Have we demonised the spiritual? Have we shackled it as a potentiality, chained it to the made stereotypes of organised religion and networked fundamentalism? Have we binaried it, made it white conservative and black fundamentalist – have we burnt it through the magnifying lens of the double-unwanted Other, the too-old-too-alien contemporary Frankensteinian bastard? Is the spiritual the driver of arcane and/or vilified practices? Or, is it now just that goofy intimation of the metaphysical that you can’t take to art parties? ‘This is Pappy Wassily; he’s really deaf, but he’s big into capturing the inner essence of things…aren’t you Pops?…I’m saying you’re BIG INTO CAPTURING THE ESSENCE OF THINGS!’ We’re all too down with the superstructure of artland and its insistent gaze upon the material conditions of lived relations (chiefly our own, but also of those of identified others [whose photos come through the post with the subscription]) to be thinking towards the spiritual – and that would be like looking out of the window at school when teacher was conversing with Chomsky.
But the spiritual still has one or two advocates, and they are sneaking in to the contemporary art press on occasion to drop hints. Take Christopher Bedford in this month’s frieze. Talking to abstract painters Tomma Abts, Tauba Auerbach, Matt Connors, Charline von Heyl and Bernd Ribbeck, Bedford has a brave go at it. Excusing the artists at first by stating that none of them ‘seems interested in spirituality as a social idea or abstraction as a historical category’, Bedford pushes on all the same. Abts bats a flirty one back by saying that she doesn’t ‘feel comfortable with the word “spirituality” in connection with [her] work’ because it ‘evokes a notion of spiritual kitsch, and makes [her] think of work that takes itself too seriously in its tackling of grand themes.’ Abts and Ribbeck are particularly clear that their versions of abstract painting, a convenient if imprecise term here, are about the material of painting, the ‘concrete experiment that is anchored in the material I’m handling’ as Abts puts it. Ribbeck is in the same workshop ostensibly, for ‘materiality is very important [to him]’. But Ribbeck’s materiality leaks, and he doesn’t mind too much. He puts his brush right on it when he observes the fact that ‘that things are transcended is a mechanism of art – there is a material, then it’s moved into another space or combined with other materials and afterwards it’s not what it was.’
And this has to be one of the most interesting paradoxes of art which attends to the plastic as a generative modus operandi. For artists like Abts and the others, to set out to create a painted thing which Bedford notes nicely as an ‘image which they have never seen before’, is a beguiling programme of secular, spiritual transubstantiation, let’s say, at least for now; it is a programme which has not much to do with the technicist reductivism of classical modernist plasticists; the push and pullers, the purists, the elitists, the siloists, the protectors, the formalist defenders, the vacuum-packers, and much more to do with the spiritual project of seeing some thing as some thing else – by virtue of the intervention of the imagination. These abstracts are touchstones for the spiritual, transformative underpinnings of art when replete with imagination – which is not a given.
Abts gets this right – ‘There is something else going on, because the painting is developed over time – while working on it I am always open to what I might do with it next, nothing is fixed.’ And this is the spiritual statement of import of our times. Through some thing moves another thing to become yet another thing, driven by the imagination as catalyst. And when that catalyst is at work, the conservative and the fundamentalist are smoked out, tested and sent home from the party. And not to our home. With a little imagination all material can be redescribed, revised and transformed, and no other programme needs to emerge from the conservative or fundamentalist camps to serve as harbour for our insuppressible spiritual proclivities.
Tagged: abstract painting, creativity, imagination, redescription, spirituality
This blogpost led to some really stimulating Facebook comments from Jim Hamlyn, Brian Grassom, Lisa O’Brien, and Anita Jean Stewart – many thanks indeed to them for the insights and for agreeing to repost the thread here – a pleasure to know such interesting people. Take a look at Jim’s excellent blog – http://thoughtsonartandteaching.blogspot.co.uk/#axzz1pQ0mNVjb
• Jim Hamlyn: “Insuppressible spiritual proclivities”? D.E. Brown (quoted at length by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate) would certainly give support to the idea that the supernatural/religion is a human universal but how can we be sure that such things are anything more than profound curiosity subtly coerced or corrupted by thoughts and hopes cast in the image of indoctrinated belief? Or more precisely: how can we be sure that our fascination with the ineffable in art, as elsewhere, is anything more than our imaginations run wild in the boundlessness of the as yet unknown? Do we need to invoke something as vexed as ‘spirituality’ in order to speak of such things? And is it weakness, as you seem to suggest, that we should seek to avoid it as irredeemable?
6 March at 22:05 • Like
• Ken Neil: Cheers Jim. The blogpost is a tilt at stealing back the spiritual from the supernatural – you won’t be surprised to hear from me – and restoring it in that place you describe – ‘the boundlessness of the as yet unknown’. That’s where it belongs, and the paintings of Abts and Ribbeck in particular are good metonyms for that space. It’s still about finding images, analogously, which are yet unseen, as Bedford said, through practice, and not about waiting for a higher power than the imagination to form the image for you – I think we are on the same page there. Saying that though reminds me that Ribbeck suggested himself in that interview that religion is just a practice of the imagination. I’ll go along with that, and suggest that the organised practice of transubstantiation in religious frameworks is one of our greatest spiritual-art achievements – spiritual in our secular sense of imagining (and creatively contending with) parts of the as yet unknown, and spiritual in the sense of the supernatural in this case, of course. I propose the need for only the former, but if the latter emerges for others, fair dos. There are other ways than using ‘spiritual’ to invoke such things, yes, I agree, but I quite like invoking the former by using the spiritual word so that the latter doesn’t hog it as its. Another thing that really interests me is the extent to which a vacuum-packer’s abstract painting, a la Nolan or someone, is formally the same as the ‘secular spiritualism’ of Abts or Ribbeck, or someone, (and please don’t come back to me with the ascension of painting as the now-abused spiritual truth versus Abts’s and Ribbeck’s barren, plastic secularism…)
7 March at 08:59 • Like • 1
• Lisa O’Brien: After much reference to my dictionary I am just about following this conversation, but , what on earth is a vacuum packer a la Nolan please?
7 March at 11:16 • Unlike • 2
• Ken Neil: Should be a ‘D’ on that, my haste, apologies. Kenneth Noland, a paradigmatic modernist who, according to my sarcastic phrase, would suck the air (life) out of art by attending to the purely material properties of pigment, paint, canvas…http://www.kennethnoland.com/
7 March at 11:49 • Like •
• Lisa O’Brien: OK , I’m with you, after a look at his website (spin paintings? ) and this brief interview, the cogs are starting to turn again. Interesting.http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2006/tommaabts.htm
7 March at 12:55 • Like •
• Jim Hamlyn: You do a valiant job Ken and perhaps it’s worthwhile to attempt to wrestle the spiritual from the supernatural – though I suspect they are indivisible. Their association is certainly an ancient one. I’m reminded of an essay by Octavio Paz:
“The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born of the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics–or more precisely, Revolution–co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church. The mission of the artist was to transmute the object; that of the revolutionary leader, to transform human nature. Picasso and Stalin. The process has been twofold: in the realm of politics, ideas have been turned into ideologies, and ideologies into idolatries; objects of art, in turn, have become idols, and idols have been transformed into ideas.”
7 March at 16:09 • Like
• Ken Neil: Interesting reference Jim – I’ll pinch a bit of it – Tomma Abts makes those kinds of contemporary idols which invoke a spirituality which stops at the edge of the supernatural – a weak, thus strong, transubstantiation which doesn’t see anything mutate into anything else too far from what it was.
7 March at 16:22 • Like
• Jim Hamlyn: You can find the whole essay here: http://x-arch.blogspot.com/2005/10/paz-octavio-craftsmanship.html Though the formatting is a disaster which makes it a bit of a slog to read.
