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Only Blood Can Change: The Artist as Activist and Alchemist

5/4/2017

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"The essential function of art is moral. . . . a passionate, implicit morality. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind. Changes the blood first. The mind follows in the wake."--D.H. Lawrence.

​Dear Creative Friends--I'm thrilled that this new article has been published by Immanence: The Journal of Applied Mythology, Legend & Folktale. In this piece I address the artist/creator's critical role in opening and expanding hearts and minds that have atrophied due to fear and ignorance. I accompany the writing with three new digital collages. See below for how to read the full-size article:
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You can read the entire article "full-sized" on your browser as an Immanence subscriber. I'm also happy to email a pdf of this article to you if you wish--just let me know via the Contact page. If you recognize the relevance, and urgency, of "story" to our modern lives, then you'll love Immanence. Check them out and make sure to peruse their "submissions" page for information on submitting your own articles, artwork, poetry, short film and more!
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Persephone's Secret: Living and Loving in the Underworld

9/20/2016

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Poor Persephone--If there's one mythic figure whose archetypal resonance is easy to constrict into a shallow stereotype, it would be this Greek goddess. Whether we've been steeped in mythology, or have had only a brief introduction, the tale of Persephone's abduction into the underworld is a classic. Perhaps too much so, in that we feel like we "get" the story on the first pass: A young virgin goddess is abducted by the old king of the underworld, her enraged and grief-stricken mother causes trouble for humans on earth as she transforms the eternal abundance of spring into the eternal lack of winter. Mom finally makes a deal with the head god, Zeus, and gets her daughter back for part of each year, thus creating/explaining the changing seasons on earth.

While those are the broad outlines, the story is so much juicier, especially when envisioned through the eyes of Persephone herself--not that Persephone (the silly goddess-ette romping through fields of flowers with her virgin girl squad) but the dark, powerful and mature queen of the underworld that she becomes.
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Persephone's Secret. Collage on Board.
Like all great stories (and myths are the greatest of stories) there's often a plot twist that can't be easily explained away--a twist that allows for different, and deeper, understandings of the tale's protagonist. As the goddess Demeter (Persephone's mother) rages and sinks into depression after her daughter's abduction and presumed rape, Persephone trades innocence for maturity, maidenhood for womanhood. So the plot twist: As she is being granted her freedom, she eats a handful of pomegranate seeds (knowing, I believe) that eating any fruits of the underworld would ensure that she would have to return, that her "escape" to mother would be more like a yearly visit.

Her transformation in the underworld and her willing (or unwilling) partaking of the pomegranate seeds have been the subject of numerous works by psychologists, mythologists, religious studies scholars, and artists alike. A "re-visioning" of the figure of Persephone reveals her as a complex woman comprised of equal parts victim, survivor, strategist, lover, partner and queen. In The Moon and the Virgin, artist and therapist Nor Hall writes: 

"Seduction is a kind of education. When you are educated, or educed, you are led out. When you are seduced, you are led aside. . . . . The event of first enrapturement seduces one out of childhood."

Like Hall, Chris Downing (religious & mythological studies scholar) has reflected deeply on the figure of Persephone. Her essay, "Persephone in Hades" is a powerful means of understanding how Persephone's story could have guided so many in the ancient world through the Eleusinian Mysteries, and perhaps more importantly, why myths still matter in the contemporary world.

"When [one begins to see] that the whole story is about a figure who is first and foremost goddess of the underworld, one understands very differently what it means to say that she is also goddess of spring and renewal. To start with death, with the underworld, as a given is to see life in an entirely different way. . . . We are always still virginal before the really transformative (killing) experiences."

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Persephone (as queen of the underworld) by the incredible 20th c. photographer Madame Yevonde.

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The "True" Artist: A Visionary for Our Troubled Times

7/20/2016

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At this moment in time, our world seems particularly chaotic--deep divisions and ignorance have led to increasingly brutal events around the globe.  We look to political and spiritual leaders only to realize that they are oftentimes ineffective, self-serving or even corrupt. What we're craving is meaning, the type of eternal wisdom that only the artist can deliver. Throughout history, the artist (meaning all creators, i.e. poets, writers, singers, dancers, actors, painters, etc.) has functioned as a type of visionary healer, a shaman-like figure with the power to bring clarity, peace, and ultimately meaning to his or her people. But human beings are a forgetful lot--our contemporary sensibilities have become increasingly anesthetized to the vital role of the artist. It's as if  we're starving for nourishment that we don't realize even exists.
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An Aztec priest making an offering to a double serpent. Detail from an original mixed media painting.
While we face many challenges today, ancient cultures were just as troubled as our own. However, for some of them, the artist could be called upon to find meaning in the chaos. The Aztecs (Mixteca) recounted their reverence for their artists in accounts to their Spanish conquerers. These accounts included separating the "true artist" from one that simply uses the devices or tools of the artist. Today we find ourselves uncomfortable or perhaps simply unable to discern true art from something more shallow and commercial. The marketplace has infiltrated our thinking of value and meaning, yet our need for authentic art remains as strong as ever. What could art accomplish if we looked at it through ancient eyes? An Aztec poetry fragment from the sixteenth century provides a clue:

