Is Art our Access to Truth?
What can we glean from the art created by people at various times? What does art tell us about consciousness? What were they thinking? Is consciousness merely biological, solely spiritual, does it have an evolutionary survival function? Is consciousness a process by which living beings make living beings beings living meaningfully or at least partially self-awarely? Is consciousness a background in the Searlian sense, a sort of Heideggerian Dasein state that sits in the foundations of our being? This could be what Jean Gebser calls the “ever present origin”. What can art tell us about consciousness and can it help us answer these and more questions? While humans once stood staring at the walls of caves, depicting echoes of their existence in drawings, there seemed to be a one-dimensional innocence. Gebser describes this archaic state as “complete immersion with the Great Mother” (Gebser. 1985).
Camile Paglia suggests, in her Glittering Images: A Journey through Art from Egypt to Star Wars “The only road to freedom is self-education in art,” and suggests that “art unites the spiritual and material realms” (Paglia. 2012. xvii). What a fascinating idea that we can only educate ourselves through the study of art! I think of Carl Jung’s concept of the psyche and how exploring its rich imagery can help us understand ourselves and live more meaningful lives. Art, it seems, summons up images from our psyches. The artistic images represent our inner experience, which is something Joseph Campbell wrote about extensively in his elaborate descriptions of the image in mythology.
If art is something that unites the spiritual and material realms, then it is not merely an expression of consciousness as a biologic process. Jeremy Johnson quotes Gebser, in Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness, as saying that "the apparent succession of our mutations is less a biological evolution than an unfolding." So, if art is not a product of the evolution of human beings, and is part of an unfolding, is art an expression of that background that John Searle talks about? Is it part of the structure of the cosmos that our psyche is modeled to understand, as Jung says? Is art a clue to the nature of reality?
Gebser suggests, in his cataloging of the structures and types of consciousness in human history: archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and integral, that these structures “emerge from the primordial Spirit.” Each type of consciousness is a procession along the long arc of human history. Magic and mythic consciousness capture "participation mystique," describes Gebser, and the mental is characterized by a further removal from our original unity. This gave rise to the reductionist, Cartesian-dualistic, Newtonian worldview in which the polarization of human beings against themselves begins (and is later realized in the postmodern era of mass destruction that we are now in). Kali dances her dance upon the stage of human evolution, and surely will incinerate us in her fire. The question is, will we arise, phoenix-like, from her ashes? What state of consciousness will we shift into next? What can the art of our current moment tell us about where we’re headed? With so many apocalyptic films and television shows, post modern deconstructionist art, it seems that we are sooth saying our future through the art we make today.
Bibliography
Paglia, Camille. 2012. Glittering images: A journey through art from Egypt to Star Wars. Pantheon.
Gebser, Jean. 1985. The ever-present origin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.
James, Van. 2001. Spirit and art: Pictures of the transformation of consciousness. Anthroposophic Press.
Johnson, Jeremy. 2019. Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness. Volume 1. NuraLogicals: Nura Learning.
Kali Hindu Goddess | Britannica. 10th Century ce, accessed Jul 2, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kali.
Earliest image of Kali. Kali, sandstone relief from Bheraghat, near Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh state, India, 10th century ce.
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