7 March at 16:48 • Unlike • 1 •
• Brian Grassom: To “transubstantiate” means to change one substance into another. This implies difference – one thing somehow becomes something entirely different – as opposed to ‘transform’, which means to radically alter the same substance. At the same time there is a subtle link, in that the substance is changed into something else which bears a special relationship to it: it remains itself, but becomes something else. Therefore, if an artwork is a “transubstantiation”, it means that the substance of paint (for example) is changed into something else, through the imagination, whilst remaining itself – paint. It is difficult to avoid the allusion – which I think Ken invites – of religious transubstantiation, and a meaningful, if ironic, comparison (the eucharist in religious “transubstantiation” is believed to be changed into the body and blood of Christ, whilst remaining bread and wine).
We (only) have endless words to play with when describing what happens in a work of art, and “spiritual” is one of them. Many artists have used the term to define their view of art, whilst many more have not. I think we have to take into account that words change their meaning over time, and can bring with them all kinds of connotations. At the same time we are constantly trying to convey ideas and concepts through words, some of which we find almost impossible: hence the need for “ineffable”, “invisible”, “transcendence”. Metaphysics is just this need, and it is a natural one. I think Ken is stating the case for a kind of ‘spirituality’ that is in some way immanent, as opposed to the “supernatural”, which is a term rooted in binary opposition. I would support this view, and whilst – like Abts, but perhaps for different reasons – being reticent to use the word ‘spirituality’ in relation to art, I would argue that it is relevant, and also that art has to do with ‘transcendence’, where that word too takes on a slightly different meaning than the one we are used to.
8 March at 15:46 • Unlike • 1
• Ken Neil: Totally excellent Brian. Exactly.
8 March at 17:03 • Like
• Ken Neil: In my rush to concur enthusiastically, I should have said, ‘thanks’ for the perceptive comment, Brian. I might have also added there’s a meant-to-be-cheeky (or flirtatious) component in the blogpost, viz: the implication that the spiritual in its usage pre-Abts, if you will, was always already secular – the wafer, the wine, the cup, the cloth, the table, the bread, the dish, the chant…a brilliant, artistic, imaginative concatenation to contend with the unknown of the domain Jim identified. The spiritual (as in the supernatural) is something of an ironic imposition on that artistry – at least according to the flirty, pragmatist, redescriptionist logic of my post. Abts reclaims the spiritual, by my say so, and returns it to us…something like that. Thanks again for your summary.
8 March at 17:28 • Like
• Brian Grassom: Thanks for your appreciation, Ken. I think you are right about the “imposition” of the supernatural upon the “artistry” of the ritual, in that unthinking belief in the religious transubstantiation appears to be directed towards the supernatural as exteriority, rather than invoking what we might call the spiritual as integral. It is interesting to recall that (according to legend) St. Francis could not reach that point in the liturgy of the mass without falling into trance, unable to continue. For him, it would seem, transubstantiation betokened – at least in his imagination – a ‘spiritual’ reality. In much the same way, perhaps, art can awaken our capacity to partake of a “beyond” through its “transubstantiation” of paint, plaster, stone or whatever, and the medium of the imagination.
I like your point about the formal qualities of the abstraction of Abts viv-a-vis Noland. It begs the question of differentiation. The intentions are different, but the results similar. A puzzle indeed. Perhaps transubstantiation is in the eye of the beholder? Or do the works evoke the artist’s intention, somehow, but through our imaginative participation (this is, of course, the old ‘intentional fallacy’ debate, but perhaps with a new twist?).
8 March at 22:56 • Like
• Jim Hamlyn: Isn’t there a confusion here though: since there is clearly no change in substance whatsoever – simply a profound transformation – the only thing or substance that undergoes ‘substantial’ transformation is our own perception, if, and only if, we are so predisposed?
For the atheist the wine is wine and the bread is merely a tasteless piece of rice paper stuck like mucus to the roof of their mouth. Hence the common philistine annunciation: “That isn’t art – anybody could do that!”
9 March at 10:25 • Like
• Brian Grassom: Jim: I agree with you about perception. But if we return to Ken’s initial idea, it is that the material of the work is not so much transformed – which implies that it is simply altered – but that it becomes something entirely different. Take wood, for example. You can transform it into a table: the substance is still wood, but it is now in the form of a table. Again, use the wood to make a sculpture … let’s say a sculpture of a horse … and the wood has been transformed into (the form of) a horse. However, it is not a real horse – neither does it fulfill the functions of a horse (Plato). You might say that it has a decorative function, a religious function, or a didactic function, or even as a hideaway for Greek soldiers. But if it is art (and that’s another story, but it implies that it is neither useful, didactic, nor merely decorative) then it has (it would seem, and according to our sensibilites) been changed into something else entirely. It is still wood, but its reality has entered another domain that is essentially indeterminate in terms of its being. It is perhaps easier to grasp this when looking at abstract art, wherein lies the reason – in part at least – why abstract form was favoured by artists such as the Abstract Expressionists. The ‘reality’ invoked by much of their work was neither natural nor supernatural, nor functional, but something deliberately indeterminate although nonetheless ‘real’. So, it is not so much that the wood has been transformed, but there has been a shift in its being, from wood to something that is the same, but entirely different. Here, wood and work retain their absolute autonomy, whilst remaining inseparable. It is not an artwork made from wood … like a table made from wood. The wood is wood, and the artwork is an artwork, and (here is the strange thing) they are both the same. Of course, one needs to know the language of art to some extent to appreciate this, but that does not make it any the less real. A table means nothing – or something other than a table – to someone who sits on the ground to eat, but it is still a table to us. So, I agree with you about the philistine … with a capital ‘F’. Art takes us into another dimension, if we are open to it. If not, then not. What that other dimension means in terms of the completeness of being human, is hard to say with accuracy … but we believe it is important.
9 March at 17:09 • Like
• Jim Hamlyn: Beautifully put Brian. I have no quarrel with the idea that artworks “take us into another dimension” (metaphorically speaking that is) but what I think makes for confusion is the tendency to project our perceptual shifts onto the substance of the artwork. Where there is illusion and complexity or sophistication we see (and describe) magic. When we are personally deeply confounded or moved we have a tendency to attribute this to preternatural properties of the object or by extension, as you suggest, to preternatural skills or ‘intentions’ on the part of the artist. The locus of change (of transformation or to that degree transubstantiation) is a cognitive one (in ourselves) but by dint of its complexity (largely if not entirely tacit) we are unable to recognise nor acknowledge this as issuing from ourselves. It’s no surprise that the ancients believed that inspiration was a gift visited upon them and over which they had no control. I believe this misrecognition is the source of a great deal of confusion in the interpretation and appreciation of art, not least in the intentional fallacy itself.
9 March at 21:05 • Like
• Brian Grassom: Jim: I’m going back to my table. In nature – as dead wood – it is perhaps a source of nourishment for insects or fungi, and eventually the soil. That’s about all. If nature were a person (which we tend to make her) that’s how she would see it. Its life as a table comes from us, and us alone. So you are absolutely correct in that. The ‘table’ depends upon our consciousness of it, and all the complexity of history and culture which that entails. Art, as a sophisticated human activity, is all the more dependent upon that consciousness. The perception of what is art is bound to change with time, as it is produced through time, and our interaction with it. It is also bound to differ from person to person, culture to culture. But there may be some kind of “intersubjectivity” (Husserl) which can agree on what is art, what is not. Often, of course, only time will tell. But this is a very complex question, and deserves a lot of attention. Your point about “inspiration” is an interesting one: literally that means a spirit entering from outside. Or does it really come from within, but an extended within? (Nietzsche proclaimed that we (as the ancients) created the gods … and he didn’t mean that they were not real).
