Introduction

My view of Art is woven out of many strands, which I have been trying to disentangle and examine, one by one, in hope of understanding not just what I believe, but why I believe it.

The first such strand touches on religion, and developed out of conversations with my Aunt Decie. She has focused her life by exploring the numinous through Christianity and in that quest she has had many inexplicable experiences. And through our conversations we have found common ground, sharing experiences that run contrary to day-to-day reality.

During her study for the ministry, Decie undertook a retreat and period of silence. She worked and prayed in a small cabin and had no contact with the world except to take meals at a nearby convent. One day, while deep in prayer, a very unusual state took her by surprise. As she described it the Holy Spirit came to her, threw her to the ground and she grappled with it.

Early in my artistic development I became interested in mystical traditions, lucid dreams and hallucinogenic drugs. Like many others, I wanted to bring back the intense beauty, emotion and power that I experienced during altered states of consciousness. We cannot know in a scientific way if altered states reveal the world in its essence. But one can report on the content of the lived experience, its aesthetic qualities and implications for art.

Looking back, LSD produced a transcendent and unifying state of awareness. Subjective consciousness dilates and merges with objective reality and, for a time, self-consciousness expands to encompass more than just the self. Boundaries dissolve. Thus detached from a distinct individual, consciousness transcends the separation of world and self, while natural forms reveal a hidden symmetry and beauty. Heightened states reveal an overwhelming and limitless beauty in nature. I would call it a spiritual realization that remains apart from day to day life.

A few days and several sleepless nights after the peak of what would be my final LSD trip, I experienced a recurrence. I was sitting on the floor of a friend’s apartment when a veritable Mack Truck of light and energy hit me. It lifted me off the ground and spun me. Everything became electricity. Not just seeing electricity or hallucinating it, but being it. Everything was gone except for electrified color that crackled through blackness.

This experience was different from the LSD trip itself and was not a “flash back.” As I recovered, hallucinations that paralleled perception wove themselves into my reality. I could see a cat that I know my friend did not have, burning logs on the floor with two tiny people sitting on them, and a strange sense that there was no time or space. When I walked I did not move, only the view changed, as if in a video game where the caricature is static and the scenery moves around the point of view. It was the extreme of “ware ever you go there you are.”

The days after were a blur. I met a woman who some how knew intuitively what was going on with me. She asked me if I thought I was sane or not and I said yes, she observed I only thought that I was sane. I could no longer function in society . But my friends and family intervened and got me the help by putting a space between me and the entire line of thought that had taken me to that place. I gradually reintegrated myself into school and life.

Other Voices

Jill Bolte Taylor

At the 2008 TED conference, Jill Bolte Taylor gave a lecture in which she told a story about the morning she had a stroke. At the time of the stroke, she had been involved in mapping the micro circuitry of the brain and advocating for the mentally ill. When the stroke began, she realized that she was in a unique position to observe her own brain and its alternating consciousness.

The brain hemorrhage is located behind her left eye. And as she describes, the left side of the brain is responsible for pulling out details from the mass of information streaming into the right hemisphere; categorizing information, projecting plans into the future, thinking in language, and creating a sense of self separate from the world and others.

She describes the right side of the brain as a parallel processor that organizes data from all the senses at once. Color, motion and depth are examples. In Taylor’s words, information enters the right side of the brain in the form of energy and explodes into an enormous collage—all the sensations of the here and now.

During her stroke, consciousness shifted away from the experience itself to witnessing herself having the experience. She was able to witness the witness witnessing. Her brain chatter went silent (a universal goal of meditation) and the boundaries of her body no longer stopped at her skin (a typical effect of hallucinogens). She no longer drew distinctions between her arm and say, the wall of her shower. Essentially she entered a state of oneness with her surroundings. She describes feeling a sense of expansive euphoria and being captivated by the magnificent energy all around her. She felt what she described as Nirvana.

She also talked about experiencing intense beauty. If the part of her brain that deals with speech, logistics, and learned societal behaviors was offline, and she was experiencing beauty in this state, might this say something for the existence of beauty outside of learned norms and outside of the human mind?

This American Life episode 220 act one LIFE AT ZERO: A Story on NPR

A few years ago, I heard a story on National Public Radio about a man whose body stopped producing testosterone. He did not know what was happening to him, but he observed the changes in his mind and wrote a story about the experience later. He described his mental state as being without desire or appetite for anything. Left without the need to do or achieve anything, he gained a new view the world.

