Nele Martens, Hufreesh Dumasia, Anna Maria, Agnus, and Henk van Putten

Five Auroville Artists at the Cymroza Gallery, Mumbai
by Debashish on Sun 05 Aug 2007 09:35 AM PDT Permanent Link
FIVE AUROVILLE ARTISTS By Debashish Banerji

The group of 5 artists showing together at the Cymroza gallery in Mumbai, seem at first to have little in common. A German, an Italian, a Belgian and an Indian Parsi, four women painters and a Dutch male sculptor, make up the group. What joins them is the fact that they all live and work at Auroville, a spiritual community founded by Mirra Alfassa, also known as the Mother, a collaborator of the modern Indian yogi, Sri Aurobindo. This is, no doubt, a profound source of likeness, a shared inner orientation towards the discovery and expression of spiritual or cosmic realities and coherences or intensities. This, indeed, is evident, in the large generic titles given to the artworks and even the very courage to title abstractions against the grain of most modern and contemporary practice. The question of content in abstraction, or the division into style and content is generally considered problematic or non-significant in modernism- the style is the content, which needs no further reference. Of course, post-modern practice has challenged this modernist purism, and has attempted to return to art its vehicular function as a signifier or metonym for social and psychological experiences and interpretations. From a sealed hermetic testament offered as surface only to an uncomprehending anonymity dehumanized by the global regime of techno-capitalism, there is a shift towards the re-affirmation of art as language, a tool in the salvaging, re-membering or re-creation of shared values and experiences. Participants in a communitarian context of a shared material, social, ideal and dynamic psychological reality and process, the Auroville artists are exemplars of this post-modern practice of the alphabet, vocabulary and grammar of an art culture which inheres in a common universe of perceptions, experiences, orientations and movements.

However, this culture must not be mistaken for an isolated island, nor its art for an internal cult-dialect of prefabricated signifiers. The Auroville artists come from a variety of life-situations and cultures, but they also share the ubiquitous condition of modernity which encircles the earth today with its neo-liberalist homogenization, its conditioning of experience and its flattening and fragmentation of subjectivity and this is what has brought them to Auroville. Their work is marked by a distrust for ideologies, propaganda or advertisational hypnosis and what unites them also is a culture of freedom and personal intuition in the exploration of experiences of subjective universality or non-dual consciousness or perceptions of harmony and beauty behind the bewildering diversity and chaos of appearances. This imparts to their work the freshness of an optimism born of a lived collective culture of progressive experience and it is in this sense that their art becomes a language of shared perceptions far subtler and more primordial than the language of words.

Just as one may identify a common faith in the human ability to experience states of universal consciousness and harmony and a common culture of experimental seeking for these experiences and realizations which bestows meaning and content uniting these artists, one may also identify a shared language in their expression. This is what one might now call the global tradition of modern abstraction. From its foundations in the work of Wassily Kandinsky and other European artists attempting to salvage a universal and non-sectarian spirituality out of the ruins of pre-modern civilization between two world wars, through its phase of bold experimentation and self-confidence in the post-World War II manifestation of American abstract expressionism, abstraction in art has accumulated a repertory of expressive means that marks it as a visual language of the independence of consciousness from national or multi-national or ethnic or sectarian or even human identifications or identity politics. It has received its share of castigation for this – berated for an insensitivity to postcolonial inequalities or international humanist or socialist struggles, equated with the belligerence and arrogant individualism of American modernity, dismissed as domesticated neo-liberal décor, put down as inhuman or anti-human, it continues nevertheless to draw diverse gifted adherents and enrich itself with extensions of its expressive possibilities. In Auroville, it finds a natural crucible for its furtherance through artists attempting to overcome the division between subject and object in the realization of states of non-duality or to disengage identity from its entrapment in forms so as to invoke new potentia of a transcendental creativity, or expressing perceptions of matter as force, idea and quality of consciousness or questioning the limits of the human in its transpersonal stretch towards universality. To the specter of anonymity, dehumanization and homogenization of modern global humanity, these expressions of a social consciousness stretching towards a self-exceeding of our present boundaries and the discovery of powers of universality and harmony in shaping the future, are a welcome alternative, to say the least.

The revision of human subjectivity that could be said to have launched itself as an omni-disciplinary revolution around the turn of the 19th/20th c., found its inspirations in modalities of being and expression rooted in pre-modern and non-western cultures. Modern vehicles for synthetic ideas of world spirituality, such as Theosophy or Neo-Platonism or trans-cultural reconstructions of Vedanta, Daoism or Zen Buddhism, were important acknowledged or unacknowledged sources behind Euro-American abstraction. The independent hierarchic world of Platonic Ideas or the mergence of forms in the formless indivisibility of the Vedantic Brahman or the animistic or occult energy patterns of the consciousness-beings of Theosophy became the legitimate descriptive field of the new art, as proclaimed by its prophets, such as Wassily Kandinsky, in his “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” A variety of creative movements and groupings followed, a seminal one in which Kandinsky himself, along with a number of other innovators of form were involved, being the design and architectural creative community of Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. Bauhaus design veered in a direction which attempted to validate structure, technological precision, simplicity and the high polish or transparency of ultra-modern materiality walking the borderline between form abstraction and functionality in a self-conscious non-ethnic “international style.” It also spawned a new interest in geometric abstraction in painting. All these tendencies were inherited and powerfully reconfigured by American Abstraction in the post-World War II period. The descendents of Abstract Expressionism, such as Action Painting or Color Field or Minimalism, opened up overlapping visual language domains marked by an immediacy of optical experience without idea content, which could only be described in terms of the conditions of their creation – a spontaneous performance of dynamic intuition which sought its prehistory in the art of accident of the color drip ceramics of Tang China or the crazy spontaneity of splashed ink paintings and their calligraphic counterparts or the chromatic intensity or cosmic geometry of Tantric yantras.