9 March at 23:09 • Like
• Jim Hamlyn: I was going to mention intersubjectivity too but what stopped me was the fact that this actually further undermines any notion that transubstantiation might be effected ‘in’ artworks to any significant degree. Let’s agree, as I think we do (intersubjectively), that all artworks are art. If this is so then we presumably have to agree that the transubstantiation occurs at the meta level and is almost entirely independent of the agency of the artist, other than mere designation (and acceptance by the artworld of course, though designation is usually sufficient). No matter how involved, skilful, beautiful, insightful or superficial, the entire corpus of artworks is transformed unilaterally from its individual base materials into a collection of cultural artefacts complete with a rich and varied complex of traditions and histories. Certainly there is significance here but this fails to explain why some artworks and not others have the power to move us. The only explanation that fits (to my mind anyway) is that artworks do not in fact have the power to move us at all. The statement is a misformulation that once again places agency in the relatively inert structure and substance of the object. This tendency leads to numerous mystifications that ask us to (or leave us feeling inadequate if we don’t) share in the superstitious awe of certain specially nominated artworks.
I’ll try to come at this from another angle. When we take offence at something someone has said to us we tend not to regard the form of the communication as particularly significant. We take offence at the intent. Language only mediates the intent. However, the more complex the communication the more complex the job of interpreting the intent and the greater the focus upon the form and structure of mediation. At some point this job of interpretation becomes so involved that it is impossible for us to trace the source of the many associations and meanings generated since, in fact, there is no one source, there are many. But this seems counterintuitive: the source is surely the singular communication. My claim is that this attribution is fallacious and is based upon a misrecognition of how we not only receive but actually generate new significances in our confrontation with complex artefacts – especially those formulated by our fellow homos faber.
10 March at 07:49 • Like
• Brian Grassom: As I suggested before, Jim, apprehending the ‘significance’ of an artwork is simplicity itself … but it requires a special kind of cognitive event that seemingly can take complexity into account and resolve it. This cognitive event (you might simply call it ‘feeling’ or ‘understanding’) I have called ‘transcendence’, in that it operates both through and beyond all the “associations and meanings” that accompany what you have termed a “relatively inert structure” (a good choice of words, but I would go further and suggest that our concept of ‘inert matter’ may itself be an imposition conditioned by the [enlightenment] view of man’s privileged position in the world by dint of his supposed rational and therefore detached objectivity). Art … if it works, and that is a big “if” … has the gift of revealing man’s own ‘transcendent’ nature, which is something more than scientific objectivity, although science – or scientific thought, rational thought, reason – plays a meaningful role in that capacity for transcendence. How do we make a qualitative judgement about art … assuming that there is such a thing? Well, that brings us back full circle to the (very interesting) discussion we had with Ken some time ago. I would be interested to know what you consider might be an example of a “specially nominated” work of art?
12 March at 17:27 • Like
• Ken Neil: Good stuff Brian – we are indeed back with the earlier string of posts around the Gombrich excerpt. That string made me realise that your noted transcendence was this side of the supernatural (although I resist the spatialisation of the model I’ve just advanced there[tell me how to avoid the bind]) but spiritual all the same. If I’ve got that right, then you’ve got that right, and my spiritual flirtation might have some purchase. My interest in that position is, again, to reclaim, or, perhaps, once again, to merely *reposition* the spiritual in that part of our, what, weltanschauung. Art has its business in that part, and, I agree, the transcendent (or transubstantiational [if you’re feeling flirty {and puffed up}]) dimension of Abts’s paintings is very real even though it is embedded in the technically inert plastic as Jim notes. For me, pushing this into ideological territory (if we’re not there already), it is very important to proffer a worldview which is pragmatist, or realist pragmatist (or somesuch similarly inexact) and at the same time defend that worldview as something which can take delight in the spiritual, although always bounded by what we can say about it – which is no small thing, thanks be to God.
13 March at 20:34 • Unlike • 1
• Brian Grassom: I agree with you, Ken. I said earlier that I would be “reticent” to use the word ‘spiritual’ as regards art. This may be because when we use words like ‘spiritual’, or ‘transcendence’, they immediately set up a binary opposition: spiritual/material; sensible/intelligible; form/substance, etc., whereas we would like to use them to express something more, indeed even a synthesis of the two. Of course, in effect such oppositions are unavoidable, as they actually mobilize language, and permeate our thought. We may privilege one over the other, or reverse them, but ultimately we always confront an impasse. For me, as I think for you, art (on a good day) ‘transcends’ (as in your definition above) this impasse: hence it’s special relevance. It is not ‘outside’ of language – as you rightly say – rather it is somehow both within and without.
Wednesday at 15:42 • Like
• Ken Neil: Yeh, but I’m wondering now whether I should ask you if you think that such oppositions are, in fact, mobilised *by* language. My blogpost was flirting with the idea that we can avoid the unavoidable if we just talk to each other in different ways: in that case, we could avoid the unavoidable ‘meaning’ of spiritual by harnessing it for related but crucially different ends.
Wednesday at 19:43 • Like
• Jim Hamlyn: On a related point – how might this desire to steal back spirituality relate to Mr deBotton’s “Atheism 2.0”?http://hw.libsyn.com/p/5/3/4/5343a0ac0158c53a/Alain_de_Botton.mp3?sid=b1de335c4b264c1ea160cc6d9accf605&l_sid=18828&l_eid&l_mid=2867865&expiration=1331757402&hwt=f8e4ad2075bd0c0f27bb3237ee4dc185
Wednesday at 20:12 • Like •
• Brian Grassom: Good point about language, Ken, and I think we agree about ‘spiritual’. Jim, I confess I usually don’t find Alain De Botton’s insights very profound, merely observational, as in this interview. To make a distinction between atheism and theism seems to me be missing the wood for the trees.
Wednesday at 22:39 • Like
• Anita Jean: ken- thanks for pointing me this way, I’m enjoying the conversation.
Thursday at 00:52 via Mobile • Like
• Anita Jean: Brian- nice to meet you, may I say I really like the way you write.
Thursday at 00:53 via Mobile • Like
• Anita Jean: What would you (any one of you) define a persons spirituality as? from an atheists stand point?
Thursday at 00:58 via Mobile • Like
• Jim Hamlyn: An elaborate and stimulating confusion of impressions, associations and emotions – just as it is for theists.
Thursday at 09:39 • Like
• Brian Grassom: Thank you for your compliment, Anita Jean, and your question. Also I would like to apologize to Jim for a too brief response to his post about Alain De Botton, which hopefully I can remedy in my reply. I would define ‘spirituality’ in one sense as a willingness, or openness, to explore that “stimulating confusion of impressions, associations, and emotions” that Jim wittily observes. In brief, I think a ‘spiritual’ person (as per Ken’s implied meaning) will look for God beyond religion, or truth beyond atheism. I will try to elaborate.
Alain De Botton (I’m basing this on the audio interview, as I have not read “Religion for Atheists”) takes the standpoint that our increasingly secular society should not reject religion entirely, as there may be much in it that is of value. However, he views that value through the lens of atheism, rejecting what he calls “religious doctrine”. This is fine so far as it goes, and I’m in agreement to some extent. (His views about art and religion I would query, but I won’t diverge here). What he seems to be missing, or at any rate he does not say, is that religion seems to exist in order to fulfill a very human need. But I would say that since we have a rich heritage of religious belief, then from a scientific basis it is surely of more benefit not just to cannibalize religion for whatever spare parts we need to keep the engine of secular society running, but to study it to find out what it says about us, not in its doctrine as such, but in its deeper narrative. One can apply the same method to myth, or to dreams. We should not dismiss them as unscientific nonsense, but on the contrary apply a detached and scientific approach to discover what they have to tell us about ourselves, and which we do not yet know. I am thinking in particular about the methods of Jung, Rene Girard, or Emmanuel Levinas, where ‘science’ means a rational but open enquiry. It is party to the means I referred to above for exploring Jim’s “stimulating ( …) emotions” (not just Jim’s, of course), which one might, with due care and mindful of its reclaimed meaning, term ‘spirituality’.
