Murray Hill Institute
Newsletter
March 2005
Volume 2, Number 1

The Dahesh Museum in New York recently featured an exhibit of works of Charles Cordier (1827-1905), an ethnographic sculptor of nineteenth century France. The exhibition was interestingly titled: “Facing the Other.” Much less known than his contemporary and friend Auguste Rodin, Cordier’s work is an example of polychrome (multi-colored) sculpture, an innovation of his day, but certainly not new in the arts since it hearkens back to the days of Greek sculpture. Rather than simply work on white marble and bronze–the materials we generally associate with sculpture–Cordier produced enameled, gilded, silvered bronze busts of men and women of different races. Among the works on display was a bust of a former slave from Nubia, now the Sudan, which dates from 1848. This particular work became famous when the French government declared the abolition of slavery in its colonies. Cordier sympathized not only with the abolitionist cause but upheld the equality of all races. On exhibit were busts featuring men and women from Africa, the Middle East, China, Europe, all exquisitely rendered, magnificently beautiful. For Cordier, “beauty is not the province of a privileged race,” and so he conveys to the art world “the idea of the universality of beauty.”

The people attending the exhibition were of different races and cultures, a testimony to the diversity and multiculturalism of a city such as New York. Despite the variety, however, they all seemed to be in awe of the beauty communicated through the different pieces on display. They were all united, as it were, in contemplating and taking joy in the beautiful, united in what we generally call the aesthetic experience. Their attention was focused on the beautiful objects before them, and they seemed to linger there captivated by beauty, transcending the objects themselves, perhaps desirous of those immortal and abiding things which beauty calls us to. It is no wonder then that we often experience a heightened or optimal sense of self before the truly beautiful.

One of the great minds of the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), expresses well the spiritual longings to which the aesthetic experience, as it is being referred to here, gives rise. In his essay “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis says:

For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world [of beauty]. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: “Nobody marks us.” . . . It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers.

Through the experience of the beautiful, Lewis reminds us that we become aware of “our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something . . . from which we now feel cut off.” The beauty of Cordier’s works provides us with a window onto the transcendent, a glimpse of a beyond to which we aspire and of which the beautiful objects are merely a faint hint.

The importance of Cordier’s artistic work, like that of any artist, cannot be underestimated: the arts have the power to elevate the human person, but also the power to degrade us, the power to make us better, or worse. Examples in contemporary culture abound, and so, unlike Cordier’s work, we may find art which is closed to the transcendent and which thus deprives the human person of that uplifting experience which makes us aware that we are more than just material beings. The exhibition “Facing the Other” enables us then to face ourselves and our deepest longings, the natural desire that all human persons have for truth, goodness, and beauty.