When Jung was criticized for speaking of Mandala imagery it seems to be because people had a hard time imagining how Eastern imagery could be part of a Western mind. So in comparing Rembrandt and Shi Ke to discover things about our Palaeolithic ancestors, I imagine the criticism could get much louder.
Jung did not give them George Bernard Shaw's quote: "It's never safe to trust to the intelligence of a ...... audience", instead, he said that Mandala imagery resides in the unconscious, and that because of the inward-looking nature of many Eastern religions, it is mostly them who ever get to see it. We might say that, in a cultural sense, the Eastern mind is introverted, holistic, spiritual and artistic, and the western mind is extraverted, linear, materialistic and practical. But that is a mouthful and it can also get a little confusing, so I prefer to use Mythos for the East and Logos for the West.
The other thing about East and West is that it really depends on how you align the globe for maps. It would be pointless aligning the globe by its poles: all the interesting bits would get all squashed up because of mercator distortions, while the virtually uninhabited North South polar regions would be in crisp detail (if it wasn't for the snow, that is). Are we clear on this now? Good.
When some of our earlier ancestors left Africa they had already started growing larger brains, at the top of their skulls, that is. That area is particularly good for analytical, sorry, Logos type thinking. After all, with everybody heading off into new places one would really have to be able to deal with the unexpected. Instinct would not help, thinking would be best. According to the journal Nature, in a study published in 2004, a mutation happened that started shrinking our huge jaw muscles and, quite by accident, this allowed us to get bigger brains and become smart. Perhaps we should add a little Neo-Darwinian evolution into this scenario: Because it was considered much better survival to nibble rather than to eat great mouthfulls of meat, our brains became larger and we became more intelligent because there were less muscles restricting the growth of our skulls. Just a minute, we must be missing something. Right! Let's stick epigenetics in there and then see what we get.
As we began to head off in new directions, we encountered all sorts of strange animals and plants and climatic and geographical features that we had not experienced before. Some sort of imprinting mechanism in our brains had been recording, behind the scenes; times when we had suddenly had to think a bit clearer. It had been doing this long before we were anything resembling human, but it was dependent on us breeding to pass this structure along. It was stronger in some folks than in others. One day, a hominid named Duh who did not express this ability very well decided that it would be a great plan to drive the cave bear away from what looked like a pretty comfortable new home. He didn't make it. Over the longest time, this ability became epigenetic switches, that could deliver the goods even if it meant having to nibble instead of wolfing down our food. It was especially useful, because if we were smart enough, we could cooperate with each other better and also come up with ways to prevent other creatures from stealing our food, Just as well, if you ask me. Imagine going into a restaurant and instead of sitting at a table and slowly savoring our food quite politely, we would grab the steak off the plate, hide under the table and growl at anyone who came too close.
Of course, it was not a series of sudden, dramatic random mutations that happened. It was happening so subtly that it is difficult to assign any cause one way or the other. It is just that those who had this ability less than others, had a lower chance of passing it along.
Back then, there were a lot fewer of us, and during our travels, we became ever more separated by distance and there were even fewer breeding partners to choose from. In one area, these folks started growing their brains in a different direction: toward the back. That is where vision lies and quite a bit of really primitive stuff, too. We could see better, but our "feelings" improved, too. This is because that part of the brain was not really analytical. When someone asked the hominid Hmmm why he did what he did, he could not really say, it "just felt right"
Over time, the smart groups would encounter the large eyed Neanderthals and say "What lovely big eyes you have, my dear". Of course, some groups, through different experiences were not that nice and just took what they wanted. Everyone is different. There were probably a few biological variations here and there too, and after we all became Cro-magnons, it was a pretty adaptable and very brilliant sort of person who stood in front of a cave wall and produced this wonderful painting of a boar.