I think that art does this to a certain extent already … or rather, it can do, and often does. It provides a kind of critical meaning in a way that is neither purely rational, nor requiring religious belief.
I will quote Levinas here to illustrate an interesting angle to your question: “The soul, the dimension of the psychic, being an accomplishment of separation, is naturally atheist.” Also, the following recording of Derrida on the subject, if you would like to hear it, I find quite meaningful:
Jacques Derrida On ‘Atheism’ and ‘Belief’
http://www.youtube.com
Here, at the 2002 Toronto ‘Other Testaments’ conference, Derrida responds in aud…See more
Thursday at 15:30 • Like • 1 •
• Jim Hamlyn: Oh no, not the old “believing implies some atheism” line Monsieur Derrida! No no that won’t do at all. If only I had read John Searle’s criticisms of your work back in the 80’s I could have saved myself countless hours of soul destroying (ah it was your fault all along for shrivelling my sorry soul!) attempts to pick my way through the densest thicket of what Foucault rightly labeled “obscurantisme terroriste”. Gibberish!
Thursday at 19:22 • Like
• Ken Neil: I like the definition Jim offers in response to Anita, and I very much like Brian’s call to to see deeply into cultural formations (including religion, of course) so that heritage might be taken forward, with respect, to inform our current and future worlds of lived relations – not because it is an end in itself to pay deep respect to cultural heritage, but because to pay deep respect to cultural heritage is more likely to give rise to more productive knowledge and understanding to take forward for our current and future worlds of lived relations. In keeping with my line of inquiry in this chain, though, I’ll say that God and Truth, and other stuff like that (stuff that is transmogrified with capital letters like stuff sitting on a table transmogrified by a white cloth and a ceremony) do not sit beyond Abts’s (our) domain of creative, spiritual, transubstantiation. A spiritual person for me in this chain is a person, like Abts, who can see the mutability, fallibility, transubstantiationability and contingency of all of our contributions to the world of lived relations. That kind of pragmatic poetry shines the brightest for me, but I don’t want God and Truth to come back to haunt this reconstructed space. In other words, I’m not advocating spirituality by another name, I’m flirting with the idea of a different spirituality with the same name: a victory for redescription that would be, Luke.
Thursday at 20:41 • Like • 1
• Jim Hamlyn: I’ll click the “Amen” button to that!
Thursday at 23:40 • Like
• Brian Grassom: You seem to have misunderstood Derrida’s remarks, Jim. He does not imply belief through atheism, but questions whether one can “position” oneself as either a “believer” or an “atheist”. This is entirely in keeping with his work in what has been termed ”deconstruction” (a term that he did not invent, and which he is at pains to point out is neither a method nor a philosophical position positing a truth, much less any belief in God – and the word in that context is by convention spelled with a capital ‘G’). I find much of John Searle’s work very good indeed, Foucault too, although I would disagree with them on some issues – but both require careful reading. I am with Ken here … I think … but would draw the line at pragmatism, which, as an ‘ism’, I would not say “Amen” to, nor would I to any other thought that positions itself as a ‘truth’. This is not to say I do not appreciate the line from Bacon to Rorty – I do, very much – but I do not think it wise to decide that this line constitutes ‘truth’ in any privileged way, although Rorty’s views are quite similar to Derrida’s. I repeat, that art is (to my mind) important because it lives with ambiguity, uncertainty, indeterminateness: it deals in that currency – not in facts, positions, concretizations, and sermons. I am now determined after this conversation not to use the word ‘spiritual’ when speaking about art – which until now I have not. It is – as I always suspected – too volatile for most people. Sorry, Ken.
Yesterday at 00:21 • Like
• Anita Jean: A question from ken’s last comment if you start the sentence ‘a spiritual person to me…’ that infers a person needs to learn to be spiritual? That maybe only the potential to be spiritual is naturally present but a person isn’t basically spiritual. This might be part with needing to learn to see art, so then is the atheists spirituality for the educated elite? Another part of that sentence I find intriguing is ‘lived relations’. If spirituality exists on your terms I’d prefer it had a communal aspect. Which is missing in Jim’s definition. Though I’m still enjoying mulling it over. A mix of Jim’s definition plus some kind of head nod to shared nature of existence. I’d say the word spirituality has already begun to move away from the theists grasp. Id say Jims definition isn’t the same for theists, or possibly shouldn’t be for a Christian theist.
Yesterday at 03:35 • Like
• Jim Hamlyn: Me oh my, where to start? Great questions by the way Anita but I’m going to try to sum up my ‘position’ (such as it is [I will come back to this spatialisation too Ken).
For me (and this is obviously not “communal” but nonetheless exists in a social frame (network even!) that I take to be strongly implied by the context of “human relations” and is therefore perhaps the “head nod” you seek) this whole discussion (and the entire human conversation I would suggest as per Rorty and Michael Oakeshott from whom he takes a cue) comes down to a question of interpretation where much hangs on one’s acceptance, or rather tolerance of ambiguity. That was (dare I say precisely) what I was trying to get to in what you describe as my “definition” (put forward more as a proposal) and is why I am finding Brian’s addition “a willingness, or openness, to explore” extremely enlightening. Interpretation, one might argue, is in itself a willingness or openness to explore an elaborate and stimulating confusion of impressions, associations and emotions but I think at some point we have no other option (if we wish to make any sense of the confusion rather than simply wallow in it, which is certainly an option but not by my reckoning an exploration – hence the centrality of interpretation [I’m thinking of Rorty again]) than to establish some points of fixity. Even when running, our feet still touch the floor. Let me try to be more clear (since, in this case, the possible ambiguity of communication is something I wish to minimize [a footfall if you will – very Derridean]).
If we accept that existence is a process of interpretation (amongst other things granted) that seeks sense (and this is vital) then at some point it is inevitable that we should weigh anchor and survey our surroundings at certain points. We can’t float aimlessly and endlessly because this is not in our nature (difficult term I know), not for long anyway. We wouldn’t be where we are if not for the desire, the tendency and the fact that we have established some parameters.
My intention here is to use this metaphor, of the need to establish foundations (no matter how provisional [which is why, perhaps, the metaphor of an anchor is preferable]), as a means to go on.
Now back Monsieur Derrida. You’re absolutely right Brian, I have “misunderstood” Derrida (can you honestly claim any different for yourself though and stay consistent? I would wager not.). His is a port that I will no longer weigh anchor in for I believe the waters are as murky as squid ink and the sands shift with the tides such that no anchor ever finds a clear purchase and no sooner have you set your boat to ground than you find yourself once again at sea. Misunderstanding is the cargo carried by so many ships that visit that port and the inhabitants speak in many strange tongues and live by customs that no man will ever fathom. I have lodged there many a night in earnest but fruitless labour in the hope of something more steadfast than an spiralling array of glimmers from the darkness. For some, so I hear, these distant glimmers are a source of meaning and guide to navigation but for me they are a nothing more than a ungraspable constellation of apparitions.
The ambiguity of art is quite enough for me and I revel in the interpretations. But I look to philosophy (as some look to religion) for clarity not for more confusion.
