abstract images in art vs. astral experience
tra...@pipeline.com
but I'd appreciate some input.
Jackson Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist painter
whose claim to fame was that he dripped paint on canvas.
To quote him: "When I am *in* my painting....I have no fears
about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the
painting has a life of its own...When I lose contact with
with the painting, the result is a mess. Otherwise the result
is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes
out well" . More on this later...
Ok, he was very influenced by imagery of Native American artists,
most specifically by NAvajo Sand paintings, which were actually
used as part of healing rituals, and destroyed when the ritual
was done. In looking at one of these sand paintings, I took note
that even though the images of humans were very strange and abstract,
(diamond shaped bodies, knees bending the opposite way, horns coming
out the side of the head)...there seemed actually something very
balanced and interconnected and even yin/yang aabout the figures.
But Pollock's derivation has none of these elements. It's a painting called
"Totem Lesson 2". He used sand painting too, he used similar colors, it is
very vaguely reminiscent.
So, I wonder several things. First, do you think magicians of more
primitive cultures experienced images this abstractly on the "astral plane"?
Their art was quite abstract, but I tend to think that their
magickal experiences were not quite so much so...that is, the astral plane
is experienced in much the same way as the real world is. You know, Gods
and Goddesses, archangels alike, look human, the landscape looks like the
real world, etc., because that is what humans know.
I would like to know what you think.
Personally, I think that if I was pathworking, say, and I ran into a space
that looked like one of Pollock's drip paintings, I'd think I was in some
form of hell and want to get out of there right quick. But that's me. If I
also ran across some people with diamond shaped bodies and knees that bend
the other way I would be a little weirded out too.
So my question I guess is about the dichotomy of how the astral plane is
experienced, and how that experience gets translated into art, as in the
abstract art of all primitive cultures.
What do you think?
Blue Rajah
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
news:3bc27635....@news.pipeline.com...
>
> So, I wonder several things. First, do you think magicians
> of more primitive cultures experienced images this abstractly
> on the "astral plane"?
Some work has been done on the hardware of the optical cortex that
indicates that early visual experiences have an impact on the subsequent
construction in the cortex itself. There tend to be some very basic visual
patterns that get hardwired into us, like the basic visual pattern of a
face or a hand.
Many of these basic patterns are going to be experienced by virtually any
human being anywhere on earth. Others may be culturally determined by the
particular culture's art and technology. There's no good reason to think
that people engaging in deep visual introspection couldn't dredge up all
kinds of stuff that is part of the special way the brains of human beings
interact with the world.
> So my question I guess is about the dichotomy of how the astral
> plane is experienced, and how that experience gets translated
> into art, as in the abstract art of all primitive cultures.
http://www.paulhughes.co.uk/books/timewarps/andetext.html
http://arthistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.ariztlan
.org/iview/joeben/index.htm
Quant_OM
Now of course, this is speculative, but I suppose the reason that most fail
short in expressing experience in magick without ego, is because they have
failed to integrate the Astral, nay the Mental on the Etheric. Art does not
mimic life nor does it shape it, but merely acts in unison with life if one
pairs the opposites. The Gods represent an ideal, the Goddeses represent the
opposite of that particular ideal. The goal is find the ideal and negate it
as being fixed in reality. I 'm not certain if this is exactly the kind of
response you had in mind but I intuit it was. Could you add to this? Maybe
we could continue from here.
Joel Biroco
I don't know whether the term "astral plane" is sufficient for dealing
with the geometrical imagery that frequently comes from shamanic
experiences induced by hallucinogenic substances. Probably the
"primitive" art of native people is influenced by entheogens, almost
certainly. As for Pollock, it seems to me he had a good grasp of the
role of spontaneity in art, although some of the Chinese and Japanese
brush calligraphy is to my eye more elegant than his work. Franz
Klein, another of the New York school, encompasses this too, and was
inspired by eastern calligraphy. Maybe someone like DeKooning would be
a better example than Pollock, whose work seems quite tired these
days. DeKooning referred to himself as a "slipping glimpser". In my
opinion some of his best work was done when he had Alzheimer's disease
and the debate raged in the art world about whether someone "without a
mind" could produce "art". Anyone who has seen the film of DeKooning
when he had Alzeimer's in the middle of the night in his pyjamas
painting the most amazing paintings would have no doubt that those
who thought "art" depended on having a fully functioning brain were
quite mistaken. So yes, "something" does come through if one doesn't
stand too much in the way of it. That is what a true artist does,
tries to get out of the way so that the inner can make it onto the
canvas. The art of the "primitive" most resembles the art of children,
but the motifs have become standardised. And as modern artists became
more interested in shamanism, such as Kandinsky, it's interesting how
their paintings came to resemble those of the "primitive". At first it
was a clear influence, but then these artists came up with their own
motifs of a similar order to those of the "primitive" but unique to
themselves. I don't know whether these artists necessarily visiualised
an inner motif and painted it, or whether the motif came out in the
very painting of it. Certainly when I paint it is usually the latter.
So, in effect, one paints in order to visualise the otherwise
unseeable. One is looking for something in the unfolding of a picture
that spontaneity will make as a gift to you. I don't know whether I've
really approached what you were interested in talking about, but maybe
I've skirted round it sufficiently.
pansamsara
<danto...@qwest.net> wrote:
>Some work has been done on the hardware of the optical cortex that
>indicates that early visual experiences have an impact on the subsequent
>construction in the cortex itself. There tend to be some very basic visual
>patterns that get hardwired into us, like the basic visual pattern of a
>face or a hand.
>
Ah yes, this is of some interest to me. In one of his books (I
forget) Bucky Fuller discusses the influence he feels that his acute
long-sightedness had over his early cognitive development. It is
about 10 years since I read this, but recall finding that I could
strongly identify with what he was saying (I too am very long-sighted
and did not wear any glasses for the first 4 years of my life).
Fortunately, high index plastics have saved my vanity from the
humiliation of having to wear jam jar bottoms.
I would appreciate it if you could direct me to the work you have
mentioned.
>Many of these basic patterns are going to be experienced by virtually any
>human being anywhere on earth. Others may be culturally determined by the
>particular culture's art and technology. There's no good reason to think
>that people engaging in deep visual introspection couldn't dredge up all
>kinds of stuff that is part of the special way the brains of human beings
>interact with the world.
>
The subject of 'complementary colours' and their relationship to the
operations of the eye is fascinating. As is the aesthetic 'golden
section' worked out by Pythagoras. What the hell was that all about?
Pansamsara.
tra...@pipeline.com
On Tue, 09 Oct 2001 05:32:20 +0100, Joel Biroco <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>I don't know whether the term "astral plane" is sufficient for dealing
>with the geometrical imagery that frequently comes from shamanic
>experiences induced by hallucinogenic substances.
Yeah I used that term as a rough descriptipn.
> Probably the
>"primitive" art of native people is influenced by entheogens, almost
>certainly.
Certainly :)
> As for Pollock, it seems to me he had a good grasp of the
>role of spontaneity in art, although some of the Chinese and Japanese
>brush calligraphy is to my eye more elegant than his work. Franz
>Klein, another of the New York school, encompasses this too, and was
>inspired by eastern calligraphy. Maybe someone like DeKooning would be
>a better example than Pollock, whose work seems quite tired these
>days. DeKooning referred to himself as a "slipping glimpser". In my
>opinion some of his best work was done when he had Alzheimer's disease
>and the debate raged in the art world about whether someone "without a
>mind" could produce "art". Anyone who has seen the film of DeKooning
>when he had Alzeimer's in the middle of the night in his pyjamas
>painting the most amazing paintings would have no doubt that those
>who thought "art" depended on having a fully functioning brain were
>quite mistaken. So yes, "something" does come through if one doesn't
>stand too much in the way of it. That is what a true artist does,
>tries to get out of the way so that the inner can make it onto the
>canvas. The art of the "primitive" most resembles the art of children,
>but the motifs have become standardised. And as modern artists became
>more interested in shamanism, such as Kandinsky,
He was?? I thought he was into theosophy......
> it's interesting how
>their paintings came to resemble those of the "primitive". At first it
>was a clear influence, but then these artists came up with their own
>motifs of a similar order to those of the "primitive" but unique to
>themselves. I don't know whether these artists necessarily visiualised
>an inner motif and painted it, or whether the motif came out in the
>very painting of it.
Yes that is what I am driving at. I think that is how it worked.
>Certainly when I paint it is usually the latter.