In the Auroville artists, we may find a completion of the circle of the forms and languages of abstract experimentation developed in Euro-American modernism through its re-assimilation in new traditions of Asiatic consciousness practice. For example, Nele Martens draws her inspiration from the play of conscious energy in or as form, universally active in nature. Structural modeling through variations of color density combine with controlled or swift rhythmic and textured brush dynamism to convey an impression of archetypal energy-events at the subtle interface between substance and force. While Martens, of German origin, with her early cultural immersion in the work of Bauhaus artists, can be seen furthering the traditions of Kandinsky, Klee and Johannes Itten, she brings to her paintings a color sensitivity and intensity which introduces an element of quality of consciousness missing in her European sources and only beginning to be hinted at in the later American Color Field artists. One may see this most clearly in a painting like Immersion, where the simplicity and contrast of the two-color scheme and the luminosity of pigment project a powerful visual immediacy through which a synaesthetic sixth-sense experiences the consciousness-world of flowers. The bold and expressive structural power of Martens’ work predominates in paintings like “Breakthrough,” while the dream-like monochromatic It Touches My Soul, stands apart for its evocation of interiority. These two paintings may, in fact, be taken together as exemplifying the sunlight and moonlight polarities of Martens’ consciousness explorations. Nele Martens' Paintings (Mouseover image for title; Click to see full size) www.flickr.com

Another artist relying on intensity of color as a primary qualitative constituent of her work is Hufreesh Dumasia. Dumasia’s canvases present an all-over attention, placing her inheritance closer to the American Abstract Expressionists. But unlike Pollock or de Kooning or their descendents, her centreless expanses radiate an intense exuberance and light, the subtle shades of the qualitative language of an impersonal and transcendental Delight, which as the Upanishads say, is the originating power of all Becoming. But these shades of Delight are not abstractions or even symbols for Dumasia. As in Martens’ case, a direct and mindless optical impression is the carrier of a synaesthetic experience of these universal Delight-states in their cosmic materiality. Dumasia’s layered densities of scattered color-particles and stretches of expanding amorphous shape are subtly organized through underlying rhythmic circularities or sinusoids and impress the viewer as descriptions of archetypical processes and realities at atomic or astrophysical levels of consciousness-matter. Hufreesh Dumasia's Paintings (Mouseover image for title; Click to see full size) www.flickr.com

Annamaria is a third artist of this group to rely on non-formal elements of abstraction to express herself. Anna Maria, draws her inspiration from an intimate lived relationship with the world of natural contours and vegetation. These forms, looming out of thin evocative patina-washes, are reminiscent of Chinese splashed ink landscapes or other conceptual abstractions of the Chinese literati (wen-ren) painters. She clarifies that she paints out of an inner intuition but it was only after discovering studies of chaos and fractal theory that she consciously sought the capture of similar processes in her work. In this, I feel more confirmed that her inspiration parallels the Daoist ideas of expressive spontaneity arising out of a meditative union with the creative shakti in Nature - giving body to the elemental lines behind natural forms and processes. However, to these microcosmic exercises, color lends a dimension of inner dynamism and drama, as brought out most clearly in a painting like The Invading Light. Annamaria's Paintings (Mouseover image for title; Click to see full size) www.flickr.com

If the previous three artists depend more on color, line or texture, Belgian painter, Agnus and Dutch sculptor, Henk van Putten put to work a progressive intuition in the expressive power of geometric form. With a predisposition towards the retention of the marks of natural or historical ageing processes in the perpetual recyclings of cultural materials, the marks of the passage of time bearing within them the insignia of imperishable or eternal gestures, Agnus uses the patina settled covers of aged ferrous boxes as the surfaces for her brushed acrylic subtle symbols of the hermetic life of devotion and self-transcendence. These symbols serve as watermarks, burned or etched into the inevitable decay of forms, a reminder of the persistent imperishable in perishable things (nityo’nityanam), formed of the enigmatic language of familiar similitude, yet uniquely distinct in every instance. Agnus' Paintings (Mouseover image for title; Click to see full size) www.flickr.com

Finally, the work of Henk van Putten, the only sculptor in the group, draws us further into the pure geometries of form and the properties of material substance with their immediate modern roots in Bauhaus design. The machined purity and perfection of deceptively simple forms, extruded or interlocking curvatures painted in intense primary colors bring to concrete focus a fusion of the worlds of rational order and the spontaneous symbols of earth fertility, while at the same time presenting and resolving the ambiguous relations between inside and outside and stillness and movement. Pythagorean geometry, Platonic Ideas and the perpetual circulations of Tantric meditation machines (yantras) form the archaic presences enlivening and rendering perennial these ultra-modern solids, offering themselves as inexhaustible bodies of contemplation. Henk van Putten's Sculptures (Mouseover image for title; Click to see full size) www.flickr.com

Keywords: Abstraction, JohannesItten, Kandinsky, JacksonPollock, Bauhaus, AbstractArt, Klee, ColorField, WenRen, AbstractExprwessionism, ActionPainting, MarkRothko, SriAurobindo, Spirituality, Culture, Auroville, Art

For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center

Spring / Summer 2007, Vol 15, No. 1 Boston University 621 Commonwealth Boston, MA 02215PH: 617-353-6480FAX: 617-353-5905 Contact Arion Advertise With Arion US Bookstores Carrying Arion EDITOR IN CHIEF Herbert Golder

Religion and the Arts in America CAMILLE PAGLIA

But here's the bad news: the avant-garde is dead. It was killed over forty years ago by Pop Art and by one of my heroes, Andy Warhol, a decadent Catholic. The era of vigorous oppositional art inaugurated two hundred years ago by Romanticism is long gone. The controversies over Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Chris Ofili were just fading sparks of an old cause. It is presumptuous and even delusional to imagine that goading a squawk out of the Catholic League permits anyone to borrow the glory of the great avant-garde rebels of the past, whose transgressions were personally costly. It's time to move on.

For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people's faiths is boring and adolescent. The New Age movement, to which I belong, was a distillation of the 1960s' multicultural attraction to world religions, but it has failed thus far to produce important work in the visual arts.1 The search for spiritual meaning has been registering in popular culture instead through science fiction, as in George Lucas' six-film Star Wars saga, with its evocative master myth of the “Force.” But technology for its own sake is never enough. It will always require supplementation through cultivation in the arts.

To fully appreciate world art, one must learn how to respond to religious expression in all its forms. Art began as religion in prehistory. It does not require belief to be moved by a sacred shrine, icon, or scripture. Hence art lovers, even when as citizens they stoutly defend democratic institutions against religious intrusion, should always speak with respect of religion. Conservatives, on the other hand, need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture. Every vibrant civilization welcomes and nurtures the arts.

Progressives must start recognizing the spiritual poverty of contemporary secular humanism and reexamine the way that liberalism too often now automatically defines human aspiration and human happiness in reductively economic terms. If conservatives are serious about educational standards, they must support the teaching of art history in primary school—which means conservatives have to get over their phobia about the nude, which has been a symbol of Western art and Western individualism and freedom since the Greeks invented democracy. Without compromise, we are heading for a soulless future. But when set against the vast historical panorama, religion and art—whether in marriage or divorce—can reinvigorate American culture.

Note :1. See Camille Paglia, “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious ­Vision in the American 1960 s,” Arion 10.3 (Winter 2003), 57–111.

