Is Beauty Cool Again?
To find out more about Artisan in Bristo, co-ordinated by Geoff Hall, see www.artisaninitiatives.org
Philosopher Roger Scruton presented a 60 minute program on the BBC a few weeks back entitled 'Why beauty matters?’ He makes a case that beauty should be restored back into the centre of art, our lives and civilization. Here are his closing remarks:
"Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows. Art and Music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life and through them we are able to confront those things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence. This capacity of beauty to redeem our suffering is one reason why beauty can be seen as a substitute for religion. Why give priority to religion, why not say that religion is a 'beauty substitute'? Better still why describe the two as rivals? The sacred and the beautiful stand side by side, two doors that open onto a single space and in that space we find our home."
A New Renaissance
This week, on the 8th December the artist Richard Wright won Britain's most prestigious art award the Turner Prize for his spectacular gold-leaf mural which is at The Tate Britain in London until 3rd Jan. It is interesting to see a headline by a British newspaper 'A new renaissance' with a critic's acknowledgment that 'Wright's work reminds me of Leonardo and Michelangelo'. A number of artists I have spoken to in the past few days are excited about this award. 'Is beauty cool again?'
Here is a snippet from an article in today's Guardian written by Charlotte Higgens after an interview with Richard Wright:
On the 3rd January, after the exhibition closes, the image will be painted over. It's the same with every wall-painting he makes. They are not meant to last; Wright's point is that all art is mortal. "The fragility of the experience is the hinge for me," he says. It makes the work more like a musical performance, he explains, something that exists in the memory of the creator and the audience, but can't be owned, sold, or carried around. "There's already too much stuff in the world. And it buys you a kind of freedom. Not having [paintings] come back to haunt you is a kind of liberation. You make something, and a month later it is gone."
The Super Supernova
Today, images were released from the biggest scientific satellite ever built in Europe, the XMM-Newton observatory which has been orbiting Earth for a decade with its mirrors capturing X-ray images from across the Universe. One of the most beautiful X ray images is of the remnants of a star that exploded in AD1006. The scientists have put together the high and low energy x-rays which reveals the supernova in all of it’s beauty and glory.
Beauty Bounds
I am fascinated by the reality that most beauty is not only temporary but also unseen and unappreciated. Artists are significant players in this constant flow of beauty through words, film, music, the movement of a body, a brush, scalpel or mouse. Innovative and unique beauty is in each of us and our challenge I believe is to interact playfully. In the words of Roger Scruton beauty has the potential to 'amplify the joys' and bring 'consolation to our sorrows'. I believe beauty carries us to the divine who millennium after millennium extravagantly pours out order and beauty like a never failing Victoria Falls.
Steve Cole
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Quote: "This capacity of beauty to redeem our suffering is one reason why beauty can be seen as a substitute for religion. Why give priority to religion, why not say that religion is a 'beauty substitute'? Better still why describe the two as rivals?"
In an ugly world it is not surprising that people now want something beautiful from their art. To paraphrase Paul Klee, 'the uglier the world becomes, the more art moves to abstraction.'
Before we equate beauty with salvation, we should realise that this notion of the beautiful has its roots in Humanism! And before we get excited about a new renaissance, we should discern that 'Renaissance' does not equal 'Christian'. Whilst generally we look to the Pauline formula "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things." (Phil ch4 v8), we cannot see this as a blueprint for art.
Say what? But isn't it obvious Geoff? Frayed knot! Why? Because again context is everything. Look at the stories Jesus told. Did they just focus on whatever is honourable, pure or lovely? Again, frayed knot! There was decadent behaviour ending in a pig-sty lifestyle, murder of the vineyard owner’s son, weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth, a rich man tormented in hell. I could go on, but if we base our art around one verse in the Bible, because we want something unchallenging, safe, therapeutic, then perhaps we haven't read the Scriptures carefully enough. Redemption is set in the context of the ugliness of the Fall; the agony of the cross may be painted beautifully, but is it redemptive, was Jesus striking a pose for beauty's sake on the cross? I doubt it, but the agony of crucifixion is juxtaposed against the glory of resurrection!
Yes beauty is fleeting. We need only look in the mirror to see beauty’s demise over the course of our lives!! But beauty tempered with grace, Rembrandt ageing before our eyes (now) and his (then), is the wonder of incarnational beauty! No I don't mean the beauty within, but the wonder of our spiritually-charged beings, flesh and blood, created in the wonder and awe of the image of God!
Our constant appetite for beauty and the reversal of ageing, of the vision of life that Rembrandt gives us, stems from what those in the know call BDD, or body dysmorphic disorder. The constant re-proportioning of our body, looking for perfection where we fear it has disappeared, is an interesting dilemma and not unrelated to the Renaissance view of beauty.
Say what? Well, the Renaissance theory of beauty was rooted in a thing called 'proportion'! Think of Botticelli's Venus, with her bi-laterally symmetrical figure, worked out on the 'golden-proportion'. How many women do you know like that!! Aquinas' view of proportion and beauty seems to conform to what was called by early scholars 'kroma kai symmetria' or colour and symmetry, whereby beauty could be found in the right proportion of colour. Nothing to do with expressionism and colour theory, but the mathematics of proportion. We are not fearfully and wonderfully made because we are created in the image of God, with certain inspirational capacities, but because our proportions measure up!
Umberto Eco in his book, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas writes about the Vitruvian Man (you may remember Da Vinci man framed in a circle!), and reflects that there is '...an underlying belief in the identity of moral and aesthetic value, in the identity of aesthetic value with a mystical and supernatural value, and finally, in its identity with a cosmological value."
So, we can see that if we follow this theory of beauty, not based on christian thought, but on a pagan, humanistic one, we can get into all sorts of trouble, whether through dysmorphia, or equating morality and cosmological truth with proportion and its sister, beauty!
Our calling as christians in the arts is not to a moralistic, prosaic aesthetic, but to meekness in the context of the misuse of power, grace in the face of excess, loveliness staring into the eyes of dissipation, righteousness confronting oppression, whatever is honourable contradicting the commercial betrayal of Creation. For such are the days we live in and such is the time for change. Redemption comes from none of these created values or things, but through Christ.