During this time he was very quiet and sometimes he would have long stretches of time where no thoughts at all crossed his mind. He was content to eat only the simplest of food and stare at the wall. But what was most interesting was that in this state of mental silence and wanting nothing, one thought did come to him again and again. The thought was that everything is beautiful. He found beauty in everything. All the mundane and unremarkable things in life began to exude beauty.

This unexpected Zen-like state, brought about through a chemical imbalance in the brain, highlights an interesting distinction between the things that we want and therefore classify as beautiful, and a different sort of beauty that exists ubiquitously in all things. A sort of beauty not only beyond what is socially lauded as beautiful but that is even beyond the drives of biological survival.

Poet Khalil Gibran

In a way, too, this man's perceptions of life without testosterone are not unlike Kant’s ideal of disinterested contemplation. In Kant’s opinion art should be viewed as a judge views a case in the courtroom, as opposed to the way a hungry person views an all you can eat buffet. In order to have a meaningful interaction with a work of art, the viewer should not demand a specific need be filled by it (Dutton, 2009, pp 188-189).This emphasizes the non-utilitarian nature of art and perhaps beauty beyond desire.

Now consider this excerpt from Khalil Gibran's The Prophet.

In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."

And in the summer heat the reapers say,

"We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves,

and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."

All these things have you said of beauty,

yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,

and beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,

but rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,

But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,

but rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.

But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

Relativism and the Art Instinct

Steven Pinker and Denis Dutton

Contemporary art is currently defined as an open equation having no true nature. Art is anything that an artist proclaims to be art or anything an art institution puts in a gallery.

Could art be governed by artistic instincts? Denis Dutton, Professor of Philosophy of Art, and linguist Steven Pinker think so. In the last chapter of The Blank Slate, Pinker suggests that art—like language—is an innate human facility not a cultural construct. It is something that grows out of our biological make up like the facility for language.

Art is found in every society and everywhere humans exist. And Dutton (2009, 51-59) has compiled a list of core uncontroversial criteria that cross cultural boundaries. This list is a statement of what all art traditions have in common. Although not every work of art encompasses every concept on the list, there is a significant overlapping of most.

I have chosen to discus only the items that are most important to my argument. The full list can be found in Duttons book, The Art Instinct.

1. Direct non-utilitarian pleasure

People across the world take pleasure from exposing themselves to art. Art is not a means to an end like a hammer or other utilitarian objects, but enjoyed simply for what it is. And this is the case even though there is status in owning or producing a work of art.

1. Virtuosity

Although talented people do not always get the recognition they deserve, virtuosity is hard to ignore. Whether it is in group activities such as singing, dancing, or more solitary acts like crafting tools, virtuosity is self evident. Every well-functioning human being around the world esteems a job well done and can be floored by a master be it art or trade.

On a visit to Ursula von Riding's Gards-Studio, I observed as her main assistant of many years cut a piece of wood. Riding's work is made of cedar two-by-fours. The end of each piece is cut to look like a multifaceted nub. To do this with a saw requires an intense focus on the part of the saw operator as the blade is at constant risk of binding.

Watching the wood being cut was like watching a dance. The saw was like part of the man's body. His hands were fast and light as they welded the saw plunging and withdrawing the blade as he had done for years and years. Watching him work inspired a reverence and awe in his skill, discipline, and control.

This example references an inclusive conception of art containing craft and sports. It is the joy of watching an expert reach a new level of perfection or achievement.

1. Style

All art fits into a stylistic notch. The style provides rules and standards of expression for the artist to follow and conflict with in order to create novel works. Without the conventions of style there is no tension in a work of art.

1. Novelty and creativity

This is the punchy, edgy innovation that comes from outgrowing tradition and updating art in order to keep pace with life. Although we may be suffering from all the age-old problems of humanity, we need them to be restated for us, by us, in order to overcome them and find some sort of solace and stable stance in life. The hero myth has been used over and over again by every culture, but it still helps us find the courage to do things that that frighten us. This myth was recently reincarnated in Tim Berton's version of Alice in Wonderland, a classic story that was given new life and has touched a new generation.

1. Criticism

Criticism includes public discussion of artwork, talk amongst artists and the evaluation of professional critics. Critique is most prominent in literate cultures and is sometimes nearly nonexistent in cultures without writing. In literate societies, critics have held great power over which art is celebrated and which is reviled, but right now we may be in the middle of a shift towards a more democratic form of criticism.

