spiritual art
The Obvious Characteristics Of Contemporary Spiritual Craft
Lange Wei
ACD521 Theory Of The Object
Instructor: Sarah Gilbert
March 18, 2013
Spirituality is an old-fashion word. This word translatable as “spirituality” first appears in 5th century, derived from the Biblical "roeach/pneuma" and the Latin spiritualitas, which means to be put in motion, to be a living person, and being driven. In the book Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods, Kees Waaijman defines the traditional meaning of spirituality :
“The re-formation aims to recover the original shape of man, the image of God. To accomplish this, the re-formation is oriented at a mold, which represents the original shape: in Judaism the Torah, in Christianity Christ, in Buddhism Buddha, in the Islam Muhammad.” Which is a process of re-formation.
The meaning of the term "spirituality" (which is become much more vague) has changed by the time.
In the modern times "spirituality" gradually separate from the religious institutions, as "spiritual but not religious", according to a poll at 2005, about 24% of the U.S population as identifies itself as “spiritual but not religious." Modern spirituality is came to be related with private thought and discovery the inner world. Gradually, the word spiritual came to be associated with the private realm of thought and experience instead of to be connected with the public realm of membership in a religious institution with official denominational doctrines.
By associating with the private realm of thought and experience, modern spirituality not only separate from the religious institutions, but also goes to the opposite way of its original meaning: from obey an organized belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality, to break any mental models, reaching the realm of no belief, no security, no concept and no desire.
In the spiritual in twentieth-century art, Roger Lipsey said :
“The spiritual is not an abstract knowledge of cosmos or human nature; it is a renewed discovery, a beginning again and again.”
Most artists and audience start to interested in spiritual art is because of the depression, and the desire of get rid of it, as rami shapiro says
"We often don’t come to that spiritual ground until we’ve hit the bottom and have tasted the medicine of heartbreak." only when people truly feel their powerlessness, they start to touch something larger than their ego, their ego's suffering and fleeting happiness. Spiritual art helps people to reach something that "larger than their egos".
The ego, or in another word the "sense of self" could easily brings people negative emotions sometime: when people have a strong sense of self, they have a blue print of what type of people they will be, and what kind of situation they will experienced, all in all, they building mental models. While, when they meet something disturbance their ideal models, they feel upset and lost.
“From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a container already built for us to fit inside: a social security number, a gender, a race, a profession, an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in than what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies?”. Also, from the moment we are born, our brain tends to have a mental model gradually built for us to fit outside: in what situation I should feel sad; in what situation I should feel happy…
In the book Portrait From Memory, when Bertrand Russell talks about how to over come the fear of death, he says:
“ An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”
Bertrand Russell argues that the best way to eliminate sadness, pain, fear and other negative emotions is losing individual being, which is very tricky and true: if the originator (individual being) gone, its byproducts (negative emotions) gone.
When people try to separate from their previous models and the events their experienced, their pain relief: they are start to sense that they are not the event, they are the one who experience the events, are the one who doing all this, seeing all this, and experiencing all this. And the events just happen, which happen to the moment belongs to its moment, they do not belong to "you"----a sense of self, nor does it exist in some people's opinions.
The concept " lose the sense of self " always applied in modern spiritual art. Art and astonishing beautiful things could be a hint of other world, when people experience the world beyond they link themselves to that utopia and detached from the reality and “the sense of self”. Just like when a young man see a sunset over the ocean and, unable to express or analysis the motion that it rouses in him, briefly conclude that must be a world that lies beyond. It is difficult to any of us to resist the suggestion that a different realm's existence when we have intense aesthetic experience.
In modern spiritual art, artists helps audience “lose the sense of self” mainly by “Create a hint of another world” and “break the Zone of ego Protection”
Create a hint of another world
James Turrell’s “Meeting” (The Sky View Room at MoMA’s PS1), 1986
Meeting is basically composed of a 10 feet by 10 feet square room with a rectangular opening cut directly into the ceiling. Carefully calculated artificial lights produce an orange glow on the white walls of the room, permitting the viewer to appreciate the intensity of the sky’s color.
