In the Middle Ages, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the greatest medieval Christian theologians, commented on what he thought were the elements of Beauty. What was a carefree comment on your monumental Summa Theologica It has become for many beauty lovers a model of valuation and appreciation based on three concepts: integrity, balance and luminosity.
If a work of art contains all three elements, the viewer can be reasonably sure that the work is beautiful. If one of these three components turns out to be deficient, the work will be deficient; and although it may gain acceptance as a work of art, it will never be considered beautiful.
But before proposing my own views on beauty, let me do a bit of history:
The ancient Greek word for beauty was kalos, a word that had other connotations such as “what is appropriate”, “what is good”; and as a result the Greeks did not leave us a well-defined model of beauty. And, incidentally, although Plato’s theory of forms leads to absolute beauty, which is transcendental, I am interested in the beauty that is of this world.
John Keats in his “Ode to a Greek Urn” tells us that: ‘Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, that’s all you know on earth and all you need to know’.
Clive Bell:
In each one, lines and colors combined in a particular way, certain forms and relationships of forms, stir up our aesthetic emotions. I call these relationships and combinations of lines and colors, these aesthetically moving forms “Significant Form”; and the “meaningful form” is the only quality common to all works of visual art.
Both Clive Bell and Plotinus think of beauty as “human form.” But since Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher, published his Dehumanization of art book, no one thinks that art and beauty should deal exclusively with the human. In fact Hans Hoffman, the American expressionist, tells us that painting doesn’t even have to tell a story.
When I was young and saw Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” for the first time, I was in awe of the play for many years. Later, I came to appreciate works by Braque, Klee, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Miro, Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne; and yet I couldn’t handle that elusive feeling of aesthetic emotion. Was it good? Truth? Or meaningful way?
The complicated thing that mattered was Marcel Duchamp’s type of art: his ready-mades, his anti-art artifacts. How can anyone feel the churning of aesthetic bliss when looking at a urinal? I struggle like I did with this problem, couldn’t imagine an answer.
In a rereading of James Joyce Portrait of the young artistI was captivated by Stephen Dedalus’ translation of Aquino’s model of beauty: wholeness, balance and radiance. “This is the model that I like! This is a model that I can understand and that I can apply to all the arts.”
When I start reading a literary work, if somewhere in the book I find fullness and harmony or well-balanced sentences, I keep reading. When I finish the book I ask myself: Does this book have a radiance or an aura that is discernible and transferable to the enrichment of life? If your answer is yes, then you would say without reservation: “What a beautiful book!” And Marce Duchamp’s urinal? – you would ask. My simple and humble answer is: the work may have fullness and balance, but it lacks the glow! It lacks the aura that I would take with me to enrich my soul for years to come.
Try the model: check out the statues of Henry Moore or the mixed media of Julian Schnabel. See if you can discern wholeness, balance, and radiance.