>So, in effect, one paints in order to visualise the otherwise
>unseeable. One is looking for something in the unfolding of a picture
>that spontaneity will make as a gift to you. I don't know whether I've
>really approached what you were interested in talking about, but maybe
>I've skirted round it sufficiently.
Yes :). Thank you. more thoughts to come.....
tra...@pipeline.com
>
><tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
>news:3bc27635....@news.pipeline.com...
>>
>> So, I wonder several things. First, do you think magicians
>> of more primitive cultures experienced images this abstractly
>> on the "astral plane"?
>
>Some work has been done on the hardware of the optical cortex that
>indicates that early visual experiences have an impact on the subsequent
>construction in the cortex itself. There tend to be some very basic visual
>patterns that get hardwired into us, like the basic visual pattern of a
>face or a hand.
It makes complete sense.
>
>Many of these basic patterns are going to be experienced by virtually any
>human being anywhere on earth. Others may be culturally determined by the
>particular culture's art and technology. There's no good reason to think
>that people engaging in deep visual introspection couldn't dredge up all
>kinds of stuff that is part of the special way the brains of human beings
>interact with the world.
So you think it could either or both? I mean...."normal" appearance
or abstract appearance?
>
>> So my question I guess is about the dichotomy of how the astral
>> plane is experienced, and how that experience gets translated
>> into art, as in the abstract art of all primitive cultures.
>
>http://www.paulhughes.co.uk/books/timewarps/andetext.html
>
>http://arthistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.ariztlan
>.org/iview/joeben/index.htm
Thanks I will check them out.
Blue Rajah
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
news:3bc30fd8....@news.pipeline.com...
> >virtually any human being anywhere on earth. Others may be
> >culturally determined by the particular culture's art and technology.
> >There's no good reason to think that people engaging in deep
> >visual introspection couldn't dredge up all kinds of stuff that is part
> >of the special way the brains of human beings interact with the world.
>
> So you think it could either or both? I mean...."normal" appearance
> or abstract appearance?
It's more likely to manifest in an abstracted form, since it's very early
stuff. Perception of fine details comes later. Still, as the visualizing
capacity grows, so does its ability to embellish upon primitive stimuli.
So I wouldn't rule out more complex imagery either in which a basic pattern
is expressed, as in, say, a very detailed mythological image.
Joel Biroco
(pansamsara) wrote:
>On Mon, 8 Oct 2001 21:42:08 -0700, "Blue Rajah"
><danto...@qwest.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Some work has been done on the hardware of the optical cortex that
>>indicates that early visual experiences have an impact on the subsequent
>>construction in the cortex itself. There tend to be some very basic visual
>>patterns that get hardwired into us, like the basic visual pattern of a
>>face or a hand.
>>
>Ah yes, this is of some interest to me. In one of his books (I
>forget) Bucky Fuller discusses the influence he feels that his acute
>long-sightedness had over his early cognitive development. It is
>about 10 years since I read this, but recall finding that I could
>strongly identify with what he was saying (I too am very long-sighted
>and did not wear any glasses for the first 4 years of my life).
>Fortunately, high index plastics
You mean high index *glass* don't you, plastics, after all, have a
lower refractive index than glass, or are you referring to something
very new?
Joel Biroco
>Oh cool an art type.
I have paintings for sale :-)
Most artists are interested in many things, but Kandinsky was
certainly interested in shamanism.
>
>> it's interesting how
>>their paintings came to resemble those of the "primitive". At first it
>>was a clear influence, but then these artists came up with their own
>>motifs of a similar order to those of the "primitive" but unique to
>>themselves. I don't know whether these artists necessarily visiualised
>>an inner motif and painted it, or whether the motif came out in the
>>very painting of it.
>
>Yes that is what I am driving at. I think that is how it worked.
>
>>Certainly when I paint it is usually the latter.
>>So, in effect, one paints in order to visualise the otherwise
>>unseeable. One is looking for something in the unfolding of a picture
>>that spontaneity will make as a gift to you. I don't know whether I've
>>really approached what you were interested in talking about, but maybe
>>I've skirted round it sufficiently.
>
>Yes :). Thank you. more thoughts to come.....
It's an interesting subject. Lately I've been comparing the various
tarot pack images and today was reflecting on the twin watchtowers in
the background of the Waite Death card with the sun rising or setting
between them. They appear to be the same twin watchtowers that are
featured in the Waite Moon card with the moon between them, making me
think that the path between the towers in the Moon card leads to where
Death is in the Death card. Just a thought, there's probably more to
say about that.
HEY! HO! JUST BLO!
> So my question I guess is about the dichotomy of how the astral plane is
> experienced, and how that experience gets translated into art, as in the
> abstract art of all primitive cultures.
>
> What do you think?
In primitive cultures there was no concept of primitave, civilized,
abstract, objective, etc, for the most part (depending on the society)
not many concepts at all, so when the shaman/magickian would go though
hir rites of passage there weren't as many conceptual barriers to
break though, and there wasn't the mental division between
abstract/objective/primitive/civilized, so they were -probably-
generally more abstract simply because they hadn't any mental blocks
to filter in the perception of the astral. My occult background is
different than yours, I don't see gods in the astral, nor do i see
angels, etc, its just not my paradigm. I see energy, energy currents,
themes, images both simple and complex formed out of symbols whose
meanings are a direct bi-product of my experience. You get the same
thing, but the energies and symbols you percieve are filtered through
your paradigm. So energy currents become angels/spirits, major themes
become gods, etc. Basically, from my experience anyway, the astral
comes to you on your terms unless you consciously decide that you want
it otherwise. Cultural 'programming', personal opinions, belief
systems, expectations, your entire mental makeup all combine to make
the -perception- of the astral experience, so that you can understand
it.
IMO acid is the best way to truelly understand this, simply 'knowing'
that this is how it works seems to fall very very short of encompasing
the full scope (for me it did anyway). It'll also give you an idea of
what the mystical experience was like for many primitive cultures
(peyote, shrooms, belladonna, hemp or opium would give you a more
accurate experience, acid-like substances were only used (as far as I
know) by a realatively small Dionysian cult in Greece or Southern
Italy until recently).
We can't do anything but speculate, but I think this should help.
Martin Swain
> but I'd appreciate some input.
I am interested in art.
>
> Jackson Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist painter
> whose claim to fame was that he dripped paint on canvas.
> To quote him: "When I am *in* my painting....I have no fears
> about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the
> painting has a life of its own...When I lose contact with
> with the painting, the result is a mess. Otherwise the result
> is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes
> out well" . More on this later...
I have studied abstract art some, and I like a lot of it, but not Pollock.
I think he was more of a glitterati than an artist, my opinion.
> So, I wonder several things. First, do you think magicians of more
> primitive cultures experienced images this abstractly on the "astral
plane"?
> Their art was quite abstract, but I tend to think that their
> magickal experiences were not quite so much so...that is, the astral plane
> is experienced in much the same way as the real world is. You know, Gods
> and Goddesses, archangels alike, look human, the landscape looks like the
> real world, etc., because that is what humans know.
> I would like to know what you think.
I agree. Art is a human thing, and while may be primitive cultures,
one would have to go a long way back in geological
history to get to primitive humans. I would be very surprised to learn that
these 'primitive' peoples are very much different from you and I.
Martin
tra...@pipeline.com
>
><tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
>news:3bc27635....@news.pipeline.com...
>> I don't know how many people here are interested in art,
>> but I'd appreciate some input.
>
>I am interested in art.
>
>>
>> Jackson Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist painter
>> whose claim to fame was that he dripped paint on canvas.
>> To quote him: "When I am *in* my painting....I have no fears
>> about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the
>> painting has a life of its own...When I lose contact with
>> with the painting, the result is a mess. Otherwise the result
>> is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes
>> out well" . More on this later...
>
>I have studied abstract art some, and I like a lot of it, but not Pollock.
>I think he was more of a glitterati than an artist, my opinion.
Yes! I think so!
>
>> So, I wonder several things. First, do you think magicians of more
>> primitive cultures experienced images this abstractly on the "astral
>plane"?
>> Their art was quite abstract, but I tend to think that their
>> magickal experiences were not quite so much so...that is, the astral plane
>> is experienced in much the same way as the real world is. You know, Gods
>> and Goddesses, archangels alike, look human, the landscape looks like the
>> real world, etc., because that is what humans know.
>> I would like to know what you think.
>
>I agree. Art is a human thing, and while may be primitive cultures,
>one would have to go a long way back in geological
>history to get to primitive humans. I would be very surprised to learn that
>these 'primitive' peoples are very much different from you and I.
