Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 6 Number 3, December 2005

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Artistic Creativity: Sublime Expressions of Inner Body Wisdom

by

Gerda van de Windt

Simon Fraser University

                “What cannot be spoken of must be left in silence” (Wittgenstein) yet the arts  go far beyond mere words to express and make public inner body wisdom.  Artistic creativity expresses the invisible and makes it visible, wrote Merleau-Ponty.  Heidegger suggests that sublime beauty in a work of art speaks of authentic truth of Being and what it means live to live in harmony with our self and others.  The arts in all its diversity illustrate the different forms of artistic expression that nonetheless reveals our shared humanity.  It seems to me that individual artistic expression of innerness in a work of art heals the Cartesian mind-body split that has haunted Western culture for millennia.  The arts make public inner emotional body wisdom that reveals our common humanity and the arts speak eloquently of what cannot be spoken of in any other way. Artistic expression of emotional inner wisdom synthesizes sorrow and joy in sublime beauty that is preserved in the work of art.

Although not everyone agrees that works of art transform sorrow into sublime beauty, as a practicing artist I know that artistic creativity reveals a previously hidden inner truth that seems to  unfold within and makes the invisible visible (Merleau-Ponty).  Inner feeling is balanced by the intellectual mind and synthesizes sorrow changing it into beauty that reveals the truth of Being and being human.  Bringing the emotions that are inherent in body-knowing into form transcends the sorrow that hides in the shadows of our inner self.  As invisible and often troubling emotions are revealed, they are transformed into genuine truth that shines forth from the art work in a subtle and beautiful language that can, at least partially, be shared with others.

As the artist searches for self- expression and personal truth, a deeper and seemingly more universal truth is also revealed that has its roots in mythology and lies beneath consciousness.  It links our body to our ancestors as well as to all living beings on earth, past, present and future.  This sense of deep inner connectedness of everything around us in the world is a universal truth that reveals itself in the work of art.  Artists know intuitively that truth, beauty and art are one.   The arts are the shared language of our basic human emotions that are common to everyone.

It requires courage to risk exposing one's internal emotions that lie buried in the unconscious memory of our body into a work of art for all to see, but this is rewarded by the dispelling of the illusion of separateness that is the sorrow of the world.  By making public inner emotions, artistic creativity and imagination seem to partly reconcile the ‘mind-body’ Cartesian split that constitutes the illusion that all life is sorrowful, as Schopenhauer put it.   The act of creation involves exposing the archetypal images that lie hidden in the shadows waiting to be brought into existence.  As the images emerge, their revelation have a transformative power, both for the artist and often for society.

The act of creating form, for me has an ‘opening up of myself to me’ feeling that can be exhilarating.  Often, I feel that the artefact of the work that comes from this experience is a great gift that speaks directly to the heart.  Only later does the intellectual mind begin to judge and perhaps edit the artwork, but the concept or image must not be altered.  Intuition, delight and wonder guide my understanding of the meaning inherent in the art and if I stay true to what has been discovered, the artwork has a quality of recognizable sincerity that speaks to the sensuous and emotional body as well as the intellectual mind.  Aesthetic experience is then reciprocal as feelings of delight and wonder at form and beauty are in harmony with the meaning of its truth.

It is the function of the artist to give unique personal expression to inner truth that is informed by the body.  It involves risking exposure and vulnerability in the revelation of innerness.  It is the revelation of a mystery and truth of Being and being human that gives the work of art its authenticity.  By authenticity, I mean the quality of honest and genuinely expressed emotions  informed by lived experience.  Authenticity is recognized by the artist as well as the viewer, not only with the rational mind, but also in the emotional responses that we may experience when engaged with the art work.

As authentic innerness is made public in the artwork it becomes open to evaluation by the world.  Heidegger (1971) notes that the art work has “to stand on its own for itself” (p. 40).  Artworks remain as imperfect artefacts or symbols that penetrate this seemingly sorrowful human existence and are an invitation for others to partially share in the artistic experience by seeing through the artist’s eyes.  Each work of art will have its own individual expression, and does not imitate or copy either from nature or from itself.  It is an invitation to participate in silence as the original manifestation of Being unfolding from the medium in its disclosure of truth and beauty that goes beyond the medium. 

