Blog 92, Transfiguration
All great art is religious, an act of homage before the glory of what exists. Where the religious dimension disappears the homage degenerates into something that is merely attractive and pleasing….
The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol.4: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity By Hans Urs von Balthasar
Transfiguration means a metamorphosis that glorifies the person or object. Art transfigures the world through the inspired depiction of the subject. Photography is stronger than other visual arts in this regard because it is enslaved to the subject; it is the photographic record of the subject in the world. Making an image this way guarantees a certain level of reality, yet, artfully done the subject is transfigured into something of another plane of existence; the mysterious place from whence we, ourselves came.
When one thinks of transfiguration, one naturally thinks of the divine, Christ for example. But much in our natural world is a combination of the natural and the divine, and most things can be understood as transfigurable, if one understands that things and people can only be perceived as transfigured if one loves. In fact true beauty invites love, and thereby transfiguration. A physically ugly woman is transfigured into a beautiful person, her truest self, by the love of her husband or her child. The more we love, the more the world becomes transfigured. Modern and post-modern art’s harsh “truthfulness” is a lie because it isn’t really true; it reflects the merely physical and therefore is worse than a lie, it is a half-truth that hides the truth.
Beauty in art is an invitation to love and something we naturally respond to, but an invitation to love can be challenging. Some great art is off-putting when first encountered because of its strangeness, which is caused by our lack of familiarity with it. However, if it is true art, like a startled cat who suddenly realizes that you only want to pet it, you come around it.
Original sin, our separation from the divine world, is the flaw that limits our vision; we cannot sustain our experience of the transfigured because it is overwhelming. The world we live in is magical, but is made humdrum by our normally dull senses and sluggish brains. The transfigured is like the blinding sun; however, when we imagine something, we are transcending those limitations to some degree; we are jumping the gap between our gross physicality and the divine. For that moment, we are transported, our eyes and ears opened by the beauty of the art. We are thereby reminded that the world is a magical place to be appreciated and loved, and having been reminded we can see more of the magical kingdom we inhabit. At its truest, beauty in art does this.
Blog 92: Transfiguration
Blog 92, Transfiguration
Transfiguration means a metamorphosis that glorifies the person or object. Art transfigures the world through the inspired depiction of the subject. Photography is stronger than other visual arts in this regard because it is enslaved to the subject; it is the photographic record of the subject in the world. Making an image this way guarantees a certain level of reality, yet, artfully done the subject is transfigured into something of another plane of existence; the mysterious place from whence we, ourselves came.
When one thinks of transfiguration, one naturally thinks of the divine, Christ for example. But much in our natural world is a combination of the natural and the divine, and most things can be understood as transfigurable, if one understands that things and people can only be perceived as transfigured if one loves. In fact true beauty invites love, and thereby transfiguration. A physically ugly woman is transfigured into a beautiful person, her truest self, by the love of her husband or her child. The more we love, the more the world becomes transfigured. Modern and post-modern art’s harsh “truthfulness” is a lie because it isn’t really true; it reflects the merely physical and therefore is worse than a lie, it is a half-truth that hides the truth.
Beauty in art is an invitation to love and something we naturally respond to, but an invitation to love can be challenging. Some great art is off-putting when first encountered because of its strangeness, which is caused by our lack of familiarity with it. However, if it is true art, like a startled cat who suddenly realizes that you only want to pet it, you come around it.
Original sin, our separation from the divine world, is the flaw that limits our vision; we cannot sustain our experience of the transfigured because it is overwhelming. The world we live in is magical, but is made humdrum by our normally dull senses and sluggish brains. The transfigured is like the blinding sun; however, when we imagine something, we are transcending those limitations to some degree; we are jumping the gap between our gross physicality and the divine. For that moment, we are transported, our eyes and ears opened by the beauty of the art. We are thereby reminded that the world is a magical place to be appreciated and loved, and having been reminded we can see more of the magical kingdom we inhabit. At its truest, beauty in art does this.