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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781780996455 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Collective Ink |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2013 |
| Pages: | 268 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.53(w) x 8.57(h) x 0.61(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Awakening Artist
Madness and Spiritual Awakening in Art
By Patrick Howe
John Hunt Publishing Ltd.
Copyright © 2012 Patrick HoweAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78099-645-5
CHAPTER 1
The Awakening Artist
What I wish to convey to you is that your artistic creativity is an expression of the same creative force that created the universe. The ideas that I am about to present are not based upon intellectual conjecture. Nor are they based on New Age 'woo-woo' ideas about some alien force from outer space that is trying to get inside of you to control you and your creativity. On the other hand, if Buddhist concepts, Zen, modern psychology, common sense, and the word 'spiritual' are 'woo-woo' to you, then this book may offer you the opportunity to examine those assumptions, and to discover a new way of understanding human creativity.
Simply put, spiritual terminology has been used by art historians and scholars to describe and explain art for centuries because so much of the world's art has been influenced by the world's religions. I use spiritual terminology throughout this book, too, but not in a narrowly religious or extremist way. I use it metaphorically. As mythologist Joseph Campbell noted, when words are understood metaphorically, they may evoke deep meanings. However, when they are merely perceived literally, they block and flatten the deeper meanings. For example, take Shakespeare's metaphor "All the world's a stage". A literal, 'flattened', interpretation of the phrase would be that the earth is a theatrical platform because that is what the phrase literally states. On the other hand, if we understand Shakespeare's phrase metaphorically, it invites us to see those around us as actors performing on the stage of their lives. We are invited to observe them 'performing' their lives with all the joys and sorrows they bring. To witness humanity around us in such a way is a tremendous thing because it may inspire empathy within us. A literal interpretation cannot do that.
I am using the word spiritual as a metaphor to signify the creative force that animates life. The Taoists use the work "chi" to mean the same thing. If a reader would prefer a more secular metaphor, simply think of 'spiritual' as the evolutionary impulse, for it too describes an energy that animates life.
Spiritual vs. Religious
Until the mid nineteenth century the history of art was filled more with religious themes than anything else. This book is not an examination of religious art, nor of a 'religious' experience while making art, though a religious person might describe it that way. Instead, we are exploring a knowing of the spiritual in the creative act. This goes beyond the traditional structures of any of the world's religions.
Being religious has to do with belonging to an organized institution that holds as true certain theological concepts about spirituality that members of the institution are expected to believe. Therefore, religious art would promote those concepts. Spirituality on the other hand, describes an individual's own inner, intuitive experience of the transcendent without needing to belong to an organized religious institution, or hold and believe in set theological concepts. This is why a religious person may not be spiritual, and a spiritual person may not be religious. Also, I am using the word "transcendent" as another word to indicate that the spiritual experience is beyond mental comprehension and categorization. After all, if the spiritual dimension could be described, measured, weighed, and analyzed there would be nothing transcendent about it. It would be just another mental structure. The spiritual dimension is beyond mental comprehension, so we have to accept it as an unknowable, mysterious, incomprehensible something that is beyond us. It is transcendent. All religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta (Hinduism) and so forth—are religious because they offer theological systems of concepts to believe in. The spiritual, on the other hand, describes a personal relationship with the something-or-other about which religions have formed concepts. Zen Buddhism, interestingly, is sometimes considered spiritual, but not religious because it de-emphasizes a belief in theological systems, and emphasizes personal experience of the transcendent. It is in this sense that the awakening artist explores the relationship between the inner spiritual dimension and creativity. He allows the spiritual dimension, that can only be sensed but not known directly, to flow into creative expression, into form.
Creativity
Creativity is always neutral; it is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, though humans have used their creativity to do both harm and good. Creativity has been used to make weapons to harm people, and creativity has been used to make medicines to heal people. Is creativity spiritual? Yes, it can be, when a spiritual person is being creative. Creative action is neutral, but it always reflects the state of consciousness of the person expressing creatively.
Many artists throughout history have recognized a relationship between their creativity and what they believed was a transcendent source of their creativity. Michelangelo, for example, believed that God was working through him. In recent centuries many artists have sensed a creative source that was beyond them that is also within them, and have desired to allow it expression through them. Artist Wassily Kandinsky sought to fill his art with 'spiritual resonance'. And artist Jackson Pollack claimed that his inspiration did not come from nature because he was nature. Whether or not artists label that sensing as 'spiritual' or 'nature' matters little. What matters is the realization of a creative source that is beyond the artist's mind.
The following are comments by several artists, and others, suggesting this. Artist Keith Harding said:
When I paint, it ... is transcending reality. When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal.
