The Sublime in Art and Spirituality

[Dharmavidya]

Simon Morley writes: "Hello. My goal is to import buddhist ideas into mainstream discussions of contemporary art, but also to import some of these mainstream ideas about contemporary art into buddhist thinking. For instance, I'm currently editing a Reader on contemporary art and the sublime. What does buddhism have to say about this concept?" and I would add: what does the aesthetic idea of the sublime have to offer to the elucidation of spirituality.

Personally I think these are wonderful questions and I look forward to some good discussion.

[Mat Osmond]

Dear Robert,
Thankyou, I'm really glad to hear we resonate - I think what I most value about art is the way it has been a medium of friendship over the years.
The vexed question of turning towards contemporary art and feeling that somehow it has no heart, or anything really tangible to offer, is one I would say you share you with a great many people.
Whenever I try and come to grips with it I seem to set up unreal polarities, and along comes someone who shows me a new way of being open.
But I feel that your response points to something real - a cultural dillemma maybe, a failure of communication that is no more the artists' 'fault' than anyone else's.
But no such thing as an impasse in this shifting world :-)

[Mat Osmond]

Dear Dharmavidya,
What you say about Pureland and awareness is really helpful, and sums up in a way what really drew me to it when I enocuntered it through Who Loves Dies Well.
I obviously have much to learn. I also feel that my participation in this discussion, whilst I look forward to running with it over time and learning more together - may be in danger obscuring (with opinion) a sense of 'lostness', of having no handle on any of this at a deep level - of being at a loss in relation to both art and faith.
How to remain faithful to that truth - knowing one's confusion and not covering it over with well formed words - whilst risking foolishness and exposure by engaging in critical debate in an attempt to speak truthfully, seems like a delicate edge.
But I feel the kind of robust critique that you subject some aspects of contemporary Buddhism to in The New Buddhism is one that also needs to happen in relation to art (I have in this respect been greatly helped by others who have given words to what I have felt for a long time). I suppose not actually 'knowing' is no reason to shrink from that. Maybe one my find the other is also muddled.

[Robert McCarthy]

dear matt, i have just read your replies to myself and dharmavidya, the new buddhism was my first intro into pureland and into dharmavidayas world. your comment knowing ones confusion and not covering it over with well formed words, and how you most value art as a medium of friendship. so much in these discsussions is showing me something ,, yes touching some partly formed areas beyond my knowing. well i notice my confusion a little better thanks

[Dharmavidya]

If we take it that 'the sublime' is a term for that which touches us and has a positive power in our lives, taking us beyond the threshold of self, then there is a close relationship between 'the sublime' and 'other power'.

If, using the niyama principles, we further take it that the vision of nirvana, the eternal, the Dharma (dharma-niyama) supports our intention (karma-niyama) to keep ourselves open to subliminal processes (chitta-niyama) that generate contructive synergisms organically (bija-niyama) that reorder the world around us (utu-niyama) in ways conducive to the emergence of a Pure Land, then we can regard the Dharma as a kind of cosmic artist at work and ourselves as bearers of the medium in which that work is going on - we are paint and brushes.

If we put these two frames together we see a circularity: we are inspired by the Dharma expressed as the sublime to so conduct our lives that they generate expressions that are sublime for others. From the perspective of each of the niyamas, the other niyamas are media through which the work of the Dharma takes place.

The sublime operates primarily at the level of chitta-niyama, the heart, which is also the level of faith, but is below the level of conscious control. It directly affects who and what we are, bypassing the cognitive level. This does not mean that discussion at the cognitive level is pointless, but it is post-factum as far as experience of the sublime is concerned.

In spiritual language, Amida seizes us. However, in order to do so, there has to be something in one or other of the five orders (niyama) that gets through to us. It might be beauty; it might be tenderness; it might be nobility; it might be manifest truth; but the experience of it getting through is always some species of falling in love.

[Mat Osmond]

If I understand what you say here Dharmavidya, it would imply to me that whether or not there exists a verbal, conceptual equivalent to an artwork's meaning (I'd suggest that in many cases there is not), the work exists not simply to 'say' something - to allude to it discursively - but as you put it here, it operates as a 'a species of falling in love' that opens us directly to to its meaning - that allows it to get through to us.

