The Purpose of the Artist?

Over Easter I heard a sermon where it was argued that the purpose of the artist, to quote Samuel Becket, was "the accomodation of mess". This might just pass as an appropriate text for Good Friday but it seemed inappropriate on Easter Sunday, when the message should be one of joy, rebirth and fresh hope displacing despair.

The role of of the artist is to transcend. To take 'the mess' of our everyday existence and help us to be aware of the wonder of being alive, the deeper patterns that give meaning to it all. Their function is to distil not to accomodate. In Gericault's painting 'The Raft of the Medusa' the artist took rotting limbs and cadavers in the studio and made of them an arresting image of human suffering and the indomitable will to surive. On Easter Day we are reminded that Jesus, is the perfect artist in that he absorbs the mess of our lives and transforms it into something new, right here and now. Forget accommodation, this is something much better!