The Soul That Thirsts for Beauty
“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.””
Never was there a time that I desperately wished for a longer weekend than the weekend I spent at Ellenville, upstate New York by a lakeside with a select few of my schoolmates back in 2018—a lamentably short two nights and three days (it was all our club could afford anyway). As a teen who rarely had the chance to get away from the dreary concrete slabs and unrelenting fluorescent lights that characterize the big city for most of my childhood, a lakeside retreat was bound to be an extraordinary experience for me that I dare not take for granted even for the rest of my suburban life. So I stood there by the lakeside we’d just arrived at that morning, staring stupendously at the lush green fields seemingly stretching for miles and miles in front of me, dotted by a diversity of willows, pine, and lime trees whose leaves swayed softly in the late summer breeze. They seemed to be greeting me kindly, a gentle “Welcome, why are you troubled?”
My eyes grew teary with overwhelming emotion.
by the lakeside at the Ellenville mountain resort
I think this is where my deeper appreciation for the beauty of things truly came to a head. This spot right here. The experience was like a pressure valve being released, and after that short three days I was never the same again. What was it about those gently rolling hills, dancing trees, and stately mountains that made the hair on my arms raise? I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling then, or why I was feeling at all, but 10 years of being a representational artist and studying my craft as well as its masters have helped me begin to find those words I could only barely grasp at the time.
Albert Camus in his posthumously curated Notebooks helped me to understand this experience a little better when he wrote, “Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.” It would be unfairly narrow to speak of beauty in only aesthetic terms when it is a reality that touches every part of life beyond the visual. Have you ever heard a breathtaking performance of a timeless classic and shivered in amazement at the layering of notes and chords that form a pleasing melody? Or have you read a heart-wrenching story of love, sacrifice, and redemption? These are just a few of the many examples of how beauty touches our souls every time we encounter it in the world and in the stories we tell one another. To feel and to feel deeply in these moments is to be human, and it is a universal phenomenon that testifies to the idea that something about beauty elicits strong emotions within us no matter who we are. It is indeed a powerful thing as Camus aptly noted. And yet it is not at all simply defined despite being undeniably universal, ubiquitous, and central to our identity as humans.
Defining beauty is much beyond the scope of this particular blog post, but I am hoping to explore this more deeply, though not comprehensively, in later posts; I don’t presume that a finite human mind can comprehensively understand Beauty and all of its essence. Though I’m sure I’ve made it quite clear that I do believe there is a way to at least begin to understand it.
I think it is completely fair to start with those special personal moments and work outward from there. As someone who has always been musically inclined from my toddler years (but not musically gifted, unfortunately!), I’m especially keen to and moved by gorgeous orchestral arrangements and choral music. In fact, in the studio what I tend to listen to are the romantic and emotional scores from movies and video games—two other undeniably powerful and culturally influential art forms that can so effectively captivate our hearts through great storytelling, cinematography and soundtrack when done properly. I mean, art is all around us, it is inescapable, it is unforgettable, and more often than not it is the excellent that wins hearts and stands the test of time over the mediocre.
The soul cannot survive or live in this world without engaging with beauty, it is a natural instinct. Artists and craftsmen have their calling to supply that need for many, to translate the ordinary into the extraordinary. Or more truthfully, to point others to the reality of the extraordinary that already exists in the seemingly ordinary, that we are often not privy to because of the noise of modernization and uglification drowning it all out and dulling our senses. Only deliberately meditating on beauty as we find it everywhere, can effectively start to reverse this, which is the entire heartbeat of an artist. However, I suspect that this consciously driven purpose has been mostly lost and forgotten in the current postmodern era of commercial art—although I’m excited to be alive to witness a resurgence happening.
I haven’t found a better take on this than in Juliette Aristides’ challenge to representational artists in the intro of her critically acclaimed Classical Painting Atelier,
“Despite all appearances and talk to the contrary, we crave art that captures truth and remains powerfully and beautifully relevant long past the time of its creation. This sort of art is not just pretty or made up of the hollow aesthetic beauty that changes with the eye of the beholder. It is not sentimental, for sentiment is fleeting. The sort of art that lives eternally is that which captures astonishing, spine-chilling, breathtaking beauty that heightens our senses and floods us with transforming thought and emotion. In this work, we hear a whisper from another world saying, ‘It’s all real.’ The ache to last means you were meant to last; the longing for beauty calls to you because beauty marks a reality that actually exists.”
As a representational artist I have mulled over the question of aesthetics specifically applied to art—metaphysically, socially, and practically in my studio disciplines. If art practice is the science, then the study of aesthetics is the ethics. How far is too far when pushing the envelope, and why? Is there ‘good’ and is there ‘bad’ aesthetic beyond subjective taste? Objectively bad technique and objectively good technique? Can a banana taped to a wall be beautiful? I believe it for sure can have shock value and challenge ‘norms.’ It certainly grabs our attention and makes headlines, so may therefore hold some sort of short-lived prestige in a so-called ‘attention economy.’ But should that be the point of art? Does that do our communities any good long-term? These are considerations that have formed the basis and foundation of my belief that art is meant to be so much more than what it has been reduced to in an era of hyper-individualism.
I would be remiss not to mention, as a parenthetical aside, that I’m considerably biased towards old methods and traditional standards of beauty in art practice (if that wasn’t already obvious) for reasons I will venture into more extensively in an upcoming blog post—or potentially several due to the complex nature of the topic. I believe—and can personally attest—that it’s incredibly rewarding to engage our minds and consider these questions seriously in order to establish our belief system concerning the nature and usefulness of aesthetics in art, and consequently, how we intend to explore it with our craft, whatever it may be. It requires some difficult venturing beyond the self and the personal to question why art and beauty even exist, why humans long to create in the ways we do, why we make the aesthetic choices that we do, and why, on a subjective level, we find some things beautiful and other things not so much. This is the journey I’m on.
“More often than not it is the excellent that wins hearts and stands the test of time over the mediocre. ”
This beauty Aristides speaks of that “heightens our senses” and “floods” us with emotion is an extremely powerful phenomenon to tap into as an artist, being a visual translator and interpreter. It connects us to something bigger than ourselves. And I believe that being connected to something bigger and outside of ourselves, is essential to our flourishing.
Then, with that frame of mind, I can’t help but feel that the calling of an artist becomes so much weightier and indispensable.