A lecture delivered on 6 February 2007 as the 2007 Cornerstone Arts Lecture at Colorado College. It was videotaped by C-SPAN and broadcast on its American Perspectives series on 3 March 2007.

Arion is a member of The Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Return to the Homepage 10:58 PM

Paintings by Vishwajyoti Mohrhoff

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Benaras is not merely a geographical space, but it is also a cultural space

Santosh Verma Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, IN

I think my consciousness is constructed by my physical existence in the geographical area of Benaras. And Benaras is not merely a geographical space, but it is also a cultural space where the collective consciousness, within which I could achieve my personal consciousness, is full of abstract ideas generated by many thinkers like Kabir. Perhaps this is the context of my paintings. I leave it to the people to make sense of them. For me, I have done my bit by expressing myself through them. Posted by Santosh at 1:30 AM 0 comments Sunday, July 1, 2007

One who has this refinement will feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner

AUROBINDO ASHRAM ON THE ARTS
Jul 4th, 2007 by vivkhemka
A friend called- he mentioned that the Arts (a subject of my previous post) were a central element of the Guru-shishya parampara, a system of schooling prevalent till as late as the last century. Students would be taught by a Guru (teacher), staying at his house, doing all the housework, tending to the fields or other vocation. It was training for life. Sort of Small-Schools-Movement meeting Residential Schools.
Mira Alfassa, one of the founders of Auroville, affectionately called the ‘Mother‘, oversaw the Aurobindo Society’s Education work for a long time. She was a tireless educator, always eager to ensure her schools provided what she called “a vital education” In her book, Mother on Education, she writes about Arts Appreciation:

“Aesthetic sense should be added as early as possible. Aesthetic sense is the capacity to choose & adopt what is beautiful, harmonius, simple, healthy and pure. The child should be shown, led to appreciate, taught to love the beautiful, lofty, healthy and noble things whether in nature and human creation- one who has this refinement will feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner; it will finding expression in his behaviour and protect him from base and perverse movements."

I extend this train of thinking from appreciation to involvement. If a child is involved and then motivated to become engaged in an activity, he will “feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner; it will finding expression in his behaviour and protect him from base and perverse movements.” When talking about ‘create discipline’ in schools- what really should be called ‘creating engaging schools’ - this practice can be invaluable.
An aside: if you haven’t heard of Auroville, I recommend reading about it. You can do so here. Described as a place for humanity- of unending education, of constant progress, and youth that never ages, it is really quite remarkable in the quality of life it provides its citizens and in the community-service initiatives it undertakes. After the Asian Tsunami, as a volunteer in Nagappattinam, India’s most affected area, I noticed that Aurovilleans were the most sincere, dedicated and responsive of all the donor and non-governmental agencies assembled.
Posted in Shoulders of Giants, Curriculum 1 Comment

One Response to “AUROBINDO ASHRAM ON THE ARTS”
on 04 Jul 2007 at 10:04 pm1 sushma
It is very interesting to know that people are giving arts a respect that it totally missed 3 decades back . It was a total girly thing and if someone wanted to pursue it then he or she was looked down upon ,and the general idea was that the person concerned was not capable and a duffer .
I wish I could take up this stream and satisfy my hunger for art .I totally agree on the concept of engaging as it leaves no room for indiscipline . On days I have less work at office I become a nusiance to myself but otherwise I am busy and happy .well written !

God’s purpose in the creative advance is the evocation of intensities

Whitehead is very much a Jamesian pragmatist. The pragmatic test for truth is the interest that it sustains; “the primary function of theories is as a lure for feeling, thereby providing immediacy of enjoyment and purpose” (1929/1978, 184). Truth is finally a matter, not of empirical verification, but of “enjoyment and purpose,” or (to use Whitehead’s more frequent term) “satisfaction.” That is why “Beauty is a wider, and more fundamental, notion than Truth” (1933/1967, 265).19

In linking feeling to beauty, rather than subordinating it to truth, Whitehead unites the two senses of the word “aesthetic” that we find in Kant (and in the philosophical tradition more generally). On the one hand, the “Transcendental Aesthetic” has to do with sensation and the forms of sensibility; on the other hand, the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” in the Third Critique has to do with experiences of the beautiful and the sublime. Though Kant himself doesn’t comment upon the disparity between these two senses, other thinkers have found it problematic.

As Deleuze (1990) puts it, “aesthetics suffers from a wrenching duality. On one hand, it designates the theory of sensibility as the form of possible experience; on the other hand, it designates the theory of art as the reflection of real experience. For these two meanings to be tied together, the conditions of experience in general must become conditions of real experience” (260). For Deleuze, such a transformation is accomplished by certain modernist art practices; in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and Gombrowicz’s Cosmos, among other works, “the conditions of real experience and the structures of the work of art are reunited” (261).20

But Whitehead unites the two senses of aesthetics without privileging modernist aesthetic experimentation in particular. This is because, for Whitehead as for Kant, the question of beauty pertains not just to the creation and reception of works of art, but to sensible experience more generally. The connection, unremarked by Kant, between the “Transcendental Aesthetic” and the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” is that acts of sensible intuition and judgments of beauty alike involve feelings that are receptive and not spontaneous, and for which there can be no adequate concepts. In both cases, there is a certain act of creative construction on the part of the subject; yet this construction is responsive to the given data, and cannot be described as arbitrarily imposed, or as merely subjective. Neither the attribution of time and space to phenomena, nor the attribution of beauty to phenomenal objects, can be justified on cognitive grounds. Yet both these attributions make universalizing claims that have to be taken seriously.

Whitehead emphasizes these continuities between the two senses of aesthetics. He notes that the creation of “subjective form,” as an element in any act of sensible intuition, is already a proto-artistic process, involving as it does the selection, patterning, and intensification of sensory data. There is always already a “definite aesthetic attitude imposed by sense-perception” itself (1933/1967, 216). Even the most utilitarian, result- and action-oriented modes of perception nonetheless remain largely receptive, and thereby involve a certain “affective tone,” and a certain degree of aesthetic contemplation – and, Whitehead adds, “thus art is possible” (216).

In the process of feeling, “any part of experience can be beautiful,” and “any system of things which in any wide sense is beautiful is to that extent justified in its existence” (265). Though it falls to Whitehead to make these immanent connections explicit, they are already there, implicitly, in Kant’s own accounts of sensible reception and aesthetic judgment. It is only Kant’s privileging of cognition over affect that leads to the “wrenching duality” deplored by Deleuze.

