Arts – Page 2 – Soul Needs

Beauty in Bronze

I saw these two statues and thought them to be of the same order as the David and Venus di Milo statues

Today Reggio’s National Museum hosts many remains of history and art, as well as archaeological collections of Basilicata and Calabria, but the real attraction are the “Bronzi di Riace“. Two human size statues made out of bronze. The reason why they were found at the bottom of the sea bed of “Riace” is unknown.

The bronzes look human and divine at the same time, at the very close edge between reality and myth. They represent the Greek conception of heroism and beauty, the classical composure and dynamic vitality. These elegant bronzes are wonderful works showing a very refined taste and consequently they date back most probably to one of the most flourishing periods of the Greek civilization and of the culture of the whole mankind, the representation of the human body is very expressive and realistic in many anatomical details.

A question rises… who do they represent? no one knows exactly which two characters they are supposed to represent, neither the paternity or origin, but surely they were warriors armed with lances and shields.

Arts and the Spirit of Community in Cuba

I found this very inspiring – watch closely and it might change your life – and your view of the arts in education!

http://www.teachers.tv/video/5471

My response was

A brilliant model of how the arts can create what has been leeching away in the UK – community, family and a vision and process of working together toward a better future.

Oh if only…….

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Favourite Art Quotes

This is a start to a collection of favourite art quotations;

“All works of art though visible represent invisible things,” (by or about Bill Viola)

Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine.
~ Magdalena Abakanowicz

“The atmosphere of our early years – the blend of impressions, sensations and fantasies we absorb – leave an indelible imprint on every one of us.”

Isabella Far

This is one sense of poetry. A little concoction of words against death. It’s almost the instinct against death crystallized.

~ Miroslav Holub

“For me, a relationship without an artistic connection is like sex without chemistry: dull, flat and mechanical. And sex without chemistry is like bad art: forced strokes that inspire nothing but rolling eyes. Creative

people are creative in every context, and sex is no exception. ”
-Stephanie Sellars (article)

“The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” – Piet Mondrian

“I never believed in god, but I believe in Picasso.” – Diego Rivera

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams

“At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.” – M. C. Escher

“The drawings have to do with releasing energy. Somebody once said that people become artists because they have a certain kind of energy to release, and that rings true to me.”

– Dale Chihuly

Thus in all poetry a word is like a sun, with its corona and chromosphere; words crowd upon words and enwrap each other in their luminous envelopes until sentences become clear, continuous light bands.

-Ernest Fenollosa-

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world

~Oscar Wilde

Poetry is the voice of spirit and imagination and all that is potential, as well as of the healing benevolence that is used to be the privilege of the gods.

– Ted Hughes

Stylistically, an artist can do two very brave things in their careers: a Picasso-like switching between unrecognizable styles, or a Morandi-like pursuit of the same relentless vision (the challenge here is to maintain a

pitch of intensity across a long line of similar works).
-Kara Besher

Morandi

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Oscar Wilde ..

“Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.”
Margot Fonteyn

“It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. … I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.”

-Frederick Chopin

“Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world.”

“I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle. “

– Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing.

“When the artists is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes and inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets,

enlightens, and opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book , he opens it and shows that there are still more pages possible.”

-Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (1923)

My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys,
The obedient lock, the belated notes
The few days left to me will not find time
To read, the deck of cards, the tabletop,
A book and crushed in its pages the withered
Violet, monument to an afternoon
Undoubtedly unforgettable, now forgotten,
The mirror in the west where a red sunrise
Blazes its illusion. How many things,
Files, dorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
Blind and so mysteriously reserved.
They will endure beyond our vanishing;
And they will never know that we have gone.

–Borges

Art is a revolt against fate.

– André Malraux

Sources include:

http://community.livejournal.com/artquotes

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Getting our I, WE & IT voices Balanced – inspired by Ken Wilber

Getting our I, WE & IT Voices Balanced

Are your voices in a twist? We each have 3 God-given voices to sing different kinds of songs. Imagine if one voice dominates & consequently the other 2 ‘shrivel’ to almost nothing. Where would we be?

Answer – where we and our world are now. This is how Ken Wilber explains our situation.

All great wisdom traditions (and Perennial Philosophy) used to believe in the Great Chain of Being which taught that reality was a rich tapestry of levels starting with matter:

spirit

soul

mind

body

matter

Wilber suggests reality now is best understood as a Great Nest of Being – like a set of ‘Russian Dolls’ – same levels – ‘matter-body-mind-soul-spirit’ but like an onion. (All are forms of spirit?)

