frithjof schuon - the degrees of art

8/6/2019 Frithjof Schuon - The Degrees of Art

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as the icon of the Virgin and Child, painted by an angel, or theicon of the Holy Face which goes back to the holy shroud and toSt Veronica; or such as the statue of Shiva dancing or the painted

or carved images of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Taras. To thesame category in the widest acceptation of the term belongritual psalmody in a sacred language among others Sanskrit,Hebrew and Arabic and, in certain cases, the calligraphiccopying likewise ritual of the sacred Books; architecture, orat least the decoration of sanctuaries, liturgical objects andsacerdotal vestments are in general of a less direct order. Itwould be difficult to do justice in a few lines to all possible types

of sacred expression, which comprises such diverse modes asrecitation, writing, architecture, painting, sculpture, the dance,the art of gestures, clothing; in what follows we shall beconcerned only with the plastic arts, or even only with painting,the latter being moreover the most immediately tangible and alsothe most explicit of the arts.

Besides the icons of Christ and the Virgin, there are also a

multitude of other hieratic images, relating the facts of sacredhistory and the lives of the saints; likewise in Buddhisticonography, after the central images come the numerousrepresentations of secondary personifications; it is this more orless peripheral category which may be called indirect sacred art,even though there may not always be a rigorous line odemarcation between it and direct or central sacred art. Thefunction of this ramification apart from its didactic

significance is to enable the spirit of the central images toshine through a diverse imagery which rivets the movement othe mind by infusing into it the radiance of the Immutable, andwhich, in so doing, imposes on the moving soul a tendencytowards interiorization; this function is thus entirely analogous tothat of hagiography or even to that of tales of chivalry, notforgetting fairy tales whose symbolism, as is well known,

belongs to the realm of the spiritual and so to that of the sacred.

Sacred art is far from always being perfect, although it is

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necessarily so in its principles and in the best of its productions;nevertheless in the great majority of imperfect works, the

principles compensate for the accidental weaknesses, rather as

gold, from a certain point of view, can compensate for the butslight artistic value of a given object. Two pitfalls lie in wait forsacred art and for traditional art in general: a virtuosity tendingtowards the outward and the superficial, and a conventionalismwithout intelligence and without soul; but this, it must bestressed, rarely deprives sacred art of its overall efficacy, and in

particular of its capacity to create a stabilizing and interiorizingatmosphere. As for imperfection, one of its causes can be the

inexperience, if not the incompetence of the artist; the most primitive works are rarely the most perfect, for in the history oart there are periods of apprenticeship just as later there are

periods of decadence, the latter often being due to virtuosity.Another cause of imperfection is unintelligence, either individualor collective: the image may be lacking in quality because theartist the word here having an approximate meaning islacking in intelligence or spirituality, but it may likewise bear the

imprint of a certain collective unintelligence that comes from thesentimental conventionalization of the common religion; in thiscase, the collective psychism clothes the spiritual element with akind of pious stupidity, for if there is a navet that ischarming, there is also a naivet that is moralistic and irritating.This must be said lest anyone should think that artisticexpressions of the sacred dispense us from discernment andoblige us to be prejudiced, and so that no one should forget that

in the traditional domain in general, there is on all planes aconstant struggle between a solidifying tendency and a tendencytowards transparency which draws the psychic back to thespiritual. All of this may be summed up by saying that sacred artis sacred in itself, but that it is not necessarily so in all itsexpressions.

* * *

Sacred art is vertical and ascending, whereas profane art is




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horizontal and equilibrating. In the beginning, nothing was profane; each tool was a symbol, and even decoration wassymbolistic and sacral. With the passage of time, however, the

imagination increasingly spread itself on the earthly plane, andman felt the need for an art that was for him and not for Heavenalone; the earth too, which in the beginning was experienced as a

prolongation or an image of Heaven, progressively became earthpure and simple, that is to say that the human being increasinglyfelt himself to possess the right to be merely human. If religiontolerates this art, it is because it nevertheless has its legitimatefunction in the economy of spiritual means, within the horizontal

or earthly dimension, and with the vertical or heavenlydimension in view.