If “the basis of experience is emotional,” then the culmination of experience – what Whitehead likes to call its “satisfaction”21 – can only be aesthetic. This is the reason for Whitehead’s outrageously hyperbolic claim that “the teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty” (1933/1967, 265). Whitehead defines Beauty as “the mutual adaptation of the several factors in an occasion of experience”; it is the “Harmony” of “patterned contrasts” in the subjective form of any such occasion. The purpose of such “patterned contrasts” is to increase, as much as possible, the experience’s “intensity of feeling” (252). Such a buildingup of intensity through contrast is the basic principle of Whitehead’s aesthetics, applying to all entities in the universe.

At the low end of the scale, even the most rudimentary “pulses of emotion” (like the vibrations of subatomic particles) exhibit a “primitive provision of width for contrast” (1929/1978, 163). And at the highest end, even God is basically an aesthete. “God is indifferent alike to preservation and to novelty,” Whitehead says. “God’s purpose in the creative advance is the evocation of intensities” (105). Whitehead’s overall principle of “creative advance,” his “Category of the Ultimate” underlying all being (21), has nothing to do with Victorian notions of moral and political improvement, nor with the capitalist ideal of endless accumulation. Creative advance is rather an intensive, qualitative, and aesthetic drive for “depth of satisfaction” (93, 110). Emotions are intensified, and experiences made richer, when incompatibilities, instead of being excluded (negatively prehended), are transformed into contrasts that can be positively integrated within a greater “complexity of order” (100).

But this process is not a tranquil or banally positive one, and Whitehead certainly does not regard “order” as an intrinsic good. The “patterned contrasts” must not be too tastefully arranged. Creative advance is stifled by any sort of static perfection. It demands, rather, the impetus for renewal that comes from “the emotional experience of aesthetic destruction” (1933/1967, 256-257). Whitehead always reminds us that “it is the business of the future to be dangerous” (1925/1967, 207); his aesthetics of feeling is both an expression of this danger, and the best means we have for coming to grips with it. Steven Shaviro shaviro@shaviro.com The Pinocchio Theory

19 It is important to point out, once again, that this means “not a relativity of truth, but, on thecontrary, a truth of the relative.” James’ and Whitehead’s pragmatism is not a slipshod relativism, but rather a claim about the situatedness of truth. A truth that is not “important,” or not strongly felt, does not thereby cease to be true; and a false proposition doesn’t become true, merely byvirtue of being invested with intense feeling or great aesthetic appeal. An unimportant truth isjust that: unimportant. But it may become important, if it is invested by feeling. And when afalse proposition operates effectively as a “lure,” so that it is invested with great feeling, one resultmay be the arousal of an “appetition” that works towards changing the world in order to make theproposition true. This is the very basis of change and Creative Advance: the “realization of whatis not and may be” (1929/1978, 32).

20 Elsewhere, Deleuze (1994) states the same point slightly differently. Aesthetics is “dividedinto two irreducible domains: that of the theory of the sensible which captures only the real’sconformity with possible experience; and that of the theory of the beautiful, which deals with thereality of the real insofar as it is thought. Everything changes once we determine the conditionsof real experience, which are not larger than the conditioned and which differ in kind from thecategories: the two senses of the aesthetic become one, to the point where the being of the sensiblereveals itself in the work of art, while at the same time the work of art appears as experimentation”(68). Here, the emphasis is less on specific modernist art practices than on the way in which philosophicalconstructivism converts Kant’s transcendental conditions of possibility into generativeconditions of actualization.

21 Whitehead uses “satisfaction” as a technical term. He defines it as the “final unity” of any actual occasion or experience, “the culmination of the concrescence into a completely determinate matter of fact” (1929/1978, 212). “Satisfaction” evidently does not mean that an experience has turned out happily, or favorably, or unfrustratingly; but just that the process of experiencing has terminated, and now only subsists as a “stubborn fact,” or a “datum,” for other experiences to prehend in their own turns. In the present context, the crucial point is that the same movement that transforms an affective encounter into an objectively cognizable state of affairs also, and simultaneously, offers up that state of affairs as an object for aesthetic contemplation.

Interactive art is art whose state of rest must be disturbed before it can become art at all

Feelings Are Always Local (Paperback) by Arjun Appadurai (Author), Joke Brouwer (Author), Mike Davis (Author), Alexander Galloway (Author), Tijs Goldschmidt (Author), Christopher Kelty (Author), Karim Nader (Author), Loretta Napoleoni (Author), Christa Sommerer (Author), Gijs van Oenen (Author), Arjen Mulder (Author) Amazon.com Editorial Reviews

Book Description: Interactive art organizes itself as an open system: it preserves its coherence by exchanging matter, energy, and information with the environment. In that manner, interactive art is art whose state of rest must be disturbed before it can become art at all. Yet, it is precisely this instability makes it ever more complex. Feelings are Always Local is published on the occasion of DEAF04, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, which focuses on interactivity as open system and interactivity in open systems. It features projects with a social and political slant, as well as projects that have a technological or biological character. Included as well are essays, interviews, and projects by DEAF04 international theorists and artists. Amazon.com

An inner power of discrimination

All artistic work in order to be perfect must indeed have in the very act of creation the guidance of an inner power of discrimination constantly selecting and rejecting in accordance with a principle of truth and beauty which remains always faithful to a harmony, a proportion, an intimate relation of the forms to the idea; there is at the same time an exact fidelity of the idea to the spirit, nature and inner body of the thing of beauty which has been revealed to the soul and the mind, its svarupa and svabhiiva.

Therefore this discriminating inner sense rejects all that is foreign, superfluous, otiose, all that is a mere diversion distractive and deformative, excessive or defective, while it selects and finds sovereignly all that can bring out the full truth, the utter beauty, the inmost power. But this discrimination is not that of the critical intellect, nor is the harmony, proportion, relation it observes that which can be fixed by any set law of the critical reason; it exists in the very nature and truth of the thing itself, the creation itself, in its secret inner law of beauty and harmony which can be seized by vision, not by intellectual analysis.

The discrimination which works in the creator is therefore not an intellectual self-criticism or an obedience to rules imposed on him from outside by any intellectual canons, but itself creative, intuitive, a part of the vision, involved in and inseparable from the act of creation. It comes as part of that influx of power and light from above which by its divine enthusiasm lifts the faculties into their intense suprarational working.