1. Representation

1. The recent discovery of a new class of neuron may shed some light on the joys of viewing representational imagery. A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primates and are believed to occur in humans and other species including birds. In humans, brain activity is consistent with that of mirror neurons and has been found in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal cortex. Representational images, especially video, stimulate mirror neurons.

I recently viewed the work of Kate Clark at Clair Oliver Gallery. I ambled in off the street and was not previously familiar with her work, but it moved me. Typically the works incorporate the body of a gracefully posed animal with a life like human head attached where the animal's head used to be.

The skin of the head, which looks as if it is made of scrap hide, is tacked on with the seams following the symmetry of the face. The tacks are used liberally and give the feeling of tiny rivets. And the high quality glass eyes look wet. But I was enamored with on special piece that consisted of a small group of gazelles. The work felt as if the gazelles could walk off the pedestal. Oliver is aided by the use of the body of a real gazelle—a marvel of evolution and pinnacle of beauty in itself. But the heads and facial expressions that she so seamlessly attached took what would have been a stiff, dead body and made it appear sentient.

The craft by which they were made was somewhere between tribal scarring, tattoo, and leather working. But here is my point. The work seemed as sensitive as the living creatures themselves.

7. Intellectual challenge

The readymade has bean touted as proof that art is nothing more than whatever a group of people call art. But the fact is that every culture studied by anthropologists independently exhibits artistic activity that shares many of the same characteristics.

This points away from the idea of people being passive consumers of culture and towards human biological universals. This suggests that art is not a completely open ended equation, and that art exhibits cross-cultural traits. Art is not art just because it is designated as such by an institution or artist. It is art because it fulfills deep human needs in specific ways. Art nurturers the imagination, provides emotional release, stimulates public debate, brings people closer to the transcendent, provides insight in to human nature, galvanizes groups to action, expands our perspectives and helps us see the world in different ways. To argue that art can be defined in arbitrary ways by insiders, overlooks the advantages and benefits art has always provided.

Steven Pinker, in the last chapter of his book The Blank Slate, suggests that pushing the idea of cultural relativism to an extreme is responsible for the decline of academic and elite arts.

According to Pinker, as technology advanced, art became accessible to more people in the form of the printed picture, the book, films on DVD and the explosion of all forms of media on the Internet. But in order for elite arts to confer status, art has to be rare. Easily acquired and enjoyed works of art pose a direct threat to the status conferred by the art establishment.

Social relativity asserts that reality is constructed by society through language and images. In the chapter titled “In Touch with Reality,” Pinker discuses the centrality of the image in postmodern thought. Postmodernism blurs the distinction between images in the mind and images in print and film and suggest that images create reality. Ordinary people are not only in danger of being completely fooled by images and words but trapped in a completely false reality. This removes power from ordinary people and places it in the hands of academics and artists who can supposedly distinguish truth from misleading fantasy.

Pinker argues that the job of the postmodern academic and artist is to subvert the stereotypes and misleading images that have blinded the middle class. And because postmodernism dose not believe in an objective reality, it can only attempt to call attention to the falseness of images. This produces irony, poor craft (so as to not fool any one that what they are looking at is only a picture and should not be confused with reality), and self-referential imagery.

Pinker concludes his argument by citing Virginia Wolf: “On or around 1910 human nature changed." Of course, this is not true; human nature did not change but instead was rejected by modernism in exchange for cultural relativity.

Memes

Richard Dawkins first proposed the possibility of memes in his book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976. The theory starts by asking the question: Are there any other self-replicating packets of information besides DNA? Dawkins then points to thoughts that spread like a virus, copying from one brain to the next.

The meme is that which is copied (song, pattern, turn of phrase). Key to the theory of memetics is the idea that memes develop within the evolutionary parameters of variation, mutation, competition and heredity.

Susan Blackmore, in her book The Meme Machine, suggests that one of the biggest evolutionary breakthroughs for humans was the ability to copy the actions of others instead of having to be born with instincts alone; humans could copy behavior that they observed in others.

According to Blackmore, some memes are helpful and some hurtful to the host . A meme can be successful regardless of the well-being of the host. From the “meme’s eye view” success is proliferation at all cost. Memes can subvert the aims of genes: vows of celibacy, birth control, and suicide bombers are all examples of memes overruling genetic interests. From the perspective of the meme, the brain is a production center where memes vie for space and access to the equipment.

