Very Clear Integral Realism

I got this from Integrallife
"According to Integral Theory, there are at least 4 primary dimensions or perspectives through which we can experience the world: subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective."


"What’s the point of looking at the world through a 4-quadrant lens?
Simple answer: Anything less is narrow, partial and fragmented! Integral Theory maintains that all 4 quadrants are real—and all are important. So, for example, to the question of what is more real, the brain (with its neural pathways and structures) or the mind (with its thoughts and perceptions), Integral Theory answers: BOTH.
Moreover, we add that the mind and brain are situated in cultural and systemic contexts, which influence both inner experience and brain activity in irreducible ways.
What’s more important in human behavior? The psychology of the mind (upper left), or the cultural conditioning of the individual (lower left)? Integral Theory answers, again: BOTH. What is more critical in social development? The habits, customs, and norms of a culture (lower left), or the products it produces (like gun and steel – lower right). Integral Theory answers: BOTH.
All four quadrants are real, all are important, and all are essential for understanding your world.
While some might like to reduce reality to the mind (upper-left quadrant), and others to the brain (upper-right quadrant), and still others to the influence of cultural context (lower-left quadrant), and yet others to the effect of systems (“it’s the economy, stupid!” i.e., lower-right quadrant), Integral Theory holds that ALL 4 QUADRANTS are indispensable. The more we can consciously include the 4 quadrants in our perspective, the more whole, balanced, healthy, comprehensive, and effective our actions will be."

Battles

Battles is a "math rock" band from New York, bringing a new kind of realism into music, for sure. And the video kicks ass! The band is rocking out! And the setting looks like Yayoi Kusama's mirror room.

Alan Watts and Ween

Awakening instructions from The Matrix, Alan Watts saying,"You are something the whole universe is doing..." plus one of my favorite Ween songs with some awesome visuals from all over the internet. I love how the song ends: Jean Ween singing with his acoustic guitar,
"Believe me."

Murmurs From Deep Time

Robert Brawley
"Murmurs from Deep Time"
2004, oil on panel, 14.5" x 16"

That mirror is about the size of a silver dollar. Bob must have used a single haired brush! It's very Jan van Eyck. The Arnolfini Portrait.

In Murmurs from Deep Time, everything is lucid, like in a dream; everything is in a dreamy focus, surrounded by atmosphere of ambiguity. Bob often integrated the fantastic and symbolic with the objective and mundane, making a very integral realism, I think. This comes through beautifully here in this painting, yes? I mean, just look at how the moon, crystal ball, window, and mirror (each established esoteric symbol) are all aligned down the central axis. Six ordinary stones are arranged in the foreground, at the base, expressing both symmetry and asymmetry, diversity and homogeneity. And each stone is glowing like a magic jewel, stunning, absolutely stunning! Bob even put some fantastic Himalayan mountains into this still life. If you appreciate "disguised symbolism," or Japanese Haiku, this painting is a lot like those as well. Haiku poems (5-7-5) often include juxtaposed sizes, for example:

The distant mountains
wait outside a window-light
lined with river stones

God I love this painting. As many of you know, my meditation teacher, Khamtrul Rinpoche, used a crystal ball in his "pointing out instructions," that changed my life, so including that clear marble on the windowsill cements this into meaningfulness, for sure. Bob also studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism, so any "buddhist" interpretation very likely could have been intended (crystal balls and circular mirrors are both used on buddhist altars.) Moreover, Brawley worked a lot with totems and totemic relationships (rooted in his own indigenous ancestry?). His wife told me that the stones might represent the earth. the elements, chaos and order; the mirror might represents the mind, reflection, perception, and the crystal ball might represnt transcendence, purity, clarity, the nature of mind. But the totem doesnt end there. What whould go above the Nature of Mind you might ask? God? Goddess? Spirit? Well, there is a window (the beyond, the light?), and then a scene of mountains and the moon in the sky. Interestingly ordinary. Profoundly ordinary. And yet, mountains are often equated with the Ground, the Vastness, the Holy, the Alaya (as in Himalaya), and in Japan they can actually be Gods--great protectors and sources of energy. Dead center above them, at the top of the totem, is the crescent moon (mystery, sacredness, feminine/masculine, luminous emptiness, nondual reality?, whatever. The cresent moon can represent open boundarylessness, as well as the union of emptiness and form. In Zen it represents the Truth, or Dharma, and the teaching is to look at the moon, not the finger pointing to it. Maybe the moon at the top is like the star at the top of a Christmas tree; it's the guiding Light, it's the guiding Love. What is so amazing is that the painting only suggests that these relationships and meanings might be experienced there. Nothing is obvious. The moon could simply represent the moon.

According to this great article, Brawley sees his still lifes as expressing “a layered metaphor of entrapment or containment in a materialistic and destructive plane of existence.”


