Saturday, January 16, 2010

"God is Love", Thoughts on Aesthetics

In my garden a lyrical sound came to my attention. Like a heart beating impossibly fast, the sound of hummingbirds’ wings is high and rhythmic. What is the source of all these wondrous creations? Why did God make the universe? Without hesitation my 11-year-old son replied, “God created the universe out of love”. This parallels my own thought that God was lonely. So then from this desire to share His great happiness and His love the Creator of the Universe began the unfolding process of existence.

You are of course thinking that you have to believe in God to even answer such a question, because you cannot prove the existence of God through empirical thought.” You might say I only believe in science because through inductive and deductive reasoning I can come to real provable results. In that regard may I point to this small fact, that all science is based on belief. “Science is based on this one belief, a first principle, that the human mind is capable of discovering and understanding all the working principles of the universe,”( Dr Philip Snider, University of Houston Biology Dept.) This hypothesis cannot, of course, be proven. So we see that “belief” in science is similar to “belief” in God, in so far as neither can be substantiated. Is this not, after all, the very definition of the word “belief.”

To phrase this in a slightly different manner, most think that science and religion are opposed because they come from different basic premises, but in fact they are the same. You might say that I cannot prove God exists, but I believe that God exists. In the same manner the basic principle of science is that the human mind can know the unknowable. This basic believe has yet to be proven true. A belief is something which cannot be empirically proven. We take a belief on faith. These two words belief and faith are intertwined. In other words that the human mind, thru scientific evaluation, can discover everything there is know about the universe and also understand that knowledge. Hmmm I wonder.

Dr. Daniel Price, (University of Houston Honors College), famously commented, “.....isn't that a sweet way to look at it. ‘God is love.’ What a sticky, emotional idea that is, and also fairly recent I might add.” (I am of course paraphrasing Dr. Price)

Daniel in your recent showing of “Natural Born Killers” what was the one thing that was strong enough to kill a demon? Do you remember what the psychopath said? Coming from the depths of his insanity there arose his greatest insight. The only thing able to overcome the demon was “Love”. So, from the mind of a madman, comes the simplest of truths. This truth is that “love” is not sticky sentimental emotion but rather that most powerful strength emanating from the human spirit.

Wars waged throughout history, employing techniques of violence and destruction, always yield results which eventually crumble. Conquered peoples have risen up and had revenge on their conquerors. The greatest empires built on violence have all faded. They ebb and flow across time like the sea onto the sand.

The most enduring concept human kind has contributed to its own existence is the concept of “Love”. Perhaps one might say this is new in western culture. A mere 2000 years ago Christ brought this message to the West. The Gautama Buddha, 500 years earlier, delivered it to the Orient. Buddhists speak of the four Noble truths, and an eight fold path. Christ asked us to love one another. Both these great thinkers have spoken simply of the concept we call “empathy”. Empathy is of course the wellspring of love for others.

Hinduism, with its roots extending far into prehistory, and its traditions passed down orally for 5000 years, focuses on “daily morality”, “karma”, and “right living”. Within these three concepts is the core concept of Love”.

Great nations, great empires, all seem to have God on their side. When in truth God is on the side of the individual. God is within the individual. The individual is part, and the same, as is that eternal Spirit to which we give the name God. Modern intellectuals tend to shy away from using the word God. I understand their inclination. They are hesitant to put their faith in any other than themselves. This is the bias of analytical thinking.

Personally, on the field of athletic competition, I have learned one thing. When I put my complete faith in myself I fall short of my goals. When I allow my faith to reside in a power greater than my own I succeed. In other words, when I accept that my analytically based physical training has limits but my spiritually based belief has no limits, I am able to succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Scripture tells us God would never put a dream in our hearts without also putting the ability there to achieve that dream. All we need to do is believe. This is the simplest of acts. And yet it is the most profound.

A man is living one moment, dead the next. What is the difference in that physical being we see before us? He may still be warm, his blood may still be flowing, and he may even have some brain wave activity. It is his eternal Spirit which has left his mortal body. This is why the man is now dead. And no matter what we might do to revive him our efforts would be futile.

Is there a high art, low art? What is art? Is art that which touches us deeply? Is it those things made by human hands, inspired by human hearts, which touch the human spirit, how we define art? If the human spirit is a part of the spirit of God then isn't the creation of art that loveliest of endeavors.

