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Tag: transcendence
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Good, Evil, Transcendence & The Divine
As an artist I depend on writers to put into words their thoughts on some of the issues that philosophers perennially grapple with: Good, Evil, Transcendence & The Divine. A work of art is sometimes loosely referred to as “transcendent” but what does that mean? The definition of transcendence has been hotly debated among philosophers and religious theorists but Wikipedia defines it thus:
In everyday language, “transcendence” means “going beyond”, and “self-transcendence” means going beyond a prior form or state of oneself. Mystical experience is thought of as a particularly advanced state of self-transcendence, in which the sense of a separate self is abandoned.How does the word relate to art? In her book, Summer, Ali Smith takes a stab at it: “Art is about the moment you’re met by and so changed by something you encounter that it takes you both into and beyond yourself and gives you back your senses. It’s a shock that brings us back to ourselves. Art is something to do with coming to terms with and understanding all the things we can’t say or explain or articulate with help from something which we know will help us feel and think then articulate those things even at times like this when feeling and thinking and saying anything about anything are under impossible pressure. What art does is, because we encounter it, we remember we exist too, and that one day we won’t.“
Then there is Aldous Huxley’s ambitious work, The Perennial Philosophy, (1945, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, edition 1990) that makes the connection between transcendence and the arts.
Huxley says the perennial philosophy has to do with”… the metaphysic that recognizes a divine reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds: the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the imminent and transcendent ground of all being -the thing is immemorial and universal.“(p.vii)
This is a meaty tome and not an easy read, but I ploughed through it wondering why a gifted writer like Huxley would be interested in such an esoteric topic. The answer becomes apparent about halfway through the book where he talks about simplicity.
“…real simplicity, so far from being foolish, is almost sublime. All good men like and admire it, are conscious of sin against it, observe it in others and know what it involves; and yet they could not precisely define it. I would say that simplicity is an uprightness of soul which prevents self-consciousness…. That soul which looks where it is going without losing time arguing over every step, or looking back perpetually, possesses true simplicity. Such simplicity is indeed a great treasure. How shall we attain to it? I would give all I possess for it; it is the costly pearl of holy scripture.”(p113)Huxley and Pablo PIcasso agreed on the goal of simplicity and spontaneity:
“Only the most highly disciplined artist can recapture, on a higher level, the spontaneity of the child with its first paint box. Nothing is more difficult than to be simple.”(p116)
Girl Before a Mirror, Pablo Picasso, 1932, Oil on canvas 63.9 in × 51.3 in and
“…it is by long obedience and hard work that the artist comes to unforced spontaneity and consummate mastery. Knowing that he can never create anything on his own account, out of the top layers, so to speak, of his personal consciousness, he submits obediently to the workings of “inspiration”; and knowing that the medium in which he works has its own self nature, which must not be ignored or violently overridden, he makes himself its patient servant and, in this way, achieves perfect freedom of expression.”(p117)Another example of an artist who acheived exquisite simplicity is the sculptor Alexander Calder, whose mobile is shown below.
However, Huxley goes on to clarify that perfect freedom of expression and even the creation of perfectly beautiful and inspiring artwork is not the highest goal. The ultimate goal is overcoming the sense of a separate self and instead, identifying with what is called “the ground” which is God or the Tao as it exists in an eternity outside time.
Alexander Calder, Red Mobile, 1956, Painted sheet metal and metal rods, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. And he says the corollary of this explains the nature of good and evil:
“… good is the separate self’s conformity to, and finally annihilation in, the divine ground which gives it being; evil, the intensification of separateness, the refusal to know that the ground exists.”(p184)The problem arises when Huxley gets onto the topic of “subhuman existences”. He states that “…every other species is a species of living fossils, capable only of degeneration and extinction, not a further evolutionary advance…of all this living matter only that which is organized as human beings has succeeded in finding a form capable, at any rate on the mental side, of further development. All the rest is now locked up in forms that can only remain what they are or, if they change, only change for the worst. it looks as though, in the cosmic intelligence test, all living matter, except the human, had succumbed, at one time or another during its biological career, to the temptation of assuming, not the ultimately best, but the immediately most profitable form. By an act of something analogous to free will every species, except the human, has chosen the quick returns of specialization, the present rapture of being perfect, but perfect on a low level of being. the result is that they all stand at the end of evolutionary blind alleys…. as species, they have chosen the immediate satisfaction of the self rather than the capacity for reunion with the divine ground.”