When it fails, when it is betrayed by the lower executive instruments rational or infrarational, - and this happens when these cease to be passive and insist on obtruding their own demands or vagaries, - the work is flawed and a subsequent act of self-criticism becomes necessary. But in correcting his work the artist who attempts to do it by rule and intellectual process, uses a false or at any rate an inferior method and cannot do his best. He ought rather to call to his aid the intuitive critical vision and embody it in a fresh act of inspired creation or re-creation after bringing himself back by its means into harmony with the light and law of his original creative initiation. The critical intellect has no direct or independent part in the means of the inspired creator of beauty...Page - 131

For the conscious appreciation of beauty reaches its height of enlightenment and enjoyment not by analysis of the beauty enjoyed or even by a right and intelligent understandiJ1g of it, -these things are only a preliminary clarifying of our first unenlightened sense of the beautiful, - but by an exaltation of the soul in which it opens itself entirely to the light and power and joy of the creation. The soul of beauty in us identifies itself with the soul of beauty in the thing created and feels in appreciation the same divine intoxication and uplifting which the artist felt in creation.

Criticism reaches its highest point when it becomes the record, account, right description of this response; it must become itself inspired, intuitive, revealing. In other words, the action of the intuitive mind must complete the action of the rational intelligence and it may even wholly replace it and do more powerfully the peculiar and proper work of the intellect itself; it may explain more intimately to us the secret of the form, the strands of the process, the inner cause, essence, mechanism of the defects and limitations of the work as well as of its qualities.

For the intuitive intelligence when it has been sufficiently trained and developed, can take up always the work of the intellect and do it with a power and light and insight greater and surer than the power and light of the intellectual judgment in its widest scope. There is an intuitive discrimination which is more keen and precise in its sight than the reasoning intelligence. Page-127, Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Social And Political Thought Volume-15 > The Suprarational Beauty

Artistic expression is a means more than it is an ends

Why do many of us continue to seek a fresher, crisper, more internal ‘musical experience?’ Jewish Musicism By: Doni Joszef 5tjt.com Published: Friday, June 22, 2007

Based on the above formulation of spiritual creativity, the explanation emerges. Artistic expression is a means more than it is an ends. An artist’s masterpiece emerges naturally when he seeks to reveal what dwells within. This cannot be forced or scripted; it must be experienced. Dovid HaMelech did not sit down with a laptop and thesaurus to write a best-selling book of “mystical meditations.” Tehillim is the natural manifestation of a soul-searching artist who used the seven musical notes and twenty-two Hebrew letters as springboards toward self-expression. These notes and letters were his tools to unlock the iron chambers to his inner self. The creative experience was his way of etching away the external rough to allow his inner ‘diamond’ to naturally shine.

For better or worse, the reality of our present-day community presents a constant roadblock before the paths of self-discovery and self-acceptance. Rigid molds and high-pressure expectations continually clog our internal stability and alienate us from our true selves. This pressure manifests itself in many different ways—some more tragic than others. The emotional health and psychological stability of our extended family has surely suffered from these challenging forces. External pressure creates a fog of anxiety and uncertainty within the minds and hearts of those who encounter it. For many of us, self-expression expired long ago—as soon as community “standards” and “expectations” took hold of our consciousness. The rich soil of our “flower-seeds” hardened. The garden dries and becomes desolate.

Creativity is the counter-force. True art involves a tzurah besoch tzurah, art within the art. It is the process through which the artist tries to naturally express what seeks to be revealed from within. This is the music that speaks to the soul. Determining what is and what is not a portrait of meaningful creativity involves no formulas or equations. It is not concrete or external. It cannot be seen or measured. But it can be sensed. It can be experienced. When music is a means by which an artist sincerely discovers and shares what dwells within, this waters the garden of creativity; this gives life to the flower seeds. Keep seeking the “tzura b’soch hatzura” and may your life be an ever-evolving work of art, continuously infused with the “inner art” of self revelation!

There is an art for each aspect of the grammar of being human

« Home » Great Artistry » The grammar of art Posted by Matthew

To taste — smell — hear — see — touch — speak — move — write … are these not the essentials of being a human? And thus, the grammar of being human? Which form the foundation of being human, and give way to how we think and reason (the dialectic of being human) and how we choose to live our lives amidst all the choices and possibilities (the rhetoric of being human). There is an art for each aspect of the grammar of being human, is there not …

Of taste (cooking) — of smell (perfumery) — of hearing (music) — of sight (painting) — of touch (sculpture) — of speaking (poetry) — of moving (dance) — of writing (literature) … and cannot these, singularly or in combination, in small as well as large scale, in these or other similar names, account for every form of art we might imagine?

Architecture, for example, is the sense of touch (sculpture) writ large. Film, to take another, is a hybrid of sight (image) as well as hearing (music), moving (dance), and writing (literature). Theatre, the hybrid of speaking (poetry), moving (dance), and writing (literature).

Thus — is it difficult to understand that what we make into objects of art comes directly from what we’ve experienced in our life, as John Dewey suggested? Or, it is easy to see this? This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Art. About the Authors Great Quotes HomeThe WoodshedElegant Thorn ReviewThe Bookshelf

If you are measuring beauty, you aren’t experiencing it

Socrates and beauty Posted by Matthew. In his dialogue, Charmides, Plato has Socrates say something that really caught my eye this morning as I read it for an upcoming class on this dialogue. From around 154b:
…I am not good as measuring, and in the presence of the beautiful I am like a measuring line without marks…

For me with good and beautiful works of art, the question of degree becomes one more of whether the work is exhaustible, or whether it is inexhaustible—as far as it provides perceptually and conceptually enriched experience, contemplation, depth, and sensory affect. Works of the Humanities canon are those works that are inexhaustible, and thus endlessly inspire the memory and imagination. But the matter of inexhaustibility in art is altogether different than measuring art’s beauty while one experiences it; rather, it is over months, years, and epochs, not a mere moment. But, oh, the moment—I take Socrates to mean, in essence, why measure, when the point of experiencing beauty and goodness is precisely opposite of that? And further, if you are measuring beauty, you aren’t experiencing it. This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Memory and Imagination, Beauty. Matthew Dallman (website)

The art world loves/hates Digital Art

Is Digital Art really Art? Can digital artists slug it out with the big boys? As little more than genre artists or craftspersons, do they even deserve an arts prize? Ironically, Imaginaria could prove to be more useful as a catalyst for the exposure of a long-simmering antipathy between two worlds - that of 'digital art' and that of 'contemporary art' or 'art' - and their accompanying discourses than as a catalyst for elevating the status of the dubious category of digital art to a 'serious' cultural practice. We should thank Cap Gemini for this, if nothing else.

With a deep curtsey in the direction of all the platitudes, terminological contradictions, historical omissions, generalisations and false homogenisations that are part of such a venture, we asked Ewan Morrison and Matthew Fuller to hypothesise why it is exactly that the art world both hates and loves digital art.

