A Transformative Pull on Consciousness

Robert Brawley
"Gnosis"
oil on board, 2000


The Spectrum of Realism
Using an updated version of Jean Gebser's stages as an example, I'd like to point out that there is Magic Realism, Mythic Realism, Rational (Mental) Realism, Postmodern Realism, and Integral Realism, and they unfold in that order across art history. As you know, from an avant garde or integral perspective, what is "real" depends upon the stage or altitude of consciousness in the individual. There is a deep and wide spectrum of real worldviews, and therefore, real worlds, each with their own form of "realism."

With that in mind, the actual term "realism," didn't appear until the renaissance era of Rational Realism. At that time, a very new kind of reality was taking shape in people’s minds. This period was the nascent of Modern consciousness, and I'd like to discuss that stage's transformative pull on people operating from a pre-rational, pre-modern stage of consciousness. Then, let's look at "Persephone" with that cool idea in mind.

An Evocative Pull
According to Ken Wilber and his interview with Michael Garfield, one crucial item in integral theory is understanding that art is imprinted with the nature of consciousness that is doing the creating, and that the art will then evoke a similar state of consciousness in sentient beings coming into contact with it.

If this evocation causes transformation, the artwork is "art from tomorrow," "the call of the future," "art on a signifier that the general culture is not yet embodying, and therefore it actually carries content and a transformative pull to these higher structures."

I like this idea a lot.

To explain how this works, Wilber uses the popular example of how 3-D perspective didn't appear in painting until the early Renaissance (or what I call the period of Rational Realism). In fact, no paintings can be found with accurate one-point perspective before the year 1423. Even in sculpture, during this era figures were taken off the walls of cathedrals to occupy a new three-dimensional space. Wilber: "…as the Renaissance was emerging, you would see visual painting go from grand mythic schemes [depicted as very flat], with actual men as heroic and as semi-divine,…to a painting that was reflective and coming from an orange rational, perspectival space. So all of a sudden you get three-dimensional perspective for the first time. Which is astonishing, that people actually don't see three dimensions until they get to an orange rational structure. And it didn't get depicted in art until that time."

This is somewhat hard to believe, that humans actually couldn't see or understand three-dimensional space before they moved into rational consciousness. Maybe they just didn't know how to depict three-dimensions until that time. But then again, when I think back to when I was pre-rational, maybe zero to six years old, I can't say for sure that I saw in 3-D. If we assume that artists honestly depict what they can see, then the appearance (and gradual development) of perspectival art during the Renaissance means that before then people really could not see in three-dimensions. Pre-rational people are not yet living in a world so clearly organized. They have yet to establish a single "perspective," or anchored point of reference from which the visual world lawfully projects. Pre-rational consciousness can't yet recognize and organize all the special visual cues, and this means that back then, for someone who has not yet moved into perspectival, rational awareness, (for someone who still sees flat and believes all the myths are absolutely true), just standing in front of a realistic painting would have transformed their consciousness, gently pulling it into a higher altitude /more evolved mode of perceiving.

I believe that this 3-D "pull" on consciousness still exists in today's realism, only now, since we all can see the exterior world in 3-D, the pull is more about in-depthing the interior world, or invoking intrinsic value and restored significance. “Depth perception” has moved from external depth to internal depth and value restoration. In other words, the new realism pulls on consciousness to move beyond the shallow "flatland" of postmodernism and photorealism, causing the viewer to be flooded with refreshed depth and value. It can bring the viewer into a consciousness that perceives the inherent depth and significance of form.

Now what does that mean?


Robert Brawley
"Persephone"
oil on board, 2001

Photorealism is Flat
When people tell me that this shell painting looks like a photograph, I say "Really? I have never seen a photograph look like that before! Photos are flat; this shell is round!" (Note: Photorealism, as an off-shoot of Pop-art, was concerned with making flat, photo-like paintings, since photos, at that time, were considered to be the most honest form of realism. Photos lack expression, lack first person intervention and painterly emotionalism, and so they lack ego and romanticism. This also means that they lack human psychological depth, and therefore, in the world of postmodernism, (which denies the validity of interior depth), photos and photorealism point to a most direct, universally true reality. This is why Gerhard Richter said, “The photograph is the most perfect picture!”
And, needless to say, this painting is not photorealism.

Transcendental Realism (or Future Realism)
Another friend said this about the painting: "It's amazing. This shell looks so real!" I had to disagree with him as well. "Really?” I said. “Have you ever seen a shell look like that before in this world? in this reality? I don't think I have. In fact, it's almost like Bob made this shell up out of his mind. It's a kind of surrealism. And the scenario is not very realistic. How often, in the real world, do you see a shell sitting on cloth next to a window? And that drapery looks too ideal to be real. The whole thing looks dreamy."

I realized that somehow this shell is even more real than an ordinarily real shell. It's like a lucid shell, or a shell you might examine during a lucid dream. It's glazed in a magnifying-glass mind, (a mind from the future?) and I feel a crystal clear mirror consciousness in me (that was theoretically also inside Bob) making the shell appear a bit more beautiful, more true, and more good than an ordinary shell. Is this what the everyday shell looks like from a higher stage of consciousness? I think so.

(It also kind of looks like a shell seen on mushrooms. But Bob said he never did drugs in the studio, so we can assume that this is what he actually saw in his normal consciousness. It looks like the altered state became a constant trait. What a view!)

Secret Tweaking
How this dreamy, jewel-like glow is accomplished is magical and mysterious, because there is no obvious sign or technique that gives this "altering" intention away. It’s not like he used a halo or super bright colors to express the radiance (like van Gogh or Alex Gray would have). Looking closely at the surface, the shell appears to be rendered faithfully and genuinely, in a masterful, but nonetheless impersonal style of realism (many semi-transparent glazes and a single-hair brush). Except for perhaps the impeccable flatness of the surface of the painting, for which Bob was well known, this painting is almost anonymous and ego-less. And yet, this does not look like any old shell.

The secret tweaking, such as omitting details, blurring lines, balancing and slightly accenting colors, is too subtle or sophisticated for the thinking mind to apprehend, but the eyes don't think; they roll over the painting, drink in the details, fill in the spaces, play in the color fields and smoky sfumato that covers the painting, just as they might in a mystical or lucid state of consciousness. This might trick the mind to think that it is on mushrooms. When I asked Bob why he made art he said ‘I want to get into people’s heads and mess things around.” Maybe looking at good art can trigger a kind of subtle mushroom trip, where the world looks a bit more radiant than before. And this is not a hallucination, because radiance really does permeate all of space and time. Like the Dalai Lama says, seeing people as “beings made of pure light” is closer to the truth than seeing them as these solid, fleshy things. (He knows what modern scientists know; that all our atoms interact with every other atom in the universe every second.)

Leading Edge
If this is a shell appearing from the leading edge of Realism, it is informed by all the previous levels and maybe even some future ones. Calling it “Persephone” definitely helps us include the mythic stage! Which reminds me; Wilber says that because the avant garde artists usually find themselves at a leading edge of transformation, their signifiers (symbols) are “coming down from a level or two above where the cultural center of gravity is, and is speaking to people in a way that is then actually transformative."

Bob told us once that "If your art is too avant garde, nobody will understand you." But if what Wilber is saying is true, and I think it is, then it doesn't matter if no one can understand your work, because if you really are leading edge, and are showing the world signs from their collective future, then the art is a preview of the great dream that is to come and will no doubt help prepare them for the feature presentation.