Limitless Fire

Humans have extraordinary capacity for abstract reasoning. Through the years they have developed religious awareness, spiritual life, and assorted elements of mythological, and metaphysical belief. Additionally, the ability to appreciate aesthetic, moral, and ethical behavior have become part of the human psyche. Through self-conscious discipline humans have been able to harness the will. While it is easy to recognize the genius involved in all of these capabilities, humans also function without conscience, building horror upon horror in the lives of others, and in the natural world.

In aesthetics, artists delve into the mysteries of the human capacity for imagination, intuition, expression; a world of the yet unknown. This is the place where art bridges the instinctual with the conscious. At the instinctual level, the human mind invokes, reacts, and processes ideas in an immediate (pre-conscious) way. Prior to the mechanism of conscious intervention, the instinctual creative mind brings to the surface ideas, organizing thoughts from the many regions of the mind, the intellect, the emotions. These processes of inspiration, intuition, instinct, and imagination, all contribute to the ability to foresee that which is intangible. In bringing forth ideas from these complex regions of the mind and brain, the artist transforms idea into a fashioned, constructed manifestation (the form). The medium takes on the characteristics of that original thought, allowing material to act as a cohesive device, a kind of matrix holding ideas in place.

Aesthetic encounter takes the art further, when a viewer, or participant interacts with the concept using powers of perception to draw the idea into the self, merging mind with mind. As the perceptual mechanism absorbs data, feeding the information to the higher functions of the brain, a new impression forms in the viewers mind, perhaps, nearly identical with the original moment of creation, perhaps different, but at the very least becoming a tool, an experience for new and uncharted mental ideation. Art is the catalyst, the enzyme triggering a cascade of secondary responses in the viewer’s mind. Perhaps this is the greatest function of art, where the mind of the viewer takes on new characteristics, new capacity to learn, understand, and feel, becoming immersed in the aesthetic experience.

Each viewer enters this action of aesthetic encounter with unique criteria; perceiving, processing, and making new the art put in place by the artist. Here we find the power of communication evident in the language of art; the tangible, the unknown, beauty, horror, complexity.

HISTORY OF HISTORY: IDEA IS HISTORY

History (from Greek historia, meaning “inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation”) is the study of the human past. It is a field of research, which uses a narrative to examine and analyze the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. This discipline of history can be used as an end in itself and as a way of providing “perspective” on the problems of the present.

Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English histoire, historie, from Anglo-French estoire, histoire, from Latin historia, from Greek, inquiry, history, knowing, learned; akin to Greek eidenai to know
1 tale: story
2 a: a chronological record of significant events often including an explanation of their causes
2 b: a treatise presenting systematically related natural phenomena
2 c: an established record
3 branch of knowledge that records and explains past events
4 a: events that form the subject matter of a history
4 b: events of the past
4 c: one that is finished or done for
4 d: previous treatment, handling, or experience

Extant Pronunciation: \_ek-st_nt; ek-_stant, _ek-_\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin exstant-, exstans, present participle of exstare to stand out, be in existence, from ex- + stare to stand
1 archaic: standing out or above
2 a: currently or actually existing 2 b: still existing: not destroyed or lost

Archaeologists to identify and recognize cultural and social customs from ancient historic periods use extant examples.

Scientists use various mechanisms to examine the past, using the geologic record, and the data contained within rock formations to understand forces working at specific times, and geographic regions. Astrophysicists and astronomers use telescopes, spectrometers, and other machines to examine the physical universe. This data allows the scientist to look back through history in order to identify cosmic circumstances, ultimately to know how the universe formed, when things happened, and how the dynamics of celestial mechanics continues in the present, predicting future developments.