Author Lewis Hyde commented that many artists "sense that some element of their work comes to them from a source they do not control".
Composer Igor Stravinsky said he did not write The Rite of Spring; he transcribed it.
Artist Mark Tobey wished to "express higher states of consciousness" in his artwork.
Artist, Morris Graves stated: "My first interest is in Being—along the way I am a painter."
Sculptor Isamu Noguchi noted that "... art comes from the awakening person. Awakening is what you might call the spiritual ... Everything tends toward awakening."
Art Historian Roger Lipsey (1988) stated in An Art of Our Own, "The artist leads us to sense our own stillness between activities, and beyond that an abiding stillness."
Mythologist Joseph Campbell observed: "The way of the mystic and the way of the artist are related, except the mystic doesn't have a craft."
George Rowely, (1959) author of Principles of Chinese Painting pointed out that the Chinese artist "had to experience a communion with the mystery of the universe akin to that enjoyed by the Taoist 'mystics'."
Artist and Zen master Hakuin stated that, "If you forget yourself you become the universe"
Albert Einstein said: "The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of art and all true science."
Artist Andre' Enard expressed it this way: "Isn't the ultimate desire of human beings to perceive an order that surpasses us yet is within us, to participate in that order?" Enard's statement hints at a higher form of creativity that the artist is part of, and potentially one with.
Isn't the ultimate desire of all artists to participate in a universal expression of creativity that is beyond them, and yet flows through them? Christians and Jews have called it God, Allah by Muslims, the Tao by Taoist, the Unmanifest by Buddhists. Various spiritual teachers and scientists sometimes call it the One Life, or the Universal Intelligence of Life. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan proclaimed: "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." Meaning, it seems to me, there is the potential for an inseparable knowing of creative oneness shared between oneself and the Cosmos. Sagan also said "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent a universe."
Each quotation above points to something transcendent. They are metaphors that indicate something beyond mental comprehension. If it is beyond our mental comprehension then how can we know this universal creativity? Just look around at the infinite variety of life forms. Evidence of the universe's creative expression abound. The artist who is becoming aware of the infinite creativity that is beyond him, that flows through him, and that he is ultimately one with, is the awakening artist.
The fact is, understanding art is not difficult, but the intellect, disconnected from anything deeper, likes to imagine that it knows something mysterious and special that others do not. But the awakening artist understands that there are no objects of art that are particularly difficult to grasp mentally. Some art is predominantly intellectual because the artist, and many viewers, believe that the intellect is superior to any other way of creating and viewing art. But from the view of the awakening artist, great art goes much deeper than the intellect, much deeper than clever ideas. Truly great art touches the depths of a person's whole being, not just their thinking. When we look at a Monet painting, for example, we usually do not expect to acquire intellectual information from the experience. Rather we are moved at a deeper, non-verbal, non-intellectual level within ourselves. To perceive with one's whole being in this way goes beyond intellectual analysis. As we shall see later, the intellect has its place in making art. However, we are not fooled into believing that the intellect is supreme when it comes to creativity, because creativity, when expressed from the transcendent level, is beyond the intellect. As Joseph Campbell suggested, the function of mythology and the artist is to spiritualize the place as well as the conditions in which we live. The intellect alone cannot do this.
The awakening artist allows space for this universal creative energy to flow through him or her, and this flow includes the interaction of perceptions, ideas, and feelings. There is nothing serious or heavy about it; yet creating with this awareness is always profound because it connects the artist to the universal creative intelligence of life, and that is the source of true intelligence and beauty in art. What beauty is, however, is a matter of opinion, so now we will look at the meaning of beauty from the awakening artist perspective.
CHAPTER 2
Seeing Beauty and Telling the Truth
There is an expectation held by many viewers that art should be beautiful. After all, when we see something beautiful it brings us pleasure, satisfaction, and delights our senses. It would seem only reasonable, to many viewers, that a work of art should do that. At the very least viewers expect it to offer them a good reason to look at the art—because it presents an interesting idea, or encourages them to look at the world in a new way. So let's look at some of the assumptions we have about art, what art is, what it should look like, and what is should mean.
What is Art?
Today art can mean just about anything. A person merely has to declare that something is art to them, and if that is his or her opinion then who is to argue? If art world scholars, historians, critics, dealers, and curators insist that something is art, and the rest of the world doesn't think so, who is to argue? It's their opinion. This lack of a concrete definition of art is a relatively recent phenomenon. This ambiguity, which is not necessarily a bad thing, started with the deconstruction of the meaning of art by Picasso and the other modern artists of the early twentieth century and continued into the 1970s.
