Anna Layman ~ Jacques Maritain ~ Creative Intuition in art and poetry

"Now it seems to me that three principal steps might be discerned in the evolution of modern art, especially modern painting and poetry. Fisrt, it endeavors to free itself from nature and the forms of nature. It transforms nature, not only by carrying to extremes the law of deformation of natural appearances which painting has always brought into play, but also by causing another universe of forms and relations between forms- disclosing a deeper reality, more akin to our dreams, angers, anguish, or melancholy- to arise from nature in art’s own fabrics of colors or of words. And in great artists this in no way implies any contempt for or divorce from nature. They rather steal from nature its own secrets of poetry" (pg. 53)
Art is a creative virtue of the intellect. We connect with nature and its beauty, and through art we try to imitate the forms we see. I think that in nature, our desire for self expression is enhanced. Nature has for a very long time been part of art; such as painting and poetry. We see in it a part of us, and try to connect with this through our creative intuitions. There is a spiritual depth to our art, and it can convey messages of our reality. We can bring into it our emotions, our relationships with the world. Nature is beauty. Religious art makes the connection with this beauty. God created the world, to some, and therefore God is beauty. There is aesthetical beauty and trancendental beauty. Dante said, the “beauty of anything created is nothing else than a similarity of divine beauty participated in by things, the existence of all things derives from divine beauty.” In the eyes of God all that exists is beautiful, to the very extent to which it participates in being. The beauty that god beholds is transcendental beauty. When we participate in the beauty of the world through art, we are therefore participating with God.