Oh, how I love to post. Endlessly. Daily.
But I bought an iMac and all hath come to ruin. No more pictures until I figure this thing out.
Within me, it seems, intuition is lacking… severely. No longer is there an easy route to resize a photo to under 1Mb. The method for doing so resides somewhere and I was searching, searching, searching, but nowhere is it to be found.
Oh, woe is me. 
I am a verklempt Windows addict.
Artists are a strange bunch and nowhere is that more obvious than the huge disparity between figurative and imaginative art.
Most try their hardest to capture nature in all its glory, whether it is human beings and their varied emotional states or clouds, trees and lakes to project beauty and serenity. Sombre landscapes could also emote darkness and foreboding; in other words, there s no limits to figurative art. It may and does encompass all that the universe has to offer.
On the other hand, there is imaginative art and derived, not from the exterior world, but an internal one… the landscapes of dreams and the main source of inspiration for much of my work.
Aniela Jaffé, in the C. G. Jung book ‘Man and His Symbols’ (pg. 255) devotes a short chapter to the resurgence of ‘Modern Art’ in the 20th century.
Here it is verbatim:
Modern painting as a symbol
The terms “modern art” and “modern painting are used in this chapter as the layman uses them. What I will be dealing with, to use (Herbert) Kühn, is modern imaginative painting. Pictures of this kind can be “abstract” (or rather non-figurative) but they need not always be so. There will be no attempt to distinguish among such various forms as fauvism, cubism, expressionism, futurism, suprematism, constructivism, orphism and so on. Any specific allusion to one or the other of these groups will be quite exceptional.
And I am not concerned with an aesthetic differentiation of modern paintings; nor, above all, with artistic evaluations. Modern imaginative is here taken simply as a phenomenon of our time. That is the only way in which the question of its symbolic content can be justified and answered. In this brief chapter it is possible to mention only a very few artists, and to select a few of their works more or less at random. I must content myself with discussing modern painting in terms of a small number of its representatives.
My starting point is the psychological fact that the artist has at all times been the instrument and spokesman of the spirit of the age. His work can only be partly understood in terms of personal psychology. Consciously or unconsciously, the artist gives form to the nature and values of his time, which in their turn form him.
The modern artist himself often recognizes the interrelation of the work and its time. Thus the French critic and painter Jean Bazaine writes in his Notes on Contemporary Painting: “Nobody paints as he likes. All a painter can do is to will with all his might the painting his age is capable of.” The German artist Franz Marc, who died in the First World War, said: “The great artists do not seek their forms in the mists of the past, but take the deepest soundings they can of the genuine, profoundest center of gravity of their age.” And, as far back as 1911, Kandinsky wrote in his famous essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”: “Every epoch is given its own measure of artistic freedom, and even the most creative genius may not leap over the boundary of that freedom.”
For the last 50 years, “modern art” has been a general bone of contention, and the discussion has lost none of its heat. The “yeas” are as passionate as the “nays”; yet the reiterated prophecy that “modern” art is finished has never come true. The new way of expression has been triumphant to an unimagined degree. If it is threatened at all, it will be because it has degenerated into mannerism and modishness. (In the Soviet Union, where non-figurative art has often been officially discouraged and produced only in private, figurative art is threatened by a similar degeneration.)
The general public, in Europe at any rate, is still in the heat of the battle. The violence of the discussion shows that feeling runs high in both camps. Even those who are hostile to modern art cannot avoid being impressed by the works they reject; they are irritated or repelled, but (as the violence of feeling shows) they are moved. As a rule, the negative fascination is no less strong than the positive. The stream of visitors to exhibitions of modern art, wherever and whenever they take place, testifies to something more than curiosity. Curiosity would be satisfied sooner. And the fantastic prices that are paid for works of modern art are a measure of the status conferred upon them by society.