The art world hates Digital Art. The ICA's show Imaginaria, which sets out to show the best of Digital Art 1997-1998, has helped clarify the reasons why Digital Art is shunned by the art world, and why it will never be accepted into the canon of high art. The following is a list of reasons why 'Digital Art' will not be accepted as fine art.

1. A new art form - give it up! Art is dead. There is nothing more futile than aspiring to the condition of art at a time when giving up art is the only legitimate art form.

Since Baudrillard claimed that art is dead, and continues to exist only as a simulation of its former self, the only way to make art has been to endlessly replay the death of art - to take 'the authentic' and show that it is a simulation. Digital Art seems to start from a misreading of Baudrillard: it attempts to make art out of simulacra and then claim authenticity for its own products...Ewan Morrison utilityfilms AT btinternet.com

7. The art world loves digital art because someone other than the Royal Society of Portrait Painters has to take the conventions of pictorial representation into the future. Whilst virtual worlds might still be to the mid-nineties what Roger Dean album covers were to the mid-seventies, the onward march of technology will one day surely permit an upgrade-obedient artist to produce a final form of perfection: an utter conformity to perceptual mechanisms whose perspectival instructions permit viewing only by the most perfected of subjects. At this sublime moment being empties in entirety onto a computer and thus perhaps allows isolation on a hard drive to be stored or destroyed. Matthew Fuller matt AT axia.demon.co.uk

Mouth of Purgatory is like a vortex where black loses its darkness

Drawing on Dante Express Features Service Saturday , May 12, 2007

He confesses to be jittery about life’s fast pace, but ironically Pranab Basu’s latest exhibition is titled “Speed”. “It is an evil necessity,” he says. The former journalist may not be a frequent presence in the art circle, but the passion of a self-taught artist is reflected in his abstracts where he ponders on evanescence and Dante’s hell. In the Disappearance series, forms seem to be irretrievably hurtling toward a point of invisibility. Mouth of Purgatory is like a vortex where black loses its darkness while the vaulted tomb of the inferno in La Tomba almost seems like a womb. The Renaissance poet seems to have been a permanent influence on Basu. He had earlier made a film, Dante and Ganga, on how the poet was inspired by the river. Next Basu hopes to uncover a secret about Leonardo da Vinci in a documentary that he will start filming in September.

The exhibition at the India International Centre is on till May 15 — Vandana Kalra cities.expressindia.com

With more perspectives, more understanding is possible

Leonard Koscianski 2002

Focusing their attention on the dark side of postmodern society, critical postmodern artists depict the sinister aspects of a media saturated, postmodern world. The critical postmodern artist depicts the fragmentation of society and the alienation of individuals as dark, problematic - weird. This outward, critical perspective is closely related to the central tenets of Critical Theory and high modernism.

Critical postmodern art is based on the postmodern assertion that all artist perspectives are valid, but unlike postmodernism, the critical postmodern holds that greater understanding of society is possible by viewing it through the lens of individual artworks or narratives. With the possibility of detatchment, a more independent point of view might be feasible. Like postmodern art, and unlike the art of the Enlightenment, critical postmodern art does not see itself as part of a progression toward an ultimate truth or beauty, nor as part of a grand art historical continuum. However it assumes that with more perspectives, more understanding is possible. This implies the recognition of a modicum of "objectivity" though it may be elusive. If some assertions are "true" – the Earth is round, Nazi Germany was inhuman, then some visual expressions might be true, or more accurately truer than others. This would seem to revive the idea of artistic detachment and notions of an avant-guarde, valid or not.

The validity of multiple perspectives does not negate truth. Because it respects the validity of the individual artist’s perspective, critical postmodern art pays respect to the integrity of that perspective more than was the case with postmodern art. It values multiple perspectives, and the integrity of each individual artist’s vision, and by extension the individual self. This departs from Lyotard’s assertion that "A self does not amount to much". (Lyotard, 1979) This is also a departure from the postmodern art assumption that a work of art is just a move in a "language" game. Conversely, this recognition of the validity of multiple perspectives separates the critical postmodern artist from the self-centeredness of modern Existentialism. He attempts to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity. Though his vision may be largely subjective, at the same time he believes that there are other largely subjective views which when experienced may lead to understanding, or objectivity. This may be an attempt to have ones cake and eat it too, or it may be a way out of a postmodern trap.

If individual perspectives are important, then artwork, which expresses those perspectives, must be developed seriously even if the content is humorous. For this reason critical postmodern art is often more highly crafted than postmodern works, and often more accessible and communicative. The critical postmodern artist rightly or wrongly assumes that craftsmanship implies respect for the viewer, and enables artwork to communicate more effectively. The critical postmodern artist is ethically engaged in the act of creation rather than ironically detached.

As the world moves beyond the postmodern, critical postmodern recognizes the phantasm of advertising and shopping malls as a materially destructive force. It explores the effect this phantasm has throughout the world. The critical postmodern artist recognizes the need for art works which are not merely expensive status symbols, but which act as independent lenses onto a troubled world. In this praxis the critical postmodern artist recognizes the need for some form of ethics, integrity and aesthetics, without yearning for a contemporary version of the pre-postmodern world. However when one adopts a critical stance it does imply a certain moral superiority. The achiles heal of critical postmodern art may be an attempt to have both ways to be socially critical but at the same time retreat to the safety of postmodern multiplicity. LEONARD KOSCIANSKI paintings & drawings HOME BIO CONTACT WHAT IS CRITICAL POSTMODERN ART?

The way the building is tilted at 20deg to the road to catch the breeze

Golconde Golconde is the dormitory that The Mother wanted to build for her disciples, in Pondichery. The commissioned architect was Antonin Reymond, who was practising in Japan. He came to the country to assist in F.L.Wright's Imperial hotel, and then went on to open his own office, in 1920. He was known for his love for RCC and incorporating Japanese values and practices in his buildings.

In 1935, he was given the task, by The Mother, to build a dormitory for Sri Aurobindo's disciples. He was assisted by George Nakashima (an architect in Raymond's office) and Francois Summers (a Czech architect who worked with Le Corbusier) before coming to Pondy. The building has distinct Corbuserean influences. The strong horizontal lines, the shading devices, the recessed semi-basement that gives makes it seem like the building is floating.It has a few Wrightian ideas incorporated in it too - the way the building is tilted at 20deg to the road to catch the breeze, the "organic architecture" principles of Wright, where the building is a part of nature.

