Modernism and Neomodernism By William DeRaymond

Painting had a great renaissance in France in the 19th century. This renaissance we call impressionism. Color and form came to life in a style that had heretofore been unseen in painting. The artists painted to express themselves, and nature in terms of painting (color, brush, composition, and style - the art form itself).

In a real sense, the whole culture entered the modern era. With the coming of the industrial revolution, it seems the times demanded a shift in awareness. The industrial revolution served modern art by producing color in easy to dispatch tubes, with greater variety and intensity.

Modernism means that a painter can paint, compose and express her or himself and if there was talent and genius, create harmonies of color, brush, self, and nature that represent a true balance of all these elements. Most importantly self expression is the keynote. It started to be understood that painting was an aesthetic language which could propel the artist and her/his audience into states of ecstasy, i.e. other states of consciousness.

At this point it is important to understand the difference between style, and 'stylized". A quote by the master Antonio Salemme (1892-1995) explains this beautifully:

"Style is most important, whether it be a book, a piece of music, a painting, or a piece of sculpture. But style is recognized only in retrospect. If one has style in mind while one is painting, one becomes stylistic. One produces a style after the Gothic, or Renaissance, or African. The style becomes superficial and becomes a manner, and we call that stylistic.

My style comes out of my whole life. The style is the result of the state of mind of the artist, the subject matter one is handling, the state of one's health, and the clarity of one's mind, all that goes into the work. After it's done, the style can be recognized. Whatever comes out is a spontaneous and mysterious thing. Style cannot be defined intellectually. It can be seen only in retrospect.

For example, the Gothic style came out of the condition of France and Germany in the 13th and 14th century. The 12th century was Romanesque: after the Romanesque came the Gothic. The Romanesque was a result of the Roman Empire, the Greek art and all of that. Then the Gothic came because the people began to express themselves more directly. It came out of The climate, the stones they had to work with, and their religious approach... their interpretation of Christianity. That whole thing produced what we call the Gothic style, and the word 'gothic' means 'barbarian', uncivilized'. It was original expression, getting away from the Greek and the Roman. But it all came about in retrospect. The people who built the Gothic cathedrals built them as well as they could under the condition and the state of mind they were in, and out came what we call the Gothic style.

So when someone does a painting, the same process takes place. Everything one is comes out in that painting. If one's able to be spontaneous, then there is spontaneity in the style and there is vigor in the brush strokes. If one is not able to be spontaneous, because one is still immature and one is uncertain, and one's technique is not complete, then style doesn't come through, because one is still struggling with technique. If one has mastered the technique and lived, and is still vigorous, and paints with pleasure, then out comes what we call style. Style is never an intellectual and willful effort. It is like grace in the spiritual life. We try, we pray, we sit, we meditate. By the grace of God in a mysterious way we become enlightened. You don't become enlightened by mere effort. You don't achieve enlightenment. Enlightenment comes after great discipline and effort, but we don't achieve. It is the same with style in Art."

'Always be a beginner...'- Suzuki Roshi

The true masters all through history express style and their value ever resonates with us. The great painters of the l9th century create the space for a more mature understanding of style. They are the first modern masters. Impressionism is not an appropriate title if you allow it to chain them to a stylistic concept of art. Their work is not conceptual, nor are they dated now, but their works still live. Because they are true paintings and art, they transcend time.

So, Morisot, Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Sisley, Pissaro, Le trec to name a few, are our modern masters. They have real style, they paint with their whole selves- they were not merely intellectual, not merely emotional, but at their best they form a balance of mind and heart seasoned with transcendent intuition that creates works of ecstasy. Works of great music. They create visual music, Raga!

The generation that followed naturally was caught up in this flow of apparent revolution. Most notably Picasso and Matisse, two of the better known neo-Moderns. They say, 'look what has gone down, We'll go farther out.' Not realizing the basic fallacy of that kind of self conscious search for a style to set them apart from everyone else. While they both show genius and moments of brilliance, neither of them truly dig as deep or with the intensity of their predecessors. They become children of their fame and the media before they had truly been grounded in the art. Thus they were always searching for the next great step like most of the twentieth century world.