Extant artifacts define Art history. These objects and ideas allow us to speculate and re-create a social history of any specific time. It is necessary to clearly understand that art history is an actual history only defined by the continuing presence of the idea. Some cultures maintain an oral tradition carrying significant icons into future generations through the transmission of the word and idea. Many examples exist in the historical record of painting, sculpture, architecture, and print offering a glimpse into what people thought, and in effectively maintaining the idea as a living entity. Ideas are sometimes lost, destroyed, or fail to be cared for. These ideas then depart from the historical record.

Artists engage the historical record through the creation, capture, and maintenance of ideas. Properly maintained ideas live well into the future as ideas flow through dialogue. The persistence of history is the key element to preserving truly human pursuits. How, who, why, and what ideas are maintained determine the course of human history evidenced by the ideas themselves.

http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=575576:distracted-by-the-gaze&catid=443:noted

OBSERVATION: This URL connects to the Summer 2010 issue of NY Arts Magazine, and the essay written by Abraham Lubelski.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Siva, New York, 1985.

AK Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)

…..”The question follows: What is the essential element in poetry? According to some authors this consists in style and figures, or in suggestion (vyanjana, to which we shall recur in discussing the varieties of poetry). But the greater writers refute these views and are agreed that the one essential element in poetry is what they term Rasa, or Flavour. With this term, which is the equivalent of Beauty or Aesthetic Emotion in the strict sense of the philosopher, must be considered the derivative adjective rasavant, ‘having rasa’, applied to a work of art, and the derivative substantive rasika, one who enjoys rasa, a connoisseur or lover, and finally rasasvadana, the tasting of rasa, i.e., aesthetic contemplation.

What, then is Beauty, what is rasa, what is it that entitles us to speak of divers works as beautiful or rasavant? What is this sole quality which the most dissimilar works of art possess in common? Let us recall the history of a work of art. There is (1) an asethetic institution on the part of the original artist, –the poet or creator; then (2) the internal expression of this intuition, –the true creation or vision of beauty (3) the indication of this by external signs (language) for the purpose of communication, –the technical activity; and finally (4) the resulting stimulation of the critic or rasika to reproduction of the original intuition, or of some approximation of it.

…The true critic (rasika) perceives the beauty of which the artist has exhibited the signs. It is not necessary that the critic should appreciate the artist’s meaning–every work or art is a kamadhenu, yielding many meanings–for he knows without reasoning whether or not the work is beautiful, before the mind begins to question what it is ‘about’. Hindu writers say that the capacity to feel beauty (to taste rasa) cannot be acquired by study, but is the reward of merit gained in a past life; for many good men and would-be historians of art have never perceived it. The poet is born, not made; but so also is the rasika, whose genius differs in degree, not in kind, from that of the original artist. In western phraseology we should express this by saying that experience can only be bought by experience; opinions must be earned. We gain and feel nothing merely when we take it on authority that any works are beautiful. It is far better to be honest, and to admit that perhaps we cannot see their beauty. A day may come when we shall be better prepared.”

OBSERVATION: Rasa, or flavor represents the essential fluid, energy, dynamic, and mystery that defines art. Necessary aspects of art are found in the artist as generator of the art, and the rasika, the connoisseur or lover of rasa; aesthetic contemplation. It is this mutually symbiotic relationship between artist and participant that maintains the liveliness of the idea; rasa; flavor. Participation is necessary for a successful marriage between intuition, artist, participant, and ultimately the active component: rasasvadana .

Harold Rosenberg, The De-Definition of Art, MacMillan, 1972.

page 223. “The artist today is offered a catalogue of styles and invited to choose. He knows, however, that the latest edition of the style book is already out of date. Everything that has been done in art opens another door, but the door faces a blank wall. To the
artist, once someone else has made a move there is no use repeating it. In effect, therefore, each invention plugs up another avenue in advance. Thus, having cancelled or submerged traditional modes of art, the new has reached the point of cancelling itself. All advanced styles are simultaneously legitimized on the ground that they reflect present realities, and discredited on the ground that they belong to the past.”