"But", you say, The Neanderthals were more western. In fact, they seem to have lived in the same places as the Cro-magnon cave painters. Yes, but remember, our cleverer, more analytical ancestors had left Africa much earlier and had gone both east and west. A long time later, what was, or what became Neanderthals left and went in all directions, as well. not so many of them made it that far east, because some places had such ideal conditions that it was already getting rather populated. A few of the earlier residents could well have killed the newcomers or drove them away,
Here's where syncretism comes into play: A member of one of the really smart groups is getting fed up with one of his companions, a workman of some sort, always telling him, "Well just tell me what you want, and I will build it". This was starting to be real pain to the other fellow, because he didn't know what to make either, and what was even worse, he couldn't have made it even if he knew what it was he needed to make exactly. He was starting to feel inferior, and that really annoyed him. He remembered travelling a few miles with this other hunter. That fellow was not such a good hunter, but he sure had some great ideas. They kept popping up all the time in fact. The fellow had said, though, that his own people just thought he was a pain, always talking, never working. Sometimes he would just sit there gazing off into the distance and that really annoyed them.
Our inferiority complex driven human rushes off to see this fellow again, and invites him to come along. "Don't worry", he says, "We won't make you work too hard, and we will really appreciate all of your good ideas." He jumps at the opportunity. These two were each just a little on each side of the Logos/Mythos division and they could understand each other very well. They were very clever, indeed. Other groups were too far apart, stupid and violent, both unable to understand each other. What of those few at the extreme ends? They were completely insane, but in different ways.
East and West do not matter at all. We can barely keep track of the erratic movements of people over the last 4,000 years. Imagine the problems of tracking movements over 40,000 years. We ended up with what we have now.
Well, this has been fun, but the sun is shining and I think I will wander off somewhere. Tomorrow, I'll bring Jung along to talk about Picasso and other stuff.
That the earliest exemplars of anything that even approaches the balance found in the Altamira boar are seventeenth century in the west and tenth century in the east is highly significant as is that the latest examples in the west appear around 1960. That, in contemporary times, there is nothing at all and this situation might be compared with that of the Medieval period is downright chilling.
While in the Medieval period, art was in the service of religion and not very good, today, art either continues the styles of previous art movements or is completely varied; is of far greater originality; and has little to no unconscious content. People actually expect paintings to have meanings that can be expressed in words. The Medieval art is subservient to religious dogma and today's art is subservient to irreligious dogma. Even the word "myth" is taken to mean "false".
When I first saw the slideshow of "looted" ancient art on this CBS site. I burst into laughter. Not a single object there is genuine. The mosaic is a really shoddy fake that would have had me laughing as much when I was fifteen years old, and one of the other items was likely a half decent souvenir shop item, but the rest are abysmally poor tourist souvenirs. Yet not one of its subscribed commentators spotted even a single fake and swallowed the story hook line and sinker. One fake almost got me when I was fifteen: it was a southern Italian red figure pot that seemed to me both right and wrong. I insisted that I would buy it only under the understanding that I could return it for a refund the same day. The British Museum told me that the pot was genuine, but the painting was modern It was quite well done at that). News organizations used to have fact checkers, apparently they do not do that anymore. I left a comment on this blog and its owner claims to teach at a university. As it is moderated, I am still waiting for my comment to appear. That was days ago, perhaps its owner is away somewhere. You would think, though, that he would actually ask someone before posting such a thing...
The psychological state of a society can be easily measured by the aesthetic content of its art, because aesthetics lies in an area of the unconscious which contains no language or any linear sort of system. It can thus not be tampered with by the con man because it will only transmit a vague feeling to even the most introverted artist. You can also measure the society's overall intelligence with that too. Art is considered "improper" by just about every religious fundamentalist group in the world, Yet religious fundamentalism does not even exist prior to the nineteenth century and in the time of the Bible not a single person would have imagined any religious story to be literal fact. They would have thought a person crazy to even think such a thing. No single story in the New Testament is even original. How could it be? it is a system based on metaphor alone. The psychology of the fundamentalist is actually the same as that of the atheistic skeptic who frequently says "There is no scientific evidence that..." They are both philosophical materialists who need solid things that they can count or measure and are very uncomfortable with anything else. It is as if they only possess just half a mind.