What has not been truly understood by this culture of ours is the originality of self. It is already original. To paint a simple still life without concept, without prior ideas, but with one's own heart, mind, and soul, it will be different, it will be a manifestation of one's self. Have faith in your originality and forget all you've been taught to see. See beauty with your own eyes.

I recently read a quote by Matisse that was rather disturbing to me. In it are implied the forces of neo-modernism. He says" a Cezanne is a moment of the Artist, while Sisley is a moment of nature." A seemingly to the point statement, because certainly Cezanne is that. He transforms his motif into a personal style that is his connection to the universal- yet he doesn't rely wholly on himself. He is in relationship to nature, the world. Sisley, in his own way transforms nature into painting and sings to us in an exquisite voice which may not have the depth of contemplative genius visible in Cezanne ( he lacks Cezanne heavy temperament and nature, and is more fluid in his expressions.) He nonetheless is a poet of color and form, and should not receive anything but thanks from his descendants for his moments as an artist. For Matisse to say Sisley is a moment of nature (as if to suggest merely) shows the immaturity of Matisse! All one has to do to realize this is to look at Sisley's struggles that broke the ground for men like Matisse to gain their reputations.

In this universe there is understanding. There is the relative and the absolute. As above so below. It is very important to grasp how the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. In a true painting you will find this understanding expressed. It will within its perimeters carry you from HERE TO THERE, you can see it as the unfurling of cosmos. This is achieved through understanding. The artist must further understand the tools by which he practices the expression of his understanding. The appreciator must also be part of this understanding in order for her or him to enter fully into the depth of possibility the artist creates.

A painting is a doorway into Psychological/Spiritual space, it is an expression of transcendent form which opens out into the infinite. If you can allow your judgment to arise out of your experience of art rather than have your experience be tainted by your pre-conceived judgments, you are on the right path. Fashion has little to do with true art, while the ebb and flow of real history (not the history of books and words, but the living reality of each moment) evolves art from understanding to understanding. SO PAINTING IS NOT MUZAK FOR YOUR WALLS , But contemplative doorways. Communications of ecstasy and understanding. To have a painting on your walls is to have a great positive vibration in your life. It is not muzak for your walls.

In the Eastern visual traditions we have Mandala and yantra. These are visual designs which the viewer would concentrate upon in order to go within her/himself. They are rather formal and generally very rigidly executed. In the Sumi e brush and ink tradition an aesthetic understanding of the spontaneity of the brush and ink is established but becomes generally formalized and thus stylized and ritualized , the student mimicking the master and taught thus, The danger of all traditions. The work of the l9th century French "impressionist's" is a more evolved and mature understanding of painting involving a synthesis of east and west. These artist who we now label impressionists or post impressionist, which are by the way poor labels, are visual musicians.

In India, music has developed over the centuries and these classical works are called raga. They are so sensitized in this tradition that certain ragas are played only at certain times. Thus there are morning ragas and evening ragas which fit these specific times and are to be played and practiced only at those times. They carry the vibrations of those times. They arise directly out of the heart of nature and one's attunement to it. Ravi Shankar is a famous example of the player of raga on sitar. Singing out the beautiful notes of moment to moment understanding, his music is an expression of the 3 great forces of cosmos, creation, preservation and destruction, all one in the great universal flow. Who has understood Vincent sees Vincent in ecstasy in the midst of nature's cosmic dance expressing himself in the moment to moment heat of creation, preservation and destruction and his paintings are visual expressions of that ecstasy. Look at Monet, each brush stroke a player in a great symphonic harmony of color and form. Cezanne, incomparable raga of aesthetic understanding. Gauguin, Sisley, Le Trec, All magnificent.