It's become a truism for visual artists to say that their work exists to say what cannot be said in words. Maybe, then, we could say that the artwork exists in order that what the words can at best only point to may seize us, get through to us in such a way that we fall in love, and are opened to being touched by meaning in some specific if conceptually indefinable way.

Obviously in poetry and other verbal arts the distiction would be between creative/poetic and discursive language, not words as such.

[Mat Osmond]

I have coming back to this, too, from Dharmavidya's last reply: "'the sublime' is a term for that which touches us and has a positive power in our lives".

The simple idea that by the sublime we refer to something whose basic quality is positive and life enhancing is something I haven't previously been clear about.

Understanding the sublime as a disruptive and overwhelming opening of the senses doesn't automatically imply any positive power in our lives, and I think in particular I have conflated the sublime in contemporary art with the use of shock. One artist well known for his use of 'shock tactics' suggested in 2002 that those who organised 9/11 ("although wicked") should be credited for "the greatest artwork in history". I only drag up that offensive nonsense because while I would suggest it offers nothing to our understanding of 9/11, it does I think offer an insight into the ethics of much contemporary shock-art, in which 'making a spectacle' and the resulting mass media attention are the crucial currency, and in which visual language itself has often been abandoned altogether in favour of 'the real thing' (dead sharks et al).

I do accept that the use of shock in art is much more complex than I am making it sound here, and often is a very valid aspect of art making... Grunewald's Isenheim altar piece comes to mind as a deeply shocking but also cathartic and healing image.

So, this is only to explore my confused understanding of what we mean by ' the sublime'. Seeing it as intrinsically positive is probably obvious, especially in terms of a Pureland perspective, but in relation to art, I have managed to miss this so far.

[Simon Morley]

Greetings,

Here is my next talk. I try to link my previous discussion of the sublime to Eastern ideas about radical impermanence and void. Very serious stuff!

I'd also welcome any comments on my artworks: www.simonmorley.com

Namo Amida bu

Simon

[Mat Osmond]

Many thanks Simon, I look forward to picking up the thread.

Namo Amida Bu,
Mat

[Dharmavidya]

Thank you Simon for introducing these Taoist ideas of a positive void. The emphasis here is on the fact that there has to be space for things to happen in. What is already full is unproductive. Completion may be perfect but it is also dead and past tense. It is what is incomplete that still has possibilities and incompleteness implies spaces. It is not just that the artist needs space - the blank canvass - but the artist can put the viewer into the position of having space that she can fill in her own way - incompletenesses in the art ovject or crevacies within which one may imagine happenings. This means that some of the aim of Eastern art is not so much to depict as to invite imaginative participation by dipicting just enough to intrigue while leaving plenty of room for observer participation. Such participation is supposed to also open new possibilities for the viewer. In other words to make apparent the spaces in the viewer - reveal the fact that she/he still has possibilities, is not dead/complete. Space is essential for breathing and there is something in this approach to art that makes it an aid to preserving the flow of breath of life. Thus the skilful utilization of void in art is what renders the art therapeutic.

[Mat Osmond]

Hi Simon,

I found your talk excellent, and helpful. I have read it several times now, but have been rather scattered and distracted for several weeks for various reasons, and have felt rather blank in terms of a response.

I like Dharmavidya's point here about the therapeutic value of space. It seems to me a good way of distinguishing between the way in which we engage with analytical / theoretical material, and creative work. I am thinking as I say this of the different way that we read a poem or a novel, as opposed to a theoretical text. That the former provides a space in which to be, just as described above. Just so great painting, music, etc.

On the other hand, I suppose sometimes theoretical ideas, including Dharma teaching, do just that. In a different sense, maybe ...create, or point out a space in which to be. Carve out, even?

What you say about the Chinese flung ink painting is quite fascinating, with extraordinary parallels to some key ideas - 'discoveries' - within 20th century art.

Mat