PLAN
The first RCC framed structure to be built in India, the building is an archetype for detail.Everything, including the furniture has been designed to suit the climate.The building has been so sited that the longer facades have been designed to face the North and South. There are no walls - only asbestos louvers that screen the interior from the exterior, providing shade from the sun while ventilating the interior space.The Southern garden is heavily wooded, while the Northern garden is sparsely planted. The difference in temperatures facilitates conventional currents through the building.

CORRIDORS on the NORTHERN SIDE - access to the rooms
Sliding teak doors with no rollers and panels alternating on the inner and outer frames provide constant ventilation, while ensuring privacy.The flooring is of black cudappah that has been laid with large joints to disguise the irregular edges which were a result of a lack of precise cutting instruments in those times. The few walls have been plastered with Chettinad egg plaster, which is dense and highly reflective.The extended low sills, highly polished black cudappah floor, the shining white walls and the constant breeze through the building proves to be the perfect canvas for the sunlight streaming in through the louvers.

CROSS-SECTION
The furniture has also been aptly designed to suit the climate.The bed is made of cane, with provisions for a mosquito net, the chairs have cane seats and backrest for ventilation.The extended low sill allows for additional seating, with a view into the northern garden, which has narrow reflecting lotus pools.The utilitarian core consisting of the main staircase, bathrooms and laundry area services the building.The wiring and plumbing are concealed and the building is provided with lightning conductors.

FRONT ELEVATION of GOLCONDE
From the street, a large exposed concrete wall with an oversized door allows forms the dominant part of the elevation, behind which is visible a series of louvers that form the northern facade. The subtle shifts in scale and accent - between form, structure and detail make the entire building a harmonious union. The Golconde ( named after the Golconda Fort ( a mine of jewels)) , funded by Akbar Hayadri, the then Diwan of the state of hyderabad , remains a vital part of Modernist Indian Architecture for being the first "home-made" building of its kind and its success in merging aesthetics, craft and technology almost-perfectly. Posted by Jyotsna at 1:55 PM Labels: visits Monday, April 23, 2007

Baker's low-cost architecture was in sharp contrast to the promise of big science

LEADER ARTICLE: Master Builder Amrith Lal TOI 21 Apr, 2007

Laurie Baker, who passed away in Thiruvananthapuram a few days ago, is relevant for a world that is threatened by global warming. His futuristic vision of India, encapsulated in his buildings and ideas of architecture, emphasised efficiency in the use of materials and energy, improvisation and adaptation of local craft and artisanal traditions, and the needs of millions of homeless. The hundreds of houses, churches and public buildings he designed and constructed offer a rare example of an equitable and sustainable architecture. Baker has spoken about the influence of a Quaker upbringing and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi in his life.

In an autobiographical essay, he recalled how Gandhi took fancy to the Chinese shoes he had made of cut waste clothes when they met the first time. Gandhi invited him to come and work in India after the war. One can deduce from the encounter that Baker shared some of Gandhi's economic ideas even before they had met in person. The Quaker roots had inculcated in him an appreciation of labour and austerity. One does not know if Baker shared Gandhi's interest in the British philosopher, John Ruskin. However, there is an imprint, conscious or otherwise, of Ruskin in Baker's work, especially the ideas expressed by the former in his writings on the Gothic. Ruskin suggests three rules to test the desirability of a product: One, never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which invention has no share; two, never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end; three, never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving records of great works. These, we can see, formed the core of Baker's work ethic.

The contribution of Baker to Gandhian praxis is similar to that of the economist J C Kumarappa. Unlike with Kumarappa's formulations on the village industries, Baker's ideas found a wider audience. As in the case of Kumarappa, it was Gandhi who gave a political orientation to Baker's professional skills. Baker's experiences within the Quaker community may have prepared the ground for him to relate to Gandhi and understand science using moral categories. His pacifism was also shaped by the belief that the science which disrupted the order of life negatively ought to be shunned. He was always supportive of campaigns that sought to expose the false science of our times. He wrote with equal passion on the need for an essential architecture and the immorality of a nuclear bomb. The aesthetic and wholesomeness of his buildings and concepts were a reflection of his philosophy of life. In the essay, Architecture and the People, Baker summed up his work practice in four points.

• One, he had a clear idea of his clients and their needs. To him, they did not exist as social and economic categories; they were not high income groups or tribals, but people with names and personalities. He once said that he could recall the names of all those for whom he had built houses.
• Two, no one has the right to waste money, materials and energy in a country like India.
• Three, people have the "inherent and inherited ability" to know what good architecture is. Architects, he felt, could and should learn from ordinary people.
• Four, design has to be organic; it has to be transferred from the field to the drawing table and not the other way. He wrote that, "good or bad design, or good or bad taste has little to do with colour, or form, or texture, or costliness — but that has only to do with honesty and truth in the choice of materials and the method of using them".

His concepts of architecture and design were not utilitarian; he only reiterated that utility and aesthetics can comfortably coexist. There is a fundamental critique of the way knowledge is currently understood, acquired, valued and practised in Baker's work. He did not respect the hierarchies implicit in the use of modern knowledge. He acknowledged traditional wisdom and was constantly learning and adapting it in his work practices. The divide between thought and manual labour was for him a false one. He designed his buildings in such a way that they would "fit in with the local styles and not be an offence to the eyes of the people". The housing projects Baker undertook for the poor were in sharp contrast to the government housing projects. His homes were lived in whereas the sarkari concrete huts ended up being used as cattle sheds and storehouses.

In one sense, Baker was a lucky man. Gandhian ideas of social and economic reconstruction were on the retreat by the time Baker began to build. Baker's low-cost architecture was in sharp contrast to the promise of big science. However, he found a powerful backer in C Achyuta Menon, the communist leader and chief minister of Kerala, and the Archbishop of Thiruvananthapuram when he settled in Kerala in the 1960s. The Baker model of a low-cost housing revolution to address the needs of the poor found a lot more takers among middle-class elite in the later years. The joke about the upwardly mobile Malayalee seeking a Baker model house with an exorbitant budget explains the complex nature of his acceptance among people. People may have only bought in to the form of his architecture, and not the vision behind it. A construction company offered tributes to him with a front-page ad in a leading Malayalam daily on the day his death was reported. Of course, the master builder would have smiled at the irony. Editorial l Columnists l Speaking Tree l Interviews l SUNDAY SPECIALS l Letters to the Editor

The possibility of emerging into light is essentially preserved

In a sense, the artist, and the artists ideas are influenced by their arsenal of technology, whether that be the hammer and tongs, the brush, the pencil, or any number of the countless other possibilities. The artist speaks a particular language in their work, and as an artist, one must be conscious of this physical language. As Husserl states when discussing Galileo, “culturally acquired ideas can become part of one’s ‘natural attitude’ through the addition of technology to the body”[8], and one must be aware of what technology we extending our body with and what kind of ‘cyborg’ we may become. For my part, having the hammer and tongs in my arsenal, being able to manipulate the blocks of red hot steel with technology that will (hopefully) eventually become an extension of my body, is a valuable and desirable skill.

