Cristina González Martínez • Graduated from the BA in Philosophy UNADIS
Beauty, or what you like, could not in any way
serve as the basis for a definition of art.
Tolstoy
From antiquity to the eighteenth century, approximately, man had combined reflection on art with beauty, even identifying the former as an expression of the latter, however, the historical development of aesthetics has demarcated art of such an assignment, by virtue of the fact that art as a cultural expression of all time, highlights those interests of society that range from the worship of the gods and God, to the avant-garde fashions of our days, which according to aesthetic categories will not always be beautiful artistic expressions.
In its German root, art is derived from “being capable of” and means “ability, expertise, wisdom”, in such a way that the artist will be who he is capable of, but in an eminent way; However, in its Latin root it also refers to the artisan, it would be the one capable of elaborating a sensorially perceptible work and with imagination, the difference is that the craftsman elaborates looking for the utility of his creation and in theory, the artist will seek beauty, in its original roots it was like that at one time, nowadays no longer, the artist can seek beauty, but not only that, nor necessarily.
On the other hand, the beauty is etymologically linked with contemplate. Beautiful, originally means: contemplable, worth seeing; It then goes on to mean luminous, bright, resplendent, from which the current meaning is gradually born (Brugger,1995).
Among the philosophers of antiquity, Socrates is attributed three categories of ideal beauty, which would correspond to nature, the spiritual, which would be the one that reflects the soul through the gaze, and the useful or functional. However, beauty, according to Plato, goes beyond the physical plane, since for him beauty to be such, must go hand in hand with the intellectual plane, it requires dialectical art to capture true beauty. Something that Saint Albert the Great and Saint. Thomas Aquinas synthesize in terms of the harmony of the form, which denotes the essence and the nucleus of being, whose content expressed by unity, truth and goodness, will result in such attributes being of a luminous brilliance, when you are in front of an authentic beauty.
And it turns out that when man does not allow his vision to be clouded by the “demon” of beauty that captivates him and places him in the sole bodily beauty, then in beauty a reflection of the beyond is perceived, of the absolute perfection of God and his creation.
In our days art has become an object of study of aesthetics, regardless of beauty. Walter Benjamin talks about how the reproduction of works of art has led art to become something close, at the cost of its sacredness from other times, it has gained in extension and lost in intention, turning it into an object of consumption, it is stripped of its value and becomes a substitute for art, which pleases the masses.
The kitsch floods the market, an “art” popular that is sold as if it were what it is not. Art no longer meets the absolute, it will enter spaces that were not its own, such as urban or natural space, as well as its non-artistic dissolution such as fashion, design and advertising, it is facing the aestheticization of the existence, thus arising the transesthetics, of which the French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky speaks.
Aesthetics could not escape the postmodernity that has permeated all areas of human life, in such a way that having always been in close alliance with philosophical thought and with the history of art, today it has crossed the borders of such spaces and has become a trend that sets trends in technology, in marketing, in the automotive industry, in short, in everything that is part of consumer society, in the capitalist world.
It is possible to follow Lipovetsky’s critique from some of the characteristics of postmodern society: positive, transparent, floating, dynamic and global.
Positive society eliminates the concepts of truth and goodness in order to avoid conflict, relativizing everything in accordance with subjective principles, which allows that axiology that guided the tastes, thought and behavior of man, disappear and prevail in its place. subjective values, resulting in hyperconsumption, among other things.
Transparent society is permissive, everything can be seen and tolerated everywhere, everyone has the right to everything, it is a certain democratization of life that, in the case of art, has turned it into a democratic cultural expression, rather than aesthetics itself. said, and that it has opened the doors to spaces that were alien to it, such as capitalism, mass media or technology, for example.
The floating society is the one that has lost its roots, uprooting occurs in the nature of things and sadly, also of people, forgetting what things or people are essentially, the fashion is adopted that will be the one that marks it. that you want things and people to be, according to the trends of the moment.
The dynamic society gives speed, almost vertigo, to the production and consumption of everything: clothes, electrical appliances, movies, automobiles; coming to consider people as one more good that will be discarded as soon as it loses its usefulness or goes out of style.
Finally, global society understands that everything happens everywhere, the advertising campaigns of any product of a transnational company will be advertised in all those countries where the company is present, moving fashion from one country to another, cultural tendencies from one country to another, aesthetic values from one country to another, which will form a generation of hybrid artistic expressions and this is how the trans-aesthetics of which Lipovetsky speaks appears on the cultural map of postmodernity, whose greatest Risk is precisely the loss of the essence of aesthetics, like that concern of philosophical thought about the beautiful, the transcendent, what elevates the spirit.
Sample of the exposed is the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican on the occasion of Christmas 2020.
He Birth Within the Christian tradition it is a plastic representation of the mystery of the Incarnation, it invites Christians to reflect on the love of God made man, however, the figures of the aforementioned Bethlehem, without denying their artistic quality, far from inviting the sentence, they seem to trivialize the aforementioned mystery and turn it simply into an expression of postmodern and syncretistic art.
However, we consider that it is possible to make an effort to rescue and capture in art, the beauty of nature and the sublime of human beauty, which will prevail over all trans-aesthetic art, as a way of elevating man to essential Beauty in which all material and spiritual beauty participate.
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