Gadamer consistently speaks of works of art as “events of being.” Is this anything more than Heideggerian mumbo-jumbo? I think so. Gadamer appears to mean at least two things. First, with regard to the art work itself: The art work brings something into existence that wasn’t there . . . . Continue Reading »
Gadamer says in his discussion of the ontology of art in Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts) , “It is quite in order that the opposition between profane and sacred proves to be only relative. We need only recall the meaning and history of the word ‘profane’: the . . . . Continue Reading »
I have a Good Friday meditation on beauty at the First AThings web site today: http://www.firstthings.com/ . . . . Continue Reading »
Thoughts inspired by Hans Holbein’s “Body of the Dead Christ”: The Father sees His crucified Son, and says “This is my Beloved Son.” He regards the corpse of Jesus, blue, bruised, scarred, twisted, hands and feet blackened like claws, sightless eyes lolling upward, jaw . . . . Continue Reading »
David Luy has a helpful article in the April 2011 issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology , where he summarizes how von Balthasar harmonizes his Trinitarian theology with his claim that Christ, especially in the cross, is the “form” of God’s glory and beauty. he . . . . Continue Reading »
In his highly readable The Sublime (The New Critical Idiom) , Philip Shaw lucidly summarizes the standard distinction between the sublime and the beautiful: “The sublime is greater than the beautiful; the sublime is dark, profound, and overwhelming and implicitly masculine, whereas the . . . . Continue Reading »
Seerveld argues that “Christians in the twentieth century who adopt Beauty in some transcendental way as the key to understand art and human aesthetic activity are easily misled into also adopting the apologetic attitude toward art and the ontological framework in which Beauty was . . . . Continue Reading »
Calvin Seerveld ( Rainbows for the Fallen World: Aesthetic Life and Artistic Task ) points to the 18th-century introduction of “sublime” as the beginning of the end of aesthetics focused on beauty: “When ‘the sublime’ became understood around the middle of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Kuyper endorses poiesis , then waxes quasi-Platonic: “You are familiar with the question, already mentioned, whether art should imitate nature or should transcend it. In Greece grapes were painted with such accuracy that birds were deceived by their appearance and tried to eat them. And this . . . . Continue Reading »
A cheer for Kuyper, who offers a great summary of Calvin’s views of art: “the blind prejudice against Sculpture, on the ground of the Second Commandment, Calvin declares unworthy of refutation. He exults in Music as a marvelous power to move hearts and to ennoble tendencies and morals. . . . . Continue Reading »
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