That's the premise I am trying to work from :)
>
>Martin
>
>
tra...@pipeline.com
>On Tue, 09 Oct 2001 14:55:11 GMT, tra...@pipeline.com wrote:
>
>>Oh cool an art type.
>
>I have paintings for sale :-)
where's your web site?????
Didn't know. hmm....that could be important to me.....
>
>>
>>> it's interesting how
>>>their paintings came to resemble those of the "primitive". At first it
>>>was a clear influence, but then these artists came up with their own
>>>motifs of a similar order to those of the "primitive" but unique to
>>>themselves. I don't know whether these artists necessarily visiualised
>>>an inner motif and painted it, or whether the motif came out in the
>>>very painting of it.
>>
>>Yes that is what I am driving at. I think that is how it worked.
>>
>>>Certainly when I paint it is usually the latter.
>>>So, in effect, one paints in order to visualise the otherwise
>>>unseeable. One is looking for something in the unfolding of a picture
>>>that spontaneity will make as a gift to you. I don't know whether I've
>>>really approached what you were interested in talking about, but maybe
>>>I've skirted round it sufficiently.
>>
>>Yes :). Thank you. more thoughts to come.....
>
>It's an interesting subject. Lately I've been comparing the various
>tarot pack images and today was reflecting on the twin watchtowers in
>the background of the Waite Death card with the sun rising or setting
>between them. They appear to be the same twin watchtowers that are
>featured in the Waite Moon card with the moon between them, making me
>think that the path between the towers in the Moon card leads to where
>Death is in the Death card. Just a thought, there's probably more to
>say about that.
That makes sense...
Joel Biroco
>On Tue, 09 Oct 2001 19:55:16 +0100, Joel Biroco <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 09 Oct 2001 14:55:11 GMT, tra...@pipeline.com wrote:
>>
>>>Oh cool an art type.
>>
>>I have paintings for sale :-)
>
>where's your web site?????
Don't have one at present, though when I bring out the KAOS I'm
presently doing I'll set one up. I'm putting some paintings of mine in
KAOS.
pansamsara
<bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 09 Oct 2001 12:30:11 GMT, pan.sa...@ntlworld.com.
>(pansamsara) wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 8 Oct 2001 21:42:08 -0700, "Blue Rajah"
>><danto...@qwest.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Some work has been done on the hardware of the optical cortex that
>>>indicates that early visual experiences have an impact on the subsequent
>>>construction in the cortex itself. There tend to be some very basic visual
>>>patterns that get hardwired into us, like the basic visual pattern of a
>>>face or a hand.
>>>
>>Ah yes, this is of some interest to me. In one of his books (I
>>forget) Bucky Fuller discusses the influence he feels that his acute
>>long-sightedness had over his early cognitive development. It is
>>about 10 years since I read this, but recall finding that I could
>>strongly identify with what he was saying (I too am very long-sighted
>>and did not wear any glasses for the first 4 years of my life).
>>Fortunately, high index plastics
>
>You mean high index *glass* don't you, plastics, after all, have a
>lower refractive index than glass, or are you referring to something
>very new?
>
Well, the ones on my face right now are plastic. They have the
advantage of being lighter than glass and are also a lot thinner than
the ones I used to wear. A bit expensive at 160 quid just for the
lenses though. I don't know anthing about the polymers used to make
them.
Martin Swain
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
news:3bc3b5d8....@news.pipeline.com...
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2001 01:14:49 GMT, "Martin Swain"
<martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> ><tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
> >news:3bc27635....@news.pipeline.com...
> >> I don't know how many people here are interested in art,
> >> but I'd appreciate some input.
> >
> >I am interested in art.
> >
> >>
> >> Jackson Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist painter
> >> whose claim to fame was that he dripped paint on canvas.
> >> To quote him: "When I am *in* my painting....I have no fears
> >> about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the
> >> painting has a life of its own...When I lose contact with
> >> with the painting, the result is a mess. Otherwise the result
> >> is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes
> >> out well" . More on this later...
> >
> >I have studied abstract art some, and I like a lot of it, but not
Pollock.
> >I think he was more of a glitterati than an artist, my opinion.
>
> Yes! I think so!
I do like Kandisnsky, though.
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/modernism/images/kandinsky-composition8.jpg
>
> >
> >> So, I wonder several things. First, do you think magicians of more
> >> primitive cultures experienced images this abstractly on the "astral
> >plane"?
> >> Their art was quite abstract, but I tend to think that their
> >> magickal experiences were not quite so much so...that is, the astral
plane
> >> is experienced in much the same way as the real world is. You know,
Gods
> >> and Goddesses, archangels alike, look human, the landscape looks like
the
> >> real world, etc., because that is what humans know.
> >> I would like to know what you think.
> >
> >I agree. Art is a human thing, and while may be primitive cultures,
> >one would have to go a long way back in geological
> >history to get to primitive humans. I would be very surprised to learn
that
> >these 'primitive' peoples are very much different from you and I.
>
> That's the premise I am trying to work from :)
What are you working on, can I ask?
> >
> >Martin
> >
> >
>
tra...@pipeline.com
>What are you working on, can I ask?
Oh, right now I am exploring abstract expressionism.
I have been trying to get my own "handle" on modern
art for a while now, and the occult influences on modern
art interest me especially.
I am working up to a better reply to Joel's first post.
Tracy
>
>> >
>> >Martin
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
Grrr
>On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:25:59 GMT, "Martin Swain" <martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>What are you working on, can I ask?
>
>
>Oh, right now I am exploring abstract expressionism.
>I have been trying to get my own "handle" on modern
>art for a while now, and the occult influences on modern
>art interest me especially.
The modern artist's maxim: admire what thou wilt shall be the whole of
the law.
tra...@pipeline.com
>On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 14:40:28 GMT, tra...@pipeline.com wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:25:59 GMT, "Martin Swain" <martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>What are you working on, can I ask?
>>
>>
>>Oh, right now I am exploring abstract expressionism.
>>I have been trying to get my own "handle" on modern
>>art for a while now, and the occult influences on modern
>>art interest me especially.
>
>The modern artist's maxim: admire what thou wilt shall be the whole of
>the law.
ahaha I like it.
Martin Swain
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
news:3bc5aee8...@news.pipeline.com...
> On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:25:59 GMT, "Martin Swain"
<martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >What are you working on, can I ask?
>
>
> Oh, right now I am exploring abstract expressionism.
> I have been trying to get my own "handle" on modern
> art for a while now, and the occult influences on modern
> art interest me especially.
I really like a lot of modern art. As opposed to abstract, right?
I mean the industrial type stuff, way way cool. Phillip Glass.
What specifically do you mean by occult influences on modern art?
Joel Biroco
<martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
><tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
>news:3bc5aee8...@news.pipeline.com...
>> On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:25:59 GMT, "Martin Swain"
><martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >What are you working on, can I ask?
>>
>>
>> Oh, right now I am exploring abstract expressionism.
>> I have been trying to get my own "handle" on modern
>> art for a while now, and the occult influences on modern
>> art interest me especially.
>
>I really like a lot of modern art. As opposed to abstract, right?
Modern art as opposed to abstract? What on earth are you talking
about?
>I mean the industrial type stuff, way way cool. Phillip Glass.
Philip Glass you regard as "industrial"? Good grief.
>
>What specifically do you mean by occult influences on modern art?
I don't think you're up to scratch on the basics yet. I hope your
patter is better than this chatting up chicks in the Rothko room: "The
dark purple....it's just so... purple, and like there's so much of it.
Existentially, what does it say to you? By the way, you're really
sexy."
tra...@pipeline.com
>On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 05:30:34 GMT, "Martin Swain"
><martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>><tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
>>news:3bc5aee8...@news.pipeline.com...
>>> On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:25:59 GMT, "Martin Swain"
>><martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> >What are you working on, can I ask?
>>>
>>>
>>> Oh, right now I am exploring abstract expressionism.
>>> I have been trying to get my own "handle" on modern
>>> art for a while now, and the occult influences on modern
>>> art interest me especially.
>>
>>I really like a lot of modern art. As opposed to abstract, right?
>
>Modern art as opposed to abstract? What on earth are you talking
>about?
>
>>I mean the industrial type stuff, way way cool. Phillip Glass.
Well, I have to be in the right mood for Phillip Glass, but I like his
work. Just not all the time.
>
>Philip Glass you regard as "industrial"? Good grief.
>
>>
>>What specifically do you mean by occult influences on modern art?
>
>I don't think you're up to scratch on the basics yet. I hope your
>patter is better than this chatting up chicks in the Rothko room: "The
>dark purple....it's just so... purple, and like there's so much of it.
