Art and Sacred Resistance: Art as Prayer, Love, Resistance and Relationship / Bruce Herman
āArt is a form of prayer ⦠a way to enter into relationship.āArtist and theologian Bruce Herman reflects on the sacred vocation of making, resisting consumerism, and the divine invitation to become co-creators. From Mark Rothko to Rainer Maria Rilke, to Andres Serranoās āPiss Christā and T.S. Eliotās Four Quartets, he comments on the holy risk of artmaking and the sacred fire of creative origination.Together with Evan Rosa, Bruce Herman explores the divine vocation of art making as resistance to consumer culture and passive living. In this deeply poetic and wide-ranging conversationāand drawing from his book *Makers by Natureā*he invites us into a vision of art not as individual genius or commodity, but as service, dialogue, and co-creation rooted in love, not fear. They touch on ancient questions of human identity and desire, the creative implications of being made in the image of God, Buberās I and Thou, the scandal of the cross, Eliotās divine fire, Rothkoās melancholy ecstasy, and how even making a loaf of bread can be a form of holy protest. A profound reflection on what it means to be human, and how we might change our livesāthrough beauty, vulnerability, and relational making.Episode HighlightsāWe are made by a Maker to be makers.āāāI think hope is being stolen from us Surreptitiously moment by moment hour by hour day by day.āāThere is no them. There is only us.āāThe work itself has a life of its own.āāArt that serves a community.āāYou must change your life.ā āRilke, recited by Bruce Herman in reflection on the transformative power of art.āWhen we're not making something, we're not whole. We're not healthy.āāMaking art is a form of prayer. It's a form of entering into relationship.āāArt is not for the artistāany more than it's for anyone else. The work stands apart. It has its own voice.āāWe're not merely consumersāwe're made by a Maker to be makers.āāThe ultimate act of art is hospitality.āTopics and ThemesHuman beings are born to create and make meaningArt as theological dialogue and spiritual resistanceCreative practice as a form of love and worshipChristian art and culture in dialogue with contemporary issuesPassive consumption vs. active creationHow to engage with provocative art faithfullyThe role of beauty, mystery, and risk in the creative processArt that changes you spiritually, emotionally, and intellectuallyThe sacred vocation of the artist in a consumerist worldHow poetry and painting open up divine encounter, particularly in Rainer Maria Rilkeās āArchaic Torso of ApolloāFour Quartets and spiritual longing in modern poetryHospitality, submission, and service as aesthetic posturesModern culture's sickness and art as medicineEncountering the cross through contemporary artistic imaginationāArchaic Torso of ApolloāRainer Maria Rilke 1875 ā1926We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beastās fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.About Bruce HermanBruce Herman is a painter, writer, educator, and speaker. His art has been shown in more than 150 exhibitionsānationally in many US cities, including New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houstonāand internationally in England, Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, and Israel.Ā His artwork is featured in many public and private art collections including the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art in Rome; The Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts print collection; The Grunewald Print Collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; DeCordova Museum in Boston; the Cape Ann Museum; and in many colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada.Herman taught at Gordon College for nearly four decades, and is the founding chair of the Art Department there. He held the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts for more than fifteen years, and continues to curate exhibitions and manage the College art collection there. Herman completed both BFA and MFA degrees at Boston University College of Fine Arts under American artists Philip Guston, James Weeks, David Aronson, Reed Kay, and Arthur Polonsky. He was named Boston University College of Fine Arts Distinguished Alumnus of the Year 2006.Hermanās art may be found in dozens of journals, popular magazines, newspapers, and online art features.Ā He and co-author Walter Hansen wrote the bookĀ Through Your Eyes, 2013, Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, a thirty-year retrospective of Hermanās art as seen through the eyes of his most dedicated collector.To learn more, explore A Video Portrait of the Artist and My Process ā An Essay by Bruce Herman.Books by Bruce Herman*Makers by Nature: Letters from a Master Painter on Faith, Hope, and Art* (2025) *Ordinary SaintsĀ (*2018) *Through Your Eyes: The Art of Bruce HermanĀ (2013) *QU4RTETSĀ with Makoto Fujimura, Bruce Herman, Christopher Theofanidis, Jeremy Begbie (2012) A Broken Beauty (2006)Show NotesBruce Herman on Human Identity as MakersWe are created in the image of Godāthe ultimate āI Amāāand thus made to create.āWe are made by a Maker to be makers.āTo deny our creative impulse is to risk a deep form of spiritual unhealth.Making is not just for the āartistāāeveryone is born with the capacity to make.Theological Themes and Philosophical FrameworksInfluences include Martin Buberās āI and Thou,ā RenĆ© Girardās scapegoating theory, and the image of God in Genesis.āWe don't really exist for ourselves. We exist in the space between us.āThe divine invitation is relational, not autonomous.Desire, imitation, and submission form the core of our relational anthropology.Art as Resistance to ConsumerismāWe begin to enter into illness when we become mere consumers.āArt Versus PropagandaCulture is sickened by passive consumption, entertainment addiction, and aesthetic commodification.Making a loaf of bread, carving wood, or crafting a cocktail are acts of cultural resistance.DesireāAnything is resistance⦠Anything is a protest against passive consumption.āArt as Dialogue and SubmissionāMaking art is a form of prayer. Itās a form of entering into relationship.āSubmissionāthough culturally malignedāis a necessary posture in love and art.Engaging with art requires openness to transformation.āIf you want to really receive what a poem is communicating, you have to submit to it.āThe Transformative Power of Encountering ArtQuoting Rilkeās Archaic Torso of Apollo: āYou must change your life.āTrue art sees the viewer and invites them to become something more.Hermanās own transformative moment came unexpectedly in front of a Rothko painting.āThe best part of my work is outside of my control.āScandal, Offense, and the Cross in ArtAnalyzing Andres Serranoās Piss Christ as a sincere meditation on the commercialization of the cross.āDoes the crucifixion still carry sacred weightāor has it been reduced to jewelry?āArt should provokeābut out of love, not self-aggrandizement or malice.āThe cross is an offense. Paul says so. But itās the power of God for those being saved.āBeauty, Suffering, and Holy RiskEncounter with art can arise from personal or collective suffering.Bruce references Christian Wiman and Walker Percy as artists opened by pain.āSometimes it takes catastrophe to open us up again.āGreat art offers not escape, but transformation through vulnerability.The Fire and the Rose: T. S. Eliotās InfluenceFour Quartets shaped Hermanās artistic and theological imagination.Eliotās poetry is contemplative, musical, liturgical, and steeped in paradox.āTo be redeemed from fire by fire⦠when the fire and the rose are one.āThe collaborative Quartets project with Makoto Fujimura and Chris Theofanidis honors Eliotās poetic vision.Living and Creating from Love, Not FearāMake from love, not fear.āFear-driven art (or politics) leads to manipulation and despair.Acts of love include cooking, serving, sharing, and creating for others.āThe ultimate act of art is hospitality.āMedia & Intellectual ReferencesMakers by Nature by Bruce HermanFour Quartets by T. S. EliotThe Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria RilkeWassily Kandinsky, āOn the Spiritual in ArtāAmusing Ourselves to Death by Neil PostmanThings Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by RenĆ© GirardThe Art of the Commonplace by Wendell BerryAndres Serranoās Piss ChristMakoto Fujimuraās Art and Collaboration