"The artist: disciple, abundant, multiple, restless.
The true artist: capable, practicing, skillful:
maintains dialogue with his heart, meets things with his mind.
The true artist: draws out all from his heart,
works with delight, makes things with calm with sagacity,
withs like a true Toltec, composes his objects, works dexterously, invents;
arranges materials, adorns them, makes them adjust.

The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at the people,
makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things,
​woks without care, defrauds people, is a thief."


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Shiva's Dance of Destruction & Renewal - Springtime Insights for the Artist/Writer/Creator via Hindu Mythology

3/19/2016

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Myths have a way of working on us--far from being "lies," they reveal eternal truths. When introduced to the world's great mythic stories (whether through books, film, performance or music) one may begin to sense that mythology is more than just a collection of curious stories--there's something more going on beneath the fantastical imagery and dream-like plots. Contemporary scholar-sages such as C.G. Jung, Joseph Campbell, Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman (among so many others) ​have credited psyche/soul/the unconscious as the ultimate myth-maker. Hillman goes so far to say that "we humans don't make up myths, instead the myths make us."  On this Spring Equinox, the Hindu god Shiva (Siva) provides a wonderful example of the metaphoric power of myth. His complex character shares much in common with the artist/writer and creator.
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Primavera/Spring. Digital Collage w. Original Painting and Photography
Like most gods and goddesses, Shiva is multi-dimensional and known by many names. Shiva Nataraja/The Lord of the Dance is one of his most compelling personas. In this guise, he is the eternal dancer cycling through never-ending phases of destruction and creation. The artist and creator will recognize these phases in himself/herself as well--there is always a dying-off, an ending, a period of disappointment, or an agonizing fallow time that both proceeds and precedes more generative, fulfilling periods. We may actually find ourselves dismantling, abandoning or even destroying our work in order to better receive new inspiration.  Courage, patience and pain can accompany this phase much like excitement, euphoria, and "flow"  can be present when the "making" phase is going well.

On any spot along the continuum, Shiva Nataraja reminds us of the importance of "playfulness" in the creative process--even on our dreariest days when inspiration seems to have forgotten us.  Hindu mythology features a wonderful term called "lila," meaning the "play of the gods," "cosmic playfulness," and "aimless display." East Indian scholar Heinrich Zimmer expresses the concept of lila as it appears in the figure of Shiva Nataraja:

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ART AND GIFTEDNESS: Find Your Gift, Then Give It Away

1/7/2016

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Ask almost anyone in the Western world to name a great artist (or any artist for that matter) and you can bet that Picasso will make the cut. It's been over forty years since his death, yet his iconic status has not diminished in the least. Integral to his enduring legacy (especially for today's artists, writers and creators) are his concise and powerful thoughts on art and art-making. 
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Recently the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum @GuggenheimBilbao took to Twitter to remind us of Picasso's brilliance as a philosopher of art - and of life:
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"The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away." -Pablo Picasso

Picasso speaks to all of us, no matter whether our gifts are "creative" or not. For those of us called to create, his words take on a special urgency. The twin notions that art is a "gift" and that the artist/creator is a "gifted" individual have captivated many a great mind - including the poet, essayist, scholar and MacArthur fellow, Lewis Hyde. His classic The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property is ESSENTIAL reading for every artist/creator regardless of discipline. The book was re-released on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary as The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.  No matter the version, Hyde will transform/shift/just plain rock your "creating" world! Consider this:

Art is a gift, not a commodity. . . . We come to painting, to poetry, to the stage hoping to revive the soul. And any artist whose work touches us earns our gratitude. . . .When art acts as an agent of transformation [we may] speak of it as a gift. . . . Moreover, with gifts that are agents of change, it is only when the gift has worked in us, only when we have come to its level, as it were, that we can give it away.

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My well-loved copy. Fifty sticky notes and counting....