>Existentially, what does it say to you? By the way, you're really
>sexy."
Well, I don't mind it if he doesn't know....lots of people don't.
There are people from lots of fields here.
Martin, abstract art is modern art, and there have been lots of
movements, each with its own name. I guess having the
name makes a big difference. There's been surrealists,
dadaists, abstract expressionists, the pop art people,
etc, etc.....up to the post modernists, and who knows what
will come next, but now we have people slicing up pigs
and displaying them in formaldehyde (gross) and
February 2000, in Copenhagen, somebody put some
goldfish in clear water in blenders for an art exhibit.
One fish per blender. Working blenders. One person
did push a button on one. The police wanted to arrest
the people who put it on for cruelty to animals.
Art? I think not.
Blue Rajah
"Joel Biroco" <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:rm0dsts9qm6s68mnf...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 05:30:34 GMT, "Martin Swain"
> <martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >I mean the industrial type stuff, way way cool. Phillip Glass.
>
> Philip Glass you regard as "industrial"? Good grief.
Glass changes his style so drastically and so often that his work as a
whole defies any convenient label but some of his work might be considered
"industrial" in some senses. His minimalist works tend to be mechanistic
in their repetitiveness, for example. His compositions have sometimes
reflected technological feats, such as the Michelson-Morley experiments in
"The Light" and the huge hydro-electric dam project on the Panama River in
"Itaipu".
tracy
Joel, I'd be especially interested how you approach the process
of doing your art work. Being a magician, do you approach the act
of making each individual painting as a ritual?
> I don't know whether the term "astral plane" is sufficient for dealing
> with the geometrical imagery that frequently comes from shamanic
> experiences induced by hallucinogenic substances. Probably the
> "primitive" art of native people is influenced by entheogens, almost
> certainly. As for Pollock, it seems to me he had a good grasp of the
> role of spontaneity in art, although some of the Chinese and Japanese
> brush calligraphy is to my eye more elegant than his work.
I agree, it is more elegant.
Franz
> Klein, another of the New York school, encompasses this too, and was
> inspired by eastern calligraphy. Maybe someone like DeKooning would be
> a better example than Pollock, whose work seems quite tired these
> days. DeKooning referred to himself as a "slipping glimpser". In my
> opinion some of his best work was done when he had Alzheimer's disease
> and the debate raged in the art world about whether someone "without a
> mind" could produce "art". Anyone who has seen the film of DeKooning
> when he had Alzeimer's in the middle of the night in his pyjamas
> painting the most amazing paintings would have no doubt that those
> who thought "art" depended on having a fully functioning brain were
> quite mistaken. So yes, "something" does come through if one doesn't
> stand too much in the way of it. That is what a true artist does,
> tries to get out of the way so that the inner can make it onto the
> canvas. The art of the "primitive" most resembles the art of children,
> but the motifs have become standardised. And as modern artists became
> more interested in shamanism, such as Kandinsky, it's interesting how
> their paintings came to resemble those of the "primitive". At first it
> was a clear influence, but then these artists came up with their own
> motifs of a similar order to those of the "primitive" but unique to
> themselves. I don't know whether these artists necessarily visiualised
> an inner motif and painted it, or whether the motif came out in the
> very painting of it. Certainly when I paint it is usually the latter.
This is interesting....
> So, in effect, one paints in order to visualise the otherwise
> unseeable.
>One is looking for something in the unfolding of a picture
> that spontaneity will make as a gift to you. I don't know whether I've
> really approached what you were interested in talking about, but maybe
> I've skirted round it sufficiently.
Tracy
Joel Biroco
>Joel Biroco <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote in message news:<iut4sto0jpghi4t8m...@4ax.com>...
>
>Joel, I'd be especially interested how you approach the process
>of doing your art work. Being a magician, do you approach the act
>of making each individual painting as a ritual?
I don't necessarily "approach" it in that way, before I start I mean,
but it becomes a ritual in the doing of it and is done in the manner
of "juxtapositional magick" that I have mentioned here before, in
which all cues are taken from the spontaneous nature of life itself,
the juxtapositional reality of this next to that which is in itself a
language to be read. Sometimes it is a magical act, intended to be so
before I begin, other times it becomes one in the doing of it. It is
never not magical in some sense. I constantly apply what I have learnt
from the occult in painting. I studied Chinese calligraphy under the
artist Da Wu Tang, who approaches painting like a martial art. So that
was one influence. Then another influence was magical writings and
magical diagrams (voodoo vevers, Goetic seals, this kind of thing),
also African "protective writing". This is a kind of "channelled"
writing that is calligraphic in execution (like Chinese running script
cursive calligraphy) but doesn't necessarily overtly mean something.
But it does in the sense of sigilisation, except that they are
unconscious sigils transported into a sign from the unconscious
without me knowing consciously what they mean. Save that in some sense
they do indeed represent my mind at the time of writing them, but it
is so fast that the sigil is "cast" the moment it is conceived without
any necessity for "forgetting", and, by extension, the entire painting
is one immense sigil of its own execution, it *is* a thing intended to
cause change in the mere viewing of it, but without the observer being
in any sense aware of exactly what is responsible for their feelings
on viewing it or what it is doing to them. *All* paintings are
intended to provoke reaction of some sort in the observer, this after
all is the object of "art", but I specifically intend this in the
magical sense. For instance, I have a curious one I did on Oct 1 on my
wall (I have a frame I can slip new paintings in to view for a while)
that I called "Pandora's Box", I believe it is sort of inspired by
recent events in the world, and I have noticed that it has been
exerting some kind of magical effect over me as I view it every day,
but it is hard to put my finger on what that actual effect is. It is a
fascination, which of course Crowley wrote was the key to magick in
Magick without Tears. This to me is a desirable reaction to have in a
painting, as if something is embedded, something occult, that is
beyond words. Through the process of painting I have redefined my
views on what constitutes "sigilisation". Many of my paintings have
these spontaneous sigils, or are entirely a sigil, and they are
magical, but they are not "planned" sigils with a sentence as in the
method of Austin Spare, they are pure spontaneity. Spontaneity is what
I learnt from Da Wu Tang. "Wuwei" (not doing) and "li" ("pattern") are
two Chinese concepts that feature in my work. These paintings are
mostly abstract but not always, and they are executed from an intense
state of mind I also associate with Goetic evocation. All artists are
a mix of influences, and many of my influences are occult, but I
suspect when you speak of ritual you are thinking far more formally
than I would ever be interested in. Spontaneity is where the kind of
art that interests me happens, and through practice spontaneity can to
an extent be "controlled" (it is more that I lose myself to the
spontaneity and so "direct" it because I *am* it). Concerns of
materials matter too, with experience for instance you can tell by the
surface reflectivity of wet paper almost precisely how much a wet ink
or paint mark will spread out "wet-in-wet", and this becomes
second-nature. So, after mastery of materials and tools (ritual tools
you might say) you are enabled to forget "how" to use them and you
simply do it. You may have ten different sized brushes for instance,
and a beginner may wonder which is the best brush to use, but to me in
practise all I do is simply reach out and take a brush, it seems like
it could be any brush, but I have simply resigned the reasoning to the
back of my mind and rely on spontaneity to dictate the best pathway
towards completion of the painting, sometimes the most interesting
marks will not be made by a brush at all but by a violent hand or a
knife. Sometimes the process may involve painting over what seems like
a mistake, or washing off a mistake, but nothing is a mistake in this
way of working because inevitably traces of that "mistake" are present
in the finished work. They are not even thought off as mistakes since
I may wash off the painting several times before it is completed and
it is simply the process I currently like. It seems I need to create
and destroy, create and destroy, such that the final creation emerges
from the destruction of previous creations, traces of which remain
since certain pigments are more staining than others and other reasons
to do with the materials. Pigment will gather in a scratched line, for
instance, and be more resistant to being washed away. And thus an
image is built up that somehow is a direct transfer from my unconcious
and when I finally draw back from making any further mark (frequently
this comes suddenly like the end of a trance) I find myself staring at
the end result almost as if it was something done in my absence, and
while it is drying I may spend the time attempting to account for the
fascination the image evokes in me. It is a kind of enforced fixity of
gaze, as if I am tied to the image by an umbilical, which is only cut
when I sign it and consign it to "the rest". Like Paul Klee, I am
interested in the qualities of different kinds of marks and their
juxtaposition (and juxtaposition also involves choice of colours). I
also learnt this in studying Chinese calligraphy. Klee wrote about
"taking a line for a walk". A useful idea. Also see the book
"Interviews with Francis Bacon" by David Sylvester, since Bacon talks
a lot about spontaneity in art. Ultimately the quality that gives rise
to a good painting is wuwei, and in executing a painting you can feel
it more intensely than in everyday kinds of actions, this is why I
like painting. And in the kind of magick I do it is precisely this
quality that is present. I am not into predefined prepackaged
prewritten pre-anything kind of magick. I study the occult not to
follow recipes or attempt to repeat what others have done, but solely
to discover new ground in the hope that what I have learnt will apply
*itself* in the great spontaneity that I always seek. And it does.
