We always hear about Albert and science. In 1941 Pope Pius XII named Albert the Great—our very own Albertus Magnus—the patron saint of the natural sciences. But I’d never heard of Albert and art, and, being an art professor, I know that science and art are profoundly connected. So I wondered if Albert had anything to say about that. Indeed he did.
I thought first of Albert’s most famous student, Thomas Aquinas, because I know he grappled with the subject. I work in Aquinas Hall, after all, our main academic building which is named after the great medieval philosopher and theologian.
Both Albert and Thomas were part of movement called Scholasticism, which is a method of teaching and learning based on dialectical reasoning (logical discussion). It originated in Ancient Greece and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. In the Socratic Method, knowledge is gained and refined through debate, verbal reasoning, the expression of opposing points of view and the asking of many questions. The concept of the University was a new idea in the 12th century. Medieval Scholastics rediscovered the Greeks and Classical ways of thinking, and Scholasticism became the basis for the vision of the university as we know it today.
Thomas Aquinas was born between 1225 and 1227 in what is now Italy, and he became a Dominican friar, theologian, and philosopher. As a Scholastic, Aquinas championed rationality and reconciled Christian faith with an understanding of the natural world through reason, dialogue, and logic. In other words, faith and reason, he argued, are not incompatible. Beauty can be thought of in terms of both the physical world as well as the transcendent and is related to being itself. Thomas argued for the existence of God through both faith and reason simultaneously. In this view of things, there is no incompatibility between faith and science. If Albert and Thomas were alive today, they would be shaking their heads at the opposition of certain fundamentalist Christians to scientific ideas such as evolution and global warming.
Thomas Aquinas, as I said, was a student of Albertus Magnus (1200–1280). Later scholars gave him the appellation Magnus or “Great” because he was thought to be the greatest scholar of the medieval world. Albert gave a series of lectures in the city of Cologne in 1248–1252. These discourses were published as De Pulchroet Bono and they had a great deal of influence on Thomas. In these lectures, Albert focuses on the natural world. He says that the material world is a source of beauty. Actual physical form is to be celebrated, not rejected. He refers to “the splendor of actual form which is found in the proportioned parts of a material thing.” Thomas Aquinas later expanded on this idea. He understood that form and proportion are outward signs of transcendent beauty. For Thomas, beauty has three very important formal characteristics: clarity (claritas or radiance of being), integrity and proportion.
How can art today communicate a deep transcendent intuitive sense of universal truth? What can contemporary artists learn from studying the great ideas of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas? Questions of truth, being and beauty are just as relevant today as ever.
When discussing the painting of 20th century color field painters such as Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko and Jules Olitski, one can better understand what their work is about in light of Albert’s and Thomas’ concept of transcendent beauty as it relates to pure form.
Consider this painting by Mark Rothko, which is in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery. In this work, pure form, color and proportion are devoid of references to the embodied world and instead yearn for the infinite… for transcendence through abstract formal means. Figure and ground merge together to become one. This understanding comes from a personal, direct perception rather than an intellectual understanding.
In Mark Rothko’s remarkable and large 1954 canvas, “Untitled,” rectangles of diffuse pure color emanate from the canvas.
http://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/24363
To experience a work such as this, take your time and stand before it quietly and receptively, allowing the pure color and form to work on you in an intuitive, non-verbal way. Let the being-ness of the piece speak for itself. Be drawn in. Quiet your mind, your thoughts and your associations. Be nourished by the transcendent beauty St. Thomas Aquinas spoke of: “clarity, integrity, and proportion”.
For further reading on this topic, please refer to The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, by Umberto Eco, 1954, 1988, Harvard University Press.
Jerry Nevins
Professor of Visual and Performing Arts