Deeply seeing by Grey reveals that there is a vast difference between looking and seeing. In the text, seeing is actually the recognition of meaning, “No wonder that once the art of seeing is lost, Meaning is lost, and all of life seems ever more meaningless: “They know not what they do, for they do not see what they look at” (Grey 73). By this quote, Grey means that seeing some spiritually must only focus on the art of seeing itself, and not by focusing on the meaning or anything else.
Artists look for three things in art and they are things “that are need for beauty: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (radiance)” (Grey). These three concepts can be recognized as the artists’ “three eyes of knowing, which are used to examine the spiritual beauty”. As the article goes on, Grey describes more about the creative processes and how spirituality can play a huge role in artist, especially inspiration because spirituality can influence an artist’s artwork. In his case, Grey’s art came to him in visions of grander. Little visions he sketches in a book and makes complete later. “In order to experience art fully, viewers must go through a mini ego death by placing themselves in the inspired minds of the artists, who themselves are out of their minds and only act as channels of creative spirit” (Grey 74). This quote reveals the creative pathway that artists go through to experience art spiritually. Also, when an artists is inspired, it is as if the artist is “possessed by some creative force, overtaken by a vision and driven to create” (Grey). By spirituality, artists can fully experience art’s true meaning, but this also can applied to anything. How do you express spirituality through inspiration?
Hi, I feel it’s interesting to read your response when you mentioned artists can fully experience art’s true meaning even for anything by spirituality. I think this is a really good point, and the first thing I came up with is apply to human relationships because just like we see arts, we see people in different ways in different stages. We care about more about spiritual things rather than physical beauty while we know someone deeper. I am really curious about what you are thinking when you say it can apply onto everything and how you see something by spirituality?
Hi,Alinadang! I enjoy reading your post. I agree with what you say about needing to put ourselves in the shoes of the author,but I think this is difficult sometimes because we all interpret art differently, sometimes artists don’t publicly release their inspiration for certain artistic pieces. So, do you have a experience that your spiritual practice have connected with a piece of art? Does your religion origin influence when you viewing an art subject? In addition,what connections did you make with the artist if you really want to look at art from the artist’s standpoint?
Hi Alinadang:
I am also very interested in the “artist three eyes of knowing”. Although I am not super talented in art, I still had similar experience of seeing wholeness, radiance and harmony of a art work. A work will attract me at the first hand by its radiance. It might be the color, the size or the sound that first draw my attention. Then I need to detach the whole work from its surroundings to view the work as a whole. The final stage of viewing a work is the notice of its structure and its harmony.
I also thought the process which artists get inspiration is very interesting and mysterious. I myself never had that experience as a art creator, but I did have the “mini ego death” experience when viewing someone else work. I used literature in my post as a comparison.