Agape: Love and Art in Community

Abstract

In the New Testament the early Christians adopted the notion of absolute, creative and excessive love-agape-as a comprehensive fatherly love that God possesses for mankind, which as a consequence extends to a love of one's fellow man. This paper is an investigation of agape and its relevance in contemporary art. Like a work of art, agape has an immanent creative component in that it generates value in its object. Agapic art is largely activated in the space of community. I unpack my thesis examining several contemporary artworks beginning with a public installation in 2010 commissioned after the murder of a student at the University of Virginia. I deploy my research through multiple lenses, including the thinking of Arendt, Freud, Heidegger, Lewis and Nancy. Art provides the Heideggerian clearing of light in a world that is witness to the darkness of terroristic threats, domestic violence and ethnic hatred. The list goes on, because now-as in all of history-the human instinct for aggression sees no end in sight. Works of art that express agape are gifts of optimism to the living.