Martin Swain
<tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
news:3bc6abb1....@news.pipeline.com...
Well thanks for pointing that out. I do have a general
knowledge of the things you've outlined. By modern art
I mean specifically a kind of sculpture popular in the
late 50's. By abstract art I mean specifically a particular
style of painting. More specifically abstract impressionist.
> and who knows what
> will come next, but now we have people slicing up pigs
> and displaying them in formaldehyde (gross) and
> February 2000, in Copenhagen, somebody put some
> goldfish in clear water in blenders for an art exhibit.
> One fish per blender. Working blenders. One person
> did push a button on one. The police wanted to arrest
> the people who put it on for cruelty to animals.
>
I heard about a guy who dropped a brick onto a mouse
or hamster that was positioned on a canvas as part of
a performance art display. In Vancouver I think. And I
believe he was charged.
> Art? I think not.
How about this:
A pedastal, 4 meters long and 1 wide, .75 meters high, fashioned
to look like it's made of concrete, and placed on the sidewalk
in the downtown business section of a big city. Cover said pedastal
in paper bags full of poo, arranged neatly in rows and columns,
tops all neatly rolled up, one right next to the other. Surround the
pedastal with one of the movie theater velvet rope barriers.
Arrange a method of igniting all the bags at once. At lunch hour,
when there is the maximum # of people on the street, ignite the bags.
Of course a photographer would have to be present.
Martin Swain
> On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 05:30:34 GMT, "Martin Swain"
> <martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> ><tra...@pipeline.com> wrote in message
> >news:3bc5aee8...@news.pipeline.com...
> >> On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 03:25:59 GMT, "Martin Swain"
> ><martin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >What are you working on, can I ask?
> >>
> >>
> >> Oh, right now I am exploring abstract expressionism.
> >> I have been trying to get my own "handle" on modern
> >> art for a while now, and the occult influences on modern
> >> art interest me especially.
> >
> >I really like a lot of modern art. As opposed to abstract, right?
>
> Modern art as opposed to abstract? What on earth are you talking
> about?
Answered that in another post.
>
> >I mean the industrial type stuff, way way cool. Phillip Glass.
>
> Philip Glass you regard as "industrial"? Good grief.
Whatever. Sounds pretty modern to me.
> >
> >What specifically do you mean by occult influences on modern art?
>
> I don't think you're up to scratch on the basics yet.
Wasn't asking you.
> I hope your
> patter is better than this chatting up chicks in the Rothko room: "The
> dark purple....it's just so... purple, and like there's so much of it.
> Existentially, what does it say to you? By the way, you're really
> sexy."
Existentially, nothing says anything, I guess.
And thanks, I think you're cute too.
Martin Swain
"Blue Rajah" <danto...@qwest.net> wrote in message
news:%uDx7.57$FY4.1...@news.uswest.net...
Yes, thanks. It is primarily his use of repetetiveness that conveys the
impression, I think.
Martin Swain
"Martin Swain" <martin...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:hxcy7.74903$oa2.25...@news2.rdc1.ab.home.com...
On second thought, it is something more in the composition. The structure
of the music sometimes seems very large and impersonal, driven by logic that
does
not conveniently fit the human scale. It feels industrial.
I am rambling now.
Quant_OM
To think he was talking about Chris Connoley touring
with Ministry in '91.Those were the days.... Abstract
hermetic vision disguised as hate and aggression. Does art
mimic life or create it?
Joe Cosby
thunder crashed, tra...@pipeline.com laughed madly, then wrote:
>I don't know how many people here are interested in art,
>but I'd appreciate some input.
>
>Jackson Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist painter
>whose claim to fame was that he dripped paint on canvas.
>To quote him: "When I am *in* my painting....I have no fears
>about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the
>painting has a life of its own...When I lose contact with
>with the painting, the result is a mess. Otherwise the result
>is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes
>out well" . More on this later...
>
>Ok, he was very influenced by imagery of Native American artists,
>most specifically by NAvajo Sand paintings, which were actually
>used as part of healing rituals, and destroyed when the ritual
>was done. In looking at one of these sand paintings, I took note
>that even though the images of humans were very strange and abstract,
>(diamond shaped bodies, knees bending the opposite way, horns coming
>out the side of the head)...there seemed actually something very
>balanced and interconnected and even yin/yang aabout the figures.
>
>But Pollock's derivation has none of these elements. It's a painting called
>"Totem Lesson 2". He used sand painting too, he used similar colors, it is
>very vaguely reminiscent.
>
>So, I wonder several things. First, do you think magicians of more
>primitive cultures experienced images this abstractly on the "astral plane"?
> Their art was quite abstract, but I tend to think that their
>magickal experiences were not quite so much so...that is, the astral plane
>is experienced in much the same way as the real world is. You know, Gods
>and Goddesses, archangels alike, look human, the landscape looks like the
>real world, etc., because that is what humans know.
>I would like to know what you think.
>
>Personally, I think that if I was pathworking, say, and I ran into a space
>that looked like one of Pollock's drip paintings, I'd think I was in some
>form of hell and want to get out of there right quick. But that's me. If I
>also ran across some people with diamond shaped bodies and knees that bend
>the other way I would be a little weirded out too.
>
>So my question I guess is about the dichotomy of how the astral plane is
>experienced, and how that experience gets translated into art, as in the
>abstract art of all primitive cultures.
>
>What do you think?
>
>
>
To me this is a very interesting subject ... for me art and magic have
alwas been kind of the same thing, wanting to do art and to study
magic were a single drive for me, at one point, and my art has always
had some roots in magic, and magic for me has always been essentially
a form of art.
I don't necessarily know why that is, exactly, or where I came to
identify the two. When I was young enough that I still wanted to do
everything, the people who I knew who were into art were all into
magic, in one form or another. I came to just take it for granted
that that was how it worked.
Surprisingly enough it doesn't seem to work out hte other way around,
not everybody who is into magic is into art.
This is all off the subject a little ... I think artists and magicians
share a common instinct, that there is a reality 'beneath teh surface'
that they are searching for.
I think as far as what you're asking, there are two 'branches'
involved. I've taken astral visions and represented them by drawing
or computer painting. For most of what I do, what I see is not at all
like Pollock or the Navajo artists, but very similar to the images
from teh Harris/Crowley tarot deck. In terms of artists I would tend
to look more to painters like van Gogh and the impressionists for
comparisons.
I have had magical experiences much further into the hallucinogenic
realm though, the sort of thing you might describe as 'Higher Astral
Plane' or 'Mental Plane'. In a lot of ways it's not as interesting,
at that opint the link to the day-to-day world is strange and
incomprehensible.
One time tripping wildly on acid, my whole visual field was completely
replaced by this abstract geometrical hallucination. I could never
describe it adequately, but it was something like an arabic prayer
rug, those kind of lush pure geometrical patterns, but in exquisite
colors, and the slightest move on my part made the whole field alter,
much the way the image in a kaleidoscope alters. Definitely a kind of
hyperdimensional vision.
What made this interesting though ... this hallucination began as I
entered a forest. (In fact the geometrical patterns of light through
the leaves was the root of it.) I just 'went with it', and manuevered
through this hyperdimensional field. When the hallucination cleared,
suddenly, later, I was at the other end of the forest, on my way home
(which is originally where I was going). So I'd moved several miles
on a narrow path my maneuvering this hallucination.
I can at least imagine, then, these Navajo sorcerers who can easily
enter and leave this state, learning to identify the normal-world
equivalents of things like people and represent them in these strange
abstract forms.
You mention the people's bodies being diamond-shaped; in this state I
was in everything was diamond-shaped. Things like backwards knees
would be fairly normal at a higher-dimensional state. Horns coming
out of the sides of people's heads is a fairly normal sight to me at
etheric and lower astral levels, I don't doubt it continues at higher
levels.
There's another aspect to it too, the other 'branch'. I think this is
more relevant to the abstract artists, Pollock especially.
