Surrender to Art
June 20th, 2005 | Published in Quotes, Art and Design
We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things to it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)
—C.S. Lewis (Cited in All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture by Kenneth A. Myers (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1989), p. 92)