La entrada ¿Dónde empieza la belleza? se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>Evolutionarily, the priority among the senses has shifted from smell and hearing to sight, which has become the dominant sense. Even the bony structure of the face underwent a radical change: the snout became shorter, and the eyes moved forward. Vision developed advanced color perception, and the human brain reorganized its processing areas.
This marvelous machine—which we call the body—on which human life depends, gives us the ability to understand our surroundings, but also to feel and express ourselves through it. External stimuli are processed by the brain, evaluated emotionally, and ultimately linked to meaning and recognition.
In the late 1990s, studies in neuroaesthetics brought philosophy, art, and science into dialogue, making it possible to observe some of these processes using brain imaging techniques. Neurobiologist Semir Zeki has studied the relationship between perception and beauty. His research shows that the experience of beauty involves areas of the brain associated with reward, memory, and emotional processing.
We could say that the experience begins when something catches our attention; we try to understand it, and when a connection is made, we feel the pleasure of having found meaning. Each of us assigns a value—consciously or unconsciously—to each of these experiences.
Beauty is, first and foremost, the result of a judgment. It is true that there are universal components of beauty, linked to certain standards that many people find attractive and that our brains seem to process more easily. For example, admiration for nature has been a common factor throughout history and across cultures.
From this perspective, beauty does not lie solely in the object we are looking at. It also takes place within us. It is an experience in which what we see intersects with our memory, sensibility, and history.
Likewise, what is considered harmonious in one culture may seem strange in another. Beauty, then, does not depend solely on the perfection of a form. There are objective elements that can influence our perception of beauty—symmetry, balance, harmony—but our memory and cultural heritage also play a role. We see things through the lens of who we are.
Zeki has quantitatively measured the neural activity associated with aesthetic and moral judgments and suggests a connection between the two experiences. Our brain can react to the beauty of a work of art, but also to the beauty we recognize in a human gesture. An act of kindness can inspire admiration.
Beauty, when truly understood, can be a form of care. Cultivating beauty in everyday life, in the spaces we inhabit, or in our own actions is also a way of upholding human dignity. Beauty is not merely what we contemplate, but also what invites us to treat reality and others with love.
In the face of the overwhelming power of beauty—and where words fail to convey what a person feels—the language of art emerges. The way beauty is represented speaks to a particular way of viewing reality. Contemporary art has shown us that beauty can also be found in what is broken, in uncertainty, and in that which initially makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes, beauty lies not in the perfection of things, but in their ability to reveal a truth.
In classical tradition and Christian thought, beauty, goodness, and truth have always been closely linked. But perhaps we should avoid turning that relationship into a rigid formula. Beauty does not consist in seeking a reflection of our own standards, but in learning to look at others until we discover in them a truth we had not yet been able to see.
A gaze that allows itself to be transformed by beauty can transcend difference without denying it and turn the encounter with the other into a form of recognition. In that movement—from contemplation to encounter—beauty can help us understand who we are and recognize, in the other and in the world, the imprint of their Creator.
La entrada ¿Dónde empieza la belleza? se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Cuando el sueño de la razón aterroriza se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>The world is not neutral. It enters us through the senses and elicits a response. The mind identifies an emotion and, through memory and intelligence, transforms it into a feeling and interprets it. As Byung-Chul Han points out, “Feelings are narratives. Emotions are impulsive.” (“The Salvation of Beauty”).
When faced with a stimulus, we experience pleasure or pain, and the option to fight or flee arises almost automatically. We interpret reality from our own perspective and, based on that, regulate our behavior and our relationships with others and with the world. Paying attention to this process creates a pause between the stimulus and the reaction and allows us to decide whether to react or respond.
Fear is one of the most primitive emotions and arises almost immediately in response to certain stimuli. The fear of the dark is one of the first fears we experience. Where understanding is lacking, the imagination can fill the void with threats. Reason then acts as a light that allows us to discern and understand the unknown.
But there are experiences—such as death or pain—for which reason does not always provide answers. When faced with something that overwhelms us, we can run away, hide, or give up.
Running away is the most instinctive response. Hiding means protecting oneself, putting on masks, playing roles, or putting up walls. The third option is to surrender. This does not mean giving up, but rather acknowledging that we are facing something beyond our control and accepting the limits of our ability to understand.