Works of art can only be appreciated in silence as it speaks of the unspeakable.  Heidegger visualizes this silence as the rift or threshold that has to be stepped over in order to fully experience the Being that lies embedded in the work of art.  It is in the silence of emotional engagement between the work of art and the viewer that a place opens up where valuable insights are found.  Insights that lead to the knowledge that underlying all the sorrows of the world there exists profound peace and joy as the interconnectedness of all existence is reveals and is transformed into deep feelings of gratitude and joy. 

Sublime beauty has a timeless quality as past and future melt into the ever present ‘now’ that is the revelation of Being or Dasein.  Heidegger (1961) understands that “the interpretation of Dasein as temporality does not lie beyond the horizon of ordinary time” (p. 480) but is experienced bodily, here and now, in a particular time and place.  As past and future are either slipping away into memory or projected elsewhere, Heidegger felt that the concealment of this “earth’s mystery”  could never be fully illuminated, but that a great work of art somehow partially reveals the essential truth of Being as works of art silently speak of things that cannot be said in words.

This transcendental part of human existence seems to lie hidden in the shadows of the emotional and sensuous body and can be found by intuition and listening to our inner voice.  The expressive artist is able to access a collective consciousness that lies embedded in the shadows of our body-knowing through her emotional and intuitive dialogue with the artistic medium.  As the medium is manipulated, images emerge that bring invisible, innerness into visible manifestation that is recognized intuitively and seems to confirms the existence of a monumental matrix of shared reality that informs and underlies our everyday world which is timeless and eternal.  This inner body-knowing transcends our feelings of alienation and separateness that is experience in our individual bodies.  Being  present in our bodies means we experience the world as if anew with childlike wonder and awe and joyful participation in the sorrows and joys of existence. 

The wisdom of the emotional body understands that the illusion of sorrow and separateness can be transcended.  Rather than life being a flat and linear distance from birth to death, the probability is that it is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know at present.  Life cannot be if there is no death, as the cycles of nature should have taught us long ago.  To everything there is a season, and death follows birth, generation after generation.  I think that our beingness in existence is eternal, as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow. 

Artistic creativity as self-revelation conceals and yet discloses the tangible and intangible in a synthesis of inner and outer worlds.   The artist searches for something that is at once familiar and yet unknown in this process of self discovery.  That ‘something else’ the artist intuitively recognizes when the pieces fall into place.  Inspired imagination guides the artist as she disengages from time and everyday existence during artistic creation and focused entirely on the medium, be it colour, form, rhythm, or tone.  These reflections are often rewarded with fresh insights that expand our existence and have a redemptive quality as we reconnect to an ancient source of body knowing that appears to underlie everyday existence.  It is the mythic-poetic part of our minds that children and oral cultures intuitively remember, and that has informed all the arts from the beginning of time.  Artists know this force when it courses through their veins and leaves behind yet another artefact that, however imperfectly, has embedded within its medium something of Being.  Works of art speak of truth that reconcile the mind-body split and illuminate the world as it is with all its sorrow and joy.   As we open ourselves to the emotional message in the metaphorical myth of art works we begin to understand the complex meaning of Being and being human. 

In prehistoric times, the arts originated as sympathetic magic.  Artists used imagery to bring into existence something that carried a special emotional appeal evoking archetypal, mythological symbols.  The symbols will vary from culture to culture but not the essential meaning of the symbols.  Although culturally determined, the underlying meaning, the truth of Being, I feel is shared by all human beings. They seem to be archetypal, mythological images of our innate and shared humanity and existence.  As these forms are made visible in a work of art, they give a satisfaction that heals the person as well as the culture. 

The artist who truly expresses innerness does not copy, imitate or look for personal glory.  The purpose of artistic expression is to create something of value that will invoke a deep sense of recognition that is felt in the body.  The artist hopes that this emotional response is not only personal, but that it also touches others.  The expression of the artist's private innerness into the public objective world allows the opening of an underlying knowledge of existence to be exposed for all to see.  That is the risk the artist takes in manifesting one's deep emotional life, and it takes courage to expose one's emotions for judgment by others.