OBSERVATION: Since the beginning of the twentieth century many schools and styles of art have appeared in the world. Manifestos have proliferated describing new intentions and directions, with artists hoping to make a mark inviting viewers to ponder ideas in a new light. As remarked by Rosenberg, new insights can be either legitimized or discredited relative to the observer’s position.

The historical sources of art found in new art can provide artists with rich soil for the imagination. While there are times in the history of art when artists have specifically tried to undo previous styles and philosophical directions, there are also times when earlier art has provided fertile ground for the proliferaiton of new ideas, dependent on previous insight. If it were not for Roman sculptors who copied earlier Greek sculpture, we, in the present, would not know, and have access to the iconography of much Greek sculpture. It is only through observing Roman copies of Greek sculpture that we have a historical document (albeit copied) of this earlier Greek period.

The history of art is rich with instances where artists attempt to be the advance guard, sometimes reacting to previous art, and at other times trying to work freely in an effort to open the doors of possibility. Certainly, we can look to mathematics as a correlary, where mathematicians in the contemporary world have benefited from the explorations of earlier minds. Science demonstrates a continuing evolution of knowledge. There was a time when people believed the earth was flat.

Perhaps more than anything it is importnat to recognize the contributions made by artists throughout time, for it is in the world of art where we see many spectacular achievements of the human imagination. Personalities reflect themselves in the art, and it is this demonstration, or concretion of ideas where we as partipants in the esthetic experience benefit from the thoughts, actions, and marks left by artists.

Kubler, The Shape of Time, Yale, 1962.

page 84: “Time has categorical varieties: each gravitational field in the cosmos has a different time varying according to mass. On earth at the same instant of celestial time, no two spots really have the same relation to the sun despite our useful convention of time-zones regulating the regional concordance of clocks. When we define duration by span, the lives of men and the lives of other creatures obey different durations, and the durations of artifacts differ from those of coral reefs or chalk cliffs, by occupying different systems of intervals and periods. The conventions of language nevertheless give us only the solar year and its multiples or divisions to describe all these kinds of duration.

St. Thomas Aquinas speculated in the thirteenth century upon the nature of the time of angels, and, following a neo-Platonist tradition,1 he revived the old notion of the aevum as the duration of human souls and other divine beings. This duration was intermediate beitween time and eternity, having a beginning but no end. The conception is not appropriate for the duration of many kinds of artifacts–so durable that they antedate every living creature on earth, so indestructible that their survivial may, for all we know, ultimately approach infinity.”

1 Duhem, “Le temps selon les philosophes hellenes,” Revue de philosophie (1911).

OBSERVATION: ETERNITY: INFINITY: Pondering the concepts of time and space allow the human imagination to wander through territory well beyond the touch of conventional reality. In considering the idea of aevum, or infinity, it is possible to understand time and space beyond the individual physical presence of the self. Astrophysicists using mathematics, physics, and contemporary technologies explore the possiblity of looking back in time, actually seeing events occurring historically. The ideas of art, imagination, insight, intuition, creativity, and all these things represent clearly point to a potential of the human mind for vast exploration.

Krishnamurti, The Flame of Attention, Harper & Row, 1984.

p. 15: “Thinking is a process born out of experience and knowledge. Listen to it quietly, see if that is not true, actual; then you discover it for yourself as though the speaker is acting as a mirror in which you see for yourself exactly what is, without distortion; then throw the mirror away or break it up. Thinking starts from experience which becomes knowledge stored up in the cells of the brain as memory; then from memory there is thought and action. Please see this for yourself, do not repeat what I say. This sequence is an actual fact: experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action. Then from that action you learn more; so there is a cycle and that is our chain.”

p. 22: “The word ‘discipline’ comes from the word disciple, the disciple whose mind is learning-not from a particular person, a guru, or from a teacher, or preacher, or from books but learning through the observation of his own mind, of his own heart, learning from his own actions. And that learning requires a certain discipline, but not the conformity most disciplines are understood to require. When there is conformity, obedience, and imitation, there is never the act of learning, there is merely following. Discipline implies learning, learning from the very complex mind one has, from the life of daily existence, learning about relationship with each other, so that the mind is always pliable, active.”