Something similar happens when we encounter a work of art. When we stand before it, we seek to identify and understand what it depicts, what it means, what it resembles, or how it was made. The mind quickly tries to construct an explanation and bring the experience to a close. Contemplating it requires allowing the work to affect us before we rush to interpret it.
Art can do something different with the things that frighten us. It sheds light because it plays with shadows, with what is broken and with what is ugly, without hiding or shying away from them. It looks at them and transforms them, bringing together the beautiful and the terrible, light and darkness, what we understand and what remains a mystery. In this way, it seeks a lost unity among opposites.
Surrendering to a work of art does not mean giving up reason, but rather allowing reason to come later. It means accepting that not everything has to be interpreted. Standing before what we do not understand can give rise to a question and become a form of knowledge.
To do that, we need a break. And a break requires silence.
We live in a time when silence makes us uncomfortable. Images, words, notifications, and information fill every void. Algorithms detect what captures our attention, and fear, outrage, and confrontation are often more effective than calm at holding it. While we believe we’re choosing what we see, we can become trapped in narratives that feed our fears, polarize our perspectives, and erect walls between us and others.
In that void, we can regain the distance needed to observe what is affecting us, what we are believing, and where our attention is being directed. Where noise seeks to provoke an immediate reaction, silence introduces a pause. And in that pause, we can take another look.
The account of Elijah in the First Book of Kings conveys this powerfully. The prophet comes out of the cave and seeks God in the wind, in the earthquake, and in the fire. “But the Lord was not there.” Then comes “the sound of a gentle breeze,” and it is there that Elijah recognizes His presence.
What is essential doesn't always come on strong. Sometimes it requires us to pause, listen, and stay put.
Something similar happens to Peter when he walks on the water. As long as he keeps his eyes on Christ, he moves forward. But when he feels the wind and becomes afraid, he stops surrendering. He tries to take control and begins to sink. Fear has shifted his focus to his heart, where he seeks a foundation in reason.
Elijah and Peter speak to us, in different ways, about the same attitude: learning to listen. Not everything that is important demands our attention with a clamor. Some things can only be perceived when we are silent.
Contemplation requires silence. To stand in the presence of what we do not understand is to accept that beauty, goodness, and truth can reveal themselves when we stop trying to control the experience.
La entrada Cuando el sueño de la razón aterroriza se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Cuando el arte incomoda a la fe se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>The controversy was nothing new. The people involved changed, but the human reaction remained the same.
Norman Rockwell seemed to have anticipated that reaction decades earlier. In one of his paintings, he juxtaposed a classical portrait by John Singer Sargent with an abstract one by Picasso. In front of them, he placed three female viewers. A mother and her daughter correspond to Sargent’s figurative portrait. The third, with her back turned, focuses all her attention on the Picasso. Each stands in front of the work in which she recognizes herself. None of them seems curious about the other.
Rockwell does not depict a conflict between artistic styles; he depicts the ease with which we seek out what confirms our way of understanding the world. He contrasts two ways of seeing: one that seeks to confirm what it already knows, and one that accepts standing before what it does not yet understand.
Looking is not merely a matter of directing one’s eyes toward something. Looking involves taking the time, setting aside judgment, and allowing what is before us to transform us. When we give up that possibility, we cease to encounter the work of art, the person, or the Gospel. We encounter only our own expectations.
The theme of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Madrid was “Lift Up Your Eyes.” This expression invites us to turn our gaze toward Christ, but also to reexamine the way we view reality. Because lifting up our eyes is not just about looking upward. It also means looking beyond our categories, our prejudices, and what we expect to find.
That was precisely what Rockwell painted: three people looking at the same works of art, yet unable to see the same thing. Perhaps he didn’t paint a museum. He painted a vigil. Not because he was anticipating a specific musical, but because he understood that every truly new proposition forces us to choose between two attitudes: protecting our certainties or letting reality broaden our perspective. Even when that reality comes with a gospel twist.
During the vigil, “Godspell” took the place of Rockwell’s Picasso. Not because the two works are comparable, but because they raised a similar question. Some stood in front of it with curiosity; others reacted with suspicion before even allowing themselves to be challenged.
While some people felt comfortable with pop music, rock, and ballads and saw in them creativity, joy, and a new way to proclaim the Gospel, others saw them as a break from what they consider to be characteristic of the religious sphere.