Not only does the work of art mirror one’s own existence, it often holds a reflective mirror up to a culture.  Art's emotional impact is meant to deepen our reflection on reality and broaden our insights.  Charles Taylor (1991) in The Malaise of Modernity writes that the arts are a “subtler language” (p. 81), a “forest of symbols” (p. 83) whose meaning is no longer understood by the general public.  Contemporary artists must now create their own symbolic meaning in their art works that whisper of elusive emotions. He describes the search for “a symbolism in nature that is not based on the accepted conventions” (p. 86) whose forms speak to us directly from within an artwork in an illusive language of feelings that seem to be linked to nature.   I agree with Taylor that the artist is trying to “articulate something beyond the self” (p. 88).  It goes deeper than the individual self and is an attempt to reconcile our fragile humanity with existence; past, present, and future.  He points out that contemporary culture has lost its connection to the earth and the natural cycles, but perhaps the subtle language of the arts may help to compensate for “the loss of a sense of belonging…by a stronger more inner sense of linkage” (p. 91).  I feel that the art works of the past provide a strong link to the existence of our ancestors that we can learn much from today, and this knowledge should be passed on to future generations.

The artist’s emotional dialogue with the medium reveals an authentic representation of our sense of connection with the natural cycles that speaks to our common existence.  The artist knows with an inner certainty that resonates in the body when truth has been revealed, and it is this affective component that guides our responses to the art work.  We learn what it means to be human in this world from the language of art.  It reveals us to ourselves, be it a in painting or a dance

There seems to be a type of memory that is embedded in the sensuous and emotional body that requires solitude and time to be heard. Time is required in order to be truly present in the moment and in the body, in order that the artist can attend, remember, sense and play with images and ideas as they come to consciousness.  To be in that place where one is truly present and aware feels like a timeless place full of sensuous and emotional knowledge that is discovered in the beauty of colour and pigment, or in a song.  We all have this ability, to see with the 'mind's eye', but few have the courage to follow where it leads.  William Vaughan (1985) writes that William Blake, the great visionary artist claimed that we could all be visionary if we choose to listen to our inner voice.  It seems to me that there is a drive to follow with childlike trust and naive sincerity, the inner call of Being.  Nathalie Heinich (1996) notes that by reaching deep into inside oneself, the artist discovers “what is true, one's own truth” (p. 27).  But the artist does not work in a vacuum but builds on the accomplishments of the past.  Artists are often inspired by the arts of their predecessors as art is always, to some extent culturally determined. 

Heidegger (1971) points out that a work of art changes our relationship with the world and transcends everyday public existence.  A great work of art lifts us ecstatically out of our mundane lives to connect us to the essential inner source.  It makes us aware of the “original disclosure of Being” (p. 93).  Heidegger notes that it is truth that has been established in the work, “between the disclosure and concealment, between the mysterious darkness of the unconscious body memory and the illumination to the light of the visible” (p. 62).  The artwork originates in the rift between the disclosure and concealment of form, between the invisible inner darkness and the illumination of visibility

The artist still knows that intellectual rationality must be balanced by valuing intuition and the sensuous, emotional wisdom of the body.  It is through the creative process that the artist constantly reconnects to the affective part of Being and brings back artefacts, works of art, that bear witness to the artist’s inner journey and brings enchantment back into our lives.  The arts are a celebration of lived experience, and transform sorrow into joy.  The inner response to the illumination of Being is immediate and intuitive and all other knowledge springs from it.  We recognize it and feel it in the body as rapture and inspiration.  The arts connect our inner emotional body to the outer cognitive world and the awareness of the sensual body grounds the individual within their culture. A world where sensuous and emotional body knowledge is ignored in favour of intellectual rationality is a waste land.

The arts communicate the very foundations of being human and celebrate the self in a language that cannot be articulated in any other way. Artistic sensibility is the awareness that there is more to this life's journey than the mundane, practical and instrumental everyday experience.  The arts can reconnect us to the beauty in nature and renew our respect for the environment and the natural rhythms of life and express the lived experience of humanity in a particular time and place with empathy for the human condition.   Artists across time and place have made visible the invisible in sublime beauty that reveals knowledge not accessible in any other way.

REFERENCES

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1961).

Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, intro. and trans. Albert Hofstadlter (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971).

Nathalie Heinich, The Glory of van Gogh: An Anthropology of Admiration, trans. Paul Leduc Browne (New Jersey, West Sussex: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort,  trans. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968).

Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity, (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1991).

William Vaughan, William Blake (New York: Park South Books 1985).

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logicus-Philosphicus (London: Routledge, 1974).