Fascination arises when the unconscious has been moved. The effect produced by works of modern art cannot be explained entirely by their visible form. To the eye trained in “classic” or “sensory” art, they are new and alien. Nothing in works of non-figurative art reminds the spectator of his own world – no objects in their own everyday surroundings, no human being or animal that speaks a familiar language. There is no welcome, no visible accord in the cosmos created by the artist. And yet, without any question, there is a human bond. It may be even more intense than in works of sensory art, which make a direct appeal to feeling and empathy.
Itis the aim of the modern artist to give expression to his inner vision of man, to the spiritual background of life and the world. The modern work of art has abandoned not only the realm of the concrete, “natural,” sensuous world, but also that of the individual. It has become highly collective and therefore (even in the abbreviation of the pictorial heiroglyph) touches not only the few but the many. What remains individual is the manner of representation., the style and quality of the modern work of art. It is often difficult for the layman to reconize whether the artist’s intentions are genuine and his expressions spontaneous, neither imitated nor aimed at effect. In many cases he must accustom himself to new lines of of line and colour. He must learn them, as he would learn a foreign language before he can judge their expressiveness and quality.
The pioneers of modern art have apparently understood how much they were asking of the public. Never have artists published so many “manifestoes” and explanations of their aims in the 20th century. It is, however, not only to others they are trying to explain and justify what they are doing; it is also to themselves. For the most part, these manifestoes are artistic confessions of faith- poetic and often confused or self-contradictory attempts to give clarity to the strange outcome of todays artistic activities.
What really matters, of course, is (and always has been) the direct encounter with the work of art. Yet, for the psychologist who is concerned with the symbolic content of modern art, the study of these writings is most instructive. For that reason the artists, wherever possible, will be allowed in the following discussion to speak for themselves.
The beginnings of modern art appeared in the early 1900′s. One f the most impressive personalities of that initiatory phase was Kandinsky, whose influence is still clearly traceable in the paintings of the second half of the century. Many of his ideas have proven prophetic. In his essay “Concerning Form,” he writes: “The art of today embodies the spiritual matured to the point of revelation. The forms of this embodiment may be arranged between two poles: (1) great abstraction; (2) great realism. These two poles open two paths, which both lead to one goal in the end. These two elements have always been present in art; the first was expressed in the second. Today it looks as if they were about to carry on separate existences. Art seems to have put an end to the pleasant completion of the abstract by the concrete, and vice versa.”
To illustrate Kandinsky’s point that the two elements of art, the abstract and the concrete, have parted company: In 1913, the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich painted a picture that consisted of a black square on a white ground. It is perhaps the first purely “abstract” picture ever painted. He wrote of it: “In my desperate struggle to liberate art from the ballast of the world of objects, I took refuge in the form of a square.”
A Year later, the French painter Marcel Duchamp set up an object chosen at random (a bottle rack) on a pedestal and exhibited it. Jean Bazaine wrote of it: “This bottle rack, torn from its utilitarian context and washed up on the beach, has been invested with the lonely dignity of the derelict. Good for nothing, there to be used, ready for anything,it is alive. It lives on the fringe of existence its own disturbing life. The disturbing object- that is the first sep to art.”
In its weird dignity and abandonment, the object was immeasurably exalted and given significance that can only be called magical. Hence its “disturbing, absurd life.” It became an idol and at the same time an object of mockery. Its intrinsic reality was annihilated.
Both Malovich’s square and Duchamp’s bottle rack were symbolic gestures that had nothing to do with art in the strict sense of the word. Yet they mark the two extremes (“great abstraction” and “great realism”) between which the imaginative art of the succeeding decades may be aligned and understood.
From the psychological standpoint, the two gestures toward the naked object (matter) and the naked non-object (spirit) point to a collective psychic rift its symbolic expression in the years before the catastrophe of the First World War. This rift had first appeared in the Renaissance, when it became manifest as a conflict between knowledge and faith. Meanwhile, civilization was moving man further from his instinctual foundation, so that a gulf opened between nature and mind, between the unconscious and consciousness. These opposites characterize the psychic situation that is seeking expression in modern art.
