unit 07 — creative spirituality (discussion)
I – not surprisingly – had a difficult time choking down much of the excerpt from Grey’s Art as Spiritual Practice. It was overly self-referential which inherently compromised its credibility. In the interest of indiscriminate transparency his musings reminded me overwhelmingly of listening to the vaguely coherent rants of friends contemplating the meaning of the universe after/while tripping on various psychedelics – albeit with perhaps a more academic vernacular and organized tone.
When Grey volunteered his “Aha” moment as being inspired by a drug-induced experience it became clear why. The entire tone of the piece felt a lot like one big self-congratulatory pat on the back. His talking points seemed primarily aimed towards establishing the validity and importance of his own artwork while simultaneously dismissing the value of opposing and critical views with little to no explanation: “The works of Dadaists and performance gestures force the art world to broaden the context of what art can be. This does not automatically confer greater depth of meaning to a work” (Grey, p88).
Dadaism was a nihilistic movement of the early twentieth century characterized by the illumination of the ridiculous and absurdity of life and mainstream art forms. That sort of framework obviously isn’t congruent with Grey’s tripped out notions about chakras, interconnectivity and the divine, and so he dismisses it as “aesthetic novelty” (Grey, p89).
Criticisms of his work aside, Grey did manage to bring a few interesting ideas to the table: the act of meaning production (defined as “deeply seeing”), his articulation of the creative process (which as it turns out is an “adaptation of the findings of several scientists’ attempts to outline the mysterious phases of creativity” [Grey, p75]), and his discussion of the conceptual mind and meaning as a sort of symbolic placeholder for the external.
Grey, A. (2001). Art as Spiritual Practice. The Mission of Art (1st ed., pp. 205-233). Boston & London: Shambhala.
I enjoyed reading your post because I think it was very close to my own perspective on reading this article. I had felt that the tone was far too high-minded and over-idealistic, but your reading of it points out how the self-justifying evidence of the article contributes to this aspect of it. The integrity of the argument is limited by the use of his own work as evidence, even though this does contribute as a direct experience narrative. The issue is the generalization that his artistic experience is how all artists ought to experience and understand art. I’m curious what you think in terms of the idea behind Grey’s argument though—that art can operate as a spiritual experience. Instead of the perspective that “universal creative spirit is the prime mover behind all art media” in which the “spiritual source makes visible the depth of an artist’s penetration into the divine mystery of creation” (Grey 79), could the art itself and the engagement with the art be a form of spirituality for the artist? I don’t mean in terms of art being the means to connect to a spiritual absolute like Grey seems to say, but that the art itself is spiritual just by nature of its relationship to the artist. Any thoughts?