Yesterday at 07:05 • Like • 1
• Ken Neil: Thanks Jim, you’ve thrown in a useful analogy, one which helps me offer a quick response to Brian’s comment. So let’s say firstly that each of all ‘isms’ (with varying degrees of cogency and perceptibility) offers a mappable and accessible harbour in which to weigh anchor (permanently or temporarily). Let’s say now that each of these harbours represents a version of the truth, for the sake of argument. I’m fully with Jim, then, that the practice of weighing anchor in harbours is not a practice from which one desists for fear of advocating a relationship with *a* form of truth – cooperative discourse in Philosophy, philosophy or politics, for examples, requires the sharing of perspectives from different anchor points – truth perspectives. Problems arise, however, from those whose anchor is totally stuck in one harbour, and the barnacles stick when that harbour claims *sovereignty* on Truth. Now we can see a paradox of pragmatism as a mode of critical inquiry – because to weigh anchor here is to necessarily weigh anchor temporarily *at the same time* as never being too far from the pragmatic harbour – kind of a quantum mariner’s practice. The important point is not to dismiss harbours (pragmatist ones, Derridean ones, Baconite ones, Christian ones, Muslim ones, Socratic ones, Feminist ones….) because they all appeal to versions of the truth, rather, we should accept pragmatically that harbours are part and parcel of navigating the complex world of lived relations and to look into the implications of one harbour or another. What I have just described is the implication of dropping anchor in a pragmatist truth-harbour, of course. If you pushed me on the paradox to say that that is but a big Truth disguised as a tolerant one, then I’d say, as a pragmatist mariner, yes, that’s right, it’s a tolerant big Truth, and one that would be very welcoming to as many ships as sailed up! Truth here, of course, is an offer of a worldview, or life practice, and, as Jim implies, the individual, the group, the country, can move between them for reasons of their own devising. And it might seem odd that, as a self-styled FB pragmatist, I am advocating relationships with truth-harbours, but it aint possible to avoid these relationships in the way you maybe implied, Brian…which makes me think that you have already weighed anchor in a Derridean-Rortyan harbour, an appealing complex of thought-as-offered-truth which permits intellectualism as staycation and vacation all from the comfort of your own home – the thought-as-offered-truth which allows no barnacling up of vessel or anchor, while still harbouring a degree of cogency and perceptibility, and protection. I’m gonna stick with saying that there is something spiritual in that harbour, something spiritual in the way in which the creative and imaginative outputs of humankind, from all manner of harboured perspectives, are taken as the big drivers of lived-relations all of which is an antidote to the fundamentalism of fixed anchors, and my anchor is steadfast on that point me hearties: for to stick to that harbour is to not stick, and if we need to shift the axis of normative thought to compute that non-contradictory contradiction then let’s do that at the same time as practising a different usage of the word spiritual.
Yesterday at 10:08 • Like • 2
• Brian Grassom: I’m feeling a little seasick, with all these maritime metaphors, and am resisting the urge to suggest that you are ‘all at sea’. Let me put my point in a different way, mostly land-locked. Ken brought up the subject of “spirituality”, with a view to “reclaiming” the word – that is the point of the discussion, not which “harbours” one might or might not frequent, or swim around or “wallow” in, or make one’s “home”. Instead of drawing upon analogies let’s return to reason. And here, since Jim has decided that Derrida is “gibberish” (an interesting word, which does a little violence to our Darwinian cousins) why not use some of the Frenchman’s (not a ship!!!) techniques. I am already accused of being a “Derridean”, at “home”, an effete intellectual with no impact on the ‘real’ world, so there’s nothing to lose (except what might be lost by irritating Jim, and that’s a risk I’m more than willing to take).
Ken, you speak of “reclaiming” the word “spiritual(ity)”. My questions to both of you are: from whom are you ‘reclaiming’ it; perhaps more importantly – for whom?. Who is the rightful owner of this word? You imply it is being reclaimed by you – as the rightful owners – and on behalf of someone, or some group. Who, or what, is their identity? Because this is crucial to the use and understanding of the word. And who ‘owned’ the word in the first place? Again, you seem to imply it was you, or perhaps the illusive ‘weltanschauung’ (is this not a “fixed position”, and spatial, but as you say – how can we avoid it)?
You speak of “sovereignty”. Well, here is a classic case. Who has the sovereign right (droit) to this word ‘spiritual(ity)’. You wish to wrest it from the “grasp” of whom? Who are the ‘others’, the ‘infidels’ who have not understood it’s significance, it’s ‘truth’, it’s rightful inheritance? And who are the Knights Templar who do understand, who are initiated, who hold the secret of the word, and who are now “reclaiming it” – as one would a city, a province, a space, a prop[propre])erty – and in who’s name (reason, common sense, intersubjectivity, commonality, reality)? Does it belong in Ken’s – dare I say it – “harbour”, as he is suggesting – it being the only reasonable one and one that we all know (do we all?) does not make a claim to sovereignty – a kind of ‘coalition of the willing’ taking unilateral lexical action. Or is it Jim, ensconced (excuse the medieval metaphors) behind his absolute distrust of the Frenchman (still not a ship!!!) who chatters in that intolerable language of the apes, “gibberish”?
Once you have “reclaimed” or ‘reap[propre]riated this ‘holy grail’ (Amen, Amen to that), and set it “shining” through poetry, art, and all thing duly subservient to the sovereign holiness of the ‘real’ and the ‘pragmatic’, and the undoubtedly ‘scientific’ and universal weltanschauung (who holds sovereignty there?), what will you do with it? Are we heading toward a new Jerusalem, where the word has one, identifiable meaning that we all (at least in our tiny milieu) know to be the One, the True One, the “Truth”, the transcendental signified of the presence of (what: reason, common sense, intersubjectivity, commonality, reality, weltenschauung, or the Oxford English dictionary: which will only guide us but not satisfy our holy pilgimage?); one meaning, the one meaning, the one and only meaning of “spiritual(ity)” to those who can understand, and can sign for it’s ‘true’, it’s ‘proper’, use.
I am always bemused by how we are quick to accuse ‘others’ of our own faults. Perhaps a little ‘deconstruction’ is a worthwhile irritation.
Non, in the name of reason, I will not use it.
JD
Yesterday at 16:43 • Like
• Brian Grassom: Ooops! I’ve just realized that we were in agreement Ken, before I launched into my uncalled for defence. My heartfelt apologies. But I would still urge caution in the use of the word, much as I like it, for the reasons given above – with me as one of the seasick crusaders instead of being JD.
Yesterday at 19:15 • Unlike • 2
• Ken Neil: Ahoy, Brian! We are still in the same vessel, yes. Thank you very much indeed for your contribution to the exchange, and to Jim too, and Anita. Your last comment Brian has made me add a topic to my list for future bloggy attention – the balance of reason and analogy (or simply story telling maybe) in the formation of credible and appealing, I’ll say it, *harbours* from which to ponder a perspective. It might cause us to luff up, but I’ll take art’s analogising and metaphorising as central tools in fashioning a pragmatist chart. (I might still flirt with that word spiritual with the continued intent to pinch it for my chapter of unspecified mariners – but you are quite right that caution is verily required when making a case for being the skipper of a privileged vessel.)
Yesterday at 20:43 • Like • 2
• Anita Jean: I’ve found this really interesting and quite glad to be heading into the uni setting again soon. Thanks
Some of these words remind me of a phrase from my theist background ‘all truth is held in tension’.
I would obviously have to disagree that to be a theist is to collect barnacles. Although I admit I’ve not stayed completely out of trouble with the theist harbour masters for encouraging little boats to do more sailing.
As I spend some time off next week making work I’ll be mulling over ‘an elaborate & stimulating confusion of impressions, associations and emotions ‘ and ‘a person who can see the mutability, fallibility, transubstiantionability and contingency of all of our contributions to the world of lived relations’ to see if they make good navigation software for making and viewing art or the spiritual of art.
21 hours ago • Like • 2
• Jim Hamlyn: By chance I read the following by Michele de Montaigne yesterday morning in one of his blog posts (!) entitled:
THAT IT IS FOLLY TO MEASURE TRUTH AND ERROR BY OUR OWN CAPACITY
“Tis a presumption of great danger and consequence, besides the absurd temerity it draws after it, to contemn what we do not comprehend. For after, according to your fine understanding, you have established the limits of truth and error, and that, afterwards, there appears a necessity upon you of believing stranger things than those you have contradicted, you are already obliged to quit your limits.”
and
“Why do we not consider what contradictions we find in our own judgments; how many things were yesterday articles of our faith, that to-day appear no other than fables? Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us to leave anything doubtful and undecided.”
