Art must be the expression of a divine world

One could cite hundreds of other examples. As the Mother expressed it, artists often

"live in the vital plane, and the vital part of them is extremely sensitive to the forces of that world and receives from it all kinds of impressions and impulsions over which they have no controlling power. And often too they are very free in their minds and do not believe in the petty social conventions and moralities that govern the life of ordinary people. They do not feel bound by the customary rules of conduct and have not yet found an inner law that would replace them."

Amen to that, Mother!

There is nothing to prevent a Yogi from being an artist or an artist from being a Yogi. But when you are in Yoga, there is a profound change in the values of things, of art, as of everything else; you begin to look at art from a very different standpoint. It is no longer the one supreme all-engrossing thing for you, no longer an end in itself. Art is a means, not an end...

If you want art to be the true and highest art, it must be the expression of a divine world brought down into this material world.... If you consider it in this light, art is not very different from Yoga.... In both, the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things. --The Mother, Conversations on Yoga

posted by Gagdad Bob at 3/30/2007 08:09:00 AM 26 comments links to this post One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin

Jesus Ciriza has created the successful brand `Colours of Nature'

The manufacture and use of indigo requires absolute dedication and patience. Jesus Ciriza has both; he's a Spanish man living in Auroville, Puducherry, who has created the successful brand `Colours of Nature' that uses only vegetable dyes, chief of which is indigo. He has 50 people working for him. Procuring the dye cake from Tiruvannamalai, the entire fabric dyeing, printing, embroidery and tailoring is done at his unit in Auroville. Rupa Gopal Business Line Friday, Mar 30, 2007

Practice of an art constitutes a kind of yoga

Some artists coordinate hand-eye-heart by listening to music while they work. Some music, perhaps dissonant, or mechanical, could interfere with your inner rhythm. As long as the music matches your natural mood or pace this can be a wonderful help .

The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo, who was also a poet, remarked that the consistent practice of an art, in the end, constitutes a kind of yoga. A few artists, unconsciously whistle or sing while they work. They do it very softly, more or less in the rhythm of a slow heart beat. It is an instinctive way of regulating the breath in order to centre and detach themselves from the noises of the surface mind...by CelesteVarley

Taste is something you can work at

Art, or What to Hang Over the Couch Michael Feldman - March 16th, 2007

Art is something you know when you see it, but culture tells you which reproduction to hang over the couch. Does the house cry out for a piece from the Ashcan school, the talented if somewhat morose city-life realists who worked after the turn of the last century and whose ranks included Edward Hopper?
In the master bedroom, with its Mediterranean bedstead, wouldn’t Diego Velázquez be in order, perhaps Los Borrachos (The Feast of Bacchus), or The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio if you want to tone things down a bit? I’d avoid the royal portraits unless you have an unusually large foyer. Kandinsky pretty much goes with any décor, but Picasso’s Blue Period in the powder room has been done to death. And don’t even think about a Calder unless you own the air space.
Although culture started as an opportunity for the wealthy to prove that money can’t buy taste, the franchise has been extended now that pop culture has its own department; maybe Keith Haring and Michelangelo had more in common than meets the eye (Haring did not design siege weapons on the side). I think that we all can agree that manga (Japanese for comics and/or cartoons) and illustrated manuscripts were cut from the same cloth. The good thing about popular culture is that there’s little to read. The bad thing about it is that it’s popular and, therefore, inescapable.
Aesthetics. There, I’ve said it, and I’m glad. Keats wrote, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” so we’ll find little guidance there, but taste is something you can work at. Start with the curtains and don’t stop there. Take an adult education course—maybe they’ll have nude models. Visit a museum other than one that preserves Indiana high school basketball jerseys or Studebakers (although the one in South Bend is not to be missed the next time you’re there to cheer on the Irish—hey, it’s all culture).
Find a gallery, pick a period you feel comfortable with—for me it would have to be the Expressionists, Otto Müller in particular because I feel like his subjects look—and immerse yourself. Start to dress like a character in early Nabokov (maybe not Humbert Humbert) after first reading all of Nabokov, including his essays, and get back to me.
You might want to follow the example of my parents-in-law and join a Great Books sect in Sterling, Illinois, although if it’s just a lot of Michener you could be wasting your time. Vow to learn Greek so that you can read the original Euripides, all the while remembering Chico’s “You-rip-a-dese, you pay!” Make your next movie one with subtitles, but don’t read them aloud. Opera is not out of the question, although probably not the Ring Cycle right off of the bat. But don’t go to the opera if you’re going to sit there the whole time wondering, “All right already, where’s the fat lady?” Britannica Blog

Relational Aesthetics coined by Nicolas Bourriaud

Robert Jackson // Mar 1st 2007 at 9:02 pm You’ve highlighted the same problem the art world is facing right now. Relational Aesthetics (an art notion coined by Nicolas Bourriaud, inspired by Deleuze, Guattari and Massumi amongst others) is radically against representation and instead artworks are created with relations and networks in hindsight first, i.e Rirkrit Tiravanijia cooks a load of noodles in an exhibition gallery and serves them to visitors, the point being to show that the ‘art’ is basically conviviality pure and simple. another example Liam Gillick is quite happy for people to strand with there backs to his archiectural sculptures and not pay attention to them.

Relational Aesthetics like Deleuze and Guattari aims to present the artist as a Body without Organs, always in flux, collaborating with anyone he/she likes, not producing end products but as you say producing new meanings and relationships. The problem is that no-one ever questions these relationships properly, and the art world is in a slight state of empty empiricism. Would you say the task lies with Laclau as opposed to Baudrillaud? Laclau’s notion of the subject as being in flux and fixed at the same time means that such as with artists like Santiago Sierra, empiricism could achieve meaning through antagonism.