This wasn’t the first time gospel music had faced such rejection. When Thomas A. Dorsey began incorporating the blues and jazz into Christian music, many felt those rhythms had no place in worship. Today, it is difficult to understand the history of gospel music without that initial break. Each generation seems to need to be reminded that the Gospel endures, even as its forms of expression may be renewed.
The vigil, in a way, echoed Rockwell’s scene. Each person found a language in which to recognize themselves. The question is how many of us also reached out to a language that was not our own. The Gospel itself is full of surprises that throw off those who think they know in advance how God should act.
Every work of art presents something to our eyes. What we discover depends less on the work itself than on the heart of the viewer.
Perhaps the question raised by “Godspell” is not whether that musical had a place in a vigil’s program. The question might rather be: Are we still capable of looking up before we judge? Because only those who are willing to truly look can allow themselves to be surprised by the Gospel.
La entrada Cuando el arte incomoda a la fe se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada El vacío como apertura se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>Seeing is not the same as recognizing. Touching and feeling are not the same. Hearing and listening are not the same. We perceive the world through the senses and it is sight on which we mainly rely. Our sensory perception is not neutral. It is oriented, traversed by attention, by what we seek, by what we expect to find. We do not simply receive what is there; we interpret from a previous horizon of meaning. When we see, we do it from what we expect, what we already know and what we are willing to admit. For this reason, the obvious does not always impose itself.
From the sensible we construct knowledge. We name, classify, abstract. Those concepts that we keep in our memory order reality and at the same time cut it down. They select what counts as data and what is left out. Perception requires presence while interpretation decides its meaning.
In the Gospel according to St. John, Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb with the precise expectation of finding a body. Absence does not fit into this framework. She sees the signs - the moved stone, the linen cloths - but she cannot look at them. Even when Christ is in front of him, he confuses him. There is no lack of information. There is a lack of a way of recognizing what goes beyond what is expected. There is a limit to the interpretation of what the senses perceive.
Something similar happens in the way of Emmaus. The disciples listen, but do not understand. The content is accessible, but they do not yet have the key that orders it. Their attention is focused on their own pain and disappointment. They are not able to find the manifestation of the love of God in the pain. Until they turn their attention to their own burning hearts before Christ who breaks the bread.
The empty tomb is not just a physical void. It is a turning point. It forces us to review the framework from which reality is interpreted. Faith does not replace perception; it introduces a new criterion of reading that exceeds that of reason. It does not add another object; it alters the way in which what is given is understood.
In this sense, emptiness and fullness cease to be exclusive terms. Emptiness can operate as a condition of appearance.
In the sculpture of Jorge Oteiza, emptiness is not the absence of work, but its result. The emptiness that could be considered as a remainder becomes activated space. Matter withdraws to make another form of presence possible. What is perceived is more than volume, it is tension between what is and what is released. There the emptiness that could refer to lack, is possibility.
Also in the symbolic experience the material is not exhausted in itself. It functions as mediation. It makes meaning accessible, it does not hide it.
The question is to recognize the scope of reason without abandoning it. Not everything that is real can be stabilized in concepts. There is a type of knowledge, of recognition that demands involvement, time and an attention that is not limited only to identification. It demands surrender.
In this context, to empty oneself does not mean to deny oneself, but rather to freely and voluntarily suspend the pretension of control over what appears. To introduce a distance with respect to one's own expectations so that what is real is not reduced to them.
In our sensitive world that which we touch, see, hear, smell, taste, we can turn into a symbol. Man connects with that which surpasses him through symbols. As ways of reading experience without falling into closed categories. In this horizon, the material is not opposed to the spiritual. It opens to a process.
To walk with Christ in his Passion and Resurrection demands this openness. Learning to look, to listen, to touch in a different way. It is not a matter of abandoning reason, but of letting it not be the only thing that determines what we see.
Faith educates this gaze. It broadens the capacity to recognize without adding something external. It makes visible what was there, but we had not known how to look at it.
And, as in the work of art, this transformation does not remain within oneself. Whoever learns to look also becomes a mediation for others. In a place where something can be seen, which does not close in on itself, but opens up space.
That transformation affects the way one stands in front of what is in front of him. And sometimes it makes it possible for others to see as well. Not as a conclusion, but as an opening.