He speaks of three historical periods: 1) before the Enlightenment = pre-modernism; 2) after the Enlightenment = modernism; 3) recently = post-modernism.

What did the good side of modernism give us? The good side of modernism = we were able to develop separately the 3 voices of I. WE & IT – I, (Art) WE (Morality) and IT (Science)

I = the subjective voice that we express in the arts (Beauty – and subjective truth)

WE = the moral voice that we express in the Humanities including religion (Goodness)

IT = the objective voice that we express in the Sciences (Objective Truth)

In pre-modern times I, WE and IT were not separate voices. Before the Enlightenment the Church decided everything. It forced Galileo to recant the truth of what he saw scientifically through his telescope. The Church insisted the sun went around the earth. It also decided what was and wasn’t good, and what was and wasn’t beautiful in the arts.

After the Enlightenment modernism gave us three voices developing separately I, WE and IT which were also three separate ways of knowing which I prefer to express thus:

‘I knowing’ = the subjective voice in the Arts (Beauty as pleasing patterns en-formed) -Creativity

‘WE knowing’ = the moral voice in the Humanities inc. religion (Goodness as fellow-feeling) -Caring

‘IT knowing’ = the objective voice in the Sciences (Truth as sorting, measuring, replicating) -Criticality

The bad side of modernism = the domination by the IT voice (‘Scientism’) to create ‘Flatland’. That is the ITness of science has become so powerful that it has caused the other two voices, more or less, to become invalid. This has been called the dis-enchantment of the modern world.

Therefore:

Pre-modernism = science, the humanities & the arts couldn’t develop separate to ‘Church’

Modernism = all three could develop separately (includes separation of Church and State)

Post-modernism means different things to different people a) a reaction against modernism, b) a counter-balance to (Flatland) modernism or c) a continuation of modernism

More narrowly postmodernism = the idea that there is no ‘truth’ only interpretations, and all interpretations are socially constructed (by elites to exploit groups e.g. women or colonies)

Important in pm = ‘there is no grand narrative’ that binds – such as the Christian story. My answer = ‘yes there is – being human in the world, with others, seeking truth, beauty, goodness and justice = the perennial grand narrative’.

The bad side of modernism = the empiricism of science has like a cuckoo forced out ‘I knowing’ and ‘WE knowing’. Inappropriately applying the scientific way of knowing (empiricism) to other areas of life is called scientism . (Creates ‘Flatland’)

Fundamentalism is, in part, derived by rejection of modernism – especially separation of state & religion. Ultimately it = the unwillingness to let the I, WE & IT voices grow separately.

The good side of post-modernism – it teaches us that

1 Reality is not always pre-given, but in some significant ways is a construction, an interpretation. The belief that reality is simply given, is referred to as ‘the myth of the given’.

2 Meaning is context-dependent, and contexts are boundless.

3 Cognition must therefore privilege no single perspective. (SEE Wilber p121)

Conclusion: We still validate science (the empirical and the rational), though we teach it poorly, but we don’t validate contemplation. Contemplation can also be thought of as heart-knowing – which is inspiration that follows meditation, especially the experience of at-one-ment/egolessness.

Our interior self is a flow of ‘heart-mind’. – separating heart and mind has been a disaster that has invalidated, or diminished, the feminine principle in men and women. (Heart-mind is an ancient idea ‘xin’ or ‘hsin’ in Chinese).

I, WE and IT ways need each other. If a person gets inspiration from contemplation (as Einstein did) s/he needs to order it or check it with IT knowing and WE knowing. Science needs I knowing and WE knowing as well. The Humanities need I knowing as well as IT knowing. Art needs WE & IT knowing.

Organized religion has suffered because it couldn’t stay clear on I, WE and IT knowing. It has made a comeback via the arts and ‘pick and mix’ spirituality. Its special domain, like art is I knowing – + WE knowing as inspired by what it sees as the revealed word of God.

Action needed = The world (especially the religions, governments & parents) need to nurture the I, WE and IT voices to achieve balance and concord. Unity, peace & development depend on validating objective truth and knowing, subjective truth and knowing and the moral wisdom that lies at the heart of all of the great traditions. The call is to the balancing of these three ‘voices’ of the human spirit.