Nevertheless, it must be reiterated here that the distinction between a sacred and a profane art is inadequate and tooexpeditious when one wishes to take account of all artistic

possibilities; and it is therefore necessary to have recourse to asupplementary distinction, namely that between a liturgical and

an extra-liturgical art: in the first, although in principle itcoincides with sacred art, there may be modalities that are moreor less profane, just as inversely, extra-liturgical art maycomprise some sacred manifestations.

The term sensible consolation, wrongly applied by theologiansto sacred art itself, as also, moreover, to the beauties of virginnature as if beauty had nothing to transmit other than

consolation[2] best fits the simpler types of art and thesecondary charms of nature. The purpose of such arts is tocommunicate a climate of holy childhood, which the culturistic

poisoners always aggressive and megalomaniac willdoubtless qualify as affectation, which is just a slanderousmisuse of language; in reality art has no right insofar as it isunpretentious, and even without this reservation to begrandiloquent and titanesque, the mission of the artist being to

produce work that is sane and balanced and not an expression ouseless turmoil.




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Certainly the artist does not fashion his work with the soleintention of producing a spiritually or psychologically useful

object; he also produces it for the joy of creating by imitating,and of imitating by creating, that is to say, for the joy of lettingthe existential intention of the model flow forth, or in otherwords, of extracting from the latter its very quintessence; at leastthis is so in some cases, which it would be pretentious and out o

proportion to generalize. In other cases, on the contrary, thework of the artist is an extinction through love, the artist dying,so to speak, in creating: he performs an act of union by

identifying himself with the admired or beloved object, byrecreating it according to the music of his own soul. In othercases again and all these modes may or must combine withone another to different degrees the artist dedicates himself toadapting the object to a given material or a given technique: theJapanese engravers confer on Fuji and other views a quality thatmakes one think of the wood that they use, and the painters oscreens present rivers and the moon against a gilded background

which enhances them by giving them in addition a paradisalperfume.

At all events, the sensible consolation is in the work before being in the result; the sanctification of the religious artist precedes that of the spectator. Every legitimate art satisfies bothemotivity and intelligence, not only in the finished work, but alsoin its production.

There is likewise in art a desire to pin down the visual, auditiveor other forms which escape us, and which we wish to retain or

possess; to this desire for fixation or possession there is addedquite naturally a desire for assimilation, for a quality must notonly be beautiful, it must also be entirely ours, which brings us

back directly or indirectly, depending on the case, to the themeof union and love.

* * *




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The Hindu, or more particularly the Vishnuite miniature, is oneof the most perfect extra-liturgical arts there is, and we do not

hesitate to say that some of its productions are at the summit oall painting. Descended from the sacred painting of which theAjanta frescoes afford us a final trace, the Hindu miniature hasundergone Persian influences, but it remains essentially Hinduand is in no wise syncretistic;[3] it has in any event achieved anobility of draughtsmanship, of coloring, and of stylization ingeneral, and over and above this, a climate of candor andholiness, which are unsurpassable and which, in the best of its

examples, transport the viewer into an almost paradisiacatmosphere, a sort of earthly prolongation of heavenlychildhood.

The Hindu miniature, whether centered on Krishna or on Rama,renders visible those spiritual gardens which are the

ahabharata, theBhagavata-Purana, and the Ramayana, but italso conveys musical motifs in a romanticized style, as well as

the contradictory sentiments to which love may give rise indiverse situations; most of these subjects hold us, willingly ornot, under the spell of Krishnas flute. Some of these paintings,in which a maximum of rigor and musicality is combined with avivid spiritual expressiveness, unquestionably pertain to sacredart inasmuch as the epithet profane can no longer be applied tothem; spiritus ubi vult spirat. This is a possibility that we alsoencounter in other domains, for example, when we are forced to

admit that the Bhagavad-Gita, which logically pertains tosecondary inspiration, is in reality an Upanishad, and thus arevelation of a major kind, or when a particular saint, whosocially belongs to a lower caste, is recognized as personally

possessing the rank of brahman.