As Turrell described it in an Art21 interview: “There’s this four-square seating that’s inside, seating toward each other, having a space that created some silence, allowing something to develop slowly over time, particularly at sunset. Also, this Meeting has to do with the meeting of space that you’re in with the meeting of the space of the sky."
When sitting in the room, people can’t help to look the ceiling window above them. From that window, people only could see a pure blue sky maybe with milky cloud sometimes. There is no contrast with the depth of sky, which is a uniform blue. They start to realize the closeness between themselves and atmosphere, they discover that they’re in the atmosphere, they are not separate from the sky at night or even during the day. Finally, they have the feeling that they are the one with universe by meeting with sky. When people integrate themselves into the universe, they detach from their own ego at that very moment. The “Temporary amnesia” let people forget all their secular persistence, persistence of depression, trepidation, ecstasy…the persistence of a secular ego. They become more open the to each other, as an audience says ”I felt so peaceful walking out of that room, like I had emerged from a really powerful Quaker Meeting. I wanted to shake hands with everyone who was there.”
The similar idea could be found in Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde’s Nimbus II, Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto's salt maze floor installations
Nimbus II, 2012 Hotel MariaKapel, Hoorn, Netherlands
salt maze floor installations, 20111, Motoi Yamamoto
Break the Zone of ego Protection
Ann Hamilton: Pinhole Photography
America artist Ann Hamilton invents a method of taking pictures by opening her mouth: she places a small pinhole camera within her mouth’s interior. When her mouth opens, the film is exposed. The resulting image is a trace presence of standing or sitting “face to face” with a person or landscape.
“You’re never supposed to have your mouth open in public. Like, you don’t see people standing around, you know . . . You never supposed to open your mouth in public, It’s a vulnerable position; it’s a place where you’ve relaxed and you’ve let yourself be open and vulnerable in a way.”
What Ann Hamilton doing is using expose the vulnerability as a path to break the zone of ego protection. People have the “sense of self” mainly by draw a line between the “self” and the ” External”, the main function that line which between “self” and “external” is protection. Without the eager of need protection, the “sense of self” could easily collapses. The newborn infants can not distinguish themselves with their mother, they think they and their mothers is one person, maybe the reason of that phenomenon is their mother are always protect them, their vulnerability is their mother’s vulnerability, they don’t have the concept of protection.
Pinhole cameras
Can we back to the stage of no protection, bravely expose our tenderness? In spiritual art, artists channel us to expose our mental tenderness, or say mental vulnerability (instead of encourage people get physical injury) to got a real fearlessness heart, to break the container of ego, just like Chogyam Trungpa says:
“Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.”
“Expose tenderness ” or say break the zone of ego protection, always applied in modern spiritual art, which help people being open, also is the first step of lose the sense of self, to explore a world that lies beyond.
Maybe keep the zone of ego protection keep us temporarily feel safe, but the feeling of “alienation” is evitable happens. There is a struggle for everyone between choose to break the ego protection and choose to be “safe”, be alienated, as spiritual artist Paige Bradley says:
“My recent work has become a symbol of struggle -- both being contained and liberating ourselves from self-inflicted boundaries. Fears of ostracism, avoiding distinction and hiding from greatness are all thoughts that come to mind. These fears create sculptures wrapped in extraordinary tension. The figures struggle to unveil themselves in order to become understood and known. These bound figures give me a sense of unrest as if too much life is jammed into too restrictive of space. I feel as if I am trying to live my truth free and unveiled in a society that would rather keep us contained.”
Focusing on tensions and liberations in her work, she feel most of human emotions are locked into an existential cocoon. Her sculptures show the human race as a singular individual searching for connection with self-inflicted boundaries but finding only alienation.
