I subscribe to a magazine called Critique (A Ransom Fellowship Publication).  I heartily commend it to you.  I find it to be thoughtful, edifying, challenging, and insightful.  Even when I disagree with the editor the clashes are still constructive (iron sharpens iron).  I have been exposed to some of the most robust and enriching authors, composers, bands, artists, and movie directors via the reviews published in this magazine.

 

In the most recent Issue (2015 #5), there is a critique of artist Edward Knippers’ latest series entitled Violent Grace: A Retrospective.  I was struck as I read the review that the words and phrases being used to evaluate Knippers’ work could be exponentially used to describe The Greatest Work of Art in the world …the inerrant, inspired, and infallible – active & living – Holy Word of God!  Here are some excerpts from the critique of Knippers’ work:

Delightfully Disheveled.
His art overwhelmed everything and everyone, demanding my attention as if it were a booming echo of a king’s command. …The confident strokes of paint, the nudity of the figures, the fearless color palette, and a demanding expressionistic style that is unwilling to let us remain neutral before what is depicted.
Staggering. Furious. Searing. Raw Violence. Deeply Disturbs. A Premeditated Assault.
Art that refuses to disappear into background decoration.
The artist commands attention and provokes substantive thought …entirely undeterred by a consensus that such an enterprise is obsolete and has no place in a modern, secular, society.
Intensely resistance to all forms of Gnosticism. Intensely incarnational. Intensely resistant to diluting reality in favor of something more palatable and/or sentimental.
A superb artist boldly speaking the truth to a society unwilling to hear.
Offensive.
Violent Grace.
Seeing Grace in a more primal way, as the raw, compassionate, furious determination of God to redeem His fallen world.

 

Knippers is compared author Flannery O’ Connor.  That’s high praise!  True grit!

 

…Whether or not you love Knippers, O’ Connor, or Critique Magazine I hope that you will sincerely, seriously, joyously, and honestly read the Word of God, and relish the furious determination of God to redeem His fallen world.