There are a few things which stood out within the above chapter, not least of which is the complete and utter disregard of the female artist. No mention is made of any woman anywhere. The artist is ever a male, it seems, and that irked me as if, even when this was published as recently as 1964, the women who created art were not considered as viable. Has it always been so? Is it only in recent decades and a new century that the role of the feminine in creative works is to be recognized?
I say no. The suppression of the feminine is the awful result of an age… a very long age stemming out of the destruction of what is considered ‘pagan’ and dates back to the decline of the Roman Empire, laying paternalism at the feet of a burgeoning monotheism. The shamanism which predates that sea-change in thinking had no bias in regards to a superior ability of men over women when it comes to spiritual matters.
And that brings me to a second point; even a simple study of prehistoric cave paintings, petroglyphs, mounds, menhirs, dolmens and a multitude of prehistoric carved objects reveal the truth that ‘non-objects’ such as squares, circles and lozenges were commonly represented among many other forms. It did not suddenly appear in the Renaissance as a result of a conflict between religion and science or, more recently, the foreboding angst over a century filled with a new kind of mechanized war.
Conflict has always been with us and, whether widespread slaughter is aided by steel sword blades over copper, muskets over spears, aircraft over tanks or nuclear weaponry over sanity. Even the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten learned the hard way that an age was against his notion to change the world.
The one thing which has changed from the ancient world to now is that the human race has an unprecedented ability to make known their feelings about what is generally conceived as modern art. There are those who would prefer to laud a black velvet painting of Elvis Presley to a Rothko and that, to me, is just fine. As long as everyone is talking about art as a personal topic, the ‘art world’ is better off for it in that even bad publicity is still publicity. Far worse would be if no-one gave a tinker’s damn.
When the light of reason fails
And the darkness of fear wins
Angels fall
And demons rise
In my mind.
Animus
In the absence of light
Questions rage, seeking anchors
Probing corners
With senses deprived
Of my mind.
Anima
In twilight is revealed the truth
To be found in such discomforts
Accepting both
Yet denying either
To my mind.
I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys. I am the mother of fair love and of fear and of knowledge and of only hope…. I am the mediator of the elements, making one to agree with another; that which is warm I make cold and the reverse, and that which is hard I soften…. I am the law in the priest and the word in the prophet and the counsel in the wise. I will kill and I will make to live and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
Man and His Symbols, pg. 196 – CG Jung / M.-L von Franz
16×20″ – acrylic on birch panel
(reposted with more camera care)
This was written back in ’06, but remains a serious try at penning something worthwhile. I hope some will take the time to read it and comment. Included above is a photo which might somehow set the stage.
Counting the Bones – A fiction
1.
I had another dream. This time it was a complete saga of discovery which I remember in vivid detail, and, furthermore, filled me with a full range of emotions. As I sat up and shook off the night chills, I could see my watcher sitting calmly by the fire. Joe had not said a word in five days, nor would he, because it was not his purpose to converse with me, but only to listen to what I would say. He would not even nod or smile, nor give any indication of reaction to what I would tell him of my nightly dreams. Joe came to me at dusk and left me at the rising sun, going back to sleep at his home. I knew there were other watchers during the daylight hours, but they would stay hidden from me. My waking hours were solitary.
The sun had not yet risen over the calm waters of Georgian Bay, but the sky had brightened considerably and the birds were making a racket in the maple bush further down below the escarpment. From my high perch, I could see across an unbroken expanse of forest spreading for two miles to the rocky shores of the bay, beyond which the seemingly unlimited blue waters stretched to the horizon. From this rocky shelter, my view was to the southeast, and the rising sun would soon fill my temporary home with light and warmth. Only in the evenings, shortly before sunset, would my high nest fall into dark shadow, making me reach for the blanket and the comforts of sleep.