It's often said that artists (and all people, for this matter) can choose to communicate with a certain audience--a certain type of perspective.
They choose what perspective to communicate with, and then try to use the symbols and languages inhabited by that general altitude of consciousness. They can make art for the anarchists, the spiritualists, or the traditionalists! Or all three, if they are really good. I think Brawley wanted to speak to as many kinds of people, all across the spectrum of consciousness, as he could. He wanted his work to go right into people's minds and mess things around. And it just so happens that in order to be "entrapped," some perspectives need fantasy, need dream time, and find that particular language attractive. Others need realism or technical perfection, and prefer to offer that picture their praise. This painting, like most all of Bob's later work, integrates all of these movements into one, seamless, brush stroke-less whole.

The detail, and the sfumato is breathtaking.

Collaboration is Always Vanguard

Here is another example of what happens when the most contemporary styles of three genres collaborate to co-create a new artifact. (Music and direction by Hiroshi Kizu, dancing by Masako Yasumoto. Check the youtube blurb for more details. )

My thoughts: The cinematography stands alone at the beginning, silent, stunning. Then, contemporary butoh-esque movements reflect sampled, culture-free sounds. Awesome. New. Vanguard. Yes!

I think electronic music in particular is a medium that can reach the most people, while also becoming a new, global instrument stripped of national, ethnic imprints, not totally, but almost totally (it's still elitist). The sounds are manipulated versions of "real" sounds, whose origins are hardly recognizable. The listening mind gives up at trying to identify them--it gives up and says "OK. This is new. This is a new sound; I don't need to place it." In other words, the mind goes blank and then goes global, riding sounds that evoke nothing national or cultural, nothing ethnic like a guitar or drum or human voice would. Instead, electronic music evokes a time period, a generation, which is the global, informational generation happening right now; electronic music brings to mind and manifests the inter-national, informational, electronic, post-formal, gay marriage age, on the internet, in the vanguard, and collaborating like rabbits.

Also, it should be noted that vanguard technology always gives rise to vanguard music; creation is always a four quadrant affair, as Ken Wilber would say, with the arts and interior aspects of an event correlating with the sciences and exterior aspects of the same event. The left and the right quadrants, the interiors and the exteriors, co-construct and co-evolve each other beautifully.

Are we surprised that the new instruments are computers? They are like the exterior fingertips of evolution, those little robots, and they don't just make music! They make all sorts of useful, vanguard tools. Computers are somehow the key to this whole entire thing of evolution and the unrelenting drift toward a planetary culture. Just think: The Human System, seamlessly connected to the evolving planet and stars, made a computer, and the computer made art and information global, free, and accessible. Computers are keys to a global world, beyond nations, just like their mind-altering children: electronic music and video art.

Integral to this artifact's musical expression is the pure, shamanic dancing, which is of a style also seemingly detached from any certain culture or time period. If it must reflect one, it reflects this current period's desire to integrate, include, and utilize what came before.

Dance is expressive to a shared impulse in everyone, yes? And all cultures, all over the world, all throughout time, have been moving to the beat and expressing emotion with dance. In fact, all three art forms collaborating in this video--music, dance, and composition--are at the very core of our human expression; they go all the way back to the beginning, don't they? This style of dance is primitive, as is the beat, as is the drawing and composition (small and large figures, central composition), and yet it also contains classical postures, jazz, evocative poses, and electronic, unnatural movements which cement it in the avant garde, the tip of evolution. Its style goes beyond but includes all previous styles. That is one common pattern of evolution of all of the quadrants: build upon what came before; move up by reaching down.

And now, on a similar, avant garde, Japanese note, here is the elven queen of collaboration herself: Bjork, with Opiate and Eiko Ishioka, butoh-esque body-paint and dance, modern special effects, and evocative pulls that are the sign of very deep, very vanguard art. "Her sexuality spills out of her body, becoming an entity in itself that she can manipulate, enjoy and communicate with. Bjork's fresh self-discovery makes this more of an interactive experience than the mere watching of another music video." I totally agree, Spike.com.

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.

Wayfarer

"Wayfarer"
Robert Brawley,
2003, oil on panel, 9" x 24"

This short talk today has three main objectives: one, to ennoble and provide an interesting interpretation of the great masterpiece paintings by Robert Brawley; two, to bring into fruition my own experiences with art and art-making; and three, to benefit the reader. Please read on.

The Featured Profile
Robert Brawley, “Bob”, was my professor and adviser at the University of Kansas. His lectures were integral sermons that swept over major fields of knowledge, from psychology to string theory, art history to sexuality, spirituality to postmodern philosophy; he talked about it all and integrated it all into an art lesson. I felt my time with him was, in every sense, “integrally informed”, and I felt overjoyed to have finally found a teacher so clearly operating from an “Integral Consciousness.” His artwork was mostly realistic still-lifes and landscapes, painted with a hauntingly high degree of skill.

He told me once, “The way up is back down! The entire thing is a spiral, remember?”

And so, because Bob was flying at an integral, vanguard altitude of consciousness, and painted in a style of realism, I think we should use his work to examine what the New Realism, or “Integral Realism,” looks like in painting.

Every era has its avant garde (and its avant garde chasers), and later we will explore what our own current, kickin avant garde is (and why it is "Integral"). But first I’d like to make one thing very clear.

