Part II: Looking towards a New Paradigm in Art Participation

Hermit

Through culture we express our basic need to represent our experiences and perceptions of life, using any means available.  All of the arts, although I am especially interested in the visual and plastic arts, reflect people’s values, edge of growth, collective struggles and vision. Participating in culture with creativity and imagination is our personal and communal contribution to and reflection of our society. A symptom that the art world does not belong to society is when the balance of gender and full spectrum of diversity is not reflected.

The stunning quilts of the Afro-American women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, after generations of working in isolation, were acknowledge as art by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a show in 2006. Small groups of neighborhood women after the work day ended would sing and sew late into the evening, inviting and encouraging younger members to each find their unique expression in fabric. These large colorful abstract designs told a story of innovation through used clothes. There have been others; graffiti artists, self taught artists and those from various institutions who have been accepted by the art world, stimulating the discussion about the definition of art, which has remained controlled by the curators, collectors and art critics.

There is a critical distinction between the art of the established art world and art of personal and collective involvement with meaning-making, around the activities of generating and participating in art as culture. Those of you who have created from your life experience or appreciate others with creative interaction are aware of the general social attitude, that art is self indulgent unless you are a super star. The same authority which decides quilts can be art, also determines the value in the market place. Children in elementary school experiencing bamboo brush calligraphy query me, “If it is good, does that mean I can sell it ?” We all want to experience more meaningful and creative expression in life, not by getting into the MOMA, but by opening a dialogue about a vision of involvement and relationship to our diverse and shared experience through acts of creativity and imagination.

There has been, however, in post modern art a widening gulf between viewer and viewed which leaves out the person on the street. Although historically art tells cultural stories reflecting our inner and outer worlds, much of the contemporary art in museums and galleries is outside the context of meaning for many people. It is an interesting symptom of our times that modern art has become a form of elite entertainment, owned by an industry that does not attend to the function of culture for the greater populace.  

With all this talk about moving into new economical, educational and governing paradigms, what might a shift in of authentic culture look like? It is truly staggering to attempt to perceive a paradigm outside the ones we are emerged in. One needs to experience getting out of the embedded social standard to even entertain the possibility. There are accounts of people in life threatening situations or with severe disabilities that nurture and express a depth of being that is breath taking to the rest of us. There is the heart opening story of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who found methods for finding meaning, in even the most intolerable forms of existence, in order to find reasons to continue living. These are the people who have given life to possibilities that most of us can not imagine and yet we may find ourselves in untenable situations if we do not create a greater vision of participatory culture.

I sometimes use the metaphor of living on another planet with reference to my life in Japan because it was so completely out of my box. The longer I was there, the more deeply I was emerged in language and therefore relationship, the more foreign I perceived it. It forced me to challenge unconscious values and perspectives. There is a occurrence among foreigners in Japan, where; even though we are speaking in our native language together we find ourselves using Japanese words, because there is no way to articulate the concepts we want to express in our mother tongue.

There are many worlds side by side within complex societies, which is why I could choose to avoid modern Japan. Japanese friends did not want to plant rice by hand and laughingly said I was living in the feudal age. My life style in Zen temples and in the country outside of Kyoto connected me to traditional Japan which people in the industrial cities rejected. But even with the Western influence there was incredible coherence, because of a belief system that holds a vision of a greater whole beyond the seeming contradictions. Suzi Gablik’s comment that our soulfulness is blocked by “modern traditions of mechanism, positivism, empiricism, rationalism, materialism, secularism and scientism---” is not foundational in Japan. There is an undercurrent of knowing in that society that daily life is merely a game played out in a greater field of life; this is a paradigm that can hold, so far, the incredible transformations we have witnessed in that society.

With the medieval paradigm shift from the concept of a flat world at the center of the universe to a spherical world rotating around the sun, a ceiling in cosmological belief was lifted that did not change the average person’s life, at first. With time, however, the underlying fear, literally and metaphorically, of falling off the edge of the earth was released. I project that with our paradigm shift we will lift the fear based paradigm of heaven and hell, symbolic of duality like the above mentioned paradigm shift there is an entire change in language which had to occur. Because our Western languages are rooted in duality reinforcing our ego-centric world view, it is extremely difficult to perceive a cosmological shift from duality to wholeness.

As a painter I use contrast of color, value, shapes, lines and textures to develop the pictorial frame. With my painting circle participants I make the distinction between contrast and polarity in an effort to the hold duality in a context of wholeness. We do not have to choose sides, elements that appear initially to be opposing become complementary or perform a service for greater coherence. The trick is to let go of the qualitative scale, which is easier in painting than in daily life. It is, however, a practice which influences everyday life.

The canvas is an apt metaphor for life when the engagement is in process, not product. We can easily become so identified with the outcome that it defines our self worth. I am reminded of an ex-gang member who loved art class but was thrown out for violence when he reacted to being ‘dissed’ by another classmate. He saw no choice. When we identify with one part to the exclusion of others we go into separation, which threatens the whole. Separation keeps dualism in place. Manifesting struggle and suffering in life is mirrored in creative process. I ask myself and my painters to hold the process in a unity beyond good/bad or liked/not liked. It is not easy; we have to develop the muscles for it, but it is a safe place to practice participating in the vision of a new cultural relationship.

