The Magus and The Alchemist
I love this title -The Magus and The Alchemist.
But, it's not mine so I can’t take credit.
It's the title of an article I recently read by Elizabeth Langhorne in American Art Journal 1998, about the relationship between abstract painters John Graham and Jackson Pollock.
Most know the name Pollock for his famous drip paintings. Graham was quite older than Pollock but considered the intellectual giant among a movement of American painters during and post World War II. In 1937 he wrote a treatise on modernism art and the avant garde entitled Systems and Dialectics of Art . Many consider this work the manifesto to the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Graham believed that the purpose of art is to re-establish relationship with the unconscious.
When we do so we connect to our highest spiritual purpose.
Graham states, “conscious mind is incapable of creating; and is only a clearing house for the powers of the unconscious and the best way to our unconscious is through our emotions."
Langhorne points out that Pollock once claimed Graham was the only one who really understood what he was doing with his painting.
She goes on to say that "even in the 1930’s and 40’s they were practicing a spiritual dimension in their art in what American Historian Stephen Polcari has called “ their versions of the writer T. S. Eliot’s ‘mythic method’, fusing aspects of anthropology, comparative mythology, and depth psychology in an attempt to discover meaning in the face of war and to express such meaning in an abstract and automatist art."
Automatist is is a form of art or writing which suppresses conscious control and allows for the unconscious to take the lead.
I bring all this up, because I believe we are living in such times again in history where we are in search of meaning.
Over thinking, figuring out might need a break.
Coming back to feeling our way into creative acts.
Emoting and allowing for a deeper metaphysical connection, symbolic gesture, and pure genuine voice to step on forward.
Warmly and Fondly,
Lauren
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