My educational model towards this end I have called SunWALK = we need to teach our children, and ourselves, to pursue Wise, Action, through Loving and Knowing guided by the Sun of higher-order values SEE www.SunWALK.org.uk Roger Prentice Email; rogerprentice@bigfoot.com Ver 8.7.06

Adapted from and inspired by the work of Ken Wilber in The Marriage of Sense & Soul

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Geoff Dyer’s ‘The Ongoing Moment’

In this writer’s view the claims for Geoff Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment are not over the top. It must rank with the best writing on photography. It ranks with Barthes and Susan Sontag – depending on how you feel about those two!

You can hear afascinating interview with Geoff Dyer HERE

Good review HERE in The Independent

Guardian review HERE

Amazon reviews HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

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Authenticity in Holistic Education and in the SunWALK model

Authenticity is seen as the subjective voice of the individual that expresses justly her/his unique combination of qualities and abilities, in relation to the communities of which s/he is part.

The authentic expression of the uniqueness of the individual is seen as a goal of education within SunWALK. Such a goal however, which is always subject to the limits and freedoms brought by the society in which the individual lives, is seen by some as contrary to the common good, or at least as very secondary to the good of the group. Here this development of the subjective voice, it is seen as vital in order than the individual’s gifts might be developed for the good of groups to which s/he belongs.

Charles Taylor argues powerfully for a positive view of authenticity. He points out that the modern notion of authenticity is self-referential but says there is a vital distinction between self-referentiality as orientation and self-referentiality as content. Confusing the two he says is disastrous. (pp. 81-82)

This jibes well with the distinction that others make between individuality and individualism. In SunWALK I take the view that a balanced middle way makes most sense. Individuality is vital, not just for the individual but for what s/he brings to others. The religious/spiritual view, shared here, is that authenticity and autonomy is best developed via a sense of service of others. The balance then recognizes the needs of others, and society as a whole, in the process of the individual’s development of autonomy and authenticity.

Such concern for balance also relates to the sociological debate between agency and structure. The view in SunWALK is that no agency exists, or can develop, without enculturization being present – both as external contexts and as a shaper within the consciouness of the individual. That is the cultural is both external and internal phenomena that helps shape perception and (creative) expression. Having said that our task is to achieve capabilities that enable us to see through the limits of our own culture, as it exists internally as well as externally. The metaphor of a potter, his hands, clay and the wheel relates in the sense that there is always spirit and form (and formation) in the making of a pot.

Taylor, Charles, (1991), The Ethics of Authenticity Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press

Peter Abbs (1993) gave a very interesting 8 point view of authenticity. He suggests eight characteristics to prove education as a reality distinct from other activities such as training or memorising or exam passing. He sees these characteristics as taking us a long way from the present government’s obsession with delivery, control, prescription and standardization. These characteristics, Abbs considers, have Socrates as their source. The eight characteristics that Abbs sees distinguishing authentic education are:

1) commitment to understanding;

2) seeing education as inherently valuable;

3) experiencing education as existential in the sense of the individual taking responsibility for something which cannot be bought or transferred but which can be released by the right agent including a teacher;

4) level of engagement (being utterly absorbed) – not just the mind but the whole personality;

5) recognising that education is open-ended and that of necessity we live with uncertainties with scientific theories only being provisional explanations;

6) being collaborative (in dialogue) both in the sense of wisdom passed down the ages, and as the trust and relations within the group or class or seminar;

7) recognising diversity including plurality in modes of understanding, ways of knowing;

8)acknowledging transcendence – moments in which one can sense abiding value and a sense of the ordinary self surpassing itself, seeming to be fully alive but in another realm.

Abbs, Peter, “On the Need for the Socratic”, p.1, and “On Intellectual Research as Socratic Activity” p.66 in Aspects of Education, Socratic Ed. No.49, Inst. of Ed. University of Hull 1993

There is also an interesting Baha’i perspective, in my reading of this passage from Baha’i writings concerning justice:

O SON OF SPIRIT! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbour. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes. (Baha’u’llah: Arabic Hidden Words, Page: 2)

Interestingly I found a similar quotation attributed to Albert Einstein;

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

The interesting ideas in the Baha’i quotation include; the reiteration of justice as the supreme virtue, the promise that God (or Mystery or the Other or the Whole?) can only speak to the individual if justice is ‘enshrined’, the promise that through justice as an internal condition we will see reality and see authentically not vicariously, and manifest knowing that is authentic and not second-hand, the notion that we become autonomous through justice as well as authentic, the notion that realization of this state of being and set of capabilities is through contemplation using the heart-mind (see Mind, Heart-mind and Soul).