But why East and West? You will never guess. We will start that tomorrow. Also, good news! Two Chinese men collaborated on a translation of the poem on the painting by Shi Ke. I had spoken to one of them on the weekend, and my friend Robert had printed up the poem and we had arranged that the man I spoke to who was one of Robert's customers, would go to his shop and attempt the translation. By a stroke of luck, another Chinese man, just recently from China, came into Robert's shop at that time and the two of them eagerly collaborated and debated on the best English words to use. They had to see the painting first. of course. Some of the words have no direct English translation at all. They came to an agreement, but neither of them could quite understand the poem because they knew nothing of Chán Buddhism.
Chinese is a contextual and holistic language. One word can mean many things, and meanings of complete phrases can only make real sense within the context of other phrases. Not only that, but an entire poem can provide little understanding without its philosophical viewpoint being understood. This latter problem is what happened with my two translators. They did such a good job with everything else though, that I understood the words and knowing what Chán Buddhism is all about, as Robert read their translation to me I understood it completely.
These were both very modern men, you see, and Chán Buddhism is very old. It started to change not long after the poem was written and it had become a different sort of Buddhism completely by the Ming. Also poems like this were often written by a much later owner of the scroll and that is also significant to its meaning. Mi Gyung Kim knows Chinese history before Chán Buddhism, and has a feel for earlier times and her translation, which she seems to think has some error is actually extremely close to the real meaning. I have to share it with her and some others too, before I give it here. I will give the exact translation and then attempt an English language equivalent without the metaphors of the original. It is a really beautiful poem. Every line made me gasp in joy. I doubt that I can convey the beauty of it without metaphor, but rereading the original (translated) version should take care of that. Still, it is not going to be easy for me. I can hardly wait.
"Art by its very nature is not science, and science by its very nature is not art; both these spheres of the mind have something in reserve that is peculiar to them and can be explained only in its own terms."
C. G. Jung, On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry Translated from “Über die Beziehungen der analytischen Psychologie zum dichterischen Kunstwerk,” Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart (Zurich: Rascher, 1931).Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 15: Spirit in Man, Art, And Literature: 015 (p. 66). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
Part (separated) of a handscroll attributed to Shi Ke (石恪)
Five Dynasties period (907-960). A Chan (Zen) Buddhist work
that was of primary importance in the subsequent development of Chinese art.
Rembrandt was in his late twenties when he drew that young woman. He painted the self portrait in yesterday's post in the last year of his life. The painting was bound by its technique, and yet we saw, in the enlargement of a detail the same Zen art-like use of line. The styles of the lines in the drawing above, and in the Shi Ke drawing to the left are different, but the gestures are the same. In both of these works, it is those gestures that are dominant. In the Rembrandt drawing, the wash represents shadow and the lines especially stand out in the part of the composition where the scene is flooded by bright sunlight. In the Shi Ki drawing, the wash mainly represents the tone of the subjects, and light and shadow is very subservient to that.
The Altamira boar perfectly balances the techniques of Rembrandt's late self portrait painting and Shi Ke's drawing. It is thus a far more modern work despite it being of the Palaeolithic era. This is what Picasso understood when he said "After Altamira, all is decadence"
The portrait to the left was painted by Rembrandt in about the same year as his drawing of the young woman, but the gestures of the drawing's lines are completely absent. Rembrandt is completely subservient to the more complex techniques of painting which he was still learning and developing at that time. It was only his later years that he was able to combine the two and start to approach what had been mastered by the Palaeolithic artist.
Shi Ke, too, had not achieved the balance of the Palaeolithic artist, his shading was lacking and only tone and gesture were somewhat balanced. He was, like Rembrandt, in his late painting, subservient to technique, but the technique was not of drawing as he appears to have originated that style and had nothing to learn in that respect. It was the technique of Chan Buddhism that had constrained him.