NM 5 Day Residency DREAMING into the LAND

An Exploration of the Archetypes of Place in the land around Taos, New Mexico in a five-day Painting Residency

June 21-25 2011

TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING is a large format Creative Painting Process in acrylics on un-stretched canvas that incorporates techniques of Projective Dreamwork & Awake Dreaming. In the last 20 years, I have noticed how much place influences the dreams and creative activity of people who visit and live in the Southwest this  residency will focus on how the land, including local cultural, historical and geographical archetypes of place influence our psyches.

As an experiment in our changing cultural paradigms the Residential Workshop will have a base cost of $625 which includes five nights, food and materials. There will be an invitation of an anonymous dana offering to express personal value. It will be paid forward to make the next workshop possible.

Part I: Looking Towards a New Paradigm of Art Participation

In this country we use the words society and cultural, interchangeably with the connotation that part of the spectrum is not available to most of us; as in high society and level of sophistication, as in cultured. I want to make the distinction between the word society as social structure, bound, by similar traditions, and the word culture, as the cultivation and expression of humans need to represent their experience and values in life through acting with imagination and creativity.

Although it may appear peripheral to much of the population, it is significant to each of us that the art world, meaning the gallery, museum and collecting industry, does not serve us as culture. Part of it is because it is big business, which does not want our participation; the other part is because we, as a nation do not provide education for the appreciation or value of art as cultural function.

For this and many other reasons the institutions in our civilization are showing signs of fragility; forward thinkers are grappling with how to create paradigms that are appropriate for a new relationship, to our selves, each other, and the planet, experiencing how the old paradigms of economics, education, religion and politics are not ecologically sustainable in the context of the individual, the collective, nor the planet. Our cultural institutions have to a large extent been co-opted by a branch of the entertainment industry and financed by the market place. Art, literature, performance, music and the visual arts, call for collective participation because, at its core, it is a meaning making process, which defines our relationship to reality. Art in terms of relationship is in dire need of revision. It needs to be demystified, that is, taken out of the hands of the elite and put back into the hands of the people.

The post modern assumption of ‘art for art’s sake’ is grounded in the idea that art in general has no useful role to play in society. Part of the mystification is that art, with a specific message, is not high art. To move from the subjective individualism of the current western populace to a value-based art that relates to context as a whole, is a challenging shift. It requires a re-mything, on a collective level, demanding a transformation of understanding as radical as the concepts in quantum physics that are shaking the world of science. Art critic and social thinker Suzi Gablik determines that we need to step out beyond the “modern traditions of mechanism, positivism, empiricism, rationalism, materialism, secularism and scientism---the whole objectifying consciousness of Enlightenment---in a way that allows for a return of soul.”


In the art world and very likely in many other institutions there are two counter movements in response to the dysfunctional paradigms; one is deconstructive and the other is reconstructive. The seminal art theologian, Jean Baudrillard, maintains that the first revolution in art, in the twentieth century was the deconstruction of the image and the second, the deconstruction of meaning. David Salle is an example of an artist who claims that his images are without reference; his paintings deal with ‘spectacle’, not with meaning. Barbara Kruger is an artist who uses art to reconstruct; she reflects with irony back to the consumer culture with photomontage and slogans on rented billboards, exposing advertising ploys like: BUY ME, IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Reconstructive postmodernism theory in art challenges the materialistic worldview in an effort to awaken the sense of responsibility and participation; it seeks to engage in possible solutions. (See article by Denis Dutton on Leo Tolstoy’s What is Art?) Gablik describes reconstructive art as having a desire for “re-rooting ourselves in the cosmos, realizing the bodily unity of ourselves and the world,” she offers that deconstruction and reconstruction cannot remain polarized but must find a way to work together. For a glimpse into the world of reconstruction art, ending ironically, with a graphic vision of how the current art world functions, see the movie Exit Through The Gift Shop.

The holistic paradigm is revolutionary in that it focuses out to the edges of duality into a context of wholeness. In classic art, through post modern era, there is a gulf between the observer, who does not participate, and the object of focus. Through quantum physics and spiritual practice we are coming to understand that we are the world even as we create it, and it is no longer possible for the viewer to be separate from it. Our social reality reflects what we carry within. Society is just as creative as we are and we can no longer pass it to an elite board of representatives; be it medical doctors, museums curators, art critics, corporate executives or members of congress. Right now we are especially in need of innovation to re-create our social fabric.

The art industry is possibly just another branch of the capitalistic patriarch, functioning in domination, which makes it almost impossible to give rise to a visionary voice from within. The new paradigm of art reflects the need to change from object to relationship. Art with social value includes art related to ecology, politics and social issues. There are movements outside the art world; one is by self taught artists, called Art Brut or Outsider Art. Some of this is folk art, but there is a wide spectrum including the art of inmates, institutionalized patients and other marginalized populations. Gablik maintains, however, that these are only a sideshow because healthy functional art movements are not possible without a re-structuring at the core.


Gablik also asserts that there is now no functional avant-garde of counterculture which challenges mainstream thought in relation to art, but is merely one of the many side attractions. The New York deconstuctive artist and art critic Ronald Jones contends that no real change can occur in the art world while the art industry controls it; it even controls the illusion of change. Gablik speaks with irony in saying, “commodity fetishism is the distinguishing mark of our culture, and the artist’s consciousness has been fatally enriched with this knowledge.”  Object as commodity has relationship to the market, but not to the world, in our society, culture just may have become a commodity, a situation referred to as cultural inauthenticity.