I think this has a lot to say about our articles of faith and scepticism. But when we set sail it’s important to choose an appropriate vessel for the waters one intends to navigate as well as the cargo one intends to carry or must perforce carry due to one’s nature (“our own capacity”).
We could as easily apply a Freudian analysis (as a deconstructive analysis that is) to ken’s fixation (flirtation) with the spiritual and find it reveals insights (repressed urges): its claim to “reclaim” to “pinch” spirituality. From whom? From the father and the son of course. An oedipal urge to wrestle away and possess the third enigmatic and ‘impenetrable’ element of the trinity from its (her?) male counterparts. Preposterous? Well yes, but only when we demand truth. If instead we seek meaning I think we have a different story – literally. And in that “tension” between truth and meaning, between fact and significance, is lodged all kinds of “misunderstanding” and disagreement.
14 hours ago • Like
I have read (and re-read many times ) the posts above. There are many elements that I find agreement with. For a large part I am struck with the feeling that mostly they describe the idea of searching for the spiritual (in things or experience). If I may I would like to throw a different perspective into the mix. And that is that we are spiritual in the first instance and experiencing the human.
Even if you have difficulty with the idea of spirit, simply thinking of everything that happens to you in the next week from a third person stance is enlightening. I would compare the change to the epiphany I experienced when attending the many compulsory drawing classes in foundation year. There came a point when I stopped looking when drawing and started seeing. When I believe I am having a ‘Human Experience’ I stop seeking (a reason or someone to blame or explain) and start feeling (experiencing) with the understanding that this is why I am here.
I’m not sure if you can put aside a word because of it’s history and connotations, if it is indeed the most apt word for the art work. As the meaning of words is not entirely fixed but changes with humanity passing through time. Perhaps at this point in time the general living population (atleast round these parts) is growing to re negotiate a (hopefully eventually shared) meaning for the word spiritual. The word still seems relevant and in use but it’s definition already seems to be more flexible. At least I’ve heard the word used by people from an atheist and a theist position to describe something, but even in the theists vocabulary their definition seemed somewhat mutable.
Perhaps, we don’t know fully what our shared definition of a word like spiritual is currently, but we can say that artwork like that sited by Ken is best described as spiritual, then perhaps the material art can better help us to see what spiritual is today.
Of course perhaps there would be no consensus on the art and therefore no ability to go further in seeing the word better. That begs the question of how grounded our anchors have to be to go any further forward in ambiguity/meaning/truth.
This is part of the trouble which I was partly thinking of when I asked about a shared nature for the atheists spirituality. If all is ambiguous then how can one say anything? If it is completely individualistic (‘your spiritual, my spiritual the end’) and entirely mutable (‘you can’t know that, all meaning is moving beyond your grasp no matter your speed over the water’), then surely no one can speak.
And if no one can speak then we are alone. Or at least our connection is greatly reduced. It’s a world with no harbours at all, no place to meet. The complete opposite of the fundamentalist who collects barnacles as he refuses to renegotiate what he affirms as reality, he’s built his house and only visits his boat occasionally to make sure it’s still fastened hard. So to use the phrase I’ve mentioned already this could be a place where truth is held in tension. We can not only sail for we shall be alone and we have a need for something to affirm even if loosely (as Jim’s possibly describing with his time in Derrida), and we mustn’t only anchor.
So in this case perhaps the art work forms part of the ocean floor for anchors. As in we could begin to see the word spiritual through the art rather than the art through the description of the word. This is potentially particularly valid currently because I think shared meanings for words like spirituality are being renegotiated.
(It’s possibly a weak link but one of the Edinburgh Science festival talks is called ‘Good with out God?’ and I’m reminded of this while we discuss what spiritual means. http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/whats-on/categories/talk/good-without-god )
But this approach to seeing art is possibly swapping the way that Jim prefers things, if art is his ambiguity and philosophy his steadfast…
Anita, I think you have made a very catholic – if I can use the word – summary: and a very thoughtful one. I particularly like your sentence: “As in we could begin to see the word spiritual through the art rather than the art through the description of the word”. But I think there is one tiny fly in the ointment. I know (at least I think I do) what you mean by this, but I wonder if you can “see a word” through art – you can only see, perhaps, what it refers to, in other ‘words’ what it means. Also “Perhaps at this point in time the general living population (at least round these parts) is growing to re-negotiate a (hopefully eventually shared) meaning for the word spiritual. The word still seems relevant and in use but it’s definition already seems to be more flexible.” This, I think, is absolutely true.
But here’s the rub. The word ‘spiritual’ in the sense that we are (at least I think we are) using it takes in a vast swathe of what essentially is our Western culture, and quite possibly huge tracts of other, particularly Eastern, cultures (allowing for translation). The word is, as Jim noted at the start, practically inseparable from other words. It is linked to them in it’s meaning. Words such as ‘supernatural’, ‘spiritualism’, and so on, which we may (or may not) wish to suppress. Also other words, which of course bring with them concepts: such as ‘God’ and ‘Truth’. Now, these two words (and their like) Ken wants to keep out of the space in which the new ‘spiritual’ abides. But is this possible?
One may say that what is meant by ‘spiritual’ is “good without God” or something similar. But there is more to the concept of ‘God’ than just goodness (though Plato held this to be paramount). There is humility, unconditional love, infinity, immortality, eternity, peace, forgiveness, omniscience, omnipotence, and so on. These are – arguably (most of them) – conscious or unconscious aims, or aspirations, of humanity. They all come with the ‘God’ package. And ‘spiritual’ – like it or not – is inseparably linked to the ‘God’ package. Or, if you are a Buddhist, to the “Truth” package (although ‘spiritual’ might be transcribed as ‘openness’ perhaps, but all the other words in the list apply here too). Now, it begins to develop into a theological problem as well as lexical one. At this point we could take it further and introduce negative theology, where the word ‘God’ is never used, deliberately, in order to get a more ‘authentic’ grasp of the goal of these aspirational aims. But ‘spiritual’ would not fit – by dint of it’s connotations – into that discipline, without the acknowledgement of ‘God’s’ presence by ‘his’ absence, or the ‘spiritual’s’ presence by ‘it’s’ absence. The only alternative – as you intuitively divined – is “silence”.
So, this is why – although I agree wholeheartedly with the ‘spirit’ of Ken’s proposal, and would fain propose it myself – I don’t see (logically, rationally) how ‘spiritual’ can fit. To have the definition ‘spiritual’ without linking it to ‘God’ is difficult – unless it means, or refers to, or signifies, something previously “unheard of” (Derrida), that will open up completely new (dimensions) [consider that word crossed out, suspended] that can be (shared) [consider that word suspended too]. I look forward to that day. Meanwhile, we continue to delight in words: “Thank God”, as Ken said. And again, thank you for your summary: very thoughtful.
LIKE!