All these remarks likewise apply to that other summit of paintingattained in the Japanese screen; apart from the fact that this

genre, in many of its productions, consciously prolongs the Zenor more or less Taoist painting of the kakemonos, with its




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content of landscape or plants, as well as other subjects which donot have to be taken into consideration here, it often attains adegree of perfection and profundity which renders it inseparable

from Buddhist or Shintoist contemplativity.

Another type of extra-liturgical art that captivates by its powerfuland candid originality is Balinese art, in which Hindu motifscombine with forms proper to the Malay genius; the fact that thisgenius apart from the Hindu influence has expressed itsel

principally in the sphere of craftsmanship and in that oarchitecture in wood, bamboo and straw, does not prevent one

from seeing in it qualities which sometimes become great art;there can be no doubt that from the point of view of intrinsicvalues, and not merely from that of a particular taste, a fine barnin Borneo or Sumatra has much more to offer than has the

plaster-nightmare of a baroque church.[4]

* * *

In the case of the examples just mentioned, we are obviously atthe antipodes, not perhaps of certain medieval miniatures nor othe noblest and most spring-like works of the Quattrocento, butof the dramatic titanism, and the fleshly and vulgar delirium, othe megalomaniacs of the Renaissance and the 17th century,infatuated with anatomy, turmoil, marble and gigantism.

Non-traditional art, about which a few words must be said here,

embraces the classical art of antiquity and the Renaissance, andContinues up to the 19th century which, reacting againstacademicism, gives rise to impressionism and analogous styles;this reaction rapidly decomposes into all sorts of perversities,either abstract or surrealistic: in any case, it is really osubrealism that one ought to speak here. It goes without sayingthat worthwhile works are to be found incidentally both inimpressionism and in classicism in which we include

romanticism, since its technical principles are the same , forthe cosmic qualities cannot but manifest themselves in this




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realm, and a given individual aptitude cannot but lend itself tothis manifestation; but these exceptions, in which the positiveelements succeed in neutralizing the erroneous or insufficient

principles, are far from being able to compensate for the seriousdrawbacks of extra-traditional art, and we would gladly dowithout all its productions if it were possible to disencumber theworld from the heavy mortgage of Western culturism, with itsvices of impiety, dispersion and poisonousness. The least thatone can say is that it is not this kind of grandeur that brings uscloser to Heaven. Suffer the little children to come unto me andforbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

This culturism is practically synonymous with civilizationism,and thus with implicit racism; according to this prejudice,Western humanity proves its superiority by the Greek miracleand all its consequences, and thus by the anthropolatry it isnot for nothing that one speaks of humanism and cosmolatrywhich characterize or rather constitute the classicist mentality.However, the Greek miracle is first and foremost an abuse o

the intelligence, which could not have occurred if awareness othe sacred had not been depleted despite Orphism andPlatonism in large sections of the ruling class under the

pressure of an increasingly profane outlook, that is to say of anexteriorized and exteriorizing intelligence both unstable andadventuresome and infatuated with novelties; in keeping withthis mentality, the moderns see in the most exteriorized and mostenterprising mind a superior intelligence or even intelligence as

such.

As we believe we have mentioned on other occasions, what must be blamed in artistic naturalism is not its exact observation onature, but the fact that this observation is not compensated anddisciplined by an equivalent awareness of that which transcendsnature, and so of the essences of things, as happens for examplein Egyptian art; in all sacred arts it is the style, which indicates a

mode of inwardness, that corrects such outwardness,contingency and accidentality as the imitation of nature may




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involve; we would even say that an awareness of essences to acertain extent compromises or retards, if not a sufficientobservation of outward things, at least their exact expression in

graphic terms, although and one must insist on this there isno incompatibility in principle between exact draughtsmanshipand contemplativity, the latter conferring on the former theimprint of inwardness and essentiality. Moreover, thiscombination is prefigured by the almost inward quality onormative forms, a quality that requires, precisely, an artistictreatment that is capable of giving it full expression inaccordance with the laws of the fixative or crystallizing

dimension that is figurative art.

