When standing before a cathedral, a person really feels he is placed at the center of the world; standing before a church of the Renaissance, Baroque, or Rococo periods, he merely feels himself to be in Europe.

Concerning Forms in Art – The Transcendent Unity of Religions

 

It may seem surprising that we should introduce a subject that not only appears to have little or no connection with anything that has gone before, but also in itself seems to be of secondary importance; in fact however, this question of forms in art is by no means a negligible one and is closely connected with the general questions dealt with in this book.

 

First of all however, there is a matter of terminology that calls for a few words of explanation: in speaking of „forms in art” and not just „forms”, our purpose is to make it clear that we are not dealing with abstract forms, but on the contrary, with things that are sensible by definition; if on the other hand, we avoid speaking of "'artistic forms," it is because the epithet „artistic” carries with it in present-day language, a notion of luxury and therefore of superfluity, and this corresponds to something diametrically opposed to what we have in mind.

 

The expression „forms in art” is really a pleonasm, inasmuch as it is not possible, traditionally speaking, to dissociate form from art the latter being simply the principle of manifestation of th former; however, we have been obliged to use this pleonasm for the reasons just given.

 

If the importance of forms is to be understood it is necessary to appreciate the fact that it is the sensible form that, symbolically, corresponds most directly to the Intellect, by reason of the inverse analogy connecting the principial and manifested orders. ["Art", said St. Thomas Aquinas, "is associated with knowledge".]

 

In consequence of this analogy the highest realities are most clearly manifested in their remotest reflections, namely, in the sensible or material order, and herein lies the deepest meaning of the proverb „Extremes meet”; to which one might add that it is for this same reason that Revelation descended not only into the souls of the Prophets, but also into their bodies, which presupposed their physical perfection.

 

Sensible forms therefore correspond with exactness to intellections, and it is for this reason that traditional art has rules that apply the cosmic laws and universal principles to the domain of forms, and that, beneath their more general outward aspect, reveal the style of the civilization under consideration, this style in its turn rendering explicit the form of intellectuality of that civilization.

 

When art ceases to be traditional and becomes human, individual, and therefore arbitrary, that is infallibly the sign - and secondarily the cause - of an intellectual decline, a weakening, which, in the sight of those who are skilled in the „discernment of spirits” and who look upon things with

an unprejudiced eye, is expressed by the more or less incoherent and spiritually insignificant, we would go even as far as to say unintelligible character of the forms.

 

[We are referring here to the decadence of certain branches of religious art during the Gothic period especially in its latter part. and to Western art as a whole from the Renaissance onward: Christian art (architecture, sculpture, painting, liturgical goldsmithery, and so on). which formerly was sacred symbolical. and spiritual. had to give way before the invasion of neoantique and naturalistic, individualistic, and sentimental art; this art, which contained absolutely nothing"miraculous" - no matter what those who believe in the „Greek miracle" may care to think - is quite unfitted for the transmission of intellectual intuitions and no longer answers to anything higher than collective psychic-aspirations: it is thus as far removed as can be from intellectual contemplation and takes into consideration sentimentality only. Moreover, sentimentality debases itself in the measure that it caters to the needs of the masses, until it ends in a saccharine and pathetic vulgarity. It is strange that no one has understood to what a degree this barbarism of forms, which reached a zenith of empty and miserable exhibitionism in the period of Louis XV, contributed - and still contributes - to driving many souls (and by no means the worst) away from the Church: they feel literally choked in surroundings that do not allow their intelligence room to breathe. Let us note in passing that the historical connection between the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome - of the Renaissance period, therefore antispiritual and showy, "human" one might say - and the origin of the Reformation are unfortunately very far from fortuitous.]

 

In order to forestall any possible objection, we would stress the fact that in intellectually healthy civilizations - the Christian civilization of the Middle Ages, for instance - spirituality often affirms itself by a marked indifference to forms, and sometimes even reveals a tendency to turn away from them, as is shown by the example of St. Bernard when he condemned images in monasteries, which, it must be said in nowise signifies the acceptance of ugliness and barbarism any more than poverty implies the possession of things that are mean in themselves. But in a world where traditional art is dead where consequently form itself is invaded by everything that is contrary to spirituality and where nearly every formal expression is corrupted at its very roots, the traditional regularity of forms takes on a very special spiritual importance that it could not have possessed at the beginning, since the absence of the spirit in forms was then inconceivable.

 

What has been said concerning the intellectual quality of sensible forms must not make us overlook the fact that the further one goes back to the origins of a given religion, the less those forms appear in a state of full development. The pseudoform, that is to say, an arbitrary form, is always excluded as already stated, but form as such can also be virtually absent, at least in certain more or less peripheral domains. On the other hand the nearer one draws to the end of the religious cycle under consideration, the greater the importance attaching to formalism, even from the so-called artistic point of view, since the forms have by then become almost indispensable channels for the actualization of the spiritual deposit of the religion.

 

What should never be forgotten is the fact that the absence of the formal element is not equivalent to the presence of the amorphous, and vice versa; the amorphous and the barbarous will never attain the majestic beauty of the void whatever may be believed by those who have an interest in passing off a deficiency for a superiority.

 

[The claim has sometimes been put forward that Christianity, on the ground that it stands above forms, cannot be identified with any particular civilization; it is indeed understandable that some people would like to find consolation for the loss of Christian civilization, including its art, but the opinion we have just quoted is nonetheless inexcusable.]

 

This law of compensation, by virtue of which certain relationships of proportion undergo a more or less marked inversion during the course of a religious cycle, can be applied in all spheres: for instance, we may quote the following saying (hadith) of the Prophet Mohammed: „In the beginning of Islam, he who omits a tenth of the Law is damned; but in the latter days, he who shall accomplish a tenth thereof will be saved".

 

The analogical relationship between intellections and material forms explains how it became possible for esoterism to be grafted onto the exercise of the crafts and especially architectural art; the cathedrals that the Christian initiates left behind them offer the most explicit as well as the most dazzling proof of the spiritual exaltation of the Middle Ages.

 

[When standing before a cathedral, a person really feels he is placed at the center of the world; standing before a church of the Renaissance, Baroque, or Rococo periods, he merely feels himself to be in Europe.]

 

This brings us to a most important aspect of the question now before us, namely, the action of esoterism on exoterism through the medium of sensible forms, the production of which is precisely the prerogative of craft initiation. Through these forms, which act as vehicles of the integral religious doctrine, and which thanks to their symbolism translate this doctrine into a language that is both immediate and universal, esoterism infuses an intellectual quality into the properly devotional part of the tradition, thereby establishing a balance the absence of which would finally bring about the dissolution of the whole civilization, as has happened in the Christian world.

 

The abandoning of sacred art deprived esoterism of its most direct means of action.The outward religion insisted more and more on its own peculiarities, that is to say, its limitations, until finally, by want of that current of universality that through the language of forms, had quickened and stabilized the religious civilization, reactions in a contrary sense were brought about; that is to say, the formal limitations - instead of being compensated and thereby stabilized by means of the supraformal interferences of esoterism - gave rise (through their opacity or massiveness) to negations that might be qualified as infraformal, resulting as they did from an individual arbitrariness that, far from being a form of the truth, was merely a formless chaos of opinions and fancies.

 

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Frithjof Schuon: The Transcendent Unity of Religions

 

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