Claim. Artistic creation manifests God’s two-stage creative structure: first the inner four position foundation forms a conception (plan) through give-and-take between inner Sungsang and inner Hyungsang centering on motif, then the outer four position foundation produces the work through give-and-take between the conception and physical materials.
Elaboration. God’s creativity, in Unification Thought, is the ability to form the two-stage structure of creation within the Original Image — first the inner developmental four-position-foundation (forming Logos/plan), then the outer one (creating beings by using Hyungsang in accordance with Logos) (I. Divine Principle Foundation for the Theory of Art). Lee insists this is not analogy but inheritance: ‘This process of creation by God is manifested as the two-stage structure of creation in human artistic activities.’
Applied to art (Technique and Materials): centering on the motif (purpose), the artist’s inner Sungsang (intellect, emotion, will) and inner Hyungsang (theme) engage in give-and-take to produce a conception (plan). This is the inner four position foundation. Then, centering on the same motif, the conception (now functioning as Sungsang) and physical materials (Hyungsang) engage in give-and-take to produce the actual work. This is the outer four position foundation, and it requires technique.
The materials are themselves dual: ‘Sungsang materials’ = subject-matter (actions, events, landscapes, people that constitute the content), and ‘Hyungsang materials’ = the medium (chisels, marble, paints, canvas). Both must be selected and harmonized.
This framework lets Lee unify aesthetics with the broader Unification Thought ontology — manufacturing, farming, scholarly research are all said to follow the same two-stage structure, so art is not metaphysically anomalous. It also provides diagnostic categories: a flawed work can be flawed at the inner stage (poor conception, confused motif) or the outer stage (inadequate technique, wrong materials), and the various artistic ‘styles’ arise precisely from variations in the elements of the inner four position foundation. Worth a thread: this is one of the cleanest cases of UT taking a Divine Principle structural concept and porting it into a specific cultural domain — the same move recurs in epistemology, ethics, and history.
See also. creativity-as-two-stage-four-position-foundation, two-stage-structure-and-unity-of-theory-and-practice, god-is-artist-universe-is-work-of-art