Modernism is contemporary classicism. A modern will allow her/ his painting to evolve naturally out of visual reality and its relationship to her/himself. We must break the chains of glamor and romanticism in our art and culture, and begin to see things as they are.

Gauguin has been a great inspiration to me. In his epic painting- WHO ARE WE? WHERE DID WE COME FROM? WHERE ARE WE GOING? He asks 3 basics questions in life. It has been said the soul must arrive at the point where it asks out of the depths of its being, Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? This then marks the beginning of the spiritual journey. The greatness of Gauguin is that he asks not Who am I? but Who are We? He speaks for all of us. He has become priest, Shaman, Lover of Humanity. He reaches and his paintings are communications coming out from his touchings with infinity.

Painting teaches you to see things as they are. Where can you look that the absolute nature of visual reality is not before you. You simply see. Through painting you can bring yourself to some wonderful conclusions. Bring yourself to see the everflowing , everchanging light of nature. Reality is abstract. THE ABSTRACT NATURE OF REALITY IS THE SOURCE OF VISUAL BEAUTY, not some romantic sentiment about some specific form, not some personal preference or dislike but the absolute nature of a thing as it is in any given moment, recognizing there is nothing static about nature. Yet, if you see the abstract nature of a cup (to take a simple example) and begin to note the complexity of visual relationships in such a simple object, you will find that it is not so simple, and also that it is not just an abstraction but it is still a cup. Will remain a cup. you cannot separate the cup from its abstract nature. Even if you break it you cannot separate the broken cup from its abstract nature. If the truth is reality is both abstract and representational, it follows that a true painting will be both representational and abstract.

A true work of art is abstract, to take away the representation or to simply have abstract shapes doesn't make for more sophistication, it just shows a lack of understanding and subtlety.

Cezanne says "We are the primitives of a new art. And proceeds to show us an aesthetic reality both purely classical, and personal. All the best of his contemporaries express themselves in terms of a more evolved understanding. They begin to use the palette and brush as the pianist uses his keyboard or the conductor his orchestra. They don't throw out representational form but imbue it with the rhythms of its abstract nature, translate it into visual music each according to her or his artistic personality. There is today a new academy to rebel against. An academy of neo-modernism, neo-classicism being the other side of the coin.

Who will see the world with their own eyes and break the chains of culture. Who can see a vase and flowers with some fruit (a still life) as the width and breadth of cosmos and bring to it painting that has originality. Who is willing to have art be Her or his life and have her/his life be art. Who is willing to say with the simple conviction of honest seeing "but the Emperor has got no clothes on!

Begin by looking without judgment. Do not be too sure of yourself. allow your sensitivity to develop slowly and surely or quickly and surely. You must be able to receive a painting fully , and out of that openness a sure judgment will arise, not based on some idea of what makes something art, but on an experience of which intellect is merely a servant.

Cezanne says if you want to paint you must avoid the literary spirit! Likewise if you are to appreciate a painting, you must avoid the literary. It is the disposition of color and execution of the same on a specific surface that determines a paintings value.

William DeRaymond
http://www.williamderaymond.net

"A painting is a doorway into psychological/spiritual space. It is an expression of transcendent form that opens out into the infinite." -William

The Closing of the American Mind - Redux By Sandy Krolick Ph.D.

With America leading the charge, Western civilization has engineered a hegemony that has rapidly overtaken the globe, politically, economically, and culturally. This has unleashed a domination of values that, unlike hegemony of the past, is lightning fast, wide ranging, and spreading insidiously, enabled by those very technologies it has created and which it seeks to market to the world. All the while America has touted its singularity and its greatness, its manifest destiny, offering refuge - nay salvation - to all who would learn how to partake of its many benefits, comforts and ideologies. But, is there trouble in paradise?