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Divine Dissatisfaction--Martha Graham on the Realities of an Artist's Life

12/6/2015

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If there is anyone who can express the struggles and triumphs of an artist's life, it is the incomparable diva and dance revolutionary, Martha Graham. Her life and work continue to fascinate long after her death in 1991 at age 97. While she's most often associated with New York City, she grew up in Santa Barbara, CA - a place that she would return to throughout her life for it's beauty, tranquility and healing atmosphere. When driving past the historic Santa Barbara High School, I sometimes picture her as a young woman running and leaping across the grounds before she traded our little town for the life of a touring dancer, and before the world became aware of her great talent and presence. Like so many others, whether in the dance world or beyond, I've read just about every word written about her, including Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham written by her friend and fellow dancer, Agnes de Mille. Within the pages of this book, a multi-faceted portrait emerges of a woman both inspired and insecure. She was driven and determined, yet she was quite vulnerable and oftentimes struggled with worry, despair, precarious finances and even addiction.
de Mille recalls how after achieving her own first real success with the opening of Oklahoma! in 1943, she became confused about the true value of her work, since her earlier works had all but been ignored for years. The two women met for a soda, where de Mille shared her anxieties to her friend and mentor: "I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent but no faith that I could be. Martha said to me very quietly,
'There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself and your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you.
​Keep the channel open. . . .

​No artist is pleased. [There is no] satisfaction whatever at any time . . . There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.'"
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Image by Barbara Morgan

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What is Art? - Octavio Paz and Art's Talismanic Powers

10/27/2015

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For such a small word, "art" poses quite a challenge whenever we attempt to offer a definition. Like the Greek god Hermes (patron of both artists and thieves) art itself is an eternal shapeshifter. Today we're likely to hear that art is a "mirror of our culture," providing "rigorous social and intellectual critique," or that it's primarily about "self-expression," a means for creators to communicate something of their particular human experience to others. Art of any kind, from painting to poetry, from film to music, dance and beyond is also often described as "entertainment."  While art may serve all of these functions (and more) it's worthwhile (and a bit fun) to explore whether there might be a "hierarchy of functions" involved when we ask the question, "What is art?" Creators themselves have offered some illuminating responses to this very question.

Inaugurating this new series of posts on the nature of art are the insights of Octavio Paz, the renowned twentieth century poet, diplomat and Nobel Laureate. Although a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, Paz remained awed by the power of the pre-Columbian art forms of his native Mexico--especially the massive sculptures created by the Mexica/Aztec. 
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Paz found parallels between the modernism that surrounded him in Paris, New York, Tokyo and beyond and the symbolic power of the archaic work of his homeland. His Essays on Mexican Art is a marvelous work devoted to these parallels among other themes. Here he describes an encounter with the stone figure of Coatlique:

“[The] enigma of the massive block of carved stone paralyzes our sight . . . the statue is an object that both attracts and repels us, both seduces and horrifies us. . . . Without ceasing to be what we see, the work of art reveals itself as that which lies beyond what we see”...​The Great Coatlicue takes us by surprise not only because of her dimensions . . . but because she is a concept turned to stone."

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"​If the concept is terrifying--in order to create, the earth must devour--the expression that gives it material form is enigmatic: every attribute of the divinity--fangs, forked tongue, serpents, skulls, severed hands--is represented realistically, but the whole is an abstraction. The Coatlicue is, at one and the same time, a charade, a syllogism, and a presence that is the condensation of a mysterium tremendum . . . a cube of stone that is also a metaphysic."

What Paz concludes about the function of art after his encounter with the figure of Coatlique is one of the finest descriptions on this critical subject that I've ever come across:

"​Art was not an end in itself, but a bridge or talisman. A bridge--the work changes the reality that we see for another: Coatlicue is the earth, the sun is a jaguar, the moon is the head of a decapitated goddess. The work of art is a medium, an agency for the transmission of forces and powers that are sacred, that are other. The function of art is to open for us the doors that lead to the other side of reality."

In this continuing series of posts, I'll share a variety of opinions from great minds of the past and present on the question "What is Art?". If you'd like to read a bit more about Paz and his relationship with the enigmatic Coatlique (along with a bit of C.G. Jung and arts scholar Dore Ashton thrown in)  take a look at this short essay entitled, "A Metaphor in Stone."
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    I'm Mary Antonia Wood, Ph,D. I share both contemporary & ancient insights on the origins & realities of artistic expression. Creators of all types will discover enriching & practical wisdom about their vocation as expressed through the lenses of philosophy, mythology, archetypal & depth psychologies, neuroscience and more. Take a look.

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