We turn, now, to another Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian, and we run into the same problem we had with trying to clearly see the drip of paint in the enlargement of the Rembrandt painting. This time, though, we can only get a slight impression of the textures of each colour. We can see the texture better in the black areas than the white, but the yellow eludes us. It was Carrie who had brought this to my attention. She had said that the modern art student is so used to being influenced by photographs of modern art that their products fail to include much texture and everything is as smooth as paint on the wall of your living room. In essence, this is a problem with all sorts of "book learning" as compared to experiential learning, and this effect spans all arts and disciplines. Compare the detail with the full size version:
The entire painting
I have used a very small image of the entire painting to exaggerate the effect that gives the book-learned art student the problem, although some books certainly do contain illustrations of paintings that are that small. Even if some detail of texture is available to the student who studies the book, it is the overall effect of the geometry which interferes with the perception. We see such smoothness, also, in advertizing art, but by assigning cause enter into the chicken or the egg problem.
"Beginning" Kenneth Noland, 1958
Magna on canvas (fair use)
We come now to the best of Modern Art, as far as we have been able to succeed in our approach the mastery of the Palaeolithic artist. Kenneth Noland is considered the founder of Color Field painting, and whenever you see vast sums paid by public galleries for this sort of work, and even works of different modern styles of similar calibre, you also see great public indignation and comments like "My kid could do that". No, I'm sorry, your kid could not do that. Your kid might be able to do what you see, but you do not see the painting at all. Take a look at the Zen-like gesture of the outer black circle and compare the brush work to the lines in Shi Ke's drawing. Even that shape, in this example, is reminiscent of a theme in Japanese Zen painting (Enso). See how the intermittent white line on the outer edge of the outside blue circle, and the next inner orange circle approaches the use of line in the Palaeolithic example. Science has tried, and failed, to understand art. Contemporary art has taken a step backward. Its great variability speaks more of styles and subjective thought. "Cleverness" and conscious originality has replaced the impossible task of us reaching the Palaeolithic artist. Picasso was right. We cannot go further back in the history of post-classical western art on our quest. The badger-hair blender of the Renaissance has removed all gestures and before that, dogma had almost eliminated art, itself.
Although impossible to tell from its content, this post was mainly alla prima. While I started with its general idea in my mind, my thoughts evolved as I wrote it, but more importantly I discovered something that came as a complete surprise to me and is responsible for a dramatic difference in my concluding view of the Palaeolithic artist. Of course, you will have to wait for the final episode for that.
This episode is dedicated to the memory of my wife Carin Perron (1957-2003) who brought the Mondrian/student problem to my attention, and whose favorite painter was Rembrandt.
"All conscious psychic processes may well be causally explicable; but the creative act, being rooted in the immensity of the unconscious, will forever elude our attempts at understanding. It describes itself only in its manifestations; it can be guessed at, but never wholly grasped. Psychology and aesthetics will always have to turn to one another for help, and the one will not invalidate the other."
C. G. Jung, On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry Translated from “Über die Beziehungen der analytischen Psychologie zum dichterischen Kunstwerk,” Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart (Zurich: Rascher, 1931).Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 15: Spirit in Man, Art, And Literature: 015 (p. 87). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
The entire painting
It occurred to me that it would be a simple matter to track down the Rembrandt painting where I had noticed a natural-looking drip of paint as a highlight on the nose. Everyone has seen a drip of paint, but to remember a specific drip after fifty years would almost seem impossible to do. There are only two Rembrandt self portrait paintings in the National Gallery. I was also in luck because that image is considered one of the best images on the English language Wikipedia and the full size image is 4,227 pixels high. I took a detail from the photograph, and using a trick I learned about resampling larger while maintaining good resolution brought the size up to where it just started to lose resolution. That point is as ideal as it can get, a balance of size and resolution. The above detail is 947 pixels high if you click on it. While capable of a few tricks, I cannot possibly get better resolution than the original photograph. The detail is still too blurry to see. When I saw it at the age of fifteen and with perfect eyesight (at that time, alas, no longer) I was inches away from the nose. This is no problem, here, however. I just wish I could see it again.
