Oleg V. ARONSONThe Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences
12/1 Goncharnaya Str., Moscow, 109240 Russian Federation
Senior Research Fellow
PhD (in Philosophy)
e-mail: olegaronson@yandex.ru
ORCID: 0000-0001-6753-7724
Svetlana N. TIURINAThe Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences
12/1 Goncharnaya Str., Moscow, 109240 Russian Federation
Postgraduate Student
e-mail: svetlanatyur@bk.ru
ORCID: 0009-0006-3503-6267
Aronson, О., Tiurina S. (2025) Aesthetic Contradiction: Symbolism and Sensuality in Early Christian Catacomb PaintingsAbstract: Based on the research into frescoes in the Roman catacombs of early Christianity, the article attempts to substantiate the category of aesthetic contradiction. Noting that for a long time these underground paintings did not attract the attention of either art historians (due to their aesthetic poverty) or religious scholars (due to their “naivety” with regard to future icon painting), the authors point to methods already established in the humanities for dealing with such historical “omissions,” referring to Friedrich Nietzsche's genealogical method and Michel Foucault's “archaeology of knowledge.” The article proposes to extend the shift that Nietzsche made with regard to values and Foucault with regard to historical knowledge to the realm of sensibility. This is precisely what the introduction of the category of “aesthetic contradiction” is connected with. Working with this category implies a focus not on the continuity and completeness of aesthetic experience (which is the starting point for concepts that ignore the centuries-long oblivion of certain aesthetic phenomena and include them in art history retroactively). The authors' strategy instead is to use aesthetic contradiction to point to the loss of certain zones of sensibility, in particular religious sensibility, which is expressed in the special symbolism of catacomb drawings. Their pictorial poverty unveils a gap between image and representation and raises a series of questions: are they images? How do such drawings relate to the religious prohibition against images? Max Dvorak's reference to the peculiar symbols of catacomb art and Alfred North Whitehead's theory of symbolism help to answer these questions. For the latter, symbolism is not a cultural form, but has an irreducible sensuous dimension that refers to direct experience rather than to the culture of representation. In the case of the Roman catacombs, we can speak of the “symbolic sensibility” of collective prayer, which was effectively lost, gradually turning into the worship of icons, a subjectivist attitude toward images, and the consumption of cultural forms.
Key words: aesthetic contradiction, Roman catacombs, early Christian art, symbol, symbolism, sensibility, Max Dvorak, Alfred North Whitehead.
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For Citation: Aronson, О., Tiurina S. (2025) Aesthetic Contradiction: Symbolism and Sensuality in Early Christian Catacomb Paintings. International Journal of Cultural Research, 2 (59). 106–119. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_2_106
DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_2_106