I think artists like Pollock took a ritual-like approach to art. They
searched for different techniques. They weren't so much trying to
represent a specific image which they had seen or experienced.
They became a true part of the natural flow, they became the natural
flow, they became their technique, they let the voice of nature speak
through them and their technique.
To me this seems more like what Pollock was.
***
I think though ... although it sounds like I'm talking about two
radically different concepts, I think in reality they are much closer
together than that. Pollock honed his technique on what the images
were he was producing, and at some level the images 'jibed' with him,
they struck some spark wchih was 'right' to him.
Aboriginal art like the Navajo paintings very often expresses itself
very naturally through teh media they use. A simple technique,
applied repetitively, produces these stunning geometrical images. And
these images are exactly like what the mind produces as
'hallucinogenic' or 'astral' images.
***
So, again, I think the line between the artist and the magician is
often a thin one.
--
Joe Cosby
http://joecosby.home.mindspring.com
if i look good crying, does that mean i'm cryogenic?
- subgenius spice
Sig by Kookie Jar 5.98d http://go.to/generalfrenetics/
hy
> Surprisingly enough it doesn't seem to work out hte other way around,
> not everybody who is into magic is into art.
I would have very much liked to have known how to draw before
practising magick so that I could draw what I see, or paint what I
see.
You mention diamond shaped creatures and backwards knee's. And the art
of taking drugs for visions.
I am reading how Shaman's from Cold climates had no need to do drugs
because they had other environmental concerns to set them into to
these estatic states - ex - long periods of darkness, or light. Times
of hunger, vast emptyiness and lonliness, extreme cold. Where the
people of tropical climates are more likely to take drugs for their
Shamanic experiences or are more likely to hurt themselves to induce
these states.
I have a friend who experimented with drugs soley for magick use. She
attempted the drug route for a few years. She says that what she saw
was much different then what she saw when she was not doing drugs to
enter these states. She too saw these images that you saw. Where as I
have never done drugs so I am comparing what I know compared to what I
am hearing from the two of you.
The reason that I say this, is I am curious as to these features that
you saw, and what you experienced and how it compares to warmer
climate Navajo experiences compared to my experiences or techniques
developed that are more similar to the colder version Shaman.
I rarely see creatures with this symbology.. Except reindeer visions
or other animal visions which would normally have backwards knees, and
then I relate them to the element of fire. Most of the creatures that
I see do not have any horns.
This is a special interest topic to me Joe, I would like to hear more
if you are willing to discuss more. I would even be willing to
experiement to find out more along these lines to compare them to
yours.
taipe...@hotmail.com
>On 12 Oct 2001 09:30:11 -0700, tra...@pipeline.com (tracy) wrote:
>
>>Joel Biroco <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote in message news:<iut4sto0jpghi4t8m...@4ax.com>...
>>
>>Joel, I'd be especially interested how you approach the process
>>of doing your art work. Being a magician, do you approach the act
>>of making each individual painting as a ritual?
>
>I don't necessarily "approach" it in that way, before I start I mean,
>but it becomes a ritual in the doing of it and is done in the manner
>of "juxtapositional magick" that I have mentioned here before, in
>which all cues are taken from the spontaneous nature of life itself,
>the juxtapositional reality of this next to that which is in itself a
>language to be read. Sometimes it is a magical act, intended to be so
>before I begin, other times it becomes one in the doing of it. It is
>never not magical in some sense.
I would expect not, since magick is part of what you are.
> I constantly apply what I have learnt
>from the occult in painting. I studied Chinese calligraphy under the
>artist Da Wu Tang, who approaches painting like a martial art. So that
>was one influence.
That's very interesting. I took Sumi-e, briefly, when I lived in Japan.
So, do you find that you experience the same effect on yourself
whether you are painting a formal system such as Chinese calligraphy,
or the direct-from-the-subconscious sigils?
>Then another influence was magical writings and
>magical diagrams (voodoo vevers, Goetic seals, this kind of thing),
>also African "protective writing". This is a kind of "channelled"
>writing that is calligraphic in execution (like Chinese running script
>cursive calligraphy) but doesn't necessarily overtly mean something.
>But it does in the sense of sigilisation, except that they are
>unconscious sigils transported into a sign from the unconscious
>without me knowing consciously what they mean. Save that in some sense
>they do indeed represent my mind at the time of writing them, but it
>is so fast that the sigil is "cast" the moment it is conceived without
>any necessity for "forgetting", and, by extension, the entire painting
>is one immense sigil of its own execution, it *is* a thing intended to
>cause change in the mere viewing of it, but without the observer being
>in any sense aware of exactly what is responsible for their feelings
>on viewing it or what it is doing to them.
Do you find that your paintings have this effect on people even if they
have no interest or experience in any "spiritual" practices?
> *All* paintings are
>intended to provoke reaction of some sort in the observer, this after
>all is the object of "art", but I specifically intend this in the
>magical sense.
yes.
>For instance, I have a curious one I did on Oct 1 on my
>wall (I have a frame I can slip new paintings in to view for a while)
>that I called "Pandora's Box", I believe it is sort of inspired by
>recent events in the world, and I have noticed that it has been
>exerting some kind of magical effect over me as I view it every day,
>but it is hard to put my finger on what that actual effect is. It is a
>fascination, which of course Crowley wrote was the key to magick in
>Magick without Tears.
I have also experienced this fascination with one's own work....
it wears off after a couple of days.
>This to me is a desirable reaction to have in a
>painting, as if something is embedded, something occult, that is
>beyond words. Through the process of painting I have redefined my
>views on what constitutes "sigilisation". Many of my paintings have
>these spontaneous sigils, or are entirely a sigil, and they are
>magical, but they are not "planned" sigils with a sentence as in the
>method of Austin Spare, they are pure spontaneity. Spontaneity is what
>I learnt from Da Wu Tang. "Wuwei" (not doing) and "li" ("pattern") are
>two Chinese concepts that feature in my work. These paintings are
>mostly abstract but not always, and they are executed from an intense
>state of mind I also associate with Goetic evocation.
Interesting....there are many kinds of intesnse states of mind, no?
Why the association with Goetic evocation?
> All artists are
>a mix of influences, and many of my influences are occult, but I
>suspect when you speak of ritual you are thinking far more formally
>than I would ever be interested in.
Well not necessarily. Actually this interest me particularly,
because you are an actual magician who does art.
For example, I have a little trouble accepting Pollock's work
on the basis of shamanism, because I tend to doubt that
he "did the work", that he practiced any of it. I am just learning
about him, but form what I have read, it seems to me he just
was interseted in it, and he liked to give the impression that
he had done Native American rituals, but well...I have a quote
about it, I could post it.
I would tend to give more credence to occult influences on
*your* work because you do more than read and talk.
>Spontaneity is where the kind of
>art that interests me happens, and through practice spontaneity can to
>an extent be "controlled" (it is more that I lose myself to the
>spontaneity and so "direct" it because I *am* it).
yes.
>Concerns of
>materials matter too, with experience for instance you can tell by the
>surface reflectivity of wet paper almost precisely how much a wet ink
>or paint mark will spread out "wet-in-wet", and this becomes
>second-nature. So, after mastery of materials and tools (ritual tools
>you might say) you are enabled to forget "how" to use them and you
>simply do it.
And I'm sure it is more spontaneous once you reach that level of
expertise.
>You may have ten different sized brushes for instance,
>and a beginner may wonder which is the best brush to use, but to me in
>practise all I do is simply reach out and take a brush, it seems like
>it could be any brush, but I have simply resigned the reasoning to the
>back of my mind and rely on spontaneity to dictate the best pathway
>towards completion of the painting, sometimes the most interesting
>marks will not be made by a brush at all but by a violent hand or a
>knife. Sometimes the process may involve painting over what seems like
>a mistake, or washing off a mistake, but nothing is a mistake in this
>way of working because inevitably traces of that "mistake" are present
>in the finished work. They are not even thought off as mistakes since
>I may wash off the painting several times before it is completed and
>it is simply the process I currently like. It seems I need to create
>and destroy, create and destroy, such that the final creation emerges
>from the destruction of previous creations, traces of which remain
>since certain pigments are more staining than others and other reasons
>to do with the materials. Pigment will gather in a scratched line, for
>instance, and be more resistant to being washed away. And thus an
>image is built up that somehow is a direct transfer from my unconcious
>and when I finally draw back from making any further mark (frequently
>this comes suddenly like the end of a trance) I find myself staring at
>the end result almost as if it was something done in my absence,
But you were conscious the whole time....