Fortunately, there are details that can be seen which will demonstrate my point: he had dragged an old, tattered hog bristle brush down the tip of the nose in one stroke to achieve the shading. All painters use such brushes for that sort of effect: even a tiny hog bristle blender would be too precise and would lack immediacy. More importantly, he used the same line in single stroke that I have used, along with Cézanne and with the painter of the boar in the Altamira Cave and a myriad of other artists. That line is on the right side of the nose, and it creates depth for the nose. Without it, the nose would appear flat and unrealistic. This sort of thing is called "painterly". what does "painterly" mean? It is what good painters do. Define it further? impossible. It comes from the unconscious and there are no words at the depth of aesthetics.
Rembrandt is restrained by conventions: the triangular composition coming from the Renaissance, perhaps, and the chiaroscuro while used by many artists to different effects was something that Rembrandt had made his own in his later years. It becomes impossible to see at all in da Vinci's finished paintings which are built up, layer by layer and smoothed with the badger-hair blender. Again, a glazing technique.
Technique can be described, and frequently is described. I used to have a two-volume work on the techniques of all of the Masters. Technique is subjective and comes right from the conscious mind. when we go back further into the history of painting and sculpture, technique is not only subservient to religion, but while we thain that the artists were producing a style, that is just our projection. They were just not that good at depicting reality. They were not trying to raise aesthetics to any importance, that would have been blasphemy. they were thus not very good at it.
Jung was wrong when he said that the unconscious (objectivity) in art was only ever reached in modern times. When Picasso saw that cave, it moved him greatly and he said "After Altamira, all is decadence." This is the resolution of the paradox where, as a modern artist, we seem to meet ourselves, after aeons of darkness, in those caves.
Tomorrow, the Zen of Rembrandt and what happens when you can only use line, and nothing can be blended away.
While I had said that I would have "Jung in tow" for yesterday's post, and it was entirely Jungian, his obvious presence existed only with the word "synchronicity". I write these posts alla prima and they thus take on a life of their own. Although yesterday's post was only 700 words, it took me far longer to write than part 8 which was 2,700 words. The reason for this is that in some posts, I am working out my ideas in real time, while in others I am writing essays based on existent knowledge. I was also somewhat tired and that had a lesser effect.
In the course of three days, I had put in 40 hours work over three active projects, and that did not include the phone call from a friend who had just come back from a long visit to her home town of Copenhagen. Our phone conversations usually last about three hours, but she wanted to catch up on my news and that one exceeded four hours. The following morning I was bumping into things, kept forgetting what I was doing, and even cut myself while cutting some meat. The body can only take so much, especially one that will be 66 years old at the end of the month. Working out ideas is especially draining: sometimes, I will spend two or three days thinking about a very specific question without even talking to anyone during that time. I am thus trying to catch up on lost sleep, and taking everything a lot slower.
As I also often write in series, and these have to be "stand-alone" entities for those who find my blog through Google etc. I have to define some terms repeatedly, and this might annoy my regular readers who have heard it all before. I never just cut and paste definitions, though, and I try to tailor them to the topic at hand. The term, this time, is synchronicity. Sorry for the long preamble.
The most popular term in the Jungian canon is synchronicity, it is also the least understood. Critics of the term who have never read Jung, and especially those with a strongly expressed extraverted psychology such as both religious fundamentalists and atheistic skeptics who espouse scientism more than science, have an especially difficult time with it and might even reject it completely. In the editorial preface to the Princeton/Bollingen edition (1973, vif) of Jung's Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960) It is revealed that its inspiration came from several conversations over dinner with Albert Einstein, but became fully developed, thirty years later, with his collaborative relationship with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Yet, in Jung's own text, in the same edition, Pauli makes his first appearance in note 33 on p.19, and consists only of "Professor Pauli was kind enough to draw my attention to this paper which appeared in 1949". Pauli was not the sort of person who placed great importance in academic empire building, or even publishing for that matter. A lot of his best stuff is to be found in his letters. Synchronicity, as discussed in the Pauli/Jung letters was instrumental in the development of the Pauli/Jung conjecture. For the last two titles, Pauli gets top billing. It was Einstein who had nominated Pauli for his Nobel Prize. Thus we dispose of the critics who might have formulated their opinions after some discussion following the playing of Synchronicity by The Police.
