Wounded Beauty
Aesthetic-Theological Motifs in the Work of Alberto Burri and Anselm Kiefer
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4767190 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Isabella Guanzini (0000-0001-9164-0457, Catholic Theological Private University Linz, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 813 |
| Publication date | 2023-06-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel14060813 |
| OpenAlex | W4381662839 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
In their different languages, codes of expression, practices and worldviews, art and religion share a reflexive intention to symbolize the chaos, suffering and ambivalence of the real. In particular, the aesthetic programme of Christianity has sought to combine the opposites of divine revelation attested in Scripture: chaos and cosmos, earth and heaven, betrayal and reconciliation, wounding and transfiguration, cross and resurrection, sin and forgiveness. This paper aims to explore this compositional dialectic, which over the centuries has oscillated between idealization and realism, despair and aestheticization, the ideology of pain and the mythology of redemption. In order to better understand this aesthetic religious programme in all its ambivalences and polarizations, reference will be made to two emblematic contemporary artists, Alberto Burri and Anselm Kiefer. Their aesthetic programme revolves around the memory of the suffering and wounds of history and in seeking to understand these develops a compassionate perspective on them. In their works, the artistic gesture is what saves reality from its horror and reveals a 'wounded beauty' that does not remove the signs of its struggle and contingency
Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Dialectic · Heaven · Idealization · Ideology · Literature · Revelation · Theology · Memory, Trauma, and Testimony · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|