Why is the Frame Important According to G.K. Chesterton?

Why is the frame important? Believe it or not, the most important thing in an artwork is the frame. Without the frame, it looks incomplete and undefined. However, if you have the right frame for it, it acquires some completeness — almost by magic. The frame allows the inherent beauty of a thing to come out.

If you take a few dry leaves and put them in an appropriate frame, you will get a herbarium. The frame limits the scope of your possibilities, and yet it reveals beauty. Beauty is revealed in and through limitations. Every piece of literature that has endured through centuries frames the hero’s adventures in some limitations.

The limitations allow the beauty to shine. Les Miserables, The Lord of the Rings, The Shack, The Brothers Karamazov, the Gospels — the more limitations the hero has the more this silent question arises in our minds, “Will he go through it beautifully or not?”

We know how our own limitations make us feel. We know they present obstacles to how much we can do. We wish them away. We wish we weren’t limited — or at least, less limited. We think without limitations, we will walk through life more beautifully. We won’t. We may get through life, but it won’t be a piece of art.

For a life to be a piece of art, limitations must exist. The question is not, “What will I do to get rid of these limitations? The question is, “What will I do within these limitations to reveal beauty?” The frame gives us the impetus to transcend our limitations without getting rid of them.

Of course, we can get rid of some of our limitations (thankfully). However, there will always be some that will stay. They are the frame within which we have the opportunity to rise above the frame. The frame is here to lead us out of our limitations. A framed piece of art doesn’t look limited. It looks boundless.

G.K. Chesterton once sprained his foot and used the opportunity to write an ode to his healthy leg. He reflects on the poetic pleasures of standing on one leg and appreciates the strength and beauty of his healthy leg. He points out that the isolation of one leg, similar to a single tower or tree, allows for a deeper appreciation of life. In conclusion, he says that to truly value something, we must realize the possibility of its loss​.

“The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost.”

And:

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”

We are all artists drawing our lives within the constraints of our frame. What will I do with my limitations today? I can either bemoan them or try to rise above them. They can be either an obstacle or a beauty revealer. The question is, “Will I walk through this beautifully today?”