Revelations of Art
Art expresses truth in the same fundamental way as religious ritual and myth do: its truth is the truth of disclosure. Rather than capturing a reality we can weigh and measure or test with the rules of science, art opens us to a transcendent world and way of being in the world whose correspondence to “reality” is of minimal importance. The truth of art is a truth that can be reached only by a creative participation in its revelation.
Artistic experience is not unlike religious experience. With this similarity in mind, I begin a new regular series here at Journeys in Alterity. Every Sunday I’ll be posting a work of art that I find particularly revelatory. By revelatory I do not mean religious, although some of the art works may be of religious character. I may offer a few words from time to time, but for the most part I intend to let the work of art speak for itself. I begin with The Tempest by Auguste Rodin.
Kyle, you have hit upon my favorite theme. Bravo!
There’s an amazing new website up, detailing the Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. Something like 100 billion pixels. I’ve been zooming in on these images obsessively.
Blaise – as an art conservator and self-confessed geek thanks for the link and for sucking up all of my not so free time
Any chance, Kyloe, that you’ll venture into the world of Musik?
Klassische Musik?
A bounty of infinite spiritual ecstatisies are there to be found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KUDs8KJc_c&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL3C5EEAE5EABA87E7
Ah, make that, Kyle. And for that matter, make that, ecstasies. Sorry.
Imagine, if you will, how skeletal and paltry the world of art, music, sculpture, architecture, literature would be if these magnificent, glorious, generous, geniuses had been atheists? A truly ghastly thought, indeed.
Atheists will never, ever, get “it”. They dwelleth in a colorless, soulless, vapid, prosaic universe. For a Universe to exist, it needs an Observer otherwise nothing comes nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.
“Have you ever said Yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you have said Yes too to all woe. All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored; if ever you wanted one thing twice, if ever you said, “You please me, happiness! Abide moment!” then you wanted all back. All anew, all eternally, all entangled, ensnared, enamored–oh then you loved the world. Eternal ones, love it eternally and evermore; and to woe too, you say: go, but return! For all joy wants–eternity.”
“O man! Take heed! What saith deep midnight’s voice indeed? “I slept my sleep– “From deepest dream I’ve woke, and plead:– “The world is deep, “And deeper than the day could read. “Deep is its woe–, “Joy–deeper still than grief can be: “Woe saith: Hence! Go! “But joys all want eternity-, “-Want deep, profound eternity!”
May I, kind sir, give you Beethoven’s own, “Tempest”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgub-BaTQvs&feature=related