OBSERVATION: Neural plasticity: As thinking beings we are always challenged with this process of observing our own thought process. Krishnamurti points out that we must exhibit personal discipline, and personal responsibility for this process of learning, and that we must be careful to not defer this reponsibility to other persons, or materials. Through the proper application of direct processes, we have the capacity to act upon learning, and while some of these processes are automatic and unconscious, others are precisely calculated conscious processes.

TAGORE, Personality, ISBN 076618286X, MacMillan, NY, 1917.

p. 13: ‘Questions have been asked, “What is Art?” and answers have been given by various persons. These discussions are introducing elements of conscious purpose into the region where both our faculties of creation and enjoyment have been spontaneous and half-conscious. They are supplying us with very definite standards by which to guide our judgment of art productions. Therefore we have heard judges in the modern time giving verdict, according to some special legislation of their own make, for the dethronement of immortals whose supremacy has been unchallanged for centuries.

This meteorological distrubance in the atmosphere of art criticism, whose origins is in the West, has crossed over to our own shores in Bengal, bringing mist and clouds in its wake, where there was a clear sky. We have begun to ask ourselves whether creations of art should not be judged either according to their fitness to be universally understood, or their philosophical interpretation of life, or their usefulness for solving the problems of the day, or their giving expression to something which is peculiar to the genius of the people to which the artist belongs. Therefore when men are seriously engaged in fixing the standard of value in art by something which is not inherent in it, —or in other words when the excellence of the river is going to be judged by the point of view of a canal, we cannot leave the question to its fate, but must take part in the deliberations…….
Therefore, I shall not define Art, but question myself about the reason of its existence, and try to find out whether it owes its origin to some social purpose, or to the need of catering for our aesthetic enjoyment, or whether it has come out of some impulse or expression, which is the impulse of our being itself.’

OBSERVATION: Tagore offers insight beyond any selfish notion in his attempt to self-critically examine the complex question: What is Art? Throughout modern times, artists and critics have searched for new expression, sometimes providing theories and manifestos using extreme rhetoric, debunking previous theories, and arguing that only the newest instrument has any genuine purpose. One art theory supplants another, ad infinitum. It is interesting to note Tagore’s position that it is perhaps necessary for us to examine the ‘reason for its existence’, and also perhaps to understand a participants action, rather than to stratify value.

Read, Art & Society, Schocken, 1968.

p. 102, ‘The best instance to quote is perhaps the description of a poet which Socrates gives in Ion: ‘For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains; but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say; for they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.’ 1 Jowett’s translation

OBSERVATION: Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud continue this line of thinking with their investigations into the mechanics of the psyche. Both psychologists defined aspects of the workings of the human mind in the realm of art. Jung, ed., Man and his Symbols, Aldus, 1964, has a variety of essays dealing with this subject.

Jean Cocteau, in his Orphic Trilogy, Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1949), and Testament of Orpheus (1960) looks into the description of the poet, as Orpheus (that mythic being who possesses the power of poetry and who can keep the awesome powers of Hell at bay with his words, and lyricism), states, ‘I am a writer who does not write’. Jean Cocteau, Orphic Trilogy (three films) dvd available through Criterion films.

Socrates’ reference to bees continues in the twentieth century in the work of Joseph Beuys. Beuys understood and expressed much interest in the life of bees, as evidenced in several works, and especially in his Honey Pump in the Workplace 1974-1977. (Honigpump). Beuys stated ‘The generation of energy means the production of warmth and hence the link with social sculpture.’ Beuys Honeypump in the Workplace was installed at documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany pumping two tons of honey for 100 days. (honey) as energy, and (heat) generated by the machine.