Let's begin with American-style democracy. Having been forcibly 'peddled' around the globe, pushed into the most unlikeliest of places, including the Middle East, Eastern Europe and elsewhere, such democratization has provided, ironically, yet greater credence to groups we consider well, how should I say this, non-democratic' - elements like Hamas and Hezbollah; and we have supported questionable leaders who are anything but a 'paragon of democracy', leaders like Saakashvilli in Georgia and Yushchenko in Ukraine. Oh, but how democracy is a wonderful tool for propagandists!

Capitalism as well has taken wing and exported itself to the farthest reaches of the globe, creating an economic and financial hegemony unparalleled in history, with a preponderance of American cultural artifacts popping up in the oddest of places to prove it. Our cultural seeds have been cast wide upon the waters for all of posterity. It is amazing, however, how the boldest efforts of democratic capitalism have run up against its own worst instincts. It is as if the underbelly of the beast has been laid bare, and it does not look all that attractive from this new vantage point.

Another interesting wrinkle in our current predicament: as specialization in every profession increases at exponential rates with the advance of scientific and technological knowledge, we are finding in the health care realm alone that we have run into a shortage of primary care physicians here in 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'. Why this dilemma? Because in the greatest, richest and most advanced (read: specialized) country in the world, doctors want to be specialists as well, in order to benefit from the additional prestige and money that goes along with that specialization. Otherwise they just appear to be another part of the expanding, or is it shrinking, proletariat.

And as the great moral fiber of our country seems now to be proliferating cases of schoolyard bullying, mass murder and extreme cases of domestic and random homicide on our streets, we ask why. Yet we never want to acknowledge that our own society, our culture and our politics have advanced bullying and aggressiveness as the keys to success in both business and international affairs. And, lately we have even resorted to the worst kind of bullying behavior, including torture and the murder of innocents (Iraq) at every turn; just look at our performance on the world stage over the past several decades.

Finally, Lou Dobbs and other minor pundits, engaged in their own bullying techniques, began whining on TV four years ago about how most middle class Americans (the 'proles') were being cut out of the American Dream, loudly demanding that home ownership and access to other middle class perks be made more easily available to the common citizen. Now we find that this whining and bullying reached the financial markets and federal regulators and has helped precipitate a housing bubble and crash the likes of which has never been seen before, and a financial crisis of global proportions as Americans one-and-all reached out for the golden rings passed out by lenders who were only too pleased to give in to the bullying and look the other way as they collected their ill-gotten revenues, spinning them out into credit default swaps. Indeed, the bullying began with the pundits and talk show hosts, and trickled down to the legislators, regulators, mortgage brokers and banks, one bullying the next until the poor populace was well housed and fed. Now the chickens have come home to roost; and we are looking for the bullies to punish; but they are US.

Perhaps Obama can change our ways, lower our expectations about lifestyle, transform our self-perception and our perception of the natural world, reduce our dependency on oil, provide universal health care to all Americans; well these are some interesting daydreams. But, just maybe it is not the problem of American exceptionalism per se.

Perhaps American exceptionalism itself is rooted in a much broader challenge, rooted somewhere at the beginnings of Western civilization, along the alluvial banks of the Fertile Crescent, at the intersection of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in, of all places, Iraq. I say it again, have the chickens come home to roost? Would not that be poetic justice! Is our hegemony, tracing its own manifest destiny back, just the culmination of an historical process that began millennia ago, a process that perhaps cannot be undone by simple political maneuvering or other commercial trickery -- like getting the people to just go out and spend more money or vote.

After a ten-year career in academia, Dr. Krolick spent the next twenty years in the executive ranks of several of America's largest international firms. Sandy has spent many years traveling around the world, including parts of Asia, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe. Retiring from business at fifty, he recently returned to the USA with his wife Anna, after teaching for several years in the central Siberian Steppe, at the foot of the Altai mountains in Barnaul, Russia. His latest book, The Recovery of Ecstasy: Notebooks from Siberia, is available at http://www.Amazon.com or visit him at http://www.kulturcritic.com