The Hidden Word concerning justice admonishes us to ‘ponder in our hearts’. This is interesting in that it says ‘heart’ not mind, and certainly not brain. Under ‘consciousness’ and in the main body of the dissertation I have suggested, as a new or richer epistemology that consciousness can be thought of as heart-mind, and that the peculiar desire to separate head and heart in the West has been a curse, as well as possibly a bringer of some benefits.

Authenticity is seen as vital because it is highly developed subjectivity that releases capabilities, and the key to a civilized society is seen as how it manages the public-private, objective-subjective, moral-utilitarian sets of relationships.

Authenticity, and subjectivity, are vital because freedom is necessary to act responsibility. Fundamentalism not only takes away rights, from a human rights point of view, it absolves individuals from having to think hard and make difficult decisions.

See also Trilling (1971) who deals with authenticity as a criterion of art and as a quality of the personal life. SEE separate Bibliographies.

Ken Wilber’s view is implicitly presented in his two brilliant essays on the nature of Art and art criticism in his book The Eye of Spirit.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

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A Great Video – Tim Williams Novel

From Crackle: Tim Williams Novel

From the great Crackle site.

Willard Wigan – small is beautiful – but would the ArtWorld say it isn’t art?

Willard Wigan creates sculpture in the eye of a needle or on the head of a pin.

Sugar (?) and…..

Liberty’s statue

Is this thinker’s thoughts small or large?

Elvis on his pin-head.

Visitors to Willard Wigan’s exhibitions view his work through a microsope!

The match.

The Titanic

The Wizard of Oz

The Six wives and Henry VIII+

Of course ‘skill isn’t art’ the ‘ArtWorld’ would say – but it certainly cheered my day!

But how does he do it? According to

Willard Wigan is a “micro-miniaturist,” an artist known for creating some of the world’s smallest sculptures. As he and his work are described on his web site:

Willard Wigan was born in Birmingham, England in 1957 and is the creator of the smallest works of art on earth. From being a traumatized and unrecognized dyslexic child, he is now emerging as the most globally celebrated micro-miniaturist of all time and is literally capable of turning a spec of dust into a vision of true beauty.

Willard can create a masterpiece within the eye of a tiny sewing needle, on the head of a pin, the tip of an eyelash or a grain of sand. Some are many times smaller than the fullstop at the end of this sentence.

Many are even smaller still, with some being completely invisible to the naked eye yet, when viewed through high power magnification, the effect on the viewer is truly mesmerising. Willard, who is completely self-taught has baffled medical science and been the subject of discussions among micro-surgeons, nano-technologists and at universities worldwide. His work is ground-breaking — partly because of the astounding beauty of vision which challenges the belief system of the mind and partly because it demonstrates that if one person can create the impossible, we all have the potential to transcend our own limiting beliefs about what we are capable of.

He works in total solitude at a quiet retreat in Jersey mainly at night when there is a greater sense of peace in the world and less static electricity to interfere with the immeasurable precision and tolerances required to create the pieces.

The smallest sculptures can only be measured in thousandths of an inch which is why they can sit, very delicately, on a human hair three thousandths of an inch thick. When working on this scale he slows his heartbeat and his breathing dramatically through meditation and attempts to harmonize his mind, body and soul with the Creator. He then sculpts or paints at the centrepoint between heartbeats for total stillness of hand. He likens this process to “trying to pass a pin through a bubble without bursting it.” His concentration is intense when working like this and he feels mentally and physically drained at the end of it.

Willard Wigan works with materials such as toothpicks, sugar crystals, and grains of rice and sand, spending months meticulously carving his materials into micro-figures like the ones displayed above.

And the great driver of ‘rarity and monetary value’ has slapped the art mafia in the face since Wigan’s site tells us ;

Former England Davis Cup captain turned entrepreneur, David Lloyd purchased the remaining Willard Wigan collection of micro sculptured art in February 2007, The collection was subsequently insured by Lloyd’s of London for £11.2 million.

A long time anonymous collector of art, David Lloyd’s purchase has been viewed by many as a significant coup in the art world.

