“Art without soul is like prayer without conviction.” Motto for Bezalel school of art.

Incarnate art includes brokenness and suffering and redemptive hope. Good art and living should have both complexity of suffering and light. Like gospel music or even the blues, or nearly all of David’s poetry. Authentic meeting between humanity and heaven. Where earth heaven meet there is loving friction. Art should reflect that friction.
This is the beauty of a storm. That’s where great art occurs. We are overhearing moments of transformation. Where the imperfect meets something higher. This is why an AA meeting is often more beautiful than many church services. They reflect the manger’s way, more honestly—the way of God coming as a child in an animal stable.
My own generation nearly demands it to be real. We want to see the seams, and the brokenness, then we might encounter what is making things less broken. “To see God, i need to see you, more as you actually are-broken like me.” Good art helps us see more truly, both how things are, and how they are being made to be.
Without seeing the fracture, we don’t trust the cup to hold water or something refined like wine, as one friend put it.
It’s not just that my generation wants to know the narrative. We also want a transparent story, so we can see light in it.
Authenticity is a pre-requisite to both good art and real spiritual transformation. Jesus cannot enter until we say that we are sinners.