Matthew Adelberg, Rosary, 2013, oil on panel, 9" x 12" |
Where I
part company with so many who write about beauty is, first, in the easy
conflation of beauty and art; and, second, in the assumption that
certain works of art are intrinsically, undeniably, beautiful while
others are simply not. In my book, I wrote extensively about the
difference between personal taste and objective judgment, noting that we
can like or dislike works of art while simultaneously noting that this
does not necessarily correlate with whether those same works of art are
well or poorly designed and executed. I also pointed out that, since
works of art that one person declares beautiful another person might
describe as ugly, it is not possible to say that any given artwork is
definitively more beautiful than another.
I
do believe that is is possible to say that some works of art are more
harmonious than others, that some point more directly than others to
transcendence, even that some invite us more intentionally into
contemplation of the divine. Such works are more likely to be called
beautiful by more people than those, for instance, that reveal human
brutality or suffering. Artworks that are disquieting are less likely to
be called beautiful even when they reveal important truths, perhaps
precisely because the artist has rejected the qualities of harmony,
balance, and unity that classically have been associated with beauty, or
because they depict situations or persons that society calls ugly,
So can I call any artwork beautiful? Yes, of course I can. This morning, I was reading Makoto Fujimura's blog post, Tears for Fragile Emanations, and saw an image of his astonishing painting, "Charis-Kairos (The Tears of Christ)", from his Four Holy Gospels Project.
My first thought was, Oh, it's so beautiful! Without being at all literal, Fujimura's painting evokes sky and water, fragile flowering bushes and rocky cliffs so stalwart that they seem eternal. The thin, transparent layers of paint invite me to look ever more deeply, to wonder what is hidden as well as what is revealed.
Similarly, a small painting that now graces my office, "Rosary" by Matthew Adelberg, is so beautiful to me that I can hardly stand it. The two hands, clasped tightly together around a rosary, suggest both hope and despair, the dirty fingernails and carefully-observed folds of skin at knuckle and joint contrasting with the smooth purity of the beads, the tightness of the grasping fingers held lightly against an infinite field of gold. At once iconic and illusionistic, this painting asks me to consider the palpable reality of both heaven and earth in one, single, gasping breath.
Partly,
these two paintings evoke the experience of beauty in me because they
exhibit exactly those qualities of harmony, balance, unity and technical
skill that the classical aesthetic theorists described as essential
elements for a beautiful artwork. Likewise, each of these paintings
suggest both ecstasy and pathos, exhibiting the kind of beauty that
encompasses the truth of both human suffering and divine transcendence,
as suggested by many of those who write about aesthetics theologically.
Finally, however, I experience beauty in these two, very different, paintings because each of them resonates with something in my own experience of life, with my own deep yearnings and memories. I acknowledge that someone else with different taste and life experience might find Fujimura's abstraction utterly meaningless and opaque despite the title that points to Christ. Alternatively, some other person might find Adelberg's finely rendered, rosary-clutching hands trite and sentimental rather than evocative of deeper realities. Indeed, as beautiful as I find both of them, and as much as I would like to believe it, neither of these paintings is likely to save the world.
But Dostoevsky said that beauty
would save the world, not art. And this I do believe. To say that
something is beautiful is to love it, to cherish it, to feel a thrill in its presence, maybe even, as in
the story that Fujimura tells, to give one's life for it. An experience
of beauty is an experience of love, of joy, perhaps even of eternity.
Just as Holy Communion is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, an
experience of beauty is a moment of beatific vision, in which we not
only experience the immediate, immanent presence of God but also see the
thing we call "beautiful" through God's eyes of love. I'm not entirely
sure about the world, but I do know that the experiences of God's love have the power to save me from despair over all
that is broken in the world around me. And that is beautiful.