> and
>while it is drying I may spend the time attempting to account for the
>fascination the image evokes in me. It is a kind of enforced fixity of
>gaze, as if I am tied to the image by an umbilical, which is only cut
>when I sign it and consign it to "the rest". Like Paul Klee, I am
>interested in the qualities of different kinds of marks and their
>juxtaposition (and juxtaposition also involves choice of colours).
Do you think Paul Klee was one on the ones (artists form the begining
of modern art) that actually was enlightened?
> I
>also learnt this in studying Chinese calligraphy. Klee wrote about
>"taking a line for a walk". A useful idea. Also see the book
>"Interviews with Francis Bacon" by David Sylvester, since Bacon talks
>a lot about spontaneity in art.
Ok, I will.
> Ultimately the quality that gives rise
>to a good painting is wuwei, and in executing a painting you can feel
>it more intensely than in everyday kinds of actions, this is why I
>like painting. And in the kind of magick I do it is precisely this
>quality that is present.
So you experience wuwei in both your art and your magick.
> I am not into predefined prepackaged
>prewritten pre-anything kind of magick. I study the occult not to
>follow recipes or attempt to repeat what others have done, but solely
>to discover new ground in the hope that what I have learnt will apply
>*itself* in the great spontaneity that I always seek. And it does.
Very very interesting. Joel, thank you very much for being that open
about your work.
Tracy
taipe...@hotmail.com
This is a very very interesting article, Blue! Thanks so much for posting it.
I'm almost done reading it & making notes as I go, & will post
some comments when I'm done :).
Tracy
>
>http://www.paulhughes.co.uk/books/timewarps/andetext.html
>
>http://arthistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.ariztlan
>.org/iview/joeben/index.htm
>
>
tra...@pipeline.com
It's all his fault :)
Joel Biroco
>On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 21:42:07 +0100, Joel Biroco <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 12 Oct 2001 09:30:11 -0700, tra...@pipeline.com (tracy) wrote:
>>
>>>Joel Biroco <bir...@nospamhotmail.com> wrote in message news:<iut4sto0jpghi4t8m...@4ax.com>...
>>>
>>>Joel, I'd be especially interested how you approach the process
>>>of doing your art work. Being a magician, do you approach the act
>>>of making each individual painting as a ritual?
>>
>>I don't necessarily "approach" it in that way, before I start I mean,
>>but it becomes a ritual in the doing of it and is done in the manner
>>of "juxtapositional magick" that I have mentioned here before, in
>>which all cues are taken from the spontaneous nature of life itself,
>>the juxtapositional reality of this next to that which is in itself a
>>language to be read. Sometimes it is a magical act, intended to be so
>>before I begin, other times it becomes one in the doing of it. It is
>>never not magical in some sense.
>
>I would expect not, since magick is part of what you are.
>
>
>> I constantly apply what I have learnt
>>from the occult in painting. I studied Chinese calligraphy under the
>>artist Da Wu Tang, who approaches painting like a martial art. So that
>>was one influence.
>
>That's very interesting. I took Sumi-e, briefly, when I lived in Japan.
>
>So, do you find that you experience the same effect on yourself
>whether you are painting a formal system such as Chinese calligraphy,
>or the direct-from-the-subconscious sigils?
Chinese calligraphy is indeed formal, yet in the actual doing of it it
is very spontaneous, which is probably why I gravitated more towards
the cursive calligraphies like caoshu and away from the more
recognisable kaishu. Kaishu is quite formal, but caoshu is wild
spontaneity of the type I love, and yet still something to be
"mastered" if you see what I mean. Once I read about a Chinese
calligraphy teacher who when he came to England and saw his first bit
of English handwriting---a ticket inspector writing a ticket---he
complimented the man on his fine calligraphy. This made me look at my
own handwriting, the normal scribble, under a 20X dissecting
microscope. Suddenly the strokes assumed a calligraphic intensity I
hadn't suspected and I saw in handwriting I simply took for granted
much amazing potential. I no longer practice Chinese calligraphy as
such, but what I learnt from it is present in my painting. I am
fascinated to see it myself, because I know I haven't deliberately put
it there and wouldn't know how, but it's there on its own.
>
>
>>Then another influence was magical writings and
>>magical diagrams (voodoo vevers, Goetic seals, this kind of thing),
>>also African "protective writing". This is a kind of "channelled"
>>writing that is calligraphic in execution (like Chinese running script
>>cursive calligraphy) but doesn't necessarily overtly mean something.
>>But it does in the sense of sigilisation, except that they are
>>unconscious sigils transported into a sign from the unconscious
>>without me knowing consciously what they mean. Save that in some sense
>>they do indeed represent my mind at the time of writing them, but it
>>is so fast that the sigil is "cast" the moment it is conceived without
>>any necessity for "forgetting", and, by extension, the entire painting
>>is one immense sigil of its own execution, it *is* a thing intended to
>>cause change in the mere viewing of it, but without the observer being
>>in any sense aware of exactly what is responsible for their feelings
>>on viewing it or what it is doing to them.
>
>Do you find that your paintings have this effect on people even if they
>have no interest or experience in any "spiritual" practices?
Hard to say what effect they experience, but they certainly seem to
experience something quite powerful. I don't attempt to quantify it.
But I think as time goes on I am doing this more and more so perhaps I
will notice specific effects more later.
My intense period of Goetic evocation, 4 years in the late 80s,
coincided with a lot of art of a demonic kind. Some time after I gave
up painting for a few years and destroyed all my previous work. To me
some of the best paintings come out of a kind of possession state and
many of my paintings are full of intensely chaotic energies, yet also
with an attitude of wuwei. Sometimes I set out to paint a more formal
painting, but it just goes wild again. You have to accept that the
best kind of paintings for an artist to paint is the kind that only he
or she can paint, and I tend to find that out in the doing of it each
time. This evening I set out with a vague idea to paint a picture of a
crazed person, but it ended up far more abstract and madder than I
could have visualised, a kind of crazy synaptic dream. But really it's
far better and more interesting to paint something that comes from
nowhere. This one is a weird one though, because looking at it I get a
strong deja vu with it, such that I started to wonder whether all my
paintings from now on will be things I have in some sense already
painted, and I don't mean visualised, I mean painted, but I just
haven't done them yet. Not something I can explain very well, but it
does give a quality to a painting that I recognise as "mine". Y'know,
I can look at it and say "That's one of mine". But what is it I'm
recognising, that is the mystery that constantly draws me on.
Oh yes, it is something to do with the start and the finish of a
painting marking a circumscribed time period that is of a different
quality.
>
>> and
>>while it is drying I may spend the time attempting to account for the
>>fascination the image evokes in me. It is a kind of enforced fixity of
>>gaze, as if I am tied to the image by an umbilical, which is only cut
>>when I sign it and consign it to "the rest". Like Paul Klee, I am
>>interested in the qualities of different kinds of marks and their
>>juxtaposition (and juxtaposition also involves choice of colours).
>
>Do you think Paul Klee was one on the ones (artists form the begining
>of modern art) that actually was enlightened?
Klee had a great understanding of art. Have you read those books he
wrote?
>
>> I
>>also learnt this in studying Chinese calligraphy. Klee wrote about
>>"taking a line for a walk". A useful idea. Also see the book
>>"Interviews with Francis Bacon" by David Sylvester, since Bacon talks
>>a lot about spontaneity in art.
>
>Ok, I will.
>
>> Ultimately the quality that gives rise
>>to a good painting is wuwei, and in executing a painting you can feel
>>it more intensely than in everyday kinds of actions, this is why I
>>like painting. And in the kind of magick I do it is precisely this
>>quality that is present.
>
>So you experience wuwei in both your art and your magick.
Wuwei is where it's at with me. Wuwei gives something a quality you
can't get with deliberate action.
tracy
> On Mon, 15 Oct 2001 04:14:56 GMT, taipe...@hotmail.com wrote:
> >So, do you find that you experience the same effect on yourself
> >whether you are painting a formal system such as Chinese calligraphy,
> >or the direct-from-the-subconscious sigils?
>
> Chinese calligraphy is indeed formal, yet in the actual doing of it it
> is very spontaneous, which is probably why I gravitated more towards
> the cursive calligraphies like caoshu and away from the more
> recognisable kaishu.
I see.
>Kaishu is quite formal, but caoshu is wild
> spontaneity of the type I love, and yet still something to be
> "mastered" if you see what I mean.
yes.