https://www.seacoastsciencecenter.org/2016/07/18/one-crafty-critter-common-octopus/ According to Huxley, for this wrong choice, nonhuman forms of life are punished negatively, by being debarred from realizing the supreme good, “…to which only the unspecialized and therefore far more highly conscious human form is capable.”(p183)
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Supreme-Human-Being- So despite the rigorous thought that has gone into other aspects of his book, this section reveals that Huxley is a man of his time who believes that “Man is the Measure of All Things”. Huxley’s version of the perennial philosophy thus negates the arguments against separateness that have gone before. Unfortunately, he has internalized the Christian view that, while the human goal is oneness with the divine ground, separateness of human beings from all other forms in nature is almost a prerequisite for this oneness. But if goodness is the annihilation of separateness, then evil must be the intensification of separateness whether from God, the Tao or the Earth.
Burdened by this illusion, humanity’s damage to the planet has come about through intensification of our separateness, which by the above definition, is an evil belief in ourselves as a superior species with a unique capacity for union with the divine ground, but not part of nature.
Since 1945, science is confirming that everything is connected. A closer more biocentric examination of forests shows they are a gigantic interconnected being with what could be called a mind connecting its various forms. If this observation of inter-connectedness were to be expanded, we can assume that the entire surface of the earth is one interconnected being, with one mind or what has been called Gaia. Awareness of this inter-connectedness could be called a recognition of the ground of being.
So though the goal of the perennial philosophy is to recognize the oneness of all things, the assumption that humans are a separate species with a higher calling than all other species means that this philosophy is deeply flawed. Rather than adhering to beliefs that elevate humans as aspiring divinities, we should contemplate our humble role as only one of 2.16 million species on the planet all interconnected in nature. Perhaps it is in a complete recognition and acceptance of this connectedness that our true divinity lies.
As noted above, Huxley is a man of his time and his flawed thinking is apparent from the perspective of this 21st Century blogger. He refers to humanity as “man”, uses the pronoun “his” consistently and sees no relation between the female principle and divinity. He also refers to “primitive” religions and “savages” as people who are less mentally and spiritually developed than people like himself or the thinkers he admires. However, in fairness, it is likely that mainstream ideas of the 21st Century will appear just as deluded to people of the 22nd Century.
But Huxley admitted that he had not overcome his sense of a personal separate self, was filled with pride in his many and admirable achievements, and clearly struggled to be the best person he could be in his life. While his views have been limited by assumptions common to his place and time, in other ways his book is a valuable contribution. It is a compendium of what he considers the best writings on philosophies that seek to overcome the separateness of individuals and nations as they struggle and strive in errors that bring destruction to themselves and the world.
Leaving aside Huxley’s blind spots, he has made some astute observations about the role of the artist. Huxley suggests that the best art, what might be called transcendent art, is created by artists who have overcome the separate self – a separate ego. Through discipline these artists create works that are not the product of their pride, desire for fame and recognition, or even pecuniary rewards. The most meaningful, worthwhile art is created to bridge the gap between the separate and the eternal self, or ground of all being. This is as good a definition of transcendent art as we are likely to find.
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Transcendence
The concept of transcendence has been explored in other posts and this one traces how the concept has fared in the shift from the dominant art paradigm of modernism to post-modernism.
Modernisms & Postmodernisms
The art historian/critic James Elkins made an interesting statement in his 2005 book on modernisms & postmodernisms, Master Narratives and their Discontents. The focus of the book is the role of painting in modernist & postmodernist theories and the core question of whether painting is irrelevant to contemporary visual arts.
If our understanding of contemporary visual arts is based on the assumption that there is a clear trajectory of progress in art-making where the avant guard reject the outdated, unconscious approach of the past and present and lead us forward into the future through new ways of presenting images, then the Postmodernist rejection of painting is justified. Postmodernism and painting are mutually exclusive because painting is a creature of modernist theory, and modernist theories rest on belief in the ability of art, specifically painting, to transcend the human condition.
Postmodern theories suggest that modernism’s belief that art can transcend entanglement with the political, moral and social failings of the time in which it is created are at the core of paintings irrelevance. From this perspective, the whole history of modernist painting is its coming painfully to an understanding of its place in the disenchantment of the world. Criticism of modernism is essential based on the uselessness of the received rules of painting and the hopelessness of proceeding as if painting could be the place where the world is “re-enchanted” (pp. 52-55).
