If art reflects the times in which it is created, we believe contemporary art reflects our own age: a time in which emptiness of content and meaning is spreading. This process, which has been accelerating for more than a century, seems to be leading us towards an increasingly absurd and paradoxical world.
We feel that something essential is missing from contemporary art, just as it is from Western society. What is missing is the soul!
Many perceptive observers and scholars at the beginning of the twentieth century warned of this danger, this impoverishment of the essence of art. Foremost among them was Cesare Brandi, who remains profoundly misunderstood even today. His philosophical research forms the basis of the aesthetic philosophy of Transcendental Art.
To counter this sense of “emptiness”, we felt the need to establish a course of study and research capable of confronting this materialistic abyss.
We hope that human beings will soon breathe life back into contemporary art, renewing the profound spiritual meanings that have always made art shine with a special light and enabled us to recognise it as art.
For us, the soulVital Essence or Soul
The vital essence, or soul, is the immaterial spirit that lives within us. For many people, animals too have souls. Some believe the entire universe is animated. We believe that everything around us has a soul, although of differing energy and complexity. The human soul is the highest spiritual expression in the universe known to us. is life itself: the vital essence, the breath of life. Without it, death triumphs over life and matter over spirit. Yet this has not been a natural process, but a human, historical and social one. This destruction of the soul has taken place through the violence that now spreads in every form and every corner of the planet.
Only a profound decision to follow an ethic of nonviolence can lead us towards a new dimension of art, a new aesthetic of nonviolence.
When a work of art has a soul, there is no longer any difference between ethics and aesthetics.
>>> Further reading
Contemporary art: art without a soul?
Our sense of emptiness in the face of contemporary art
The loss of the soul: a process lasting over 100 years