Apophatic Aesthetics and Hermeneutics of Mystery: Some Elements for a Criticism of Visibility

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century different hermeneutics of negativity helped reflect on the spiritual debts to negative theology, and in particular to the major mystical trends of Medieval Europe. The technical term “Apophatic (or negative) Aesthetics” is proposed to define the work of some twentieth-century artists, who are considered the heirs of these traditions. In this article, a painting by Mark Rothko (1903–1970) is studied. In it some central motifs of the modern religious experience can be traced. The hermeneutics of negativity is to be understood as a preamble to Apophatic Aesthetics, with its ascetic and mystical roots set out from a new historical reality, in which the difference between sacred and profane is no longer significant.