Joe

Monday, January 11, 2010

I was held in the arms of an angel.

There is this beautiful woman who sings in the choir at my church.

I mean she is exceptionally beautiful. She dresses with style and class. She is lovely of face and form. And she sings like an angel.

When she lifts up her voice in the Alleluia hymn she becomes radiant. From the pews she brought me to tears many times with the emotion in her voice.

Yesterday I got to stand tall and sing with her. Then during the sharing of the peace when everyone shakes hands, and says “peace of the Lord” to one another, as I extended my hand she drew me to her in a lovely warm embrace. Wow! I was held in the arms of an angel.


Sometimes in our darkest hours the radiant light of life shines brightest.
 
Joe

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Unspeakable Beauty of Being

The brilliant warm light of a spring day casts dramatic shadows on the high rock wall surrounding the Menil Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum. Looking up I see silhouetted a small building which has the outline of a Cypriot Chapel. To the eye the angles of the building are, however, decidedly modern. I wonder at this contrast. Walking up to the entrance of the building I pass a shallow black reflecting pool. The soft sound of a small fountain, light glinting off dark water, I feel my mood being manipulated by this space. I pass from a day full of natural light into a spiritual space imbued with a softly radiant ephemeral glow. I enter a world which is separate in time and space from my own.


I begin to realize that my journey to this spot began from a point far distant and converged to this central location. Inside the chapel modern architectural lines are again mixed with medieval proportions. I am immersed in a fluid experiential environment. Perhaps, as the great Erwin Panosky acutely observed, the use of geometry and perspective in art enables the human spirit to become a vessel for the divine. Within the house of these Holy Icons doors previously closed across my heart begin to open.

“In June 1983 the Menil Foundation was shown photographs of 13th century frescoes that had been cut into 38 pieces and removed from their original site near a Lysi, in the Turkish occupied section of Cyprus. They were going to be sold individually for profit and dispersed. Struck by the beauty of the photographs, the foundation asked its Washington attorney to investigate the origin of the frescoes and discovered that they came from Cyprus.
The Menil Foundation contacted both the Republic and the Church of Cyprus. With their knowledge and encouragement the foundation paid the ransom to the feeds and received possession of all 38 fragments which were then entrusted to an expert icon restorer in London,” From, A Byzantine Masterpiece Recovered, the Thirteenth-Century Murals of Lysi, Cyprus. Annemarie Weyl and Laurence J. Morrocco

The geometry of a building is first felt on an intrinsic level. By this I mean that we do not initially, consciously, think in terms of the geometry of the structure we have entered. Our first reaction is based on visceral feelings about the space and the light within it.

Kandinsky wrote, in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”
“…a child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame. And then it learns that light has not only an unfriendly, but also a friendly side: banishing darkness and prolonging the day, warming and cooking, delighting the eye. One becomes familiar with life by collecting these experiences and storing away this knowledge in the brain.”

Perhaps we might all agree that geometry and light within a space are one and the same. This is because architecture shapes the three-dimensional environment while affecting and presenting the light within it. This is done mainly through the placement of stained-glass windows. So in this regard I must also comment on the obvious, that light within a church is always rich with color.

Kandinsky goes on to say …
"In general, therefore, color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.
The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key. Thus it is clear that the harmony of colors can only be based upon the principle of purposefully touching the human soul.”

The church is the temple where the soul communes with its eternal God. If the colored light of the spirit touches directly one’s soul, and the Creator pours his light through the windows, then doesn't the geometry, which forms the space, create a fitting vehicle to facilitate this exchange?

Perhaps we might refer to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Famous Last Words”, where he postulated about perspective in the following manner…
“…. man began to measure the universe in terms of his own direct experience of life and death, and then he went on to the great work of creating good and evil. In the light of day, he said ‘white’ and in the darkness of night, he said ‘black’ and always remaining at the center of things he created perspective. The world was seen in terms of vanishing points and points of view with respect to the position of man's eye at about 5 feet above ground level and from that point he created high and low.