In response to modernism and painting’s association with hopeless efforts to re-enchant the world, contemporary art schools and postmodern critics reject painting in favour of other visual art media, such as video and other new media. And those who do continue to paint are careful to avoid using received rules. Elkins touches on the problems with this approach:
“It is certainly much easier to make an acceptable piece of video art than it is to make an acceptable painting, and…the reason for the relative ease of video art is that painting has a longer history: more strictures, more limitations, fewer possibilities, a much denser lexicon of critical terms. Therefore…the ease of video is a reason to keep considering painting, especially when it’s a place where things seem to keep going wrong, or where the artists are deliberately misbehaving themselves, piling kitch on camp on kitch without end”. (p. 164) He uses the example of Jeff Koons, whose “…place in the history of twentieth century art is assured in part because of his apparently deeply sincere endorsement of kitch ideas and kitch media“(p. 70) .
Titi, 2004–09, Jeff Koons, High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating. The Torment of the Artist
The disenchantment of the world is captured in a few evocative sentences by my author, Richard Powers. In his 2009 novel, Generosity, he describes the torment of the artist reluctant to contribute to the meaningless torrent of artistic works flooding the world at any given moment. In the face of ecological, social and economic megadisasters an artist can only tell,”...the odds against ever feeling at home in the world again. About huge movements of capital that render self-realization quaint at best. About the catastrophe of collective wisdom getting what we want, at last.”(Powers, Richard, Generosity 2009, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 152) This is the quandry that postmodernism has met with scepticism, suspicion and anti-authoritarianism.
Powers outlines the decline of modernism through the disenchantment of a budding art historian who “…nurtured the belief that the deepest satisfaction lay in those cultural works that survive the test of Long Time. But a collision with postcolonialism….shook her faith in masterpieces.A course in Marxist interpretation of the Italian Renaissance left her furious. For a little while longer she soldiered on, fighting the good fight for artistic transcendence until she realized that all the commanding officers had already negotiated safe passage away from the rout.” (p. 61)
Elkins describes postmodernism not as the name of a period with a definable approach such as postimpressionism but as “…a condition of resistance that can arise wherever modernist ideas are in place. Postmodernism works like a dormant illness in the body of modernism: when modernism falters and fails, postmodernism flourishes.” (p. 89)
Elkins’ & Power’s complementary works agree that the assumption that art can transcend the human condition is a core value of modernism that the postmodern critique rejects. So how can artists, especially painters, step out of the here and now and create works that are timeless, universal and make transcendence possible?
The Return of Myth
In his blog, [Re]construction: Metamodern ‘Transcendence’ and the Return of Myth, Brendan Dempsey, a graduate student at Yale University, courageously entered the fray. He suggested that “metamodern mythopoeia reasserts a form of ‘transcendence’ without forfeiting postmodern immanence as it reconstructs artificial paradigmatic models for the twenty-first century“. He includes the work of several young artist who he feels are involved in is artistic mythmaking that oscillates between the poles of discredited modernist myths and postmodern superficiality.
The Roses Never Bloomed So Red, Adam Miller, 2013 Dempsey used this work by Adam Miler as an example of a painting that, “reconstructs artificial paradigmatic models for the twenty-first century” and “oscillates between the poles of discredited modernist myths and postmodern superficiality“. In The Roses Never Bloomed So Red, Miller delivered an impassioned critique of late-capitalist decay by depicting a fauness vanquished by the violent spirit of development.
This is an early work by Miller and the egregiously curvaceous fauness dooms this painting to the level of soft-core porn, despite its censoriousness. Some of his later work, while still featuring voluptuous nudes being violated in erotic ways, is undeniable in its technical mastery and force. But Miller’s latest work, such as his Comedia Humana” project, is more strongly connected to myths so that, for the most part, the female nudes escape the problem of the male gaze. But overall, Miller has been lured into the same traps that have ensnared artists of earlier epochs.
Perhaps myths are not something that can be conjured up by modern men, steeped in a myth-denying culture. Myths are stories that live in our DNA and make sense to us because they are part of the fabric of ourselves as human beings. As Joseph Campbell would say in his book The Power Of Myth, “…true myths are our ties to the past that help us to understand the world and ourselves.The myths that have come down to us through thousands of years of oral and written history are precious strands of our true selves and attempting to discredit them is like trying to discredit the seasons“. Myth is clearly not a vehicle that will automatically “reassert a form of transcendence” but must be used with conscious awareness and humility to work.
