The Angel of Death is all Covered with Eyes

Abstract

I “Even if the necessity for accepting ideas were not based on clear logical foundations, we would still have to accept them on factual grounds, which give them the certainty of universal-human experience: the reality of ideas and of intellectual intuition is indisputably proved by the fact of artistic creation. Indeed, those ideal images that artists embody in their works are neither a simple reproduction of observed phenomena in their particular and accidental reality nor general concepts abstracted from that reality. Both observation and abstraction, or generalization, are necessary for the working out of artistic ideas, but not for their creation. Otherwise, every observing and thinking person, every scientist and thinker, could be a true artist, which is not the case. Anyone familiar with the process of artistic creation is well aware that artistic ideas and images are not complex products of observation and reflection but appear to mental vision all at once, in their wholeness … Everyone knows that both abstract rationality and the servile imitation of external reality are deficiencies in artistic creation.” (Vladimir Solovyov, Lectures on Divine Humanity, trans. Peter Zouboff, ed. Boris Jakim [Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1995], pp. 61–62)

SVLPICIVS MARTYR. SERVILIANVS MARTYR

–Inscription from the catacombs of St. Calixtus in Rome