The Energetic Spin of Ascension
When you read the words ascension and energetic in one sentence does it bring up thoughts of new age woo-woo-ism, or free-floating images of magical unicorns ungrounded in our concept of reality? Or, are you able to take the leap toward concepts of New Age thought like, contemporary theoretical physics that stakes claims that there is no separation of material matter from immaterial matter? In other words, everything and everybody is connected- body, nature, and spirit all in one.
Lauren Mantecon, THE CHALLENGE WITH REALITY dry pigment and oil on panel, 40 x 36, 2022
Are you able to straddle the unexplainable mystery of dimensional planes? These concepts don’t seem to speak in whispers anymore. You have probably been in conversations where you have heard something like, “I don’t mean to sound woo-woo or New Age, but …,” and then the other shakes their head nodding in agreement. However, New Ageism is prolific. It is our healing arts and alternative medicines. It’s a post-modern concept of repurposing ancient mysticism. For example, chanting, meditation, yoga, dream interpretation, tarot reading, and the study of energy chakra centers. It’s spirit visitations and animal totems. It’s not a belief anchored in a religion, but an awakening to spiritual autonomy and self-trust. Giving into the mystery is when we search for symbols and support systems, real or imagined. It’s an embrace of our daily vernacular for many, which seems to be infiltrating contemporary art as well. What does this all mean?
Woo-woo was a label granted to me in my own MFA studies of the 1990s. I was encouraged to think of painting in an objective manner. I was told to focus on form, line, shape, and color. After all, I studied art at the tail end of Minimalism and Conceptualism. The fad of the day was born out of a revolt against American Abstract Expressionism. When I discussed spiritual concepts that came from my Southern California roots, I was accused of lacking seriousness in my art practices. “Really?” This was more than a little surprising to me at the time.
One of my biggest influences came from an exhibit I saw in 1986 at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art entitled, The Spiritual in Abstract Painting 1890-1985.
You can still buy their thick catalog book with 17 essays on the Rethinking of Abstraction and I highly recommend this publication to any art practitioner interested in the origin of spiritualism in the arts.
During my graduate school days, it was considered in poor taste and outdated to discuss the past Modernist movement in the US. The Transcendental Painting Group was the product of this movement that even the likes of Georgia O’keefe were influenced by. See my blog post on Georgia O’Keeffe and Radical Creativity. Formed out of New Mexico in 1938, the members explored spirituality through symbols and abstraction drawn from the collective unconscious. Their artistic influences ranged from surrealism, mysticism, the works of Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Theosophy, and late 19th Century Romanticism.
As stated in their Manifesto:
The word Transcendental has been chosen as a name for the group because it best expresses its aim, which is to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light, and design, to imaginative realms that are idealistic and spiritual.
It appears we are now, in the art canon of our time, experiencing another round of serious investigation. A fresh look into early modernism in American culture, alongside mysticism and spirituality. Hopefully, this time more grounded in evolutionary thought.
Hilma af Klint comes to mind who had a blockbuster exhibit at the Guggenheim finally in 2019. She knew better than to submit her work to the public at the turn of the 20th century. Klint requested that her body of work, especially the series ‘Paintings for the Temple,’ be locked away for at least twenty years after she died in 1944. Klint’s intuition was that people were just not ready. Her popularity has since exploded. See my blog post: Taking Woo-Woo to a Higher Spiritual Level With Pioneer of Abstraction Hilma af Klint.
Hilma af Klint Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece 1915
And it appears that interest in metaphysical content in art just keeps gaining traction like a locomotive.
For instance, the exhibit, Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, 1938-1945 opened this past December at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As well as another exhibition of contemporary artists curated by Michael Duncan entitled Transcendent. Duncan expresses that a return to transcendental and visionary art is not so much a movement, but a theme.
“The style of the individual artists will vary radically, but their common theme is their attempt to portray the world beyond physical sight and to overlap mystical and spiritual ideas.”
Nancy Evans, San Juaquin Series #3 Transcendent Exhibition
Maybe it’s time to set aside our biases and admit New Ageism is an umbrella we might use to describe a culture and an art movement 100 years from now.
I especially want to address artists inspired by your empathic nature and spiritual investigations. If this is you, I suggest studying artists who previously dealt with bridging themes of physical reality and spiritual realms. Some artists I recommend are Leonora Carrington, Agnes Pelton, Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, and Mark Rothko.
Our evolutionary trajectory is living through energetic spins of ascension.
We are not in the clouds, but firmly embodying spiritual concepts, beliefs, and ideas in our everyday lives. As above, so below. The supernatural does not live outside ourselves. We are it. It’s the umbrella for our post-post-modernist era.
I was interviewed on ART 2 Life- visit Nicholas Wilton from the Art2Life podcast that came out this month. Listen on your favorite Podcast platform HERE.
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