Willard whose work has been described by many as ‘the eighth wonder of the world’ received his MBE for services to art from HRH the Prince of Wales in July 2007.

Thereafter, Willard was commisioned by Lloyds of London to replicate the iconic Lloyd’s of London Building as designed by the award winning architect, Lord Richard Rogers. The difference however being that Willard’s masterpiece was on a pinhead,, which was then sold by Eric Knowles (Bonham’s Fine Art) for £94,000.

From October 2007, the David Lloyd Gallery will be undertaking a touring exhibition of Willard’s work around the United Kingdom. Willard is then scheduled to tour America and Canada.

Willard Wigen’s site is HERE

BBC interview with Wigen is HERE

Other source Snopes Urban Myths HERE – but this story is true!

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A video-lecture by Bill Viola – via the Tate Modern

Tate Modern video presentations are HERE

Go HERE to see a video-lecture by Bill Viola.

Bill Viola has been making video tapes, architectural installations, sound environments, electronic music performances and works for television for over 30 years. His video installations such as Nantes Triptych 1992 and Five Angels for the Millennium 2001, which are both in the Tate Collection, are total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound.

On the eve of a major new exhibition, LOVE/DEATH: The Tristan Project, at Haunch of Venison in London, Viola talks about his career and recent work.

In collaboration with Haunch of Venison

“All works of art though visible represent invisible things,” (by or about Bill Viola)

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Triadic forms: Texts and our construction of meaning

Within the SunWALK model at the heart of this site (summaries are HERE ) I suggest that we all communicate at any one time in one of three voices – the subjective I voice of the Creative (Arts), the moral WE voice of the Caring (Humanities) – and the objective IT voice of Criticality (as in Scientific investigation, practical criticism and philosophical inquiry). I suggest that education, and personal well-being, is a matter of achieving balance between those three voices – because they each energize the others. I also suggest that wisdom is a balance of these three – at least practical, common sense, day-to-day wisdom.

The three ‘voices’ correspond to other triadic forms – Kant’s three inquiries for example. Another three concern how meaning is derived from text. This topic is brilliantly introduced on Daniel Chandler’s website at the University of Wales (Aberystwyth). He says;

The range of theories about where meaning emerges in the relationship between readers and texts can be illustrated as a continuum between two extreme positions respectively, those of determinate meaning and completely ‘open’ interpretation, thus:

* Objectivist: Meaning entirely in text (‘transmitted’);
* Constructivist: Meaning in interplay between text and reader (‘negotiated’);
* Subjectivist: Meaning entirely in its interpretation by readers (‘re-created’).

It may surprise some readers that anyone could adopt either of the extremes as a serious theoretical position. However, there are prominent theorists whose positions are at least close to these poles. For David Olson and other ‘formalists’ the meaning of a text is ‘contained in’ the text, and it must be ‘extracted’ by readers. Such a model of communication is ‘transmissive’: meaning is seen as something which can be ‘transmitted’ from a ‘sender’ to a passive ‘receiver’. As one moves towards the other pole the model of communication becomes more of a process of ‘negotiation’ or ‘construction’ (variously referred to as a ‘constructionist’, ‘constructivist’, ‘social-interactive’ or ‘dialogical’ model). In formalist theories meaning resides in texts ; in dialogical theories meaning is a process of negotiation between writers and readers (Holquist 1983). Those who stress negotiated meaning argue that the meanings of texts are neither completely predetermined nor completely open, but are subject to certain constraints. Some commentators refer to influences on the process of making meaning such as ‘a preferred reading’ – which may be represented in the text as ‘an inscribed reader’ or may emerge in ‘interpretative communities’. Individual readers may either accept, modify, ignore or reject such preferred readings, according to their experience, attitudes and purposes. This whole attitudinal spectrum towards meaning- making with texts parallels that relating to the nature of reality: ranging from objectivism, via intersubjectivity, to subjectivism.

As I have mentioned elsewhere understanding, and upholding, these various triadic approaches is vital to upholding an inclusive, universalist, world view and a balanced understanding of reality. It is also the antidote to fundamentalism and to various other sicknesses that plague us.
To be developed.

The ‘SunWALK PhD’ is HERE

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To read the rest of Daniel Chandler’s introduction – and much more – go HERE

A very interesting article on identity, prepared by Chandler for the OU, is HERE