Art as a Manifestation of Time and Space

“The great art of each age has been the accurate reflection of the rhythm of that age; while the greatest art is, always, that which is in accord with the rhythm of absolute time, of the universal.” – Samuel Putnam

When science sunk into pure materialism and began the search beneath or inside of matter, around the beginning of the 20th century, concurrently art went into the non-objective mode. There was a great suppression of the true natural sciences by the financial powerhouses of the time. The financial oligarchs also were the major source of funding for the arts, and into the 20th century abstract and non-objective arts were brought to the fore by this financial force.

Again, more than just random events, we are seeing a complex interaction of nature, intelligence and inventive genius, and the control and disruption of all three.

I’ve found some interesting clues in the concepts of Leopold Survage in the book The Glistening Bridge:

“We are thus able to envisage, paralleling the historic evolution of the mind of man, the succession of the different phases of the spatial problem in art, a succession which we may divide into three stages: the first, the empiric period, from prehistoric times down to the Italian Renaissance; the second, the optic or rationalistic period, from the Renaissance to the advent of Cubism; and the third, the synthetic or spiritual period, from Cubism on.”

According to Survage all the non-objective art is an attempt to paint what he calls the Virgin of Space. The rhythm of our time reflected in the awakening to new understandings of space and time in the conventional world. Since the concepts of space have evolved along with civilization, therefore so has the fundamental nature of our comprehension of the Virgin of Space.

The Virgin of Space is none other than the great Goddess that has gone by many names, Inanna, Ishtar, Isis, the Black Madonna, and yes, even the Virgin Mary. This Virgin of Space is none other than the center of the galaxy, the source of the dark intelligent living plasma energy that feeds us through the light of the Sun.

And the Sun, during its galactic conjunction in 2012 will go through a dark rift in Sagittarius, the Mayan’s road to Xibalba, the Birth Canal of the Universe. This passing of the solstice sun through this conjunction is a very high point in the cosmic history of earth and underlies all past religions, and is encoded into megalithic monuments around the globe: The Sun being born from the Virgin Mother … this fundamental-to-life archetype pervades all ages and cultures.

What people are trying to paint/sculpt now is the very essence of space itself, even if their vision is sorely distorted by false worldviews, devitalized food and bad electrical fields…. But what is that ultimate essence? Modern theories of art indicate that art is self-expression, but that leads to nonsense, which can be had for a high price in many galleries. Art is the expression of something greater than the artist through the medium of the art.

This goes to the heart of what art truly is. Of course there are the technical aspects of art, the diverse schools of representation. But to me art is truly an expression of the ideal, the universal reflected in the worldly, that which is above appearing in that which is below. The painting or sculpture must say something beyond the mere visual aspects. It must say something about the artist, about his/her experience of the world at either its deepest and shallowest levels (or both). Mere perfection in technical copying is not truly art in this sense, though such skills are certainly useful in projecting the artistic vision into physical media. Liking a nice design and appreciating the expression of an artistic impulse are two different things.

Old and New Views of Space

Beauty …

and the Beast!

When I was a child my father would take me to the old Post Office in Chicago. It was a magnificent old building, rather cathedral-like, a gem of the true Masonic Arts. I still remember it well, I loved that building, the feeling of grandeur I felt as a child walking in and looking at the vaulted dome, the fluted pillars, the marble floors, the organic shapes of true architecture. In the 1960′s it was torn down and a sterile metal and glass box was put in its place finished in the early 70′s (still the downtown PO to this day).

The Mies van der Rohe Chjicago Federal  Center as it is know has been called a “study in geometric perfection,” yet contrasted with the original buildings appears as nothing more than bleak efficient modernism. In the courtyard of this Federal center there was placed a large metal sculpture by Calder.

I’ve always had trouble calling that Calder piece art. To me it is just a hunk of twisted metal I-beams welded together and painted orange. I’ve spent many a moment looking at it thinking that there was some purpose to the piece. It was titled the Flamingo, but perhaps I have no proper taste to appreciate some forms of abstraction. Or maybe I’m prejudiced as such beauty was wrecked to make way for it. Perhaps we should think of it more like an ostrich, burying its head in the sand to hide from the ugliness surrounding it. The Calder readily kindles thoughts of how a city might appear after a nuclear attack – twisted orange wreckage.

So I often wonder, is the Calder bad art, is it art at all, or did Calder actually catch the zeitgeist of the time — the changeover of the old fine buildings to the new sterile buildings, the federal takeover of the states, the change from common law States “Illinois” and “California” to Federal Zones “IL 60666″ and “CA 95589″, etc. Was perhaps Calder a great artist or a welding conman? His sculpture fits quite well with the degenerate, out-of-phase-with-nature times we live in. But is that really art?

Is our taste ruled merely by convention or rather some underlying perception of the evolving structures of time from whence manifestation springs? Or some mixture of the two, dependent on our individual cultural and intellectual constructions?

Well I think that I can answer that in relationship to the changing nature of our local space. It is both bad and good art. Modern art is degenerating due to various influences, false worldviews, devitalized food, warped electrical & magnetic fields, etc. But it does represent the nature of the comprehension of space by the artist.

Such understandings allow, rather beg for a new impulse, that of understanding the true nature of art and the nature of space and ourselves at the same time. We are not insignificant; we are the centers of our biological universes.

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance.” Aristotle

Page updated August 16, 2011.

This is a work in progress so keep checking back as I weave in many years of notes and images, thanks!