Interpreting Languages
Like all interpretation, art interpretation is a dicey affair, leading to what some might call a killing. John Dean says it best: “An answer is always a form of death” and this is very true in regards to explaining art. To “explain” literally means to make flat, or lay out on a plain (from ex+ planus- level, flat.) It's the difficult task of trying to make a multidimensional "holon" one dimensional, which deletes a large, beautiful component of the artifact (and therefore, of the mind interpreting it).


"Wayfarer"
Hieronymus Bosch, 1500-1502.

So my spirit of interpretation will be to explore Bob’s paintings in a way that will not delete depth, and will not close doors. The very nature of art is to begin a conversation, not end one in an answer, and therefore, I pray that the nature of this talk will be that of many doors opening to many new ideas and avenues inspired by the work. May it increase the included perspectives, forcing the the mind to grow.

Personally
Personally, Bob’s little round painting “Persephone” pictured above, has been a portal in my living room, a tiny mirror reflecting a vast sky and mountain range of ideas within me and my world. I’ll share with you this portal, and its effect on my own perspective, and I hope everyone keeps using art as a vehicle to the still depths in the center of reality.

Cave Paintings and Early Goddesses
And so we begin our discussion of this painting by looking to the past. All modern artifacts have embedded within their creation all that came before. They enfold their own history, an art history reaching back to the cave paintings and the early sculptures of the goddess. This artifact is no exception, and calling it “Persephone” helps nudge us even more towards a review or a “re-call” of those early myths (and with your permission, we will do that later on).

However, when you read about my take on art history, please keep in mind that I am a painter, and an artist’s take on art history is very different from the art historian’s. Bob was very cynical of art historians’ theories, reminding us continually that Art History is a story that changes every 15 years or so, and that "asking an art historian about art is like asking a virgin about sex." Understanding this is important because the success of our interpretation of Bob’s work depends on how well we can piece together his worldview.


Lineage
Artists have a personal and even emotional connection to their “lineage,” and you can sense it if you talk to one about art history. Alex Grey’s “The Mission of Art," or Philip Rubinov-Jacobson’s “Drinking Lightning” are perfect examples. Or here, listen to the great M.C. Escher speak about the cave paintings at Lascoux:

“You get such a strange feeling when you try to imagine what is meant by “70,000 years ago." You try to imagine it, but can’t. How short is a historical period of 5,000 years, from the oldest Egyptian pyramids until today, compared with that time span! A dark night lasting perhaps 20 times longer than that entire historical period separates us from the human spirit whose mirror image we observe on the walls of this cave. It is an image that is alert, lively, and that speaks to us immediately, as if it had been painted yesterday. It touches you deeply, not so much at the moment you are observing it (I didn’t see anyone in our group bursting to tears), but later on, now, that is, while I am sitting here on the grass. Yes, it is a strange phenomenon that human spirit, that unextinguished spark, that seed that remained alive, that thread we hold in our hands that connects us, across the soundless and pitch-black night, with this member of our species there in the cave of Lascoux, dimly illuminated by a small wick dipped in animal grease and set in a hollow stone. Do you see him sitting there, our brother? What does he look like? What kind of sounds come out of his mouth? Does he stammer a language? We don't know. But we do know, we do see something else. A brush or a tuft of animal hair or of plant fibers in his hand, and with it he brushes over the rough surface of the stone. Look! The heard of a bull appears on the rock wall, an image so alive that it looks as if it moves. It looks as if the damp nostrils tremble. Our brother depicts the bull with such intense emotion that the distance of 700 or 1000 centuries that separates us from him shrinks to nothing. What do we care how he looks; isn’t he our very own brother? What does it mean when we call him “primitive”? Is he really inferior to us? Can we do things “better” that he? Does it clearly appear that we are “farther along” than he was? Have the Great Ones whom we honor, the mighty sculptors from any of the historical periods, depicted life more sharply, with more intensity that he has?



“He did not have paper and pencil for sketching, no modern well-lighted drawing table on which to make preliminary sketches. It must have been tiring to bend over his work while painting an animal five meters long clear across the vault of his cave. While painting such an animal under the poor lighting conditions at this disposal, he perhaps could not see the head as he was working on the hindquarters. But his will and his capacity to produce pictorial images were at the least just as strong as ours. Perhaps even stronger because he was in direct contact with nature, which we usually approach by way of a cultural and educational system that, if not barring the way, certainly obstructs it for us.


“The plastic arts have not experienced an evolution. In everything else that man makes and in much of what he thinks, he adds his contribution to what he has been done by previous generations. In everything he strives toward perfection. The development of his spirit and his increasing mental grasp are staggering in all aspects—except in the plastic arts. It seems to me that here each individual has to start from scratch each time, without ever taking anything of really primary importance from a predecessor.”

I think the reason why “the distance of 700 or 1000 centuries that separates us from him shrinks to nothing” is because when artwork enters us there is a transmission of the artist’s state of consciousness. Somehow the artist’s state of mind is imprinted in the artifact, and travels into our perspective along some sort of medium, and our minds resonate and empathize with the mind that made that mark. In a way, we become the artist for a moment when we follow his brush along its path of creation.