A perfect equilibrium between a noble naturalness and aninteriorizing and essentializing stylization is a precarious, butalways possible phenomenon. It goes without saying thatessentiality or the idea takes precedence over observation andthe imitation of nature; the intuition and expression of archetypalnature takes precedence over the observation and imitation o

nature. To each thing its rights, according to its place.

* * *

A naturalistic work of art of the most academic kind can be perfectly pleasing and nobly suggestive by virtue of the naturalbeauty that it copies, but it is nevertheless a lie, to the extent thatit is exact, that is to say, to the extent that it seeks to pass off a

flat surface for three-dimensional space, or inert matter for aliving body. In the case of painting, it is necessary to respect

both the flat surface and immobility: it is consequently necessarythat there should be neither perspective, nor shadows, normovement, except in the case of a stylization which, precisely,

permits the integration of perspective and shadows in the work,while conferring on the movement an essential, and so symbolicand normative quality. In the case of sculpture, not only is it

necessary to respect the immobility of matter by suppressingmovement or by reducing it to an essential, balanced and quasi-




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static type; it is also necessary to take account of the particularsubstance used. When expressing the nature of a living body, orsome essential aspect of its nature and thus some underlying

idea, it is important to take account of the nature of clay, owood, of stone, of metal; thus wood permits different modalitiesfrom those permitted by mineral substances and, amongst thelatter, metal enables different qualities of expression to be

brought into relief than does stone.

Stylization, as we have seen, permits a maximum of naturalismwhere it is able to impose on it a maximum of essentiality; in

other words, a summit of creative exteriorization calls for asummit of interiorizing power and consequently demands amastery of the means whereby this power may be realized. In themajority of cases art stops half-way and there is nothing wrongin this, since concretely there is no reason why it should gofurther; traditional art perfectly fulfils its role; art is noteverything, and its productions do not have to be absolute. Butthis is independent of the principle that sacred art must satisfy

every sincere believer; in other words, it fails in its mission if itscrudeness, or on the contrary its superficial virtuosity, leavesunsatisfied or even troubles believers of good will, namely thosewhom humility preserves from all intolerance and worldlyacrimony.

We have already remarked that there is a relative but notirremediable incompatibility an incompatibility of fact and

not of principle between the spiritual content or the radianceof a work of art and an implacable and virtuosic naturalism: it isas if the science of the mechanism of things killed their spirit, orat least ran the grave risk of killing it. On the one hand we have atreatment that is naive, but charged with graces and diffusing anatmosphere of security, happiness and holy childhood; while onthe other hand in classical antiquity and from the Cinquecentoonwards we have on the contrary a treatment that is

scientifically executed but the content is human and not heavenly or rather it is humanistic and the work suggests, not a




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childhood still close to Heaven, but an adulthood fallen intodisgrace and expelled from Paradise.

When calling the art of exactly copying nature an abuse ointelligence, we have indicated its analogy with modern science:artistic naturalism and exact science both comprise some validaspects since they are true in a certain respect, but in fact theaverage man is incapable of completing this wholly outwardtruth, or these respective truths, by means of their indispensablecomplements, without which science and art cannot realize theequilibrium that is in conformity with the total reality which

logically determines them. Everyone, today is aware that theefficacy of the experimental sciences is no longer an argument intheir favor, since the calamities they engender are precisely afunction of their efficacy; likewise, it is not enough that artisticnaturalism should represent a maximum of adequation, since it isust for this reason, given the use that has been made of it for all

too long, that it has finished by depriving souls of a healthynourishment adapted to their true needs.

