Spirit Plumber

Wassily Kandinsky

Have you heard of the book Concerning The Spiritual In Art By Wassily Kandinsky? It describes Mr. Kandinsky's theory of painting and is a very interesting read. I would like to quote from it: "The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forwards and upwards...".

Kandinsky goes on to say that the life of the spirit is represented by a triangle which is growing ever upwards and the true artist is the prophet who stands at the apex of the triangle and draws humanity ever upwards with the vision of his art; truly spiritual art is visionary and prophetic.

Possibly a bit too much power placed on the shoulders of the artist but never the less worth considering in the search for what is true spiritual art.

What is spiritual art?

So what is it? What defines spiritual art? Does it have to be religious subjects? Can it be abstract? Can a person with no spiritual intention create spiritual art? Is it the intention of the artist that makes it spiritual? Does it have to be beautiful? Is art that is beautiful necessarily spiritual? Is it only in the eye of the beholder? Can it be offensive and spiritual?

We have a small art gallery here in Taos, New Mexico that has been open for two years now and it is devoted to Sacred (spiritual) art and the answers to these questions have proven much more difficult than we ever imagined they might be. If you peruse the artist's statements of a good many artists you might conclude that a majority of the art being produced today is spiritual; maybe it is. Maybe it is like the supreme courts definition of pornography "I know it when I see it".

We have set ourselves the mission (I hate that word but for lack of a better one!) of turning viewers and or customers (sometimes we feel more like a museum than a store) minds to the only frontier left to explore on this earth and that is the journey inward into the Spirit. Defining and finding the art that does that is our conundrum.

Plumb the Spirit

From Breakthrough a commentary on Meister Eckhart Matthew Fox Says: "The reason the artist must plumb his or her inner life more than others is that there is where the action takes place. All things are present there. There all things are present, living and seeking within the soul what is spiritual, where they are in their best and highest meaning. The reason we do not grasp this is that we are strangers to our own capacity to give birth and to imagine images. Why don't you notice any of this? Because you are not at home there."

Purely emotional or psychological content in art is has had it's day it is time to resurrect the spiritual dimension in art; to use art to direct the viewer to the cosmic journey into inner space where human meets Divine.

And so it begins.