Post-Clement Greenburg
It could perhaps be said that much of post-modernist theory has been developed in reaction against Clement Greenburg‘s definition of what makes or breaks good painting. Greenburg simply defined good painting as something that someone with good taste, such as himself, could see was a good painting. His point of view is somewhat offensive to our post-modern sensibilities, but he was not aware of post-modernism’s greatest contribution to criticism in all genres – the disparaging of bias.
Scientific research on perception showed that the mere act of observation affects the thing observed. This has led to a general understanding that it is impossible to be objective – that the observer sees based on a set of values and assumptions that influence what is seen. This understanding has led to a cultural revolution in all areas including the arts. This cultural revolution meant that dead white men were no longer automatically considered the “greats” of literature, drama, music and the visual arts. It was no longer intellectually acceptable to assume that women and minorities were grossly under-represented among the “greats” because they were less capable of creating masterpieces. But once using the “greats” as a yardstick for excellence was gone, the very concept of excellence came under attack, all criteria for assessing the arts was dismissed and everybody is now an artist.
But the postmodernist critique, while entirely justified and rational, has been taken to extremes, until, as Elkins says, we have been subjected to exhibitions “piling kitch on camp on kitch without end”. So it is worthwhile to revisit Greenberg’s worldview to retrace our steps.
Greenberg never examined his assumption that, because he was a person with good taste, what he saw as a good painting was a good painting and he needed to provide no further evidence of this. But the reason his attitude is still appealing is because he is right in assuming that the point of art is to abandon oneself to the pleasure of viewing. It is not an intellectual activity that requires several wall-feet of text to understand. Art should be a visual, visceral, sensuous experience that bypasses the busy brain and transcends mundane day-to-day life.
Jackson Pollack was Greenberg’s most famous protégé and is a good example of a painter whose work as a visual experience is not narrative, not conceptual and certainly not banal. It is a pleasure to lose oneself in this artist’s ability to weave a surface of textures and patterns with all the complexity of nature but the intentionality of a human sensibility.
Convergence, 1952, Jackson Pollock Other painters that Greenberg loved, such as Larry Poons, also confirmed his good taste.
Larry Poons, A Sky Filled with Shooting Stars Not all of the painters Greenberg admired are immediately recognizable as a visual, visceral, sensuous experience. Perhaps, as he said, you had to stand in front of them. But the point he was making is that a great painting can transcend entanglement with the political, moral and social failings of the time in which it is created. Paintings is not and never can be irrelevant because we only have to look at a great painting like those above to know that they can create a place where the world is “re-enchanted” and can achieve transcendence.
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Doomed by A Culture of Change?
Richard Powers book, Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance includes an interesting section about progress and technology. Powers suggests that, as culture and its tools changed more in 30 years than in the previous 1900, the curve of progress reached a critical moment when it was “no longer a changing culture but a culture of change”. How has this constant change affected the arts? Are we doomed by a culture of change?
Now that change is the constant, Powers suggests that nothing has substantively changed since that critical moment. And when progress of a system becomes so accelerated, “it thrusts an awareness of itself onto itself and reaches the terminal velocity of self-reflection”. This produced a species capable of understanding its own biological evolution. In terms of its psychology the species has become aware of its defence mechanisms, so that the self can never again defend itself in the old ways. And “Art that was once a product of psychological mechanisms is now about those mechanisms and – the ultimate trigger point- about being about them.” (p. 81) “Art takes itself as both subject and content; post-modernism about painting…” and other disciplines about themselves.” (p. 83)
The self-reflexive aspect Powers refers to is clearly evident in, for instance, a film recently shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival called Faces, Places by 89 year old French filmmaker, Agnès Varda.
Still from “Faces, Places” a film by 89 year old French filmmaker, Agnès Varda. A quintessentially post-modern piece, the film, feature 2 film-makers who travel around the French countryside taking photographs of ordinary folks, blowing them up to monumental size and pasting them on buildings. It is a film about making a film of 2 film-makers who travel around the French countryside taking photographs, etc.
It was a charming film and very well done. But it was as insubstantial as the photographs that would be washed away by the first storm. Other than being a delightful portrait of the 2 artists and their working relationship, it made no attempt to touch on anything outside that frame. It was a portrait of a world where nothing is constant. so we came away from the film visually gratified and celebrating the ephemeral.
