Saint Thomas Aquinas accurately defines Beauty as that which, when apprehended, pleases (id quod visum placet). Such pleasure is not subjective, but emanates from integrity, due proportion and clarity (the splendor of form), thus reflecting the rational and objective order impressed on Creation by its Maker. However, the contemporary cultural and artistic apparatus has declared an ontological war against this classical notion, deliberately replacing the contemplation of the sublime with the institutionalized fetishization of the grotesque, the chaotic and the repulsive.
The systematic promotion of "ugliness" It transcends the mere question of bad taste or aesthetic avant-garde. It represents a symptom of sociological and theological decadence of the first order. The postmodern artist, inoculated by the virus of nihilism and relativism, refuses to subject his intellect to the immutable laws of universal harmony. In an act of profound Promethean rebellion, he seeks to generate ex nihilo his own aesthetic paradigms and "truths" autonomous, invariably producing artifacts that exude anguish, nihilism and the most absolute existential emptiness.
When galleries sponsored by the State and the academy consecrate canvases smeared with fluids, mechanistic repetitions of consumer objects or deliberately dysmorphic installations, we are not facing a "democratization" of art, but before a frontal assault on the dignity of the human spirit. The political subtext is evident: the mass is told that man is not the crown of Creation endowed with Imago Dei, but rather a random agglomeration of matter and drives without a transcendent purpose.
The restoration of Western civilization unavoidably requires the restoration of the objective aesthetic order. Future generations must be trained anew in the contemplation of the artistic summits of Christianity, where art fulfilled its mediating function: elevating the spirit towards the Creator, building an intelligible bridge between the finitude of the human condition and the splendor of the immutable Truth.
Editorial team Academic researcher at Editorial Santa Jacinta in Geopolitics, Social Anthropology and Philosophy of Law.
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