This post is an excerpt from Awakening Artist, written by Patrick Howe…
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.
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.”
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This post is an excerpt from Awakening Artist, The – Madness and Spiritual Awakening in Art by Patrick Howe
The Awakening Artist: Madness and Spiritual Awakening in Art is an art theory book that explores the collision of human madness and spiritual awakening in art. It examines a condition of insanity that can be seen in most art movements throughout art history and contrasts that insanity with revelations of beauty, wonder and truth that can also be found in many works of art. The Awakening Artist references concepts of creativity put forward by Joseph Campbell, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung and others. Furthermore, The Awakening Artist discusses many of the world’s most important artists who explored the theme of awakening in art including Michaelangelo, Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, Marcel Duchamp, Morris Graves and many others. Additionally, using concepts of Eastern philosophy, the book presents the case that human creativity originates from the same creative source that animates all of life, and that the artist naturally aligns with that creative source when he or she is in the act of creating.