Beauty reminds us, dwellers in time, that we inhabit no mighty fortress: our home lies shrouded in the silence of nothingness. And so, beauty can make us anxious: our hearts, suspended above the abyss of the silence of death, with beauty standing over us, become restless about their destiny.

During World War II, London’s National Gallery was obliged to hide all its paintings to prevent their destruction. But following requests, the gallery began to exhibit, with great caution, at least one painting per month to help revive hope among the suffering population. The pandemic of our time, even when it is over, will still pose many questions. Will it be beauty that will help us answer them more easily?

Religious traditions and cultures are wellsprings of power; however, the mechanisms of control and regulation integral to them should not be disregarded. A discussion of a theological standpoint that fails to examine the power relations in which that theology develops and which it validates will always prove inadequate. It is here that art offers a medium of expression that combines resistance and a drive to refashion religious traditions.

The divine essence lies beyond the confines of human understanding and certainly beyond the confines of sensory experience, which is the locus of beauty. This is the context that illuminates the prohibition against worshipping a graven image of any kind: if God is an expression of perfection that lies beyond our senses, then it is impossible to represent him in an image. If we assume that God is perfect, then any image can only detract from that divine quality.

In a Qur’ānic parable, Moses asks to see his Lord directly. Though denied such a vision, he is instructed to gaze upon a mountain. The Lord then reveals Himself through manifestation, causing the mountain to crumble and Moses to fall in a swoon of bewilderment (Qur’ān, 7:[143]). At this juncture, the Qur’ān instructs the faithful that there are signs found buried in creation through which one can develop a deeper understanding of the Divine. The first stage of coming to know God, says the Qur’ān, is seeing these signs in creation.

Humanity, in our day, is undergoing a turbulent transition, gradually approaching new stages of maturity. Our task is to keep the “bridges to reality” safe and properly oriented. How should we find the right source of inspiration to more fully express our rich diversity and, through it, take the human condition to new heights?

More than any other philosophical movement in recent decades, the New Materialists exerted an influence on a wide range of artists from different artistic fields. The most salient example of this trend is the famous correspondence between philosopher Timothy Morton and Icelandic singer Björk. Morton is in fact calling on Björk to develop enchanted attentiveness to the non-human other and to ponder its relation to the work of art. But Björk is just one of a widening group of artists from different fields responding to the New Materialist call to newly investigate the enchantment of man with his animal and material environment.

In narcissistic psychology, the concepts of love are all-consuming: one loves the other like the fisherman loves fish, or like the hungry loves and desires meat. This is aesthetic love, free of any ethical or religious aspect. When this model appears as part of a Theological relationship, that is – emotions or movements of the psyche directed towards God, narcissistic love will merge with the experience of religious worship, or the awakening of “interiority”.

The text of the Jewish prayer (Nusach) and the order of the blessings thus emerged in a world lacking divine inspiration, which arose following the destruction of the First Temple. The prayers and blessings sought to foster an awareness of communion with an invisible yet present God, who created the world and commands it and is present in all its manifestations. The “blessings on sights” include a blessing on natural or human beauty: “Blessed are You, the Lord our God, who has such things in His world,” or, in an earlier version, “who has such beautiful creatures.”