It may be added that an element which in one way or another haspowerfully contributed to the ruination of art is ambition and thesearch for originality; by and large and in spite of laudableexceptions, these are all that are necessary to, on average anddespite some praiseworthy exceptions, deprive art of thatatmosphere of candor and calm happiness, or of sanctity, whichis one of the reasons for its existence.

* * *

The analogy between artistic naturalism and modern sciencepermits us at this point to make a digression. We do not reproachmodern science for being a fragmentary, analytical science,lacking in speculative, metaphysical and cosmological elementsor for arising from the residues or debris of ancient sciences; we

reproach it for being subjectively and objectively a transgressionand for leading subjectively and objectively to disequilibrium




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and so to disaster.

Conversely, we do not have for the traditional sciences an

unmixed admiration; the ancients also had their scientificcuriosity, they too operated by means of conjectures and,whatever their sense of metaphysical or mystical symbolism mayhave been, they were sometimes indeed often mistaken infields in which they wished to acquire a knowledge, not otranscendent principles, but of physical facts. It is impossible todeny that on the level of phenomena, which nevertheless is anintegral part of the natural sciences, to say the least, the ancients

or the Orientals have had certain inadequate conceptions,or that their conclusions were often most nave; we certainly donot reproach them for having believed that the earth is flat andthat the sun and the firmament revolve around it, since thisappearance is natural and providential for man; but one canreproach them for certain false conclusions drawn from certainappearances, in the illusory belief that they were practicing, notsymbolism and spiritual speculation, but phenomenal or indeed

exact science. One cannot, after all, deny that the purpose omedicine is to cure, not to speculate, and that the ancients wereignorant of many things in this field in spite of their greatknowledge in certain others; in saying this, we are far fromcontesting that traditional medicine had, and has, the immenseadvantage of a perspective which includes the whole man; that itwas, and is, effective in cases in which modern medicine isimpotent; that modern medicine contributes to the degeneration

of the human species and to over-population; and that anabsolute medicine is neither possible nor desirable, and this forobvious reasons. But let no one say that traditional medicine issuperior purely on account of its cosmological speculations andin the absence of particular effective remedies, and that modernmedicine, which has these remedies, is merely a pitiful residue

because it is ignorant of these speculations; or that the doctors othe Renaissance, such as Paracelsus, were wrong to discover the

anatomical and other errors of Greco-Arab medicine; or, in anentirely general way, that traditional sciences arc marvelous in




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all respects and that modern sciences, chemistry for example, areno more than fragments and residues.

No piece of knowledge at the level of phenomena is bad in itself; but the important question is that of knowing, firstly, whetherthis knowledge is reconcilable with the purpose of humanintelligence, secondly, whether in the last analysis it is trulyuseful, and thirdly, whether man can support it spiritually; in factthere is abundant proof that man cannot support a body oknowledge which breaks a certain natural and providentialequilibrium, and that the objective consequences of this

knowledge correspond exactly to its subjective anomaly. Modernscience could not have developed except as the result of aforgetting of God, and of our duties towards God and towardsourselves; in an analogous manner, artistic naturalism, whichfirst made its appearance in antiquity and was rediscovered at the

beginnings of the modern era, can be explained only by theexplosive birth of a passionately exteriorized and exteriorizingmentality.

