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

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.

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."

The true artist of the Pre-Columbian world, unlike the carrion or false artist, was known as a yolteotl, or "deified heart." This type of artist was "a visionary, eager to transmit to objects his divine inspiration . . . . [permitting] the people to see and 'to read' in stone, on the walls, and in all works of art a meaning for their lives on earth."

In the twentieth century, archetypal psychologist James Hillman made strikingly similar distinctions between soulful and soulless art while not inferring that any particular work or art was absolutely one or the other. The "soulless"category includes art that exudes an "inflated titanism" (self-importance), along with work that is ironic, trying too hard to be witty, or filled with "hodge-podge appropriations." Soulful work would exude "sincerity" and would oftentimes be created with the "dark, pathologized eye of woundedness and vulnerability." For Hillman, soulful work is concerned with "death, love, flesh, beauty, nature and tragedy."

Mayan Vision Serpent. Detail from a mixed media original painting.

So what is today's creator to do? How does one create soulful, valuable and meaningful work? The answers to these questions include a realization that we are not alone in our work--there is always a strange collaboration occurring between our conscious intent and archetypal forces beyond our control. While we can't coerce these forces, we can seek their assistance, we can put ourselves in their service as "visionary initiates." The ancient artist and seer knew this, as the following poetry fragment illustrates so well:

"Go to a mountaintop and cry for a vision." --a Sioux poetry fragment

There is a sense of self-sacrifice, anxiety and even suffering in this statement. The artist's path has never been an easy one, yet the artist is a vital link to our deepest humanity and to those realms beyond the human. We desperately need our artists today if we are to survive the challenges that face us. Even with this great need, the riptide of everyday life makes it difficult for artists to hold fast to their mission. It is my hope that these brief posts will provide a moment or reflection and an opening toward reinvigorating the yolteotl, the "deified heart," in all of us.

---

If you're curious about the stunning wisdom to be found in indigenous poetry of the the Americas, get your hands on a copy of the marvelous Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North America edited by Jerome Rothenberg. (1986, University of NM Press). For more on the art and poetry of Pre-Columbian cultures, see Essays on Mexican Art by Octavio Paz, Burning Water by Laurette Sejourne, and Miguel Leon-Portilla's Aztec Thought and Culture. For more on James Hillman's thoughts on the meaning and mission of art, stay tuned for more posts here and on my social media accounts--I'm busy compiling these from multiple sources, both published and unpublished.

A treasure trove!