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True beauty leads men to God, Pope tells artists
November 23, 2009

The artist's pursuit of beauty "can become a path toward the transcendent-- toward the ultimate mystery, toward God," Pope Benedict XVI told a group of artists gathered in the Sistine Chapel for a special meeting on November 21.

In his remarks to the international assembly of over 250 artists, drawn from many different countries and disciplines, the Pope cited the words of Simone Weil: "In all that awakens within us the pure and authentic sentiment of beauty, there, truly, is the presence of God." The Pope challenged his audience to serve mankind by opening new paths to the Divine. "You are the custodians of beauty," he said; "thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity." The Pope's audience with the artists was arranged to mark the 45th anniversary of a similar meeting at which Pope Paul VI encouraged artists of his day to lead a "renaissance of art in the context of a new humanism," Pope Benedict recalled. He reminded the assembly that "Christianity from its earliest days has recognized the value of the arts and has made wise use of their varied language to express her unvarying message of salvation."

The world's thirst for beauty is especially pronounced today, the Holy Father said, because of "a weakening of hope, by a certain lack of confidence in human relationships, which gives rise to increasing signs of resignation, aggression and despair." He asked rhetorically:


What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation - if not beauty?
The Pope cautioned that true artistic beauty must be distinguished from the artificial sort, saying that "the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding." That counterfeit art ultimately harms the human spirit, "taking on the guise of indecency, transgression or gratuitous provocation," the Pope said. "Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond."

Typical Simone. Even though outside the church she is still quoted. If she is right, she's right so why not. But in our increasingly secular society, this important distinction the Pope refers to is less and less recognized. It is through the efforts of a few that keep it alive for those who can still sense it and inwardly profit from it.

I believe that this from Kant fillsout what the Pope, and Weil, said. I did not copy it all from Wiki as quite long but I thought that this gives me the idea of beauty according to Kant. The disinterestedness is important . It's not 'What does this object do for me?' It's love of the art object, or the natural feature, for its own sake. Or it's not 'What can this person do for me?' It's disinterested love of the person for his own sake.
Thus the connection between beauty and goodness. Jesus, for instance illustrates disinterested love of the person for the person's own sake, and not because of what the person can do for Jesus.

Overview: The Critique of Judgment begins with an account of beauty. The initial issue is: what kind of judgment is it that results in our saying, for example, ‘That is a beautiful sunset’. Kant argues that such aesthetic judgments (or ‘judgments of taste’) must have four key distinguishing features. First, they are disinterested, meaning that we take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful, rather than judging it beautiful because we find it pleasurable. The latter type of judgment would be more like a judgment of the ‘agreeable’, as when I say ‘I like doughnuts’.

Second and third, such judgments are both universal and necessary. This means roughly that it is an intrinsic part of the activity of such a judgment to expect others to agree with us. Although we may say ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, that is not how we act. Instead, we debate and argue about our aesthetic judgments – and especially about works of art -and we tend to believe that such debates and arguments can actually achieve something. Indeed, for many purposes, ‘beauty’ behaves as if it were a real property of an object, like its weight or chemical composition. But Kant insists that universality and necessity are in fact a product of features of the human mind (Kant calls these features ‘common sense’), and that there is no objective property of a thing that makes it beautiful.

The thing about beauty is that the pope and his church is the guardian of it. His beauty goes with God because with it God is validated by the weakness of men therefore excelling Catholism as the dominating force over men.

Enter Pablo Picasso, the introducer to the validation of the ugly as just as equivalent to beauty.

His painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, showed the world that ugliness has a place in the world. More so, actually, because most women are not beautiful which is why 99% of the Western World wear make-up.

It was and will always be about a man trying to hold power over others.

The pope is trying to recover his but Pablo took it away from him in the art world and delivered artists to express themselves without illusion to God-- and beauty.

THANK YOU, PABLO.