* * *

If the deviation of art is a possibility, the rejection of art isanother. To speak of a great civilization which rejects, not one

particular art, but all art, is a contradiction in terms; the more orless iconoclastic point of view of a St Bernard or a Savonarolacannot be the attitude of a whole city-based civilization. But this

point of view, or a point of view that is in practice analogous,can exist traditionally outside civilization of this type, forexample in the nomadic or semi-nomadic world of the NorthAmerican Indians: the Redskins properly so-called not all theaboriginal inhabitants of America are indeed more or lesshostile to the plastic arts, as doubtless were also their distantcongeners the ancient Mongols, and perhaps also the ancientGermans and Celts. According to the Indians, virgin nature,

which is sacred, is of an unequalled beauty, and it contains everyconceivable beauty; it is thus vain and indeed impossible to seek




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to imitate the works of the Great Spirit. It is curious to note thatthe classical world, that of naturalism and anthropolatry, looksupon itself as a conqueror as far as nature is concerned; the cult

of man involves contempt for surrounding nature, whereas forthe Indian, as moreover for the Far-Easterners, nature is amother, and also a fatherland, of which man is indeed the center,

but not the absolute proprietor, still less the enemy.

The religious naturism of the North American Indians, envisagedhere in connection with its exclusion of the plastic arts, resultsfrom a real and thus legitimate aspect of things, it could thus not

fail to be affirmed in one or several parts of the globe; history proves that this perspective, while it obviously has nothingexclusive about it nevertheless has a solid basis; to understandthis, it is enough to think of all the deviations of the creativegenius and of all the evils from which the world ocivilizationism suffers.

Moreover, this point of view is also present in the ancient world,

at least partially: the prohibition of images by Judaism and Islam proceeds in fact from an analogous or symbolically equivalent perspective, and it makes itself felt in the world as a sort o beneficent aeration or as a factor of equilibrium. The differenceis that in the case of the Redskins, the motivation for therejection or abstention lies in the inimitability of nature apartfrom practical reasons which are in any case relative whereasin the case of the monotheistic Semites it lies in the sins o

luciferianism, magic and idolatry.

It must nevertheless be admitted that the Indians of whom we arespeaking did not completely abstain from figurative drawings.They decorated their tents with a kind of pictographyrepresenting men and animals, and they also had the practice osparingly carving their calumets, but in both cases the art isintegrated into objects that are both useful and sacred, and it

consequently conforms to the sobriety and holy poverty of aworld that is committed to taking no thought for the morrow.




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Islam tolerates in certain countries and situations miniatures of a very decorative style, on condition that God

never appears in them, and that the face of the Prophet is leftblank or is covered by a veil; painting is accepted, albeit withoutenthusiasm, because things that are painted project no shadow,the miniatures having in addition the advantage of being small,and thus not cumbersome.

The Semites reproach the iconodules for worshipping wood,stone and metal, and images made by man; they are right when

they are speaking either of their own past or present paganism, orthat of their habitual pagan neighbors, but not when they includein their reproach Christian or Asiatic iconodules. The sacredimages of these communities are, precisely, not made by humanhand; Christians express this by attributing the first icon to anangel, with or without the participation of St Luke. As for theinert matter which the idolaters seem to worship in reality itcontains a magical power it ceases to be inert in sacred art

because it is inhabited by a heavenly or divine presence; thesacred image is created by God, and it is sanctified and as ivivified by his presence.

* * *

The de facto ambiguity of beauty, and consequently of art,comes from the ambiguity of Maya: just as the principle o

manifestation and illusion both separates from the Principle andleads back to it, so earthly beauties, including those of art, canfavor worldliness as well as spirituality, which explains thediametrically opposed attitudes of the saints towards art ingeneral or a given art in particular. The arts reputed to be themost dangerous are those engaging hearing or movement,namely poetry, music and dancing; they are like wine, which inChristianity serves as the vehicle for a deifying sacrament, while

in Islam it is prohibited, each perspective being right despite thecontradiction. That the intoxicating elementin the widest




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senseparticularly lends itself to sanctification, Islamrecognizes in its esoterism, in which wine symbolizes ecstasyand in which poetry, music and dancing have become ritual

means with a view to remembrance.

Beauty, whatever use man may make of it, fundamentally belongs to its Creator, who through it projects into the world oappearances something of his being. The cosmic, and more

particularly the earthly function of beauty is to actualize in theintelligent and sensitive creature the recollection of essences, andthus to open the way to the luminous Night of the one and

infinite Essence.

