Concerning The
Spiritual
In Art
Why spiritual art?
Why not just art?
You’re weird aren’t you… you’re one of those?
Back in early 2000 and something, I did a couple years of undergraduate study in philosophy with The Open University. I was really excited about it. I experienced an amazing first year exploring The Human Situation, and my second year was a focus on the field I love the most… art.
What could possibly go wrong?
Music Conducted In The Rain
I was really organised, mind-maps at the ready, prepping from word go for my end of year exam.
While almost having completed the course, I spent one evening reviewing my notes. In doing so, I became aware of feeling intensely frustrated; I realised that I didn’t believe in any of the information I was willingly committing to memory.
When it came to exploring the question What Is Art?, nothing I had been instructed to read came even close to tapping the truth. At the time, I couldn’t quite grasp what the truth might look like… but I knew it was out there, like space… another frontier, hopefully not so final. This particular realisation came as a bit of a blow at the time, which presented me with a dilemma. Do I memorise utterly useless information and outdated concepts for the sake of passing my second year, or do I quit now before I do any lasting damage to my synapses?
I decided that encouraging my ability to think for myself was more important, and so I defiantly boycotted the exam.
While I continued to read the odd bit of Bertrand Russell, my imagination was being gently captivated by the metaphysics section of the book store. One mind-bending book led to another, which would thus lead to another five, and so on, multiplying like rabbits on Viagra. Years later, my home resembles some strange landscape of totem stalagmites, made entirely of books, depositing in obscure places, and in alternate subject layers of art and spirituality.
A good friend and Demartini practitioner said to me ‘ten minutes in a persons home and I’ll tell them exactly what their life purpose is.’
Well. It took me a little longer than ten minutes. Try ten years.
I now realise that the frontier had come to me; a precipitated truth in the shape of book deposits. The concept of spirituality in art was now dripping upwards from my book totems and slowly crystallizing between my ears.
Synchronously, in the summer of 2006, Tate Modern exhibited The Path To Abstraction, an impressive collection of 80 Kandinsky works charting his journey through The Blue Rider group and Bauhaus periods. The Tate describes Wassily Kandinsky as;
‘a modernist master’ who ‘began to conceive of painting as an alternative pathway to spiritual reality… In abstraction, Kandinsky felt that he had discovered a spiritual reality which was more powerful for not being tied to the outside world – an alternative music for the senses.’
Swallows In My Dreams
This was one art exhibition I felt compelled to visit. Even so, it was yet another two years before I read Kandinsky’s seminal work, Concerning The Spiritual In Art. The artist explores concepts of inner resonance or vibration of the soul as spiritual experience, facilitated by art, specifically the cause and effect of painting and colour on the soul.
It began to dawn on me that art and spirituality, within the current context of western culture, generally appear to be presented to us with an inference of mutual exclusivity. Mixing the two feels very much taboo. While there has been a renaissance in mind body spirit associated subjects in the past decade, there seems to be a black hole when it comes to serious exploration of the spiritual within art. This only serves to highlight, not only the significance of Kandinsky’s work, but the courage it must have taken to propose such theories, especially in a time devoid of the spiritual awakening we are now experiencing.
The spiritual in art is a part of every indigenous culture, indeed the indigenous Way is one of Spirit which guides every aspect of life, and is therefore inseparable from their higher forms of expression. This is not a new concept, this is an ancient practice that has been marginalised (as have the indigenous) in the race for egoic power. However, times are a changing, the feminine principle is making her presence felt, we are in the throws of rediscovering our spiritual roots once again. This is the early train to recovery, destination: Spirit.
Michelangelo is quoted as having said ‘the true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.’ This implies a creativity that strives for such perfection. Our creations can only ever be a reflection of our true state. It is impossible to escape the reality of what we have created for ourselves thus far, and yet it is entirely possible, critical even, that we take responsibility for our creations. Only then can we truly expect to elevate ourselves from mere struggle for survival. It is in the striving, the creative process, that we reach for a better version of ourselves. It is time that we recognise, openly acknowledge, and celebrate the relationship between art and spirituality, contrary to what society would have us believe, as inseparable. Like Picasso once said, ‘God is really only another artist.’
V
∞
The above quote is written on the back of a card I bought from The Royal Academy, which I rediscovered recently. Rainbow Painting (1) 1966 has been glued to my studio wall for at least a couple years, and it still makes me smile.