Spirituality and Art

A continuation of the old Skeptiko Thread.

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Give me a little time and I'll dig out some interviews with the late comic book artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud in which he talks about  spirituality and the ability of an artist to use colour, perspective, rhythm, et cetera to reorganise and harmonise the internal forces of the viewer/reader.



Here's one of his shorts.



Double Escape (“Double évasion”) by Moebius (FR), in: Métal Hurlant magazine #50, France, April 1980. Copyright ©1980 Les Humanoïdes Associés/Moebius Production
Source: https://from-dusk-till-drawn.com/2016/05...s-fr-1980/

Artists Inspired by Ghosts and Magic

Peter Saenger

Agatha Wojciechowsky was riding a New York City bus when, she claimed, she heard a voice. It was the early 1950s, and the former seamstress was learning to be a medium and spiritual healer. She had done many modest drawings, and when the bus stopped in front of an art-supply store, the voice told her, “Go in and buy some watercolors.”

For three days she sat at home waiting for instructions on what to paint. She then worked in what she called a trance, beginning at the lower left-hand corner of the canvas and working in bands from the bottom up. By the mid-1960s, Wojciechowsky was showing her paintings—many of them vivid abstractions dotted with human faces—alongside famous artists like Man Ray and Jean Dubuffet.

Next month, her work will be featured in “Supernatural America,” a new exhibition opening June 12 at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio that covers more than two centuries of art related to the paranormal. The roughly 160 works in the show are almost all by Americans who claimed to have experience with the spirit world. They range from well-known artists like Andrew Wyeth, Grant Wood and the contemporary video artist Bill Viola to photographers of UFOs and 19th-century mediums who claimed spirits guided their drawings...

I'm quite intrigued by Alberto Thirion.   https://thirion.medium.com/




Right-click and open in new tab to see the image.

Afruz Amighi

Is there an architecture of worship? … can we find it in a house of prayer, a mausoleum, a secret niche inside a home, a white ghost-bike on a desolate street?

Building shrines is an ancient compulsion. We scurry around collecting things, we stockpile them, arranging them this way and that. It’s so o welcome, this flurry of activity; acting on orders from without feels so good, obliterating thoughts. And when we finally find the physical contours of the thing and we behold our shrine….it interrupts time and creates stillness.

Sometimes when we are moved by what we do, what we build, compose, write, we find ourselves in this stillness. For me, it is often preceded by a frenzy. And then it sits, this stillness, draping its weight over my shoulders, producing a sensation somewhere inside the moment where we suspend disbelief.

The Transvocatory Media of Barry William Hale

an interview by Robert Fitzgerald

I once had a dream-within-a-dream in which I felt incredibly tired. I lay down to sleep and had another dream within-a-dream that I was in the back of an old ute being driven by two men of African origin down these dirt roads with tall fields of yellow crops browned by the sun. I had no idea where we were going and was a little apprehensive of the whole situation. We finally arrived at a dusty clearing filled with a congregation of other Africans. There was a small four-posted open structure with a galvanised roof. Everyone was dressed in dusted white clothes; most of the men had no tops and white rolled up pants, and the women wore simple white dresses with scarves tied around their heads. There were two men who seemed to be in charge. One had a machete and a pirate flag draped over his shoulders; the other wore a short sleeved shirt and straw hat. A collection of drummers began to play a rhythmic battery, whilst a repetitive chorus of song broke out and the congregation began to sway. I found the words of the song coming out of my mouth and the dance began to make my entire consciousness real; side-to-side steps with a small bob and turn of the head. With each bob I could feel my awareness falling away and I recall a few of the congregation looking intently at me with piercing eyes. Then my consciousness fell away again and I found myself in an awe-inspiring grotto with the roof and walls lined with human skulls. Within was a circle of water with a small island in the center where a tiny amorphous figure with two black eyes captivated me. Then I found myself waking in the dream state where I had fallen asleep and then I began to hear the birds of morning in the mountains overlooking the valley of the waters with the song ringing in my head. As I awoke from this very unusual dream, my girlfriend at the time asked if I was alright because I was covered from head to toe in perspiration and my legs had been moving vigorously in my sleep.

Dreams may also be given as an initiation, or as seal upon an initiation. In the Middle East, the initiation to become a geomancer is transferred by spittle and is usually performed in graveyards. The potential initiate would know the power had been transferred if s/he dreamt of horses that night. Some Voudoun initiations require that one must remain in the temple and sleep with your head upon a rock for up to 21 days. Receiving or seeking knowledge by the process of dream incubation has a long history. The seeker sleeps in the tombs of saints or grottos sacred to the gods, like that at Delphi. One slept in these places in order to receive a revelation in dream. There are accounts of tertons or treasure-finders of the Himalayas retrieving physical sacred objects in dreams, terma-teachings guarded by dakinis and hidden by ancient Masters in clouds, trees, rocks and holy statues. These await disclosure and for the resonant keys to be unlocked; teachings and tantras received in dream when the time is ripe for their reception, dissemination and practice. The techniques and examples are vast.

Byzantine Icon Studio

Welcome to the world of Byzantine Iconography !

Byzantine Iconography – is the oldest and only Christian art form survived unchanged for the past 2000 years.

The term 'icon' - icona, ikona, икона (Russian) comes from the Greek word eikona (εἰκών, eikōn, ) which simply means image. The Eastern Orthodox believe that the first icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary were painted by St. Luke the Evangelist.

Byzantine icons i.e. : Russian icons, Greek icons, Serbian icons etc. - are filled with symbolism designed to convey information about the person or event depicted. For this reason, icons tend to be formulaic, following a prescribed methodology for how a particular person should be depicted, including hair style, body position, clothing, and background details.
Icon painting, in general, is not an opportunity for artistic expression, though each iconographer brings a vision to the piece. It is far more common for an icon to be copied from an older model, though with the recognition of a new saint in the church, a new icon must be created and approved.
Today icons are used particularly among Eastern Orthodox , Oriental Orthodox, Copticand Byzantine Catholic Churches .

The Eastern Orthodox teaching regarding veneration of icons is that the praise and veneration shown to the icon passes over to the archetype (Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 18:45: "The honor paid to the image passes to the prototype"). Thus to kiss an icon of Christ, in the Eastern Orthodox view, is to show love towards Christ Jesus himself, not mere wood and paint making up the physical substance of the icon.

I'm sure this thread is about visual art but I just want to mention a poem that has haunted me (   ) ever since I was a child.  It's "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/4...-listeners

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,  
   Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   
   Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,   
   Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;   
   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;   
   No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   
   Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners   
   That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   
   To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,   
   That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken   
   By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,   
   Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,   
   ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even   
   Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,   
   That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,   
   Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house   
   From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,   
   And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,   
   When the plunging hoofs were gone.

I'm sure this thread is about visual art but I just want to mention a poem that has haunted me (   ) ever since I was a child.  It's "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare.

Great poem! And it can be for any art, I just personally focus on visual stuff...