Escher also points to one of the reasons these cave paintings destroyed our idea about the evolution of art. We thought that art evolved like everything else: starting extremely simple and developing with time. But these “first” drawings were far more developed than they should have been when we look at where the people were socially and technologically. Art seems to have appeared already fully formed.


Escher’s account of the cave paintings might sound different from a historians because without having the experience of pulling forms from surfaces, as well as being pushed by a creative impulse hauntingly blissful and mysterious, it’s hard to…appreciate the actual depth of artists’ productions, and understand mystical and transformative intentions…

Art history might tell the story of a developing/evolving form of language. But Escher, and other artists, find that idea to be, well, just a story. The actual history of art occurs every time we pick up a pencil or an instrument, hit a drum, or release our muscles in a gesture or dance. True, our skill in depicting “realistically” an object does evolve, as well as our perspective and understanding about what is “real.” But the impulse, and the passion, and the ability to express that emotional experience…that appears to have been fully developed in its awesome completion from the beginning. Children today can express themselves artistically just as well as an adult can (if not better!).



I do believe that children don't have as much to express as adults. Emotions evolve. They get more and more complicated with age, and correlatively the arts also get more and more complex and enigmatic, but that's another story we can save for later.

Whenever we feel moved to communicate, or feel pushed and pulled by a creative impulse, we are possessed by a fully formed, liberated spirit, the same one that moved the hands and eyes of the artists 70,000 years ago. And it was that spirit which Escher connected with that day at the caves. He discovered that no time or space separates us from that spirit, no matter what the art historians say. It was there then, and the same impulse is in us now.

I will end today's talk with another impressive statement by Michael Garfield.

"A moment of speculation, rooted in a study of universal trends: Human history can be defined as development along any of numerous axes, but my preferred story-for-our-species is of an advance in mind control technologies. For good and ill, the development of our consciousness flies tandem with our expanding capacity to access and explore various states of mind at will. Our command of navigating mind with sensory and electrochemical stimulation has matured to include everything from early entheogenic experiments with drumming and chanting, to contemporary techniques of magnetic temporal lobe stimulation and virtual reality immersion…and with the impending advent of biotech and nanotech that will profoundly deepen the intimacy between brain and machine (and erase such primitive distinctions), we can be sure that mind control is one of the best markers we have for measuring our humanity (and our trans-humanity).

"With this in mind, I spend much of my time looking at contemporary art and music as touchstones, clues to our place as a self-transcending species in the cosmos. Every time I see intention meet technology in a deliberate manipulation of mindstates, I rejoice that we are on the right track."

The “All-Or-None” Recognition Response

Robert Brawley, "Whispers & Resonances" oil on panel, 1999.

A team of scientists lead by University of the Leicester bioengineer Dr Rodrigo Quian Quiroga recently released these new findings in consciousness research.

"We found that the neurons we recorded responded to the conscious perception in an "all-or-none" way by dramatically changing their firing rate only when the pictures were recognized.

"For example, a neuron in the hippocampus of one patient fired very strongly to a picture of the patient's brother when recognized and remained completely silent when it was not, another neuron behaved in the same manner with pictures of the World Trade Centre, etc.

"Interestingly, based on the firing of these neurons it was possible to predict far above chance whether a picture was recognized or not. Another interesting observation is that a picture flashed very briefly generated nearly the same response -if recognized- as when shown for much longer periods of time. This means that a single snapshot as brief as 33 ms was sufficient to trigger strong neuronal responses far outlasting the stimulus presentation, signaling the conscious perception of the picture shown."

I want to take this into consideration when pondering the power of realism, or the use of recognizable, representational objects in art. This might be one reason why the image can so powerfully effect the viewer;one’s brain literally lights up inside when it easily recognizes the object.

Also, the fact that information is recognized by the mind almost immediately is interesting. It is said that our brains and bodies take in so much more information moment to moment than our consciousness can process. Our brains become what Huxley called “reduction valves,” presenting our conscious mind with only a briefing of what is going on around and within us. There is more than meets the eye.

This idea can be a great introduction to mysticism and spirituality, but I’d rather take it into our discussion of Realism and art. After reading this article, Michael Garfield said,

"Hmmmm...it also opens the door to discussion of subliminal images and tones in artwork - your brain gets it at 33 ms, but you don't. Also speaks to ambiguous imagery - brain might light up several times several different ways on a single image, if it thinks it keeps recognizing various patterns in the same field of data. Definitely need to discuss the worth of recognition, why it mattes to recognize
something. What that means. Significance."

One day Bob told our class this:

"Realism is not real. It is total fakery. It is fooling the most basic level of mind. This gives it direct access to the viewer. It goes right in.”


Robert Brawley
"The Visitor"
oil on board 2004

Realism and Style

Robert Brawley
Discreet Serenity of the Ordinary, 2005
oil on board
9 by 14 inches

The State of the Union
Art is a conversation, with intrinsic value because it connects people and spreads perspectives, opening minds to be more inclusive, and therefore more compassionate. And why is compassionation the drift of value? Why is love always at the bottom (or top) of it all? Well, art will tell you why, if you trust it, and listen to it guide you along a very real, and sometimes very scary journey, from one extreme to the next, and always into the self and truth and beauty that is at the core of realty. Art can take you there, and bring you back home safely, if you trust it.

