“Artistry easily becomes idolatry, and when this happens, art is seen to exist only for its own sake and not for any higher purpose… It is said that when Henri Matisse completed his masterly paintings in the Chapel of the Rosary at Venice, he stepped back and proclaimed, ‘I did it for myself.’ One of the Catholic sisters overheard him and immediately objected: ‘But you told me you were doing it for God.’ ‘Yes,’ Matisse replied, ‘but I am God.'”
–Philip Graham Ryken, Art For God’s Sake (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 48.