Keep your eyes on this – will be good – http://web.me.com/briangrassom/artist/Blog/Blog.html
Fascinating stuff, and another perceptive summary. I very much look forward to tuning into your blog Brian. You’re quite right to reclaim ‘God’ from my sarcastic usage – or flirtatious usage – and reposition it as an indicator of a some thing beyond (paradoxically) logic and rationality – that thing being the sum thing of your concatenation of human aspirations – a metonym of love which defies and escapes the technics of lexical play (but which is all the same brought into existence by the clarity of thought of the Philosopher proper?). The rationality which drives my redescription, or reclamation, of ‘spiritual’ in my bloggy post, is a rationality for sure: the difference in our methods being not one of logical or rational clarity, but one of degree of supposition apropos what words can or can’t mean by conventions of usage. I guess my strictest line on the flirty redescription of ‘spiritual’ is to say that it *is* still connected to god, but that that connection is understood now in different ways (thanks to different practices of usage), so too the thing with which connection is made. This is not to suppress God-god by tricks of language only to hold, what, Him?, behind a curtain, disavowing His presence by a linguistic banishing which only results in a presentness through forced absence: rather, it is to make a claim for god as snuff: as a potent and curious substance the usage of which is now waning, let’s say, for a complex of reasons. We don’t pretend that we never did it, and we don’t fret over changing custom. God does not own the spiritual and the spiritual is not intimately linked with God-god – by my bloggy logic at least – any more than your logic and rationality keeps God alive, or my logic and rationality kills him off. And it won’t be logic and rationality that wins this one out, of course, it will be the relative mucky-human persuasiveness of the white cloth & the wine & the goblet & the bread…versus the abstract painting – oh, but remember, these practices are, at root, both the same; each a magical convention of art which brings spirituality to the world of lived relations. You’ve put your finger on it in your closing Heideggerianism, Brian, that art (god or painting or snuff) can open up completely new (and somehow already-there waiting-to-be-revealed) dimensions for us to share and not colonise. How about this as a flirty provocation, then: with a little bit more faith in art (god, painting, snuff, lexical play) we could be closer to that day than you think?!
The other aspect of spirituality that we haven’t yet discussed (though it’s been floating along with us from the outset) is mysticism and particularly the degree to which mysticism, by definition, is a form of exclusion (whether by accident or or design) of the uninitiated. I think Anita raised a very similar point with her question about “spirituality for the educated elite” and her associated and important thoughts about the difference between spirituality, as something we might be thought to be born with (as part of the human condition or a ‘genetic predisposition’ if you prefer) and spirituality that is somehow conditioned, learned or acquired. As we have already discussed, the experience one confronts before some artworks does not inhere ‘in’ the substance of the object but is a response to it. But this confrontation is by no means universal and is formed through such things as education, experience and contemplation. In this sense both connoisseurship and mysticism are two side of the same coin and both can, and often do, pose as inaccessible gates through which even the initiated may not pass. To the degree that such domains offer themselves up for critical scrutiny then I am all for the acknowledgement that experience and expertise are sometimes highly complex and sophisticated and may at times require disparate reference points and prior knowledge. But to the degree to which they are occasionally used, and I’m thinking particularly of mysticism here and it’s close consort the spiritual, to exclude the uninitiated or worse to deceive them, then I think we should apply great scepticism if not seek expose their falsehoods. The problem, of course, is that many falsehoods aren’t even known to their perpetrators and they often appear especially seductive because they promise to resolve many of our ills. If there is little sacrifice to be made then perhaps there is no harm done. But there usually is a sacrifice to be made.
I’m a bit late to this party but it’s not often I wake up at 4am thinking about facebook comments so I’m returning as I have a few questions. I do feel I’m only grasping the periphery of the conversation so apologies if I’m missing the point at times. That does seem to be par for the course with this subject matter too and as Anita Jean says, ‘if no one can speak then we are alone’ so I’ll risk sticking my head above the parapet.
There is I think a difference between the experience when making art, which could be said to be transcendental at times, and the experience when stopping, standing back , so to speak , and looking at what you have done and experiencing it, and also from looking at it months or years later, from a greater distance in time. (It is very different again when you look at someone else’s work).
So I’ve been thinking, when does the spiritual part happen, if it does, when does that take place, presumably at each stage in some way if the work is successful? Is it initially related to being inspired, is it to do with the act of creativity? Or is it that place where you lose time, that almost meditative state, which I would guess is related to the unconscious in some way and some channeling of an unidentifiable amorphous something?
And thinking about transubstantiation, it seems to be divided in to two (probably at least two ) actions. That moment, not only when paint goes from being just paint to being ‘art’ but also the action of just putting the brush on the canvas and making a mark, pencil on paper , a stick on wet sand. Isn’t the making of a mark separate from the transformation of the material, are they both required to truly transubstantiate, or in Katy Armes case (http://www.katyarmes.com/#/nothing-hellington-church/4553709480), removing something, which creates a mark, making something into nothing which creates something else.
That moment when something internal becomes external, when a barely conscious thought becomes a concrete expression irrelevant of what is produced wouldn’t that be transubstantiation, yet not necessarily spiritual in any way, supernatural or secular. (I don’t quite understand the term supernatural applied to spiritualism Ken, I’m assuming you mean in a religious sense, but I thought supernatural just mean beyond scientific explanation and that seems very appropriate here)
And when we talk about ungraspable ideas and materials, the medium of film and sound, which exist purely as digital form are very interesting to me. We watch it and are left with nothing material , just the memory, of flickering lights and sound waves, we are almost talking about small miracles except the science can explain away the science of it, but not the spirituality of it.
And something else I’ve been thinking about is how is spirituality different from the sublime? And also how is the spiritual in art different from the ‘aura’?
Oh, dear. Now I feel like I’m attempting to play three-dimensional chess, trying to keep up with this ever-expanding and extremely interesting discussion (and I can’t even play well in the two-dimensional variety). So many rich and salient points have been made, but I’ll try to contribute as briefly as possible.
First of all, let me say I find Lisa’s take on all this extremely germane, and beautifully put. What she describes in the making of art is what I might venture, at great risk, to say could be a ‘reclaiming’ of the word ‘mysticism’, thereby bringing in Jim’s point. And here I would applaud Ken’s flirtation with the ‘spiritual’, in the sense that mysticism too might be in with a chance of a night-out on the town, proffering a somewhat different meaning from what we usually, or mistakenly, expect: especially any connotations of elitism, priesthood, mumbo-jumbo, or hocus-pocus, that Jim is so wary of (and quite right too).
Lisa’s description of what it is like to make art might be seen by some people as ‘non-sensical’, ‘irrational’, even ‘mystical’, where that means (mistakenly) the ‘jjggery-pokery’ of art. It might seem pretentious, and her work – especially – might appear at surface value to be nonsense too. But to an artist such as Lisa it is real, and the ‘process’ is real and concrete also. What is more, to other artists, or to more perceptive audiences, it is meaningful and therefore real. But it’s meaning does not come from the economy of the normative, the give and take of right and wrong, of proposition and rebuttal. It transcends that – being art … and of art – and hence pushes into that other domain (space again) which could – at a linguistic, cultural, trans-modal, push – be called ‘mysticism’.
There is “sacrifice” (Jim) here, but it is only the sacrifice made on the altar of material and social ‘reality’, and the potential – and willing – victim is the artist her/himself, who is often misunderstood, undervalued, neglected, or even the subject of derision by the majority. This may change with time, and eventually people with this kind of ‘vision’ will be the norm, and as Ken says, through “faith in art” that day might be realized sooner rather than later. Then what was thought to be uncertain and ‘mystical’ will be seen as certainty of a different kind. Perhaps this has also (I’m beginning to see, and must revisit Kristeva) something to do with the growing emergence of the ‘feminine’ principle (in humankind) as a “thinking woman” (I can’t remember who coined that phrase). Philosophy has tried, and failed, to provide an all-encompassing answer. As has religion. At that point, the trajectory rebounds beyond but within philosophy, religion, and every other human endeavour. Art can at least point in that direction, as it always has done.
Mysticism in (any) religion is one of the redeeming qualities of the latter. It leaves far behind the dogma, prejudice, violence, and narrowness that can dog religion – I say ‘can’ because it is always a mistake to make a hasty or uninformed judgement about such an important thing. Indeed ‘mystics’ are often persecuted by the ‘church’ universal, whatever that might be: science, politics, religion, philosophy. In this sense mysticism is not “by definition” obfuscation, manipulation, or mumbo-jumbo. Rather it is the possibility of an intuitive consciousness freed from the constraints of what ‘has to be’ in the practical exigencies of the everyday, in every field, although the field of art has a head start. Is it worth at least a one-night-stand, folks?