Minimalism
Minimalism is an intention aware of the fact that the art is expressing universals (whether that be in the chaos of John Cage, or in the order of Steve Reich). When it is freed from, or contains a minimal amount of, the individual hand.…when it has minimal ego, it is Minimalism.(in this case, "minimal ego" also means more universal, or more spiritual.) This is also the definition of later forms of Realism, which is why I am mentioning it now. However, sometimes the individuality of the artist's style is used to reflect the Single-ness or One-ness of the Univers(als) and therefore, "pure style" and uniqueness is in itself Minimalist.

Minimalism is therefore first and foremost a specific intention, and this intention can and does appear in many different ways. Like contemporary dance, everyone’s minimalism is different. But the intention to express the universals is the same.

The note is just a note. The mountain is just a mountain. The stone is just a stone. Radical Realism is nothing special, like nondual reality, and yet it is singular, "of which the plural is unknown."

Bob told me once that at the moment he was most interested in how light fills space and falls over forms.


Robert Brawley
"An Instance of Grace"
oil on board 2002


My dad asked me a great question the other day: “What was the style of Picasso at the end of his life other than commercialism?”
Which brings us to the topic of the day:

Style
In art school one’s “Style” is addressed, often with unrelenting criticism. “Style” can be seen as an altering of the real in order to make is more personalized, and this can offend many people. Psychologically, style is identifying a mark as your own expression. But interestingly, often when an artist really looks at what they are trying to express, when they look into the fundamental question ”What am I doing?” they usually find that they are trying to express something universal. And the universals can be seen as being devoid of any personal style. This doesn't mean that Realism is better than abstraction. Devoid of style means that you can see or experience the message of the work before you see the artist’s hand.

Did Vincent van Gogh have style? Or was his rapid, thick brush strokes simply the most economic and efficient way to communicate his message? Was he trying to have a style, a personal signature, or was he trying to get a vision out of his body before the manic state possessed him again? See the difference? In his own words…

"I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does."

Generally, to a Realist and to a Minimalist, style (and I am talking here about intentional style, signature, or altering) is considered narcissistic and limiting in the scope, power, and honesty of the artwork. "This is mine! Look at me!" one's special style says. Style is the drive in us to alter the real, and some art actually pokes fun at, or utilizes, or brings to awareness that drive in all of us to write our name down on something, identify with it, and claim is as us. Some art has "Style" as its object.

And it's true that "Abstraction" and "Style" are methods that can be used successfully to get powerful universals across to the viewer, but the successfulness depends on the reception/context in which the art is presented. It is maybe easier, or less elitist (more universal), to work using a free hand, not bound to any limit or style. (Styles are also often considered to be knots or ruts that an artist falls into, and it decreases the amount of marks and styles and vocabulary they can learn.) And in all, with languages, vocabulary is love, and having a large vocabulary is filling with endless amounts of styles to move freely through. A general rule of thumb is that it might be best to have a large library of different styles of mark and color from which to choose for building the symphony of your vision.

But style is not inherently "bad" or "immature" or "violently narcissistic." In fact, style (or individuality) is a very real aspect of our lives. Ram Dass explains the importance of accepting our various neurosis as simply aspects of our style. My friend Terri Fidelak reminded me the other day that "a style, phony as it may be, is something we all have, and to accept its presence is the most genuine of all-in that so doing we accept both what we are and are not as artists, or rather, what we are not yet."

Did Rothko, who is so easily recognized, want to have a style, or did he just want to express universal feelings and atmospheres? Probably both. Before he committed suicide he told us that we should listen to his visual minimalism in chapels, and he constructed for us the Rothko Chapel in Huston, Texas. Was there personal style and self-centeredness in that, or was is just the best, honest tool he knew to employ at that moment to express his fading vision? Either way, events at the Chapel have brought leaders, heroes, artists, musicians, scientists, scholars, and spiritual teachers from all over the world (such as Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Steve Reich, and Huston Smith) to share their knowledge, experience, talents, and stories with the citizens of Huston, Texas. In my oppinion that is really a great thing to leave behind. That's great style!


Jaunted writes beautifully about the chapple: "Super-minimalist Mark Rothko did 14 paintings for the inside of this interfaith chapel in black-laced blues and greens and reds. Sitting inside the chapel, it isn't uncommon to see or hear at least three different prayer sessions taking place. Car horns and construction noises disappear into its thick walls; Anne Lamott described it as "preternaturally quiet, like being inside the mind of someone whose eyes are closed while he or she is praying." The shock of finding such a sacred space -- sacred in its conception, not necessarily in practice -- in the middle of one of America's largest cities will stay with you long after you walk out into the sunshine."

let us pray

To Thee,

think-diving into the empty, transparent, radiant and shimmering ground of consciousness, the mirror mind embracing all of its objects, the unified field of awareness from which all things emerge freely and supercomplete, fountaining, good god, FLOODING sensations and experiences across I Am, forming ideas that bubble through it's glowing fluidity, this glowing water of abundance touches the kiss of my love, and forms within forms within forms interpenetrate to play the game of life again and again within every wink, and I am here miraculously to witness the DANCE flow through and around me, Thanks to you.