La entrada El vacío como apertura se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Las habitaciones de la memoria se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>A contemporary reading of this tragedy appears in “Casting Lear” by Andrea Jiménez. The play revisits Shakespeare's text and makes it resonate in our current sensibility. The stage becomes a place of inquiry about forgiveness and the fragility of human relationships.
To ask for forgiveness is to acknowledge the harm one has caused. Saying “I forgive you” means acknowledging the harm received. There is also another, less visible phrase. “I forgive myself.” Forgiveness cannot undo what has happened because the past remains a historical fact. Its scope is different. It acts on the consequences of the harm. It opens the possibility of a different future where there seemed to remain only the repetition of the wound.
When Cordelia meets her father again, a silent question arises. His return can be understood as a gesture of reconciliation that allows to close the wound and rebuild one's own life. Forgiveness then appears as a way of recomposing what history has fractured.
Lear's tragedy can also be read as the collapse of an inner architecture. The king, who at the beginning thought he ruled everything, gradually loses the order that sustained his world. It is only in this openness that a new form of lucidity and the possibility of reunion appear.
There are moments in which each person finds himself before the pieces that compose him. Loose pieces that are difficult to recognize within one's own biography. Fragments of experiences, wounds, gestures of love. Then comes the time to try to fit them together.
Thinking about this I often return to the contemplation of Hammershøi's “Die vier Zimmer”. The painting shows a succession of rooms open towards each other. Silent spaces that are chained together in depth. One enters the first room and discovers another at the back, then another. The architecture of the painting suggests the way we go through our own memory. The space organizes the gaze. Time seems suspended in the stillness of the rooms, as if it were no longer the coordinate that marks the rhythm of life.
When we organize the agenda, we place activities in a place and time. Memory works in a similar way. It records events, encodes them, stores them and retrieves them. When they return, they do so mixed with affections. The memory is not a simple piece of data. It is the representation of an event charged with feeling. Most of these memories remain outside of consciousness even though they continue to shape our identity.
In “La Reina de las Nieves” by Carmen Martín Gaite, the house called Quinta Blanca functions as an architecture of memory. Its spaces help to order the time lived. Leonardo, the protagonist, walks through the house while trying to understand his own history.
Entering the house means crossing a threshold. This step demands attention. It is the instant in which one notices that one is moving from one place to another. Something similar happens when we pay attention to our thoughts. A passage opens up to a deeper part of ourselves.
Following the metaphor, memories that have long remained without light appear in basements. They emerge suddenly and it is difficult to find a place for them. Remaining there generates uneasiness. When going up to the main floor, these fragments are somewhat more illuminated and begin to be recognized as their own, although they are not yet ordered.
Above are the rooms where the bonds live. The family, the affection received, the affection offered. There, childhood scenes reappear. The security of sleeping in the parents' bed when a nightmare interrupts the night. In these rooms we also learn to look at ourselves in the mirror of others. Recognizing the other allows us to discover that identity is never built in solitude.
Three dimensions of experience appear at this level of the house. “Pathos” is the attention that something awakens in us. “Logos” is the consciousness that interprets the memory. “Ethos” is the possibility of recognizing ourselves in the other.
In the highest part of the house appears the tower. There the light is brighter. It is Leonardo's room, the place where he lived as a child. From there history can be contemplated with a certain distance. There lie the handwritten notebooks, the first books read, the words that have been left as a trace of the passage of time. Not everything is resolved in that place. The pieces begin to show their shape.
In the end, the three works seem to weave the same reflection.
In William Shakespeare's “King Lear” the fracture appears first. The order that Lear believed to be firm crumbles and leaves him exposed to his own truth. Only in that openness can he recognize Cordelia and understand what had been hidden under pride.
Cordelia's gaze then introduces another movement. She returns without reproach, with a silent fidelity that opens the possibility of forgiveness. Her presence allows Lear to look again. In this encounter the father recognizes the daughter and the daughter recovers the father. Between them, the lost fragments of the relationship begin to reunite. Forgiveness does not erase history. It allows it to be re-inhabited.
The silent rooms of Vilhelm Hammershøi's “Die vier Zimmer” introduce another movement. The interior space where memory moves from one room to another. Each open door suggests a transit. Something of life is left behind and something begins to light up ahead.