Past and future, near and distant, profound and superficial, true and false, single and multiple, subjective and objective, static and dynamic, these are a few examples of the complex of antinomies that has grown up around the human being as the fruit of his mind. In constant and ever more gigantic expansion, the process began with the first men who walked the earth, and it has continued until today…”

The content of a constructed architectural space, one might say, is a subject matter introduced by intellect and feeling with meaning. In short, content is the meaning made visible. This is what Henri Matisse was getting at when he said that drawing is "not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods." So too the softly lit and warmly colored ambiance surrounding the icons in the Byzantine Fresco Chapel facilitates communication of the spiritual intent of the makers. Is there a high art, low art? What is art? Is art that which touches us deeply? Is it those things made by human hands, inspired by human hearts, which touch the human spirit, how we define art? If the human spirit is a part of the spirit of God then isn't the creation of art that loveliest of endeavors.

I have come to understand that there is central dispute among art historians and critics about who actually creates a work of art. The question being this, is it the artist or the viewer. I must ask, “Why so serious?” When in fact we must surely say it is the interaction of the three factors involved which is the creation of art.


In this tranquil space a viewer approaches the icons. She kneels before an alter. Immersed in this environment, surrounded by light, she is not alone. They are not two together but three as one. These three are artist, image, and viewer. The strength of this iconic gesture is almost overwhelming. The scent of this creation fills her being. All the rest fades away. All that remains is the image and the space enfolding them. In this moment its need becomes her need. She feels the beat of its heart and the strength of its life as her eyes embrace it, and through her eyes her soul. It is that mysterious primitive part which is unlike her, and yet completes her. She yearns for this which is not part of her to become her, like shining rain in a thunderstorm light spills and falls from one onto the other. Viewer, image, and maker are as one. For this brief time together they transcend the ordinary and enter the sublime. The world around is lost to her in those bright moments of pure bliss. Her deep overwhelming need finds its satisfaction. Her ecstasy uncoils from a hidden core. Starting deep within it blossoms like the warmest memory of all past forbidden pleasures. St Theresa understood this. This is what great art can achieve. And this achievement is done in concert. With out any of the three the one cannot flower. And it is in this flowering that the true intrinsic, unknowable, and unspeakable, beauty of the human situation is apparent.

As I leave the Menil Fresco Chapel I realize I have left another world behind. My body and spirit were in tenth century Byzantium, on the island of Cyprus. One thousand years ago I knelt in a small stone chapel, spiritually engaged with the myth of the Christ. I step out into the bright light of 21st-century America. Enveloping me is the perfume of an ancient, almost forgotten, time. I walk on into the day and that lingering sweet fragrance slowly fades.

I am left with a poignant longing to return to the chapel.

Joe

Who creates the Work of Art?

Rudolf Arnheim, in "Art and Visual Perception", comments that "the forces to characterize the meaning of the story (of a work of art) come alive in the observer and produce the kind of stirring participation that distinguishes artistic experience from the detached acceptance of information"


James Elkins in "Critical Theory 22", points to this concept, "works of art have nothing to say except what we say to them they do not speak for themselves, viewers speak for the works, for example viewers put meanings, depending on their experiences, into the works they look at this position called reception theory holds that art is not a body of works but is rather an activity of perceivers making sense of images. A work does not have meaning in itself; it can mean something only to someone in the context"

I know also that there is a continuity of symbol over the millennia of human culture. This symbol is both art object and spiritual icon. I have experienced this at the Catholic mass. When at the moment the Priest holds the pure circle of the Host, named Christ, high above the congregation I am transported back to a time in Ancient Egypt as the Pharaoh Akhenaten stood to worship the disk of the rising Sun, named Aten-Ra. These simple gestures, seemingly separated by time and space, are in fact the same moment. This is the preeminent critical gesture. It is the intuitive, elemental, symbolic act. It is the essence of being human.

In “Eye and Mind” Merleau-Ponty tells us that, “A human body is present when, between the see-er and the visible, between touching and touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand a kind of crossover occurs, when the spark of the sensing/sensible is lit, when the fire starts to burn that will not cease until some accident befalls the body, undoing what no accident would have sufficed to do…”

I have come to understand that there is central dispute among art historians and critics about who actually creates a work of art. The question being this, is it the artist or the viewer. I must ask, “Why so serious?” When in fact we must surely say it is the interaction of the three factors involved; artist, artwork, and viewer, which are together the creation of art.

Joe