Art, in many ways, represents its own kind of belief system for those who create it and appreciate it.
It is my belief that artwork creates an emotional release, an outlet, a haven for creative minds. I think that working intensely on a project helps focus the mind and calm the artist. I know that, as a viewer, an artwork displaying hypnotic detail can bring me into a heightened state of thinking and seeing, and an artwork of massive scale and form can induce feelings of humility and awe. When artwork is successful in generating a sensory experience of this level, the piece is achieving a sort of spiritual importance.
Spirituality becomes imbued in a visual piece when the artist creates work that captures certain ancient feelings of awe. Be it Richard Serra's giant steel work that humbles and amazes its visitors, or Jean-Michel Basquiat's frenetic painting, the works included here remind us of age old questions about the world and how we experience it both in the collective and individual sense.
As Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel explain in their discussion of spirituality,
“We use the word spiritual to refer to the common yearning to belong to something greater than the self, the desire to probe the source of life and the nature of death, and the acknowledgment of ineffable, intangible forces at work in the universe.”
This notion of the ineffable is very important when considering the world of visual art, or any form of expression for that matter. We use images to describe what we cannot express in language. There is something in Kiki Smith's drawings that cannot be explained in words, for instance. There is a sense mythology that cannot be read or talked about, but only felt directly.
There are numerous discussions of this indescribable quality that we experience in situations of heightened sensory experience. This elusive sensation is sacred, but does not exist solely in the temples of the world's religions. Edmund Burke, an eighteenth century writer and thinker from Ireland, explored the idea of the sublime, a “quasi-religious veneration of nature,”(Robertson). Burke identified as sublime the “sensation felt by the viewer in the presence of the vast – a feeling that combines a sense of awe, horror, and supreme aesthetic pleasure.” (Robertson) Abstraction offers a similar effect, since the elusive nature of abstract visuals remind us of vast or imposing situations that we cannot fully comprehend. Annie Lapin's work offers lush, colorful brushwork in a style that is distinctly contemporary, and yet the content can never be pinned down, always leaving the viewer contemplating the motives and ideas of its maker.
Burke's theory of the sublime creates a theoretical place for natural phenomena alongside religion. Many refer to extreme weather like hurricanes or floods as “acts of God.” This simple phrase demonstrates how people use language to group awesome and horrible feelings felt toward the natural world with those felt in the face of a fierce religious presence. In either case, worlds fall short of describing the true experience. It is the ineffability that draws out spiritual ideas and language. In Leslie Shows' paintings we can see how the semi-abstracted forms of mountains and lakes carry with them an eerie, dream like quality that is truly sublime.
In contemporary America, many fear that our respect for mystery and spirituality has been supplanted by a frenzied desire for technology and money. Fewer people seek out the sublime by worshipping a god or experiencing the raw beauty of nature, while more and more people attempt to glean emotional and spiritual fulfillment through commercial and technological entertainment.
In the following paragraph, Robertson and McDaniel identify this trend in the writings of Thierry de Duve, a Belgian professor and critic specializing and modern and contemporary art theory.
“The critic Thierry de Duve argued that in contemporary secular societies, 'entertainment has replaced religion... but religiousness is still there.' Humans now experience religious feelings, such as devotion or awe, in secular public domains including museums, rock concerts, sports arenas, and shopping malls.”
If we follow de Duve's idea about how society has, in a sense, out grown religion, it can be argued that, however distantly we drift from gods and churches, our need to experience the ineffable is still as strong as ever. “The religiousness is still there,” and so the mystical quality once reserved for church has been transplanted into the entertainment industry, the world of consumerism, and the arts. James Turrell's light works demonstrate a union of technological and spiritual experience, a perfect example of how our craving for mysticism can be realized in contemporary mediums.
As you peruse the works selected for this exhibit, think about your own spirituality and beliefs regarding the unknowable. I hope these pieces remind you of the limitless possibilities presented to the human mind, and of the endless array of beliefs and schools of thought represented in the arts. Each piece should create a visual or atmospheric situation that invokes a feeling of mystical importance.