I've stumbled across a magazine I am very interested in. It's called Geez Magazine- tagline is Holy mischief in an age of fast faith. http://www.geezmagazine.org/ Their latest issue was an art issue. Now mind you, there are some things in this issue which I totally understand if people are uncomfortable with - it's a little edgy, but still worth a look.

Inside the front cover reads this:

"In an age of concentration camps and atomic bombs, religious and artistic sincerity will certainly exclude all "prettiness" or shallow sentimentality. Beauty, for us, cannot be a mere appeal to conventional pleasures of the imagination and senses.

Nor can it be found in cold, academic perfection.

The art of our time, sacred art included, will necessarily be characterized by a certain poverty, grimness and roughness which correspond to the violent realities of a cruel age.

Sacred art cannot be cruel, but it must know how to be compassionate with the victims of cruelty: and one does not offer lollipops to a starving man in a totalitarian death-camp. Nore does one offer him the message of a pitifully inadequate optimism.

Our Christian hope is the purest of all lights that shine in darkness, but it shines in darkness and one must enter into darkness to see it shining."

Great stuff.