Picture Perfect
Josef Lada was a renown Czech illustrator, painter, and author. Kindred to the way Norman Rockwell was able to capture American life and culture, Lada’s works drew broad appeal. Josef Lada, like Rockwell, depicted everyday life in a both mesmerizing and romantic way. In his lifetime, Lada depicted 15,000 color and black and white illustrations with an additional 550 paintings. Even Picasso commented on Lada’s work saying, ”He is the best we have.” Today, his artwork proliferates Czech puzzles, calendars, greeting cards, and posters.
A cursory observation of Lada’s work might make one ponder why there is such a mass appeal to his overly simplified renderings of everyday life. Many appear as only slightly elevated ‘Peanuts’ comic strips. Yet, as I have now lived in his homeland these 13 years, I am driven to tears in gazing at them. How did Lada manage to evoke the grandiose from the mundane? Anyone who has lived for some time in the Czech Republic, and has experienced the rhythm of time and season, can fairly testify that these artworks are uncanny pictures of perfection.
Among Lada’s most prolific reproductions is a scene of Czech Christmas at home. The grandfather is sitting contentedly in the corner. Grandma holding the youngest babe as she squirms in her lap. Mother and father looking on with great satisfaction, neatly attired in their fine clothes. Their three eldest children stand thoughtfully by the Christmas tree, peering at the nativity scene, listening to the Christmas story perhaps told by the kindly aunt. All is as it should be, captured in a perfectly stilled moment. If we contemplate the draw of such a scene and are altogether honest, it is not only the perfection that catches the eye, but the deep and residing contentment that captivates us. Somehow, though they occupy a different time and place, we can see that they are perfectly at ease with their situation. They belong where they are. I believe this is the captivating factor as I look at Lada’s works. I want to be incorporated into them. I want to stand in the place of the characters, with all of the complexities of life stripped away, and just bask in the belonging to the rhythm and sense of the moment being captured.
All through the year, but particularly during the advent season, we can find ourselves awash in the pursuit of perfect moments. We focus our energies trying to produce or uncover the ever elusive emotion that signifies our contentment is real. We post pictures, send cards and letters, have parties and dinners, give gifts and try to convey to the world that we are content with our picture of life. Only to roll into January, with the familiar post-Christmas deflation.
We so easily forget that we are truly pilgrims, so close yet far away from our homeland. That perfect portrait of life can’t endure. No sooner do we obtain it, than like a wisp it vanishes. Our blessings ebb and flow with the realities of our broken and troublesome lives. There are however, two realities that we can grab a hold of.
1)The first is our true and real hope of our future home, the fully realized and manifested Kingdom of God, where all of our brokenness and sad stories become untrue, as Tolkien put it, and the perfect contentment our hearts were tuned to seek in this lifetime is fulfilled in whole and perpetuity.
2)The second reality is that the contentment we seek is here and now for those brave enough to receive it. It is not found in pursuing the idols of our hearts or the projection of disingenuous surface happiness. The regeneration and redemption of our days we so desperately need can only be found in godliness. While godliness may be a grating term to many today, it is the authenticity that does not decay and produces the lasting satisfaction of joy and contentment.