The fire Joe had tended during the long night crackled with blue flames and rising sparks as the cedar burned. I took in a deep breath of the scented boughs upon which I had slept, filling my lungs with the aroma laden air, and began the morning ritual of telling him about the dream.
It had begun with scrabbling through loose soil, filled with pine needles, snail shells, small stones and mushrooms. I was searching for something without knowing what I was searching for, but, determined as always, I ran my fingers through the dirt and detritus carefully, firm in the knowledge that I would find something. I remember smelling that soil, its punguent odour assaulted my nostrils with a heady mix of decay and pine gum which I found extremely pleasant. My bare knees dug into the loose earth to give me purchase as I clawed deeper and deeper when my fingers suddenly closed on a hard little object. I knew I had found something of great importance even though I had yet to lift it from its deep repository. Bringing it into the light and brushing it off, I saw it was a tiny statuette…no larger than a bumblebee. But this was no insect. It had four chunky legs, a solidly built body and a large head with a horn at the top of its muzzle. I spit onto my fingers and carefully wiped the dirt from its faceted body, picking flecks sticking between hooves, polishing the head and body, finding what seemed like armour plating around the thick neck. I recognized it immediately. It was a tiny rhinocerous, carved so expertly that every part was perfect, even the tiny eyes glowed with a blackness deep in the folds of its grey hide.
I thought to myself that this was highly unusual. After all, I am here on the Bruce Peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay…in Canada! What was a carving of a rhino doing here? Flabbergasted, I held the miniature close to my chest, clenched within my filthy fist, and began walking, I had no idea where to. Before long I came upon a well built barn…strangely, because there are no barns where I was, not even farms. Regardless, I entered the huge dark space and sat upon a large banded pirate chest, and, when my eyes became adjusted to the gloom in that silent place, I opened my hand to view the object I had found and brought here. It was a thing of beauty, gleaming with the sweat of my palm, it gave off a pearlescent sheen much like a seashell. I so admired it that I was filled with awe at the exquisite workmanship of the artist who had created it.
But, then, it flew from my hand on fluttering moth wings. A feeling of terror and loss filled me. How could this be? It was a stone statue. How could it be alive? But it was and it fluttered like a tiny butterfly into the dark empty space above me. As it flew, every now and then, it would be visible in the beams of light which passed through the chinks in the barn walls. It beat its silent wings and dove and spiralled all around that cavernous barn but I stayed put upon my pirate chest seat and stared open-mouthed at the marvel being played out before my eyes. The feeling of loss no longer pained my gut and instead an elation grew within me. I felt I had released the wonder from its earthy prison and given it life from the sweat of my palms. I was happy.
And then, just when I was completely satisfied with my fortunes, it came back to me, dancing in front of my face. I put out my hand, palm down, and it landed upon it as lightly as a feather. The joy was profound, complete…I had made a precious friend.
And then I had awoken to see Joe, wrapped in his blanket, his dark eyes like coals in a deeply lined face surrounded by long grey hair. He listened carefully as I detailed the dream to him, his face emotionless. When I had finished, he rose, folded the blanket, lay it in the same cranny as he had the other five mornings and abruptly turned and left.
2.
As the sun now rose higher in the sky, I descended, like I always did, down the rocky dangerous path to the bay below. It was my daily trek and I would spend my day among the rock strewn beach, listening to the waves as they clinked the gravel together on the shoreline, mesmerised by the musical notes. I would bathe and drink a little water, sit in the morning sun, drinking in the warmth in turn. Then I would swim in the clear cold waters and watch the minnows scatter as I dove deep and opened my eyes. I hadn’t eaten for five days now but the urge to do so had left me on the third day. Tasting the water now seemed far different since my hunger and thirst had gone. It felt thick and sweet on my tongue, full of flavour. I could taste the fish and the stones as I sipped small mouthfuls. Everything around me had taken on a new aura. The different trees smelled of their differences, for instance, as did everything else around me. My senses were heightened, there was no doubt in that. My hearing was much more acute too, as was my sight. That gull that just flew by, giving its highpitched call, echoed in my brain. I could see its eyes look my way and noticed that my sudden presence had shocked it slightly, making a tiny hitch in the wing movement.
