. Threatened by both Russian bombing and anti-Russian sentiment (can you blame them?), mosaics, statuary, and buildings are being lost, a part of the Ukrainian national heritage just as much as Taras Shevchenko.
Art reflects both a time and a timelessness. Some in our own Nation have questioned the viewpoints of other times found in paintings by John Stuert Curry or Albert Bierstadt but art should not be destroyed simply because it reflects a particular time. In KyIv, the Motherland statue has just been modified; the Soviet hammer and sickle has been replaced with the Trident, the Ukrainian national symbol.
Prayer for the Day
Having given us creative minds, O God,
We work items into objects of art;
Searching to reflect the world around us,
We tell our stories through a variety of means.
Grant, O Lord, in using our minds and hands
We glorify your holy Wisdom in our lives.
In the name of the One who is our encouragement,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance artist and more (1452-1519)
In art, what we want is the certainty that one spark of original genius shall not be extinguished.
Mary Cassatt, American artist (1844-1926)
God has made everything beautiful in its time;
Moreover, God as put a sense of past and present into our minds,
Yet, we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11