With this arsenal, the artist translates certain ‘truths’ into the language of art, and through this revealing of truth, there is also a concealing, “the two together constitute the full nature of Truth”[9] which is called ‘the Mystery’ by Heidegger. In my own work, I often find myself writing my most personal or truthful thoughts backwards on the page. As difficult as it is to read, the purpose on an unconscious level perhaps, is the act of writing, not reading. The same can be said not only for my notes and diary entries, but also for my work. In articulating the very personal and intimate desires in LoveSick, by bringing them into the real world and making them into a real piece of art, they have also been concealed in this same piece of art. Without the security and concealment of the articulated work, the unconcealed ideas would remain concealed by their unrealized articulation. “Concealing itself is not mere closing itself up but, as Heidegger says, a sheltering and guarding, in which the possibility of emerging into light is essentially preserved, in which such emergence belongs. ‘Self- concealment guarantees to self-disclosure its essence’”[10]...

When I started attending lectures on phenomenology I wrote all my notes backwards, I didn’t really think about why, it just felt like the right thing to do, so as a particularly self-indulgent person, I indulged myself and am left with almost unreadable notes. It was only nearing the end of the course that I discovered why I felt this urge...Posted by E.Armanious at 6:07 PM

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.

Julian Lines, Chair of Auroville International and Ms. Sonia Dyne, Vice Chair inaugurated an exhibition

Dharamsala's "Art in Exile" at Auroville Pondicherry

Sent by Email [Saturday, February 24, 2007 17:30] Sun 25, Feb 2007

Three outstanding young Tibetan artists are exhibiting their paintings at the Pavilion of Tibetan Culture in the International Zonew of Auroville, near Pondicherry in South India. Migmar Wangdu Shaasar, Tsering Gonpo and Tenzin Namgyal Pelwa are showing original remarquable works on contemporary and traditional themes.The exhibition opened with a lamp lighting and brief talk by Ms. Dena Merriam from the Women's World Peace Initiative. An author on five books on Art and Sculpture, Ms. Merriam has also had audiences with H.H. the Dalai Lama and H.H. the Karmapa. Mr. Julian Lines, Chair of Auroville International and Ms. Sonia Dyne, Vice Chair inaugurated an exhibition of traditional Tibetan Handicrafts.

The artists statement mentions their aims:

• To express our emotions about being in exile to a broader world audience using our paintings as the medium.
• To create awareness and appreciation of contemporary art within the Tibetan society.
• To preserve Tibet's unique culture, tradition and religion through the form of contemporary art.

They expressed their gratitude to Pavilion of Tibetan Culture- Auroville for their generous support in making this 'Art in Exile exhibition possible and especially to Mr. Claude Arpi and Mrs. Kalsang Dolma for their tireless help.The exhibition is open 9am-6pm and runs through 28th February. Phayul.com

A documentation of the urban development and architecture witnessed within Auroville

An experiment in urban planning A. SRIVATHSAN The Hindu Book Review Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 Documentation of the urban development and architectural accomplishments witnessed within Auroville AUROVILLE ARCHITECTURE — Towards New Forms for a New Consciousness: Pub. By Prisma, Auroville-605101.

The 19th and 20th century urban history is replete with utopian visions and manifestos. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Richard Owen and Tony Garnier, every one had his share of urban vision. The story subsequently continued with Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier. What connected many of these utopias were rationalist ideas like separation of functions like residential and commercial, and presence of green belt as segregators. Some of these utopias failed, while others never materialised. A few of them survive as a folly and even fewer schemes crawl towards reality.
Vision
Urban utopias took new avatar in Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti where architecture and environmentalism hit new collaboration. Auroville near Puducherry is one such utopian vision conceived partly as an ashram retreat and partly like a rationally organised urban precinct. This book is a documentation of the urban development and architecture witnessed within Auroville since 1964.
Mirra Alfassa, popularly known as the Mother visualised Auroville as an urban experiment to "undertake the work of evolution of consciousness." She commissioned the French architect Roger Anger to give form to her vision. Anger came with a spiral plan that resembled a galaxy with the Matri-mandir at its centre. The entire city was divided into industrial, cultural, residential and international zones with a green belt encircling it. The town was designed for a population of 50,000. The book discusses the features of urban planning and architectural accomplishments in three sections. The first section briefly documents the important stages of Auroville's urban development. It reproduces some of the archival images, sketches and notes that illuminate the ideas leading to its conception. In the second part, the details of the plan, the various zones and important buildings within them are listed and described. The last section profiles the various architects who are part of Auroville and gives brief description of their important works and views.
The first two sections on the town plan could have been elaborated in order to give more insights into the functioning of Auroville as a settlement. The details of how it functions, how resources are managed, utilisation of land and issues of density could have been discussed. This would have been useful to appreciate and review it as a model.
Dichotomy
Auroville exhibits a dichotomy between an overarching central idea manifested in the form of a galaxy plan and the wide variety of buildings it possesses. While the plan may be rooted in a particular spiritual worldview, the buildings are freewheeling experiments in architecture. This conspicuous division is reflected in the book. The two sections of the book in this sense appear disconnected.
The sections on individual buildings and architects are well illustrated and form the bulk of the book. The architectural experiments are remarkable and have a lot to offer to those who seek alternative approaches to design. The variety is impressive. There are buildings that appear like habitable sculptures, some are construction virtuosos, while some remain as modest abodes. The range of construction techniques displayed is equally impressive: from the use of stabilised mud blocks to traditional construction techniques are displayed. What the book misses out is to feature the works of the Auroville architects in Puducherry and elsewhere. This would have been useful to understand the extent of influence of these ideas bred in Auroville on the world outside.
The book certainly presses home the need for an elaborate and a critical review of Auroville as an urban experiment. Many of the related issues remain undocumented in the book. For example, its recent attempt to come with a new master plan that demands more land for `complete' development, the unsustainable low density currently prevalent, the absence of any collective transportation and the hierarchical relation with the adjoining villages needs to be reviewed. The book gives a glimpse of innovations achieved within Auroville. It merits to be treated as a useful introduction and a catalogue of architecture in Auroville.