>Once I read about a Chinese
> calligraphy teacher who when he came to England and saw his first bit
> of English handwriting---a ticket inspector writing a ticket---he
> complimented the man on his fine calligraphy. This made me look at my
> own handwriting, the normal scribble, under a 20X dissecting
> microscope. Suddenly the strokes assumed a calligraphic intensity I
> hadn't suspected and I saw in handwriting I simply took for granted
> much amazing potential. I no longer practice Chinese calligraphy as
> such, but what I learnt from it is present in my painting. I am
> fascinated to see it myself, because I know I haven't deliberately put
> it there and wouldn't know how, but it's there on its own.
> >
> >Do you find that your paintings have this effect on people even if they
> >have no interest or experience in any "spiritual" practices?
>
> Hard to say what effect they experience, but they certainly seem to
> experience something quite powerful. I don't attempt to quantify it.
> But I think as time goes on I am doing this more and more so perhaps I
> will notice specific effects more later.
It would be interesting to make note of.
> >Interesting....there are many kinds of intesnse states of mind, no?
> >Why the association with Goetic evocation?
>
> My intense period of Goetic evocation, 4 years in the late 80s,
> coincided with a lot of art of a demonic kind. Some time after I gave
> up painting for a few years and destroyed all my previous work. To me
> some of the best paintings come out of a kind of possession state and
> many of my paintings are full of intensely chaotic energies, yet also
> with an attitude of wuwei.
Ok, this is just a musing on my part...nothing to do with you, more
with modern art er rather the people who do modern art in general:
You could not paint with the wuwei attitude unless you have practised
wuwei-gung fu. Am I not right? At least, it would be much harder.
Like any practice, it takes time and efort to develop it.
If you had not practiced it, and merely said to yourself and others:
"I am
painting with an attitude of wuwei!", it would be less likely to
actually be true, no? Mind you, this is just hypothetical.
But since I believe that you do practice it, I would probably find
your art interesting.
> Sometimes I set out to paint a more formal
> painting, but it just goes wild again. You have to accept that the
> best kind of paintings for an artist to paint is the kind that only he
> or she can paint,
Sure.
>and I tend to find that out in the doing of it each
> time. This evening I set out with a vague idea to paint a picture of a
> crazed person, but it ended up far more abstract and madder than I
> could have visualised, a kind of crazy synaptic dream. But really it's
> far better and more interesting to paint something that comes from
> nowhere. This one is a weird one though, because looking at it I get a
> strong deja vu with it, such that I started to wonder whether all my
> paintings from now on will be things I have in some sense already
> painted, and I don't mean visualised, I mean painted, but I just
> haven't done them yet. Not something I can explain very well, but it
> does give a quality to a painting that I recognise as "mine". Y'know,
> I can look at it and say "That's one of mine". But what is it I'm
> recognising, that is the mystery that constantly draws me on.
hmm....hmmm...thinking...
> >Do you think Paul Klee was one on the ones (artists form the begining
> >of modern art) that actually was enlightened?
>
> Klee had a great understanding of art. Have you read those books he
> wrote?
Not yet, but I read about him in: "The Spiritual in Art: Abstract
Painting 1890-1985." I will get the one you mentioned. I understand he
was influenced by images from books by Besant & Ledbetter, as well as
Blavatsky.
Tracy
Joel Biroco
<snip>
>You could not paint with the wuwei attitude unless you have practised
>wuwei-gung fu. Am I not right?
You are not right. No particular martial art "owns" wuwei, it is
common to all and beyond all too. There are plenty of people who
practice martial arts who haven't a clue about wuwei, and there are
people who don't practice martial arts who do. If you are serious
about a martial art, you should be able to do it in wuwei after many
years, but wuwei gungfu is not a prerequisite to painting in wuwei,
no. Zen meditation, for instance, would be just as beneficial.
Herrigal's Zen in the Art of Archery shows a clear grasp of wuwei, of
letting the thing do itself. Shodo is a good practice, and directly
related to painting. But the actual practice one chooses isn't too
important, as wuwei runs through everything. Understanding wuwei
begins with reading the Tao Te Ching many times. Living (and painting)
in wuwei comes after many years of trying to. The simplest things are
always the last to be felt deep within. Intellectual understanding of
wuwei counts for nothing. A practice is where one becomes acquainted
with it. Wuwei gungfu is a practice, but there are others. Wuwei is
sometimes translated as "effortless effort" but actually I maintain
that the literal translation is precisely it: "not doing".
tracy
my newsreader. I never saw your reply, Joe, until now,
through the deja archives. :(
Tracy
joec...@mindspring.com (Joe Cosby) wrote in message news:<3bca543e...@News.CIS.DFN.DE>...
tracy
> To me this is a very interesting subject ... for me art and magic have
> alwas been kind of the same thing, wanting to do art and to study
> magic were a single drive for me, at one point, and my art has always
> had some roots in magic, and magic for me has always been essentially
> a form of art.
>
> I don't necessarily know why that is, exactly, or where I came to
> identify the two. When I was young enough that I still wanted to do
> everything, the people who I knew who were into art were all into
> magic, in one form or another. I came to just take it for granted
> that that was how it worked.
Really....that's interesting.
>
> Surprisingly enough it doesn't seem to work out hte other way around,
> not everybody who is into magic is into art.
>
> This is all off the subject a little ... I think artists and magicians
> share a common instinct, that there is a reality 'beneath teh surface'
> that they are searching for.
I agree :)
>
> I think as far as what you're asking, there are two 'branches'
> involved. I've taken astral visions and represented them by drawing
> or computer painting. For most of what I do, what I see is not at all
> like Pollock or the Navajo artists, but very similar to the images
> from teh Harris/Crowley tarot deck. In terms of artists I would tend
> to look more to painters like van Gogh and the impressionists for
> comparisons.
ok.
>
> I have had magical experiences much further into the hallucinogenic
> realm though, the sort of thing you might describe as 'Higher Astral
> Plane' or 'Mental Plane'. In a lot of ways it's not as interesting,
> at that opint the link to the day-to-day world is strange and
> incomprehensible.
And there are not so many cool images? That's *real* interesting.
So, the "lower astral" is where all the cool graphics are....
>
> One time tripping wildly on acid, my whole visual field was completely
> replaced by this abstract geometrical hallucination. I could never
> describe it adequately, but it was something like an arabic prayer
> rug, those kind of lush pure geometrical patterns, but in exquisite
> colors, and the slightest move on my part made the whole field alter,
> much the way the image in a kaleidoscope alters. Definitely a kind of
> hyperdimensional vision.
>
> What made this interesting though ... this hallucination began as I
> entered a forest. (In fact the geometrical patterns of light through
> the leaves was the root of it.)
Nod.
>I just 'went with it', and manuevered
> through this hyperdimensional field. When the hallucination cleared,
> suddenly, later, I was at the other end of the forest, on my way home
> (which is originally where I was going). So I'd moved several miles
> on a narrow path my maneuvering this hallucination.
>
> I can at least imagine, then, these Navajo sorcerers who can easily
> enter and leave this state, learning to identify the normal-world
> equivalents of things like people and represent them in these strange
> abstract forms.
>
> You mention the people's bodies being diamond-shaped; in this state I
> was in everything was diamond-shaped.
Totally Synchronistic.
>Things like backwards knees
> would be fairly normal at a higher-dimensional state. Horns coming
> out of the sides of people's heads is a fairly normal sight to me at
> etheric and lower astral levels, I don't doubt it continues at higher
> levels.
>
> There's another aspect to it too, the other 'branch'. I think this is
> more relevant to the abstract artists, Pollock especially.
>
> I think artists like Pollock took a ritual-like approach to art. They
> searched for different techniques. They weren't so much trying to
> represent a specific image which they had seen or experienced.
>
> They became a true part of the natural flow, they became the natural
> flow, they became their technique, they let the voice of nature speak
> through them and their technique.
>
> To me this seems more like what Pollock was.
I know.....I was musing about what part of the brain that came from, perhaps.
Or what "plane" it came from.
>
> ***
>
> I think though ... although it sounds like I'm talking about two
> radically different concepts, I think in reality they are much closer
> together than that. Pollock honed his technique on what the images
> were he was producing, and at some level the images 'jibed' with him,
> they struck some spark wchih was 'right' to him.
>
> Aboriginal art like the Navajo paintings very often expresses itself
> very naturally through teh media they use. A simple technique,
> applied repetitively, produces these stunning geometrical images. And
> these images are exactly like what the mind produces as
> 'hallucinogenic' or 'astral' images.
>
> ***
>
> So, again, I think the line between the artist and the magician is
> often a thin one.
Yes, very likely.
Tracy