I bow deeply to the mothers who have lost their children to the class war.
and to you, Gift Giver. I bow deeply, touching my head to the GROUND..
Many Blessings,

Part 2 and 3!

Part 2 and 3 of Michael's interview with Ken Wilber are now up on his blog!

Reexamaning Realism

Robert Brawley
"Cruising the Edge"
1999, oil on panel, 18" x 24"

Brancusi, "Bird in Space" 1923

Andrew Wyeth, "Christmas Morning" 1944

Rodin, "The Prodigal Son" 1884

Gustave Dore, "White Rose" 1857

William Blake, "The Angel of the Divine Presence clothing Adam and Eve with skins" 1803

William Blake, "A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows" 1796

Banksy

Bruce Naumann "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths" 1967

Icaro Doria, "Meet the World"

Mark Rothko

Woman of Willendorf, 24,000 BCE

Francesca Sundsten "Owl Head" 2007

Ernst Fuchs, "Adam and Eve in front of the Tree of Knowledge" 1984

Millet, "The Gleaners" 1857

Courbet, "The Origin of the World" 1866

"Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations."
Paul Cézanne

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
Aristotle

"The essence of painting has actually always been to make the universal plastically perceptible through colour and line."
Mondrian

“I am very proud of being slavishly true to life.”
Rodin

“What they call 'abstract' is in fact the purest realism, the reality of which is not represented by external form but by the idea behind it, the essence of the work”
Brancusi

Introduction

I set out or write about the New Realism in painting, or the “Integral realism” (since integral is the current avant gard.) However, like any good exploration, my research gave rise to outpourings of new ideas and unexpected complications. I had to change my topic to “Reexamining Realism,” because I discovered that what is “real,” from an avant gard or integral perspective, 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.” Nietzsche: "There are no facts, only interpretations." And one's interpretation of reality depends upon what kind of structure of consciouses one has to work with.

William Blake puts it thus: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."


Put yet another way, “selfishness” only has meaning after “the self” is defined; “realism” only has meaning once “the real” is defined. What happens when the Self is pushed to include all of creation, and the Real is pushed to infinity?

To make my meanderings more meaningful, or, for the more serious student of Art History and Art Theory, you will want to consult Michael Garfield’s interview with Ken Wilber, "Art Beyond Irony."

Background
"Realism" the concept arose in the 19th century as a tool to help guide art and society away from social imbalances and mythic chains. It was to help revive truthfulness. The landscape was, at that time, a radical protest against the Church. However, today, “Realism,” if it has any meaning at all, is not confined to that original context or function. It might retain it’s impulse to be free from style, but that also has multiple meanings we will explore later.

Courbet: "The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal."

Ever since Millet painted those gleaners, the West’s idea of “Realism,” a term coined by Courbet, has been the stark, immediate reality delivered to us by our senses, not referencing past myths or past arts, not romanticizing or fantasizing, but instead reflecting only what is real in the present.

But what if “what is real in the present” for the artist is infinity? Or the ineffable feeling of falling in love? Or a mystical vision? William Blake never said he was depicting fantasies. He said he conversed with angels in his garden and they sometimes had six toes on each foot (see painting above). Michelangelo saw the mythic landscapes filling the minds of everyone around him, and he painted that real, internal world. He never said he was painting rational, physical reality, but he was definitely painting a mythic one.

Rodin, in a famous interview, got angry with the reporter who insisted that Rodin doesn't reproduce nature as it really is. “You are mistaken. I do reproduce it exactly as it is.”
“Are you not compelled to change it slightly?” the interviewer asked.
“Under no circumstances. I would have cursed myself if I had to do it!” He then explained that it is impossible for a model to stay completely still, to hold a pose for a long time, and so the sculptor of nature must include the movement, as well as the soul and spirit of the model, which is, after all, part of the reality of the living being.

“I see the whole truth, not only its surface.”

Brancusi, a student (briefly) of Rodin, made art history in 1927 when U.S. Customs decided that the proper classification for his highly polished, curving brass column “Bird in Space,” was ‘metal’, not ‘art.’ Thus, he had to pay $4,000 to import it, even though ‘art” is duty free. Up to that point, art was officially only “that which imitates the natural world.” However, artists and art lovers rushed to Brancusi's defense, he won the case, got his money back, and the US had to redefine art. The court’s final decision: objects which portray abstract ideas (in this case, "flight"), may be classified as art. Brancusi: “When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water... If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit.”

As we can see, sometimes an abstract “thought” is more realistic than the a solid “thing”. This is one way to begin to see why ‘Abstraction” can actually be more realistic than traditional “Realism.” Reality, after all, moves and decays and is made of energy, light, and sound. Seeing clearly, there are no solid forms anywhere. Our senses trick us into thinking there is, but in reality, there isn’t. Even the Buddha said that suffering is caused by clinging to things that are bound to change. It is therefore reasonable that, in order to free us from the illusion of solidness, “realism” must move into a “more realistic” stance.