Paige Bradley Expansion 2011
Lange Wei
ACD521 Theory Of The Object
Instructor: Sarah Gilbert
March 18, 2013
Spirituality is an old-fashion word. This word translatable as “spirituality” first appears in 5th century, derived from the Biblical "roeach/pneuma" and the Latin spiritualitas, which means to be put in motion, to be a living person, and being driven. In the book Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods, Kees Waaijman defines the traditional meaning of spirituality :
“The re-formation aims to recover the original shape of man, the image of God. To accomplish this, the re-formation is oriented at a mold, which represents the original shape: in Judaism the Torah, in Christianity Christ, in Buddhism Buddha, in the Islam Muhammad.” Which is a process of re-formation.
The meaning of the term "spirituality" (which is become much more vague) has changed by the time.
In the modern times "spirituality" gradually separate from the religious institutions, as "spiritual but not religious", according to a poll at 2005, about 24% of the U.S population as identifies itself as “spiritual but not religious." Modern spirituality is came to be related with private thought and discovery the inner world. Gradually, the word spiritual came to be associated with the private realm of thought and experience instead of to be connected with the public realm of membership in a religious institution with official denominational doctrines.
By associating with the private realm of thought and experience, modern spirituality not only separate from the religious institutions, but also goes to the opposite way of its original meaning: from obey an organized belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality, to break any mental models, reaching the realm of no belief, no security, no concept and no desire.
In the spiritual in twentieth-century art, Roger Lipsey said :
“The spiritual is not an abstract knowledge of cosmos or human nature; it is a renewed discovery, a beginning again and again.”
Most artists and audience start to interested in spiritual art is because of the depression, and the desire of get rid of it, as rami shapiro says
"We often don’t come to that spiritual ground until we’ve hit the bottom and have tasted the medicine of heartbreak." only when people truly feel their powerlessness, they start to touch something larger than their ego, their ego's suffering and fleeting happiness. Spiritual art helps people to reach something that "larger than their egos".
The ego, or in another word the "sense of self" could easily brings people negative emotions sometime: when people have a strong sense of self, they have a blue print of what type of people they will be, and what kind of situation they will experienced, all in all, they building mental models. While, when they meet something disturbance their ideal models, they feel upset and lost.
“From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a container already built for us to fit inside: a social security number, a gender, a race, a profession, an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in than what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies?”. Also, from the moment we are born, our brain tends to have a mental model gradually built for us to fit outside: in what situation I should feel sad; in what situation I should feel happy…
In the book Portrait From Memory, when Bertrand Russell talks about how to over come the fear of death, he says:
“ An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”
Bertrand Russell argues that the best way to eliminate sadness, pain, fear and other negative emotions is losing individual being, which is very tricky and true: if the originator (individual being) gone, its byproducts (negative emotions) gone.
When people try to separate from their previous models and the events their experienced, their pain relief: they are start to sense that they are not the event, they are the one who experience the events, are the one who doing all this, seeing all this, and experiencing all this. And the events just happen, which happen to the moment belongs to its moment, they do not belong to "you"----a sense of self, nor does it exist in some people's opinions.
The concept " lose the sense of self " always applied in modern spiritual art. Art and astonishing beautiful things could be a hint of other world, when people experience the world beyond they link themselves to that utopia and detached from the reality and “the sense of self”. Just like when a young man see a sunset over the ocean and, unable to express or analysis the motion that it rouses in him, briefly conclude that must be a world that lies beyond. It is difficult to any of us to resist the suggestion that a different realm's existence when we have intense aesthetic experience.
In modern spiritual art, artists helps audience “lose the sense of self” mainly by “Create a hint of another world” and “break the Zone of ego Protection”
Create a hint of another world
James Turrell’s “Meeting” (The Sky View Room at MoMA’s PS1), 1986
Meeting is basically composed of a 10 feet by 10 feet square room with a rectangular opening cut directly into the ceiling. Carefully calculated artificial lights produce an orange glow on the white walls of the room, permitting the viewer to appreciate the intensity of the sky’s color.