In contrast, an Egyptian film, The Nile Hilton Incident, directed by Tarik Saleh, was a riveting political allegory. Set in Cairo on the edge of revolution, this film explored the corruption that is endemic to tyranny and the near-impossibility for any of us to remain uncorrupted in a culture of greed and violence. While from a post-modern perspective, the film broke all the rules about narrative and morality, this was a piece of great art. It is impossible for the viewer not to be changed by the powerful experience of seeing the film. It was at once illuminating but challenged our complacency and willingness to comply.
Still from the Egyptian film, “The Nile Hilton Incident”, directed by Tarik Saleh This is a good example of how art can be transformative, despite the widely held belief that this is no longer possible in the jaded 21st Century. This jaded view holds that, as self-reflexive beings, art can no longer charm us into believing in a reality that isn’t there or make us suspend our disbelief. The Nile Hilton Incident showed us that whether or not we can fully participate in the experience is not a problem because art can explore powerful ideas and reveal truths outside itself.
However, the idea that there are any truths to be had or that artists can reveal truth and make us more aware is challenged by contemporary art criticism. In his essay, Doubt, Richard Shiff explores modernist and postmodern criticism. Though the nomenclature differs, the self-reflexive issue arises when he discusses the matter of identity which looms large in postmodern discourses. He also refers to the present as in a constant state of change which, to him, precludes absolutes. He then goes on to relate this lack of absolutes to the individual sense of self. if there are no absolutes & everything is relative, there can be no fixed self but a series of selves that appear according to the situation.
Dr. Richard Shiff Shiff calls these “innumerable configurations of personality and emotion” self-differing. He contrasts the self-differing self to the idea of a phantasmatic “all-at-oneness” that suspends the temporal dimension. Shiff discounts this idea by stating that the self always self-differs and never integrates, so that self-difference becomes its identity and that to differentiate the immediate from the temporal is pointless. He claims that all modern & postmodern art explores “orders of difference and temporalized plays of memory” then describes how some artists have attempted to resist self-differing: “the gap between reason & emotion, mind & body, identity by name & identity by feeling”. He suggests that this is impossible based on the aforementioned constant state of change, lack of absolutes and the irreconcilable divide between belief & doubt.
The point of his argument is to critique the style of art criticism that entails a consciously subjective approach, where the critic simply relates a personal response to the artwork. A good example of this is John Berger‘s 2015 book, Portraits, in which he provides a wholly subjective review of mostly male artists. Shiff’s point is that, if there can be no fixed self, there can be no coherent subjective point of view.
So though this may be very true of art criticism, an appreciation of the irreconcilable divide between belief & doubt may not lend itself to understanding art. Shiff’s thinking about art is based on ideas about the nature of the self (a series of selves ) and art as an expression of self-differing. But in my view, the integration of the self has little to do with the dichotomy between belief and doubt as these are simply mental states. The self is not a mental state but a state of being, of which the mind is but a part. Integration of the self does not entail reconciling belief & doubt but is a process whereby body, mind and emotions become one with the self rather than conflicting and disintegrating states. Complete integration of body, mind, emotions and soul is clearly present when a great dancer or musician performs with total commitment and belief in the work and no evidence of an irreconcilable divide. At one remove is the experience of viewing a great painting or other artwork that is clearly the product of an artist wholly integrated during the creative process.
Then there is the integration of the self with consciousness itself – that “phantasmatic all-at-oneness” that is dismissed in this relativistic view. But by dismissing this possibility – the potential for transcendence, this view also dismisses the potential for art to reveal truths, to transcend “orders of difference and temporalized plays of memory”.
In Buddhism, the Sand Mandala painting originated in Vajrayana Buddhism for meditative purposes. The center of the mandala mostly contains a circle to represent spiritual enlightenment, freedom, or the Buddha. Mandala helps practitioners to find themselves as part of nature and become one with the wholeness of the universe. It may not be possible to describe this process using reason, no matter how elegantly delivered but it may be perceived if we suspend the busy reasoning mind.
So there are examples, both contemporary and traditional, that counter Power’s pessimistic view that art is doomed by a culture of change to only be about itself and not relevant to the rest of the world. There is still the potential for transcendence and for art to reveal truths, to transcend “orders of difference and temporalized plays of memory”.
For more on transcendence and the arts, you can visit another blog on the topic.
