On the subject of Beauty.

Death of St. Sebastian

There are many things to be said about beauty in our day in age. For many, it was that which came from an imagination, that though tainted by the passions, brought forth the whimsical-musings of a longing for the tranquil and inspiring. 


In our common day in age, art has lost its transcendent and benevolent wonder. Instead, art has been replaced by illogical, basic, fundamental-immoderate caricatures of an unsound mind. Leonardo DaVinci claims that "inaction sap the vigors of the mind" and that is exactly the problem in a utilitarianistic world such as our own. The respect for the person has been lost and in that loss is that of art.  


Many great minds of the past, philosophers, historians, authors, musicians, theologians and pagans have subscribed to inner soul which releases the spiritual essence on a corporeal vision. Plato once said "Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."  Or as Edgar Degas says, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Whatever the product your raising, whatever you believe in, that is what you will make people see. 


Here is a video done by the BBC about how Beauty has been lost in the world. Beauty has been set aside, and modernity has replaced it as the model of art, but as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe says, “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”