In “La Reina de las Nieves” by Carmen Martín Gaite, this interiority finally finds an architecture. The house of Quinta Blanca allows to find a safe place, to go through the time lived and to order the pieces of one's own history.
Fracture, interiority, home. Three gestures that respond to each other. Life is broken, memory turns inward, history seeks a form to inhabit.
– Supernatural Lent proposes a similar journey. A time to accept the fractures, to cross in silence the rooms of memory and to allow one's own history to find its place. There, forgiveness begins to open space. It does not erase what has been lived. It makes it possible to inhabit it without rancor and to continue the path with a new look.
One question remains: Can someone forgive without having found who he or she is?
Forgiveness seems to lead to this answer. It allows to recompose one's own history and to look at the other without rancor. It allows us to stop living bent over the wound. It allows us to discover that identity is not built by denying what we have lived, but by learning to inhabit it.
La entrada Las habitaciones de la memoria se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada La resonancia de la voz en el tiempo se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>I cannot read it in isolation, I perceive it as a chord initiated in 2020, when Bocelli sang in an empty Duomo di Milano. That Music for Hope was a gesture of hope in the face of a confined humanity. Six years later, the framework has mutated from a biological crisis to one of values and global geopolitical uncertainty.
The choice of Nessun Dorma, by G. Puccini, functions as a declaration of principles. In 2020 Bocelli's repertoire was religious and meditative, while in 2026 the epic of human will emerges. The Vincerò sounds like perseverance in the face of adversity and an affirmation of love that overcomes darkness.
In 2020, we saw a Bocelli alone in an immense space, a mirror of collective domestic loneliness. Humanity withdrew to survive. Art acted as a balm without applause. The tuning of millions of screens shared a vulnerability that would remain in memory.
Six years later, the tenor sings in front of thousands of people in a stadium, passing from the temple of stone to the temple of spectacle. However, the essence is the same, the art returns to build memories and confirms that we can meet again.
That memory is not only spatial, it is also temporal. Remembering, inhabiting the present and imagining the future takes almost physical forms and the metaphor of water helps me to think about it.
The past is solid. The Winter Games, snow and ice, evoke stability. The figures inspired by Antonio Canova, especially the Love and Psyche, reinforce the idea of marble as a fixed memory. They are the memories we keep to strengthen our identity. As Thales of Miletus said, water is the beginning of everything, but in solid form it becomes architecture. It is our inner sculptures that remain despite crises.
The present is liquid, it slips through our fingers. It is the perpetual flow described by Heraclitus, we never bathe twice in the same water. Its uncertainty lies in its lack of fixed form, but at the same time, the liquid allows us to flow to go through the emotional emergency without breaking.
The future is vapor. Diffuse, pure possibility and at the same time unsettling. We walk in the fog and barely see a few steps. We need references, points of density to avoid dispersion.
Here the art intervenes as an orientation. Under the motto of Harmony, The inauguration sought to unite city and mountain, the modern and the primitive. At a time when misinformation fractures access to truth and erodes trust, art acquires an ethical function, operating as a tool for critical thinking, helping to distinguish between the modern and the primitive. person y character.
In this quest for truth, the integration of science and art is the way to reprogramming our brain positively and regain emotional control. The key is to treat art not as consumption, but as a way to find the depth of life. Art acts as a mirror where the viewer looks at himself and recognizes his own capacity for survival. To reach that depth it is necessary to dwell on the psychological mechanism by which art transforms uncertainty into useful memory, as a narrative construction. This orienting role of art is not abstract, it operates directly on our memory. When Bocelli sings in 2026, we are not just listening to a song; we are activating a neural network that contains the memory of 2020. That superimposition of images, the loneliness of the Duomo over the crowd of San Siro, is what generates the meaning of resilience.
In times of war and persecution, this function is critical. Art allows one to experience the other with empathy and strengthens one's own emotional fiber. The eemotional mergence that we live is fought not with hedonistic evasion, but with confrontation through the uncomfortable beauty of art that removes our masks.
If the future is vapor, art proposes that we are the ones who can give it direction, condense it into meaning. We are capable of projecting onto that mist our own stories. In the end, it is the soul or spirit that works, processing the darkness to find in it a new form of light.
La entrada La resonancia de la voz en el tiempo se publicó primero en Omnes.
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