As Turrell described it in an Art21 interview: “There’s this four-square seating that’s inside, seating toward each other, having a space that created some silence, allowing something to develop slowly over time, particularly at sunset. Also, this Meeting has to do with the meeting of space that you’re in with the meeting of the space of the sky."
When sitting in the room, people can’t help to look the ceiling window above them. From that window, people only could see a pure blue sky maybe with milky cloud sometimes. There is no contrast with the depth of sky, which is a uniform blue. They start to realize the closeness between themselves and atmosphere, they discover that they’re in the atmosphere, they are not separate from the sky at night or even during the day. Finally, they have the feeling that they are the one with universe by meeting with sky. When people integrate themselves into the universe, they detach from their own ego at that very moment. The “Temporary amnesia” let people forget all their secular persistence, persistence of depression, trepidation, ecstasy…the persistence of a secular ego. They become more open the to each other, as an audience says ”I felt so peaceful walking out of that room, like I had emerged from a really powerful Quaker Meeting. I wanted to shake hands with everyone who was there.”
The similar idea could be found in Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde’s Nimbus II, Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto's salt maze floor installations
Nimbus II, 2012 Hotel MariaKapel, Hoorn, Netherlands
salt maze floor installations, 20111, Motoi Yamamoto
Break the Zone of ego Protection
Ann Hamilton: Pinhole Photography
America artist Ann Hamilton invents a method of taking pictures by opening her mouth: she places a small pinhole camera within her mouth’s interior. When her mouth opens, the film is exposed. The resulting image is a trace presence of standing or sitting “face to face” with a person or landscape.
“You’re never supposed to have your mouth open in public. Like, you don’t see people standing around, you know . . . You never supposed to open your mouth in public, It’s a vulnerable position; it’s a place where you’ve relaxed and you’ve let yourself be open and vulnerable in a way.”
What Ann Hamilton doing is using expose the vulnerability as a path to break the zone of ego protection. People have the “sense of self” mainly by draw a line between the “self” and the ” External”, the main function that line which between “self” and “external” is protection. Without the eager of need protection, the “sense of self” could easily collapses. The newborn infants can not distinguish themselves with their mother, they think they and their mothers is one person, maybe the reason of that phenomenon is their mother are always protect them, their vulnerability is their mother’s vulnerability, they don’t have the concept of protection.
Pinhole cameras
Can we back to the stage of no protection, bravely expose our tenderness? In spiritual art, artists channel us to expose our mental tenderness, or say mental vulnerability (instead of encourage people get physical injury) to got a real fearlessness heart, to break the container of ego, just like Chogyam Trungpa says:
“Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.”
“Expose tenderness ” or say break the zone of ego protection, always applied in modern spiritual art, which help people being open, also is the first step of lose the sense of self, to explore a world that lies beyond.
Maybe keep the zone of ego protection keep us temporarily feel safe, but the feeling of “alienation” is evitable happens. There is a struggle for everyone between choose to break the ego protection and choose to be “safe”, be alienated, as spiritual artist Paige Bradley says:
“My recent work has become a symbol of struggle -- both being contained and liberating ourselves from self-inflicted boundaries. Fears of ostracism, avoiding distinction and hiding from greatness are all thoughts that come to mind. These fears create sculptures wrapped in extraordinary tension. The figures struggle to unveil themselves in order to become understood and known. These bound figures give me a sense of unrest as if too much life is jammed into too restrictive of space. I feel as if I am trying to live my truth free and unveiled in a society that would rather keep us contained.”
Focusing on tensions and liberations in her work, she feel most of human emotions are locked into an existential cocoon. Her sculptures show the human race as a singular individual searching for connection with self-inflicted boundaries but finding only alienation.
Paige Bradley Expansion 2011
