Christianity has had an up-and-down relationship with the arts, and the post-Reformation emphasis on the biblical text, along with the evangelical emphasis on the missional/gospel aspect of the church, has put the arts in the church's doghouse.  On top of Reformation sola scriptura and evangelical missions, we can also add the influence of the "last days" mentality of the last hundred years or so, especially the influence of the relatively recent dispensational theology, which tells us that Jesus could rapture the church at any minute.  

In that mix, it's hard for serious, Protestant Christians to see the justification for art.  That is, art for art's sake.  Why go to all the hundreds of hours to paint a masterpiece, or write a serious work of fiction, or compose a gorgeous piano piece if none of those things directly communicates the gospel message?  And when all of those things will burn up at Christ's imminent coming?  

There's nothing to ruin a sandcastle artist's day more than a tsunami warning.

But talented Christians still itch to create things that are beautiful and true, even if not the ideal venues for communicating the propositional content of the gospel.  Some of them bend over backwards to make their art "gospel-friendly."  Others choose the artistic high road and scorn the less-than-professional Christian kitsch that broadcasts the gospel in our current Christian culture.  

Here's my proposal for the solution, still in its embryonic state.  

I propose that Christians can take either road, and that neither road is to be despised as a "sell-out," because the two roads generally correspond to the division of "general revelation" and "special revelation."  Art at its best, whether done by Christians or otherwise, clearly and beautifully depicts the basic truths of the world:  the complexity of the soul, the divine image in the lowly human, the beauty and tragedy of human relationships, the fallenness of the world, etc.  These general revelation truths have been maintained artistically more than doctrinally over the course of the world and are the content of the traditions and cultures of most peoples, but they are more threatened today than ever before by secular doctrines that want to dehumanize humanity.  We need basic literature, beautiful and true, to keep the mirror of conscience and the general knowledge of God in front of the world.  Otherwise, the world can forget (we can get much worse than we are right now as a society).

That general revelation functions like the law (Romans 13, I Timothy 2), keeping the anarchy of the sinful world at bay while the gospel makes its way through by separate channels.  

Art as general revelation, though, is only preparatory.  It isn't specific enough to convey the gospel.  For that, we need proclamation, the foolishness of preaching.  Yes, it's still foolish, and it's still necessary.  Preaching can take many forms, and one of them can be what some people call bad art, or propaganda literature.  The point of these books and stories and songs and paintings is not to join the great artistic conversation, but to communicate the basic tenets of the gospel.  As Augustine was put off by the inferior writing and preaching of the (relatively) uneducated Christians of his time, so will many modern people be put off--but the gospel still acted in power on Augustine, and it will still act in power on people today.  

God uses kitsch to convert people, just as He uses beautiful, non-gospel art to prepare and hold them.  

So, if you want to be an artist of general revelation, be prepared to put in the time, and don't feel pressured to make your work proclaim the gospel.  But when you get an opportunity to speak the gospel, don't be subtle.  Be a fool and speak directly, not in indirect and artistic ways.  Both of these avenues are the wisdom of God in their proper places.