“Vision, or imagination, is a representation of what actually exists, really and unchangeably. Fable, or allegory, is formed by the daughters of Memory.” William Blake

The Universals
“A landscape painting represents or depicts states of nature, an abstract painting represents or depicts states of mind. Both are, in that sense, representational, because both the sensorimotor worldspace and the mental worldspace are real and existing landscapes.” -Ken Wilber

Ask any artists what they are trying to depict, and chances are they will say they are trying to depict or communicate something real. Some will even say that they are trying to depict something universally real. However, in this postmodern day in age, it's commonly accepted that "there are no universal truths" (except for that statement…whoops!). Less extreme is the idea that there are some universal truths, but there are more relative truths, and we need to be very careful before we assert anything as "universally true."

Relative truths are true only for one individual culture or worldview. Universal truths are true for everyone. I can hear the REM song "Everybody Hurts!" In 1967, when neon-light artist Bruce Naumann constructed his great truism "The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths,” he meant universal truths, spiritual truths. However, there is a spectrum of universal truths, from "We all have ten toes" to "We all feel pain' to "We all have Buddha Nature." What is catholic, or universal, or spiritual, deals with the shared human spirit, as well as the shared human history. In art (and in meditation practices) these universals are elevated in importance, for depicting them helps dissolve the boundaries between us (and open the door of our compassion/liberation). Even if the artist is depicting the existential truth that "All we know and have is ourselves," that is a universal condition. We ALL live and die alone. No matter which direction we go, ascending to transcendental unity or descending to existential alienation, universal truths shine forth, from 'we are all sinners" to "we are all gods."

Therefore, let's consider realism to be that which depicts universal truths. But if we go there, then most all art rushes to the table, because all of it essentially claims to depict the universals.

"I think a true form ought to suggest infinity. The surfaces ought to look as though they went on forever, as though they proceeded out from the mass into some perfect and complete existence." Brancusi.


In many ways, the “abstract” artists, who were trying to get at what is universally real, were pointing to reals that “naturalist” realists simply could not. Mandrian, Rothko, Brancusi, these people were pointing to pure emotions, pure forms, infinity, essence. They were extremely interested in realism. They weren’t fucking around with half-reals or fictions. Rothko himself said “I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

So what? All art is realism? Even the most abstract? Realism can have no meaning anymore!

That leaves us with a less than interesting talk, and so, I will instead point us to one aspect of realism that I, being a painter and magician, find particularly fascinating: Illusionism.

Formally, traditional realism is Illusionism. It's tricking the viewer to perceive a 3-d object (and that object could simply be space). It's like a hologram; it's a hoax, a dream, which makes it even more realistic since Reality also appears to be a hologram that isn't quite there like we perceive it to be.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
Albert Einstein

One more thing
"Fantastic Realism," "Magical Realism," and "Psychological Realism" are not the same as Surrealism because they are not just simply "dream time" depictions of nonsense and irrationality. They might appear to be surreal or dreamy, but they actually depict the mystical, alchemical, symbolic, spiritual, which are not below rationality, but beyond it.

"Trinity" and "Art Beyond Irony"

Here is a new image I just found called "Trinity" by Charlie Meers. Striking, yes? But not in a loud way. It is more sophisticated than a typical collage; more simple and well composed. Formally, I love how Meers connects the foreground TV to the background Baby through the partially transparent Burning Monk. It is an extremely simple pyramidal composition, with a minimal use of icons, and yet it invokes themes of history, spirituality, religion, birth, death, war, media, politics,....this image unpacks and engages a cornucopia of ideas, old and new, and then invites the viewer to draw from their own experience to create meaning. It answers nothing, but tickles questions and perspectives out of our sleep. To me, this art, including its title, suggests that all these ideas should be re-membered now, and they do not need to be scattered, incoherent heaps of perspectives floating wasted in the space of mind. No...they can drift into three categories: a trinity of self, nature, and culture; birth/death, sacrifice, and story telling. This collage gestures to an understanding that there is a meaningful pattern or story that can connect these images together, and all we have to do is gently remember it.

Upon first seeing this collage Michael Garfield said, "I've had similar imagery hit me like a bomb before: the whole world floating as a dream in the mind of a sleeping fetus. History, death, declaration..all in the context of something slumbering, umbilical, undifferentiated (? !)...Washington's image, famous indicator of rational agency, appears as an apparition on the television - that instrument of centralized transmission, the ringing bell of the death knell of his own ardent popular government; the burning monk, one of the most powerful pictures of protest, but doing the work of his oppressive government for them; the unborn infant, at once smaller than either of them and large beyond size-the backdrop of all human drama, the hidden signifcance of every statement of purpose, and these things all lie in superposition, pulling at each other with multivalent half-conscious meaning. Most collages are overwhelming murals of human experience - and this is no exception, but it manages to evoke all of the regular themes with the sparity and grace of an enso [zen circle painting]. Meers says more with less."
"Meers says more with less." That is so true, and points directly to the artist's high level of skill and maturity.
You can see more of Charlie's work here.