And so my days had passed…never uneventfully, becoming ever more fully aware. In the depths of the forest, just past the beach, I knew there would be a watcher, quietly sitting and never their taking eyes off me. I even fancied I could hear their heartbeat and tell where it was they had hidden themselves. It was good to know there was always someone, though, because I was becoming…stranger by the day. Everything interested me intensely, whether it was the depths of the sky, the fluffy white clouds soaring by and watching the winds tear at them or, whether it was tiny ants as they hauled their immense loads, dragging them over impossible rocky obstacles.
I was becoming child-like, enraptured by all the life around me, my senses inflamed. The days now seemed too short and soon it was time to climb back through the line of old twisted cedars at the edge of the beach and on up to my little camp under the rock ledge.
3.
When I arrived, Joe was shrouded in sweet-smelling smoke as he worked the coals back into fresh flame. The shadows had returned as the sun sank behind the rocks and a chilly west wind curled into the recess, blowing grey billows of smoke around the six foot four inch frame of my night watcher. I had met him several years ago when he joined me in a sweatlodge ceremony. Afterwards we had buttered thick slices of bread and carved up a deer heart done in a slow cooker. I learned a little about him then, how he had done four tours of Viet Nam and how he was troubled by unknown ghosts better left to himself. Tall and lanky, he smelled like woodsmoke and leather, always wearing the same jacket and rarely speaking. What I knew of him most were his actions and I held him in great respect
His eyes met mine as he turned towards me and held there as I climbed the last few steps to the ledge. When he looked at you directly, there was an intensity in his eyes…they sparkled like dew, even in the shadows, as if light actually came out of them. I sat at my usual spot, re-arranged the cedar boughs I had for a bed, and wrapped my thick blanket around me, staring at the flames as they grew. Soon my eyelids grew heavy and before the light faded in the sunset, I was fast aleep.
I was dreaming again.
4.
I lay on my back in soft soil…so soft, I had actually sunk into it a bit and it was so very comfortable. My eyes were open and I looked up into a mauve sky framed by the branches of tall trees all around me. I smelled a strong perfume in the air, as if there were many flowers nearby and the leaves were turning back and forth upon those branches. There was no breeze, though, these leaves seemed move on their own, each in a different way. Their glossy surfaces reflected the purplish sky in reds and greens, so that they shimmered with an alien light. This is how I knew I was dreaming.
There was a weight on my chest and, looking down to my body, saw a huge snake passing over me, thick as my arm and very long, it moved as snakes do, finding purchase by coiling and pushing against rough scales. The design on its back was diamond shaped, in green and gold with white ribbing on the belly. I could see each scale move and flex as it travelled over me, and, as I twitched, its’ head slowly turned my way and the eyes bored into mine. Opening its’ mouth wide, it smiled at me, wagging that forked tongue wickedly. Then I felt another snake sliding over my legs, going the opposite way. Without panic, I looked around and noticed that the area was full of snakes, in all colours and sizes. They were in the trees, among the branches and their lively leaves, and winding their way up and down the trunks of all the trees. They were like a blanket upon the ground. Some were so big that it would be difficult to reach around their thick bodies and clasp hands while others were quicker, whip-like creatures small as my little finger.
But they were all aware of me lying there.
Slowly I rose to a sitting position, careful not to cause them to fall. Running my fingers along their cold sides, they would respond by smiling graciously at me. I thought I could hear them thanking me in sibilant whispers, grateful for my touch. And I became at ease in this strange landscape of snakes and flowers and sentient leaves. Standing, I reached out and touched their graceful bodies, loving their beauty, their complicated designs, their flowing strength and their absolute kindness. Soon, I was carefully stepping among them, a strange human in a jewelled sinuous world.
