Means by which the immaterial comes to us
Art and religion both require belief for them to work. For the religious believer, water sprinkled over the head of an infant is more than a hair washing, it is the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit; drinking a thimbleful of wine and eating a wafer is more than a snack, it is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, what the Church Fathers called the “medicine of immortality.” So it is with the believer in art. For this believer, a clump of fired clay with pretty decorations on it is more than the sum total of its materials, it is something more, it is “art,” an object with meaning and significance, an object that enriches one’s life with beauty. For the believer in art, a painting is more than the sum total of its banal and quite silly materials: smelly oil paints brushed onto a canvas sheet. It does something.
There are many who do not believe in religion. They think it is silly. They do not believe that water is a means by which the Holy Spirit saves or wine and bread the means by which Christ nourishes us. But there are also many who do not believe in art. They think it is silly. They go to an art museum and do not find powerful experiences of beauty and transcendence, they find only clumps of clay with decorations on them, canvas sheets with oil paints smeared on them. Art and religion are sacramental practices. They both require belief on the part of their participants that elements of the material world: water, oil, wine, bread, canvas, clay, oil paint, paper, and graphite are the distinctive means by which the immaterial comes to us. The transcendent appears to us through the vehicle of the immanent.