Also, "part one" of Michael's interview with Ken Wilber entitled "Art beyond Irony" is up on his blog. Please read this. It is so very good, and explores art in a light that is new and refreshing. Also, mom, if you need a good excuse to read it, Michael mentions your son at the beginning. From the kick ass introduction:

"I recently had the immense honor of interviewing author and philosopher Ken Wilber, known worldwide as the premier living philosopher of integral theory and the pioneer of the AQAL Model. For over thirty-five years (his first book, the Freud-and-Buddha-reconciling Spectrum of Consciousness, was published when he was 23), Ken has been cultivating a reconstructive model of human experience and inquiry that cuts through the haze of postmodern confusion and relates art to science, psychology to spirituality, systems theory to cultural anthropology, politics to ecology, and business to medicine. He is also a seasoned meditator, and draws his descriptions of the transpersonal realms of consciousness from personal experience - making him a rare resource, someone whose scholarly musings are informed by his vivid, living experience of enlightened awareness.

Dragging a train of both ardent supporters and vicious critics, Ken's writings have been translated into more languages than any other English-speaking author. He is the founder of the Integral Institute, an international think tank where the extension and application of integral theory to every domain of knowledge and practice is being explored by thousands of people worldwide.

Most of Ken's writings focus on psychology, philosophy, and spirituality - all topics that inform a deeper understanding of art and music. But Ken has written precious little about art, so I jumped on the chance to ask him my most pressing questions about how "integral consciousness" - this next great leap in human evolution - will inform both the artist and the artistic process."

Integral Consciousness

"We need to pursue a 'science of interbeing' that integrates the methods of cognitive science, phenomenology, and the contemplative and meditative psychologies of the world’s wisdom traditions."
-Francisco Varela

"Since there has never been, and never will be, any experience or knowledge outside of consciousness, and since any scientific verification takes place in experience, the foundation of both inner and outer science is consciousness. Indeed, consciousness is the foundation of all knowledge, whether personal or public. Any assertion regarding anything outside of consciousness is, by definition, not accessible to any experience and, therefore, not verifiable. Since an assertion regarding anything outside of consciousness is not verifiable, it cannot be a proposition of science. We thus arrive at the second fundamental of integral science:

2. Scientific propositions are propositions about experiences within consciousness, i.e. within the pure space of awareness that contains all experience."

-Thomas J. McFarlane, Integral Science

"Matter is not lower with consciousness higher, but matter and consciousness are the exterior and interior of every occasion... As we will see, there are some aspects of the higher dimensions that might indeed be truly meta-physical; but the first thing we should note is that a great deal of what premodernity took to be meta-physical is in fact intra-physical, not above nature but within nature.

The postmodern contribution to the discussion can be summarized by saying that every individual is nestled in systems of cultural and social networks, networks that have a profound influence on the knowing and being of individuals themselves... Systems theory in its many forms emphasizes the fact that every individual organism is inseparably interconnected with its environment in dynamic webs of relationships and ecosystems...

#1 Increasing evolution brings increasing complexity of gross form
#2. Increasing complexity of form...is correlated with increasing interior consciousness
#3. Further - this is the connecting hypothesis - increasing complexity of gross form is correlated with increasingly subtlety of energies. As evolution proceeds to more and more complex gross forms, the increasing degree of gross complexity is accompanied by subtler and subtler corresponding (or signature) energy patterns"

-Ken Wilber, Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies


"Human consciousness is not located in the head, but is immanent in the living body and the interpersonal social world. One’s consciousness of oneself as an embodied individual embedded in the world emerges through empathic cognition of others. Consciousness is not some peculiar qualitative aspect of private mental states, nor a property of the brain inside the skull; it is a relational mode of being of the whole person embedded in the natural environment and the human social world."

-Evan Thompson, Human Consciousness: From Intersubjectivity to Interbeing



The integral worldview, which we now explore in detail, represents a transcendence of postmodernism because it does what postmodernism cannot: it fully recognizes the legitimacy and evolutionary necessity of all previous stages of development. Integral consciousness thus grows up by reaching down. It produces evolution more effectively because it understands evolution more thoroughly. And as we come to better appreciate the subtle habits and methods of evolution—its gentle persuasion, and the way that it grows from within itself, always building on what came before—we can begin to see how the degree of our transcendence is determined by the scope of our inclusion.

-Steve McIntosh, Integral Consciousness

The universe seen from within is Light; seen from without, by spiritual perception, is thought. - Rudolf Steiner

Erik Davis

I recently found this great description of a mystical experience by Erik Davis at RealitySandwich.com.
I'm posting it here because I think it's extremely relevant to our understanding of post-postmodern realism in general, the painting "Persephone" by the integral mystic and master painter Robert Brawley in particular, as well as the famous zen poem, "Before enlightenment, the mountain is a mountain. During enlightenment the mountain is not a mountain. After enlightenment, the mountain is a mountain."
I think you will really enjoy Erik's story. For more of his work, visit his website www.techgnosis.com.