I wish I could reply to Lisa’s question about Benjamin’s ‘aura’ and the ‘sublime’ of Kant, Lyotard, Barnett-Newman, and how I would see that as relating to the ‘spiritual’ of Ken, but it might need a full essay, and a lot more thought.
You’re consistent Brian I’ll give you that! …and clear which I appreciate a great deal.
“eventually people with this kind of ‘vision’ will be the norm” I certainly hope not. What a frightening prospect. You make it sound like mystics are visionaries by definition but this is surely not the case. And why might have mystics so often been persecuted? Presumably due to their refusal, unwillingness or inability to communicate the structure of their beliefs or to make them available for scrutiny. I’m with Schopenhauer on this:
“we see all religions at their highest point end in mysticism and mysteries, that is to say, in darkness and veiled obscurity. These really indicate merely a blank spot for knowledge, the point where all knowledge necessarily ceases. Hence for thought this can be expressed only by negations, but for sense-perception it is indicated by symbolical signs, in temples by dim light and silence, in Brahmanism even by the required suspension of all thought and perception for the purpose of entering into the deepest communion with one’s own self, by mentally uttering the mysterious Om. In the widest sense, mysticism is every guidance to the immediate awareness of what is not reached by either perception or conception, or generally by any knowledge. The mystic is opposed to the philosopher by the fact that he begins from within, whereas the philosopher begins from without. The mystic starts from his inner, positive, individual experience, in which he finds himself as the eternal and only being, and so on. But nothing of this is communicable except the assertions that we have to accept on his word; consequently he is unable to convince.”
And while I’m burning sacred cows I may as well have a go at Walter Benjamin too and his unnecessarily vague (mystical even) idea of “aura” which was often little more than a nostalgic fudge, especially in his Short History of Photography. No wonder he thought the faster lenses of the late 19th century had banished aura from photography. If you look closely at Benjamin’s writing I think you’ll find very little explicit mention of exactly what he means by aura. But if I were to be a little more generous, because I do actually find a lot of his insights clear and convincing, I’d say that we could, with a little artistic licence, expand our understanding of his use of the term to mean very much the same as Ken intends for the word “spiritual”.
And what of the artist? Does s/he begin from “within” or “without” … ?
Damn! I should have known that you’d pick up on that Brian. But perhaps it’s worth dwelling on for a while – your question that is. You’ve opened up a whirlpool in front of me and tempting as it is to jump right in I think I’d end up falling into the same problem as I suspect that you see (with your deconstructivist hat on) in the Schopenhauer quote. I’ll try to avoid it and jump right in at the same time if I may.
I think Schopenhauer would probably reply to your question by saying something on the lines of “both simultaneously”. Evasive as this might sound I think it’s actually a pretty good answer (though I’m sure he’d put it infinitely more powerfully), especially considering the whirlpool that threatens to rip his vessel to tatters once he agrees to your either or option (“within” or “without”).
The binary in relation to art (or at least ‘art making’ which is the only sense in which it makes sense in relation to your question) is problematic I think because we’re talking about a process and I don’t think the metaphor holds. It’s like asking if the movement of a car is ‘in’ the engine or the flight of a bird is ‘in’ its wings.
I’m so glad you got that question out Brian.
Your answer Jim, can it be applied to how philosophy and mysticism flow together? Could ‘both simultaneously’ be applied to this type of faith in art? And in fact a faith in God or other wise, if it is a healthy one.
I’m imagining someone spreading their hand through water and following it with a second hand, (possibly a front crawl through life). The first hand being their spiritual experience the second being their philosophical critique (our rational perhaps).
So when one sees a piece of art they should ignore neither hand. Indeed I’m not sure if we’ve asked Ken why he feels it necessary to to be musing over the word spiritual (though we might have, it’s a long discussion!). From the beginning of the blog post he seems to think it’s been ‘demonised’. Perhaps that we have been trying to do the front crawl with only one arm? In this case the water is art.
Though I wonder if that could be the case in other area’s too. Here’s a quote from the book I’m reading atm which just reminded me to come back and have a look at this discussion.
‘The use of image in non-Western culture and healing remains more visible than in Western medicine at the present time. The medicine man, the witch-doctor and the shaman continue to practise both independently of, as well as alongside, mainstream medicine.’
Then the book (Art Therapy and Political Violence, with art without illusion, Kalmanowitz & Lloyd) quotes
‘The history of health practices is fascinating in and of itself, but more important, it provides us with ground; it tells us that the imagination has always been integral part of the healing process, regardless of cultural disguise. In each instance of history, the gifts of the imagination took primacy over pharmacy and surgery, and those who were skilled at wielding the powers of the image were rewarded with the greatest stature in healing hierarchy. The scientific age brought this acclaim to a screeching holt.’ (Achterberg 1985:7)
(please excuse my sloppy formatting)
(Btw in my last comment when I mentioned the ‘Good without God’ debate from the science festival, I didn’t actually mean to bring that into the discussion other than to site it as another example where a traditionally theistic domain i.e. morality, is being renegotiated in our current time. Much like what I believe is/will be happening to our understanding of the word ‘spiritual’.)
Anita makes a very nice analogy in her first two paragraphs, and the mention of other medicinal practices and philosophies is very pertinent to the discussion at this point. Jim, I’m tempted to put on a Socratic ‘hat’ and put some leading questions to you, following my original one above. But let me just say it more directly. Hearing your answer, Socrates would have gently brought you to the conclusion – according to the way you have read the passage from Schopenhauer – that the two (philosophy and mysticism) could not exist together simultaneously, as they appear to be in direct conflict, and that this would therefore apply to art also. But in fact we know that the question is implicit to art, as part of the stuff it deals with …. ambiguity, again, among other things. So you and Schopenhauer would be wrong. But you (both?) wisely, and intuitively, avoided this turn.
But in fact S. did not refute mysticism. On the contrary, he deserves much overdue credit for introducing concepts of Eastern philosophy and ‘mysticism’ to the Western mind. Among these concepts are the ‘mystical’ ascetic practice that one must withdraw completely the ‘will’ (as he put it) in order to attain the highest state of tranquility, beyond knowledge, pain and conflict. He would, I think, have seen philosophy itself as ultimately a part of this ‘will’. Again, he liked the idea that everything is really ‘one’ in the Brahmanic sense. If read from that viewpoint, which is in line with his whole output, the passage above has a different sense and meaning, which – I think – is more authentically Schopenhauer. He also thought that the aesthetic was a means to transcend the conflict and pain he observed in the ‘will’ to knowledge. Of course, he said all this within the discourse of philosophy … so now, reading the passage from this viewpoint, where does art (or the artist) begin?
Putting S. to one side, I think you are right – intuitively – and as Anita confirms, that the two can work, if not simultaneously (as they do appear to be conflictual), then alternately. Art, as a sea (oh, no) in which these two aspects move, turns things into questions rather than answers. (Hence art begins from a state of relative “ignorance”, as – incidentally, and you will know from our discussion on my ‘blog’ – John (Baldacchino) articulates in what I might term wonderful post-Derridean nuances in his new book, “Art’s Way Out”.
[at ])
I think we are in danger of drifting out to sea (or perhaps I just lost my anchoring). Anybody would think that there was no such thing as, obscurity, incomprehensibility, incoherence, over elaboration, deception, falsity, wanton opacity, rebarbativeness, obtuseness or mystification in art philosophy or religion. Quick, call the coast guard before I fall down the whirlpool!
Anita, you might like this: http://philosophybites.libsyn.com/category/John%20Cottingham