* * *

The vocation sine qua non of man is to be spiritual. Spiritualitymanifests itself on the planes which constitute man, namelyintelligence, will, affectivity, production: human intelligence iscapable of transcendence, of the absolute, of objectivity; the

human will is capable of liberty, and thus of conformity to whatis grasped by the intelligence; human feeling (affectivity), whichis joined to each of the preceding faculties, is capable ocompassion and generosity, by reason of the objectivity of thehuman mind, which takes the soul out of its animal egoism.Finally, there is the specifically human capacity for production,and it is because of this that man has been called homo faber,and not homosapiens only: it is the capacity for producing tools

and constructing dwellings and sanctuaries, and if need be formaking clothes and creating works of art, and also forspontaneously combining in these creations symbolism andharmony. The language of harmony may be simple or rich,depending on needs, perspectives and temperaments; decorationtoo has its purpose, both from the point of view of symbolism,and from that of musicality. This amounts to saying that thisfourth capacity must also have a spiritual content on pain of not

being human; thus its role is simply to exteriorize the three preceding capacities by adapting them to material or cultural




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needs, or let us simply say by projecting them into the sensibleorder otherwise than by rational discourse or writing. Exiled onearth as we are, unless we are able to content ourselves with that

shadow of Paradise that is virgin nature, we must create forourselves surroundings which by their truth and their beautyrecall our heavenly origin and thereby also awaken our hope.

When creating, man must project himself into matter in his idealand spiritual personality, not in his state of fall, so that he mayafterwards be able to repose his soul and his spirit in aframework that reminds him in a gentle and holy manner of what

he must be.

* * *

The two Hindu notions of darshan and satsanga sum up, byextension, the question of human ambience as such, and so alsothat of art or craftsmanship. Darshan, is above all thecontemplation of asaint, or of a man invested with a priestly or

princely authority, and recognizable by the vestimentary or othersymbols which manifest it; satsanga is the frequentation of holymen, or simply men of spiritual tendency. What is true for ourliving surroundings is likewise true for our inanimatesurroundings, whose message or perfume we unconsciouslyassimilate to some degree or another. Tell me whom thoufrequentest and I shall tell thee who thou art.

Art refers essentially to the mystery of the veil: it is a veil madeof the world and ourselves and it is thus placed between us andGod, but it is transparent in the measure in which it is perfect andcommunicates to us what at the same time it dissimulates. Art istrue, that is to say a transmitter of Essence, to the extent that it issacred, and it is sacred, and thus a means of recollection andinteriorization, to the extent that it is true.




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NOTES

[1] When one compares the blustering and heavily carnal paintings of a Rubens with noble, correct and profound workssuch as the profile of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Ghirlandaio orthe screens with plum-trees by Korin, one may wonder whetherthe term profane art can serve as a common denominator for

productions that are so fundamentally unequal. In the case onoble works that bear the stamp of a contemplative spirit onewould prefer to speak of extra-liturgical art, without having to

specify whether it is profane or not, or to what extent it is.Moreover one must distinguish between normal profane art and a

profane art which is deviated and which has thereby ceased to bea term of comparison.

[2] It is true that this notion of consolation has a deeper importin the mystical realm.

[3] Whether it be a case of art, doctrine or anything else, there issyncretism when there is an assemblage of disparate elements,

but not when there is a unity which has assimilated elements odiverse provenance.

[4] One can say the same of Shinto sanctuaries, which have beendescribed as barns, especially those at Ise.

Original editorial inclusion that followedthe essay in Studies:

All that we are by nature is in fullcontrariety to this divine love, nor can it be

otherwise; a death to itself is its only cure




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and nothing else can make it subservient togood; just as darkness cannot be altered or

made better in itself or transmuted intolight, it can only be subservient to the lightby being lost in it and swallowed up by it

William Law.


frithjof schuon - the degrees of art

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