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| In the postmodern era from which we are emerging now, art was seen as a form of entertainment, or self-expression. Everyone seems to have forgotten that art can be something much deeper. It can nurture the deepest kind of growth for both the artist and the viewer. |
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| How can we understand the power of contemporary art to move people, to reach into the viewers' souls and transform their lives? Over the last fifty years we seem to have forgotten that art can have such power. In our museums we see people streaming through the contemporary galleries admiring the works, finding them beautiful, or interesting, or smiling at them. The artists are praised for being talented, or skilled, or witty, or simply for being authentic representatives of this or that culture or subculture. ... In commercial galleries, too, the whole setup is calculated to flatter the viewers, to reassure them that they are intelligent, educated, sophisticated, and affluent. "This art looks empty but you are clever enough to see its real worth. Won't you have another glass of wine? ..." We will not blame anyone for this regrettable situation: museums and galleries have to earn a living like everyone else and the patrons have the right to feel good about themselves. But we will not forget what they seem to have forgotten. What we explore here is a different kind of art. Before this kind of art the viewer will stand with tears in his eyes; he will move slowly through the gallery and as he responds to the emanations he senses from each work, his life will start to change. Though he may be standing in a huge gallery with hundreds of other viewers, he will feel himself enclosed in a space so private that he will feel afraid lest anything disturb it. Standing before the work, he will realize that there is something ineffable in it, something we will speak of as a divine presence; and he will realize that this same presence is in him, and that the work has summoned it up from his innermost part. Later he will not say that he saw the art: he will say that he encountered it. |
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| Married people learn from each other whether they want to or not. In those early years, Junko would sit with me on our couch and we would look together at reproductions of art works she admired. She would show me drawings by Rembrandt, and call my attention to the brush strokes, the ‚"breathing" and how each work could be "read." She did the same with paintings she admired by Klee, by Rouault, by de Kooning, and others, showing me how honest their lines were to their inner worlds. Then she showed me masterworks of Japanese art, and showed me how to look at them. This was not by any means a systematic course in art appreciation, but it was the kind of steady teaching, administered in small doses by a loved one, that makes the deepest change in the student. Just as they say that drops of water can melt stone if they are sustained over a period of time, in that way my own identity as one who had no interest in art was melted away and I began to be interested in art and to identify myself as someone who was interested in it. At the same time, I began to find a way into my own inner world. ... It was when we came into contact with a spiritual and psychic teacher in Japan, that both Junko's attitude toward her art and my attitude toward her art and my own life underwent a transformation. Before he ever saw Junko or any reproductions of her art, this teacher told an acquaintance of Junko's that he saw Junko's art psychically and that God was painting through her. The acquaintance relayed this information to us and both of us were surprised and mystified. Why on earth does God need to paint? Junko whispered. ... |
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| And this brings me back to the question with which Junko and I struggled so hard for so many years: Why on earth does God need to paint? Each of us has arrived at an answer‚ but you will not be surprised to hear that our answers are slightly different. For me, the answer comes with the observation that Junko's studio is another athanor all by itself. In her centripetal art, all the things I have spoken of in this book‚ the memories, the cultural influences, the psychological, philosophical, and religious ideas, the narratives, the courage, and the altered states of the mystic -- all are thrown together, and transformed and refined, and out come the art works. This I would say is an authentic process of creation similar to God's own process, and this, I think, is why God has to paint. His creation is not and never was the making of something out of nothing, but it is rather the process of encountering the world in utter honesty, and transforming it by making it manifest to us. This process is never complete: God requires our participation to complete it. And centripetal art is one of the highest forms of participation. For Junko, this participation is something that happens between the artist and the viewer. As she has written,
Art has the power to help penetrate and crumble down the viewer's own defensive wall, to help him become a whole person and to step even further towards the divine presence in himself. What is required of the artist here is not to create religious figures or mythological symbols. Instead the artist dives into his or her deepest personal abyss‚ to the depth where the most personal thing has become the most universal. If the artist succeeds in going through this most difficult, dangerous process truthfully, only then, encountering the art, the viewer might follow a journey to his or her own transcending. God needs to use this deepest personal abyss where the most personal thing has become the most universal because this is the mystery of art. It is through this mystery that God reveals Himself at the center of each of us. |
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