In earlier times, such as during the era of the French Academy of Fine Arts in the early seventeenth century, the definition of art was very precise. If a painting or sculpture did not fit the strict guidelines of the Academy, it was not art. It is unknown when the term 'art' and 'artist' came into use. During the Middle Ages the word 'artist' existed in some countries and referred to individuals whose craft and skills were exceptional. During the High Renaissance in the fifteenth century, those who participated in making works of art were usually considered skilled laborers, unless they were extraordinary individuals such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Raphael. Going back to the 'art' of early humans, such as the Chauvet cave paintings in southern France from 35,000 years ago, it is impossible to know what they called these cave paintings, if anything. And as we shall see in Chapter 4, some modern scholars theorize that the cave painters were actually shamans, or holy men, who recorded their visits to a spirit world on the walls of the caves. The artist-shamans provided an important link between their societies and the spirit world.
In this book I use the term "art" and "artist" loosely to describe the many objects we will be discussing and the individuals who created them. Therefore "art" for our purposes is defined as objects created to inspire a specific aesthetic, spiritual, political, social, or psychological effect on viewers.
Conditioned and Unconditioned Beauty
Most of us view art through a lens I call 'conditioned' beauty. Based in human conditioning, which is naturally biased, conditioned beauty compares one thing to another. A chrysanthemum is beautiful, but a bat is creepy. Conditioned beauty can also be culturally specific. What is pleasing in one culture may be displeasing in another. Chinese opera may sound lovely to Chinese listeners but may sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to the ears of Western listeners. Between cultures, conditioned beauty can always be challenged and debated.
In Western civilization, conditioned beauty in art changes over time. In the nineteenth century, some critics initially considered Van Gogh's art garish and childish. But now in the twenty-first century most find it beautiful, spontaneous, and alive. For thousands of years, scholars and philosophers have written about conditioned beauty, though they did not call it that, they just called it beauty. The art world has been a main stage for the debate over conditioned beauty for centuries. When beauty is being challenged in art, what is really being challenged are the assumptions and cultural conditionings of viewers, which are always conditioned and relative. Conditioned beauty is therefore temporary, contextual, and always changing in the next moment.
Conditioned beauty is a matter of opinion and point of view. The observer always projects the state of his or her own consciousness upon what he or she sees. In other words what is observed will always be a reflection of the observer's inner state. For example, an artist friend of mine and I once walked through an art exhibition wearing our audio guides, listening to the recorded voice of a prestigious museum curator explain the artwork. We came upon a large photograph of a dark forest with fallen and rotting trees, dripping moss, and black puddles of earthy goo full of bugs leaping about. The curator's recorded voice explained how this picture represented the darkness and uncertainty of the human condition. It symbolized the gloom that resides in the human subconscious. My friend and I looked at each other and burst into laughter. He, besides being an awakened artist, is also a horticulturalist and I knew that he saw the large photograph as teaming with life, complex beauty, and as a marvel of transformation. His response to the curator's comment was that a photograph of a clear-cut forest would better represent the gloom in humanity's subconscious. In this example, the audio guide curator was projecting his inner state of consciousness upon the photograph, and my friend was projecting his inner state, too.
Conditioned beauty always has at least two points of view, but it is important to know that some conditioned points of view align more naturally with life than others, and I believe this was the case with my friend's point of view. To say that an old growth forest is an intricate and wondrous expression of life is a statement that is truer of the nature of an old growth forest than to say it is gloomy, and depressing like the human psyche.
Here is another example: One person might say, "The night sky is beautiful." Another might say, "The night sky is eerie because the darkness seems sinister." Both are merely points of view and may be true for each person. However, it seems to me that it is truer to say that the night sky is beautiful because the statement connects the person to the world of which they are a part, whereas to say that the night sky seems sinister only separates the person from the world. Perhaps truer is not the best word to use. To say that it is psychologically healthier to enjoy the beauty of the night sky than to think of it as sinister is certainly true.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Awakening Artist by Patrick Howe. Copyright © 2012 Patrick Howe. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword.................... xiii
Introduction.................... 1
Definition of Terms.................... 4
Part 1: Awakening.................... 11
Chapter 1....................
Chapter 2....................
Chapter 3....................
Part 2: Madness and Awakening in the Past 51....................
Chapter 4....................
Chapter 5....................
Chapter 6....................
Chapter 7....................
Chapter 8....................
Part 3: Madness and Awakening in the Present 179....................
Chapter 9....................
Chapter 10....................
Chapter 11....................
Chapter 12....................
Chapter 13....................
Afterword....................
Notes.................... 245