Memetics theory is disturbing because it challenges our belief that we arrive at our picture of the world through free will. On the contrary, memetics suggests that our understanding of self and the world is the product of an evolutionary process. It suggests a loss of freedom and control at the point of thinking itself. But this is only a loss if you privilege your left-brain over your right brain. instead of a loss of agency it can be seen as a link back to nature.

Steven Pinker makes a parallel argument when he claims that leading perspectives like modernism and postmodernism are received dogmas built on the outdated concept of cultural relativity. The concept is outdated because it pictures human nature as plastic when, in fact, human nature and culture are evolved in the same sense that human bodies and brains are evolved to deal with specific external conditions that really exist.

In this view, art too can be seen as an evolutionary adaptation, or as the by-product of several converging adaptations. For instance the ability of abstract thought, the ability to make objects, the need to relay information, self-awareness, and the hunger for status.

Speaking Personally

One’s worldview is the bedrock from which artistic expression arises, and it flavors the choices an artist makes.

My work comes from an inward turn, a respect for technique and skill, an aggressive urge, and the joy of making. My sculptures are to be appreciated aesthetically but also as an expression of the drive of evolution and our human nature.

Each alteration of the object reflects a new way of seeing. Each attempt to find the nature of the form leaves a new seam and new connections. These seams and connections build over time giving the works a corporal history of actions. One can see them evolve.

I see the different shapes in my sculptures as artifacts of idiosyncratic building and replicating memes. They are ideas and forms that have come together over time and have accumulated enough replicator power to manifest themselves, time and time again, changing and growing with each new iteration. I nurture these ways of building as if they were animals or plants, and they produce a raw and energetic body. When I work in my studio I let them out into the material and they play and commingle with each other.

Sometimes they fight and one idea is driven out. The victorious form will then reproduce itself beyond interest and start to decay, opening new opportunities for weaker forms to proliferate. Not all the shapes survive; of the new line some of the modified fail while others succeed. Each time they are made, they change slightly. They grow smaller or larger, or develop new ways of combining and attaching to the main structure.

What is different about this view is that the ideas are self-driving; they don’t rely on the dualistic view of human nature in which the artist is directing the action. In this process the artist is the fuel for the fire. The artist brings the raw resources to the table and then surrenders to natural selection.

Ideas shape structures, and structures carry ideas. I see my sculptures and myself as a small world inside of a larger world. In this sense I see the inside as the outside. The inside is an inverted version of the outside. The evolution of ideas is lightning fast compared to the evolution of organisms.

By better understanding the truly radical challenge of Darwin's theory we see that evolution creates the illusion of intelligent design. But evolution is also responsible for the designs we make. Pinker and Dutton invite us to talk about a common human nature that includes a universal sense of beauty.

I believe that beauty transcends evolutionary concerns and points to something deeper than survival.

Common Ground

Recapture the sacred

Tao Te Ching, from chapter 1 (Muller, 2005)

The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth

While naming is the origin of the myriad things.

Therefore, always desireless, you see the mystery

Ever desiring, you see the manifestations.

The mundane is not an illusion but the skin of a deeper and living reality . We want to know what we are before we die but we work too hard in the attempt. The up shot is that we become caught in reductionist thinking in hope of finding clarity but only succeed in diminishing our possibility.

Abandon utopia

We are animals, we are tiny universes. We are dreams, we are the synthesizers of knowledge. We experience life from a contraption, made by nature out of cosmic dust. We see a small part of realty at a time but it is real nonetheless and not inconsequential.

We have the opportunity to play the most exquisite music, an opportunity not to remake what we are but to let life penetrate our doings and flow through us. We can never hold on to it and we loose everything but for now we can leave a legacy of art for the future and for ourselves.

For me It is enough to make art for the ecstasy of living, and those rare moments when the wind turns into a symphony in the treetops.

References

Blackmore, Susan. (1999). The Meme Machine. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, Richard. (1976) The Selfish Gene. USA: Oxford University Press.

Dutton, Denis. (2009). The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Gibran, Khalil. (1923). The Prophet: on Beauty, retreved from, http://leb.net/gibran/works/prophet/prophet25.html

Muller, Charles. translator (2005). Tao Te Ching: Lao Tzu. New York: Barnes & Nobel.

Pinker, Steven. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. London: Penguin.

Bolte Taylor, Jill. (2008). stroke of insight. Retreaved from TED http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html