The Philosophy of Art

Saint Thomas Aquinas defined the beautiful as that which, being seen, pleases:

id quod visum placet.

Consider the following paintings. Do you think they are beautiful?

THIS

ONE?

(A)

Or, THIS ONE? (B)

If you picked A, you picked a master. If you picked B, you picked

an amateur who likes the master.

This one? (A) or,

This one? (B)

If you picked B, you picked a master (Slava Brodinsky). A is a copy of B.

You should be able to see the difference in quality.

This one?(A)

Or,

THIS

ONE?

B

If you picked A, you picked August Macke, a German Impressionist. B

is the work of an amateur.

A?

Or,

B?

Again, A is one of the Group of Seven, B is an amateur.

A?

B?

A is the work of an amateur, a composer who took up painting. B

is a Franz Marc.

This one? A…or, B the next one?

A is the August Macke, B is a copy of it.

Mt. Lefroy as is:

Mt. Lefroy from the mind of Lawren Harris

A work of art tells us a great deal about the artist. Consider the following six paintings

Jack Kevorkian (Dr. Death)

Dave Becket (Orillia, Ontario)

The beautiful is what gives delight -- not just any delight, but delight in knowing; not the delight peculiar to the act of knowing, but a delight which superabounds and overflows from this act because of the object known. If a thing exalts and delights the soul by the very fact that it is given to the soul's intuition, it is good to apprehend, it is beautiful.[48]

Beauty is essentially an object of intelligence, for that which knows in the full sense of the word is intelligence, which alone is open to the infinity of being.

If beauty delights the intellect, it is because it is essentially a certain excellence or perfection in the proportion of things to the intellect. Hence the three

conditions Saint Thomas assigned to beauty:

• Integrity: (fullness of being, integral, complete) because the intellect is pleased in fullness of being;

• Proportion (order, harmony): because the intellect is pleased in order and unity.

• Radiance or clarity, because the intellect is pleased in light and intelligibility. A certain splendor is, in fact, according to all the ancients, the essential characteristic of beauty.

3. It is radiant. It communicates an intuition, a human feeling, a mood, an interpretation of this mountain.

1. This work is complete or integral. It conforms to the vision of the artist completely.

2. It is also proportionate. Nothing is really out of place, that is, out of harmony with the original vision of the artist.

Although this painting is complete and proportionate, I’m not sure that it communicates anything more than what a good photograph could impart.

Poetic Intuition

A good artist must be a contemplative – one who sees.

Sees what?

A good artist has an intuitive grasp of things. He understands the mood of certain scenes. He sees not just a picture, but a world. A world opens up before his eyes, and that world contains memories, feelings, moods, thoughts, and it includes a host of meaningful things that are captured in his intuitive gaze.

One person might have a similar intuitive grasp, but not be able to capture it in a painting. He may be able to express it through music, or poetry (the written word), or dance. But the artist can express it with the brush.

A good painting is one that expresses what he sees.

A beautiful painting delights the mind because it contains or is full of a world of meaning (integrity), it is proportionate to what the artist sees and is trying to express, and is radiant with the meaningful world that the artist sees and is trying to communicate. The following are more than pictures from a digital camera. They express the emotion and vision of the artist, the world from his point of view: