Negative Theology and Apophatic Aesthetics

The study of the language of negativity, in its theological origins (apophatic theology) from Saint Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, finds one of its strongest and most original expressions in the European medieval philosophers. When the new vernacular languages appear, a whole, multifarious speculative vocabulary becomes the foundation of some modern philosophical movements. Especially in the Germanic context, figures like the Meister Eckhart produced a corpus of Latin and German writings that were critically influential for Nicholas of Cusa and Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler), and for Castillian Mystics like Juan de la Cruz and Teresa de Ávila. The trace of a "mystical element" in modern thinkers, such as Franz von Baader and Hegel, and in the works of philosophers such as Heidegger and Derrida, or the "Death of God theologians" who follow Dietrich Bonhoeffer's trail, is remarkably significative.

The vocabulary derived from negative theology, which radically expressed the experience of God's absence, and particularly in the works of medieval mystical authors, but also in modern authorities (Simone Weil), presents interesting analogies with the plastic work of abstract artists from 20th-century Europe (Malévich, Mondrian) and the United States (Rothko, Newman), in modern Basque sculpture (Chillida, Oteiza), or in the projects of the Anglo-Indian artist Anish Kapoor. We understand therefore that an aesthetic reflection on concepts such as nothingness, silence or emptiness is needed. The expressive ways proceeding from abstraction and the disfiguration of images, which reproduce problems that are strictly linked to theology, such as the iconoclastic and iconodulic tendencies, are found again in the contexts of destruction and attacks against images. These strategies of negative aesthetics are quite movingly found in Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot or Paul Celan's poetry, and constitute what whe name "apophatic aesthetics," meaning negative aesthetics which, unlike that of Adorno, Lyotard and others, even though it forgoes not its own modernity, feels implicitly or explicitly attached to the trace of apophatic or negative theology.

Paradigms for a new morphology of the sacred

The dialog and tensions between the categories of sacred and prophane are the core of this research line. Remarkable figures of the 20th-century Arts have tried to locate the remains of mystery through new forms and expressive structures, in the midst of the secularization movements, and as a consequence of the sclerotization of the common religious languages, fairly worn-out after the traumatic experiences of the two European wars. Under explicitly religious forms, in architecture (Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson), music (Arnold Schönberg), painting (Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Miquel Barceló or Anselm Kiefer) or videoart (Bill Viola), but also implicitly (Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, among others), the Arts have vigorously contributed to the redefinition of concepts and categories of religious thought, and offer the researcher a fertile field for interdisciplinary questioning.

In parallel to the research in the visual Arts, the bonds between religious experience and narrative or poetry currently offer vibrant literary models, just as they had caught the attention of readers since Romanticism. This research line focuses especially in the Catalan Literature tradition, which gave rise to monumental figures such as Ramon Llull, Jacint Verdaguer, Joan Maragall, Màrius Torres and Salvador Espriu. Our perspective may offer new interpretive keys that complement those of the Catalan Studies field, and opens to interdisciplinary practices, as in the case of the artist and poet Perejaume.