Suddenly I sensed a different motion, a tiny fluttering figure just outside of my vision. Turning to its direction, it darted away to the periphery, avoiding my eyes and yet seemingly drawing my gaze. A tiny taunting teasing thing, there was no telling what it was, only that it was there and that it avoided my eyes.
5.
Going forward among the reptillian carpet, I came upon a mossy open place where my bare feet sank to the ankles and was confronted by three alien beings. They wore long white robes tied at the waist by ropes from which dangled many nonsensical shining objects. Their heads were bare and bald. I saw no ears or nose. Their lips were a horizontal slash and emotionless. Their eyes, slanted upwards at the outside, were almond shaped and black as polished ebony.
They spoke to me then, telling me not to be afraid. Their lips did not move, nor did their mouths open, but their voices were clear and pleasant, calming my jangled nerves at the weird apparitions standing tall before me.
“We are here for the counting”, they said in a musical way, “do not fear us. All is as should be. All will be well. Be silent and be at ease.”
I stood still, my arms at my side, and they came forward. Not walking, but sliding slowly towards me. One, who was in the center, came directly to me, stopping inches from my face. They were taller than me, by an inch or two at least and they smelled of cinnamon. The others came to my sides as the former held my gaze, peering into my eyes as if they were but windows into my brain.
“Don’t be afraid”, said the one before me.
“Be calm”, said the two at my sides.
Beyond, I could see a tiny winged creature flying as a butterfly does, bobbing and weaving. It seemed familiar and comforting.
“we are here for the counting”, they repeated as the two on each side of me took hold of my arm.
“Do not be afraid”, said the one before me as he lifted a blade to my face and inserted it between my lips.
The cold slippery steel slid quickly past my teeth and under my tongue. I twisted helplessly in their hard clutches as the blade tore into the back of my throat. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets in terror as the sharp edge sliced through cheek and throat The beings’ great strength was behind the knife as he tore through my neck down to the spine and, with a deft twist, I heard the discs seperate.
The being lifted my head free by the hair.
“Do not be fearful, all is as should be”, he said as he placed my head upon the soft green moss.
It was strange, but the fear left me as soon as my upper teeth touched that sweet carpet. Far above me, those dark eyes watched mine for a bit before turning back to my body, with its tongue lolling about on that stump of a neck, garlanded by white teeth and lower lip.
This they cut first, seperating it completely and stripping the flesh off the chin and lower cheeks. They then passed it around, nodding as they turned it over and over, studying the teeth, pointing out the shape here and and the hinge there. It was a clean white bone when the set it down beside my decapitated skull.
They then turned their attention to my clavicles, my ribs, my arms and so on. Every bone they cut and lifted from my body. They stripped clean until it was white as …well…bone. There was no blood at all, and that confused me. I saw red muscle and grey sinews, pink lungs and red heart, long, long windings of light coloured intestines, lumpy greenish brown liver, on and on it went in technicolour, but no gore whatsoever. I had such a grand view of it all from where I lay.
When they were finally done, my body was a pool of offal, steaming on the soft moss. On either side of me, arranged in some strangely ‘correct’ way, were all my bones, from the smallest to the largest. They had even taken the tiny bones from my ears and inspected them closely. But, now they stood in a semi-circle before me, holding one bone…a small bit of white which I could not identify.
And they were very pleased, these beings, nodding and animated by their excitement…and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t happy about them finding it myself!
6.
And then I awoke.
Dawn had come again and Joe stared into my eyes. And, for the first time, on that seventh morning, he finally spoke to me.
“you have passed the test”, he said, covering the embers of a dying fire.
“I had a really weird dre…” I began, but Joe’s raised hand stopped me.
“Don’t talk about it, your bones have been counted and you have passed the test, keep it all in here”, he said, smiling and tapping his forehead.
“I think I saw that rhino again, Joe”
“That’s no rhino, my friend,” he smiled ear to ear, “that was me”.