My own definition of synchronicity is (currently): Energy directed at a part of the unconscious mind can be attended with an event in the material world connected by meaning alone to the person experiencing such, and is thus acausal in either direction.
Emilio Valli, of the United Nations had started a small discussion group about mythology. He is currently stationed in Kyrgyzstan, where he is a Program Officer at United Nations Volunteers, but at that time was working in economic development in Kazakhstan. His interest in central Asia is explained here Now you might ask why mythology is of interest to such a person. So might I. I do have an idea, but when Emilio put forward any topic for discussion, he did not frame it within the context of his interests, but allowed people to create their own contexts. So when he put up the topic of Mythos and Logos. I eagerly ran with it as I saw it would be the perfect vehicle with which to explain the Jungian concepts of Introversion and Extraversion to the general public. Specifically to the subject of the collective consciousness. When Jung looked at the collective conscious, it was mainly to condemn it. His in-depth analyses were reserved for the collective unconscious. While, as quoted, at that link, other terms have been proposed or are used, I much prefer to stick with the original. "autonomous psyche" I think is just wrong as it does not pair too well with the personal unconscious with its compensatory function to the personal consciousness, and "objective psyche", while being accurate can only confuse people unfamiliar with Pauli's work. (which is most people).
Also, I consider that to criticize people for exhibiting their Zeitgeist is not only grossly unfair, but is indicative of considerable sloppiness and intellectual laziness. Science builds upon itself rather than abandoning what has gone before to present an entirely new science.
Jung is justifiably criticized, however, for his opinions about "primitives", which was backward thinking even for his own day, but anthropology also moves on.
Any Jungian analyst reading this and yesterday's post will correctly observe that my attention to such detail is a symptom of my lack of sleep and exhaustion from work if they knew that my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is INFJ The site at that link, while a "Reader's Digest" version is accurate in what it says. "The Protector" is just one label, other sources call my type "The Counselor" or "Intuitive Empath" By most best estimates, Jung, himself, was of the same type save for very early in his life. We are pure introverts which is always a surprise to people who know me, because I can be quite charismatic, I always have a smile on my face when I greet people, I am well liked by most who have met me, I'm also a good orator. Although I have only given two talks at universities, both were ad-lib without even notes and engaged the audiences very well.
The reason for this apparent contradiction is that my auxiliary characteristic is Extraverted Feeling (The Mentor). Being auxiliary, I am not as good at this as one who would have it as their primary feature, but that is partially counteracted by the fact that I learned most things and developed because of having a string of amazing mentors throughout my life and my sense of "paying it forward" is strong in me. My formal schooling was of such poor quality that everything it did for me was harmful. I had to create myself, and I picked brilliant mentors who were at the top of their various disciplines and specialties. I could never duplicate that as a mentor, myself, but I can at least muddle by fairly well.
The polar opposite to the Intuitive Empath is the Psychopath (Ted Bundy type), and unlike almost everyone else, we can often recognize them instantly. By way of a happy accident, I was also given an opportunity to sit and study one for about a half hour when I was younger. My sister was in hospital for a very serious condition and I was visiting her one day when her doctor needed to attend to her. I waited on a seat outside, which happened to face another room with its door open. Inside, to my surprise was a psychopath sniper who had been shot by the police, a few days earlier and was in a wheelchair and under the guard of a uniformed young police officer. I could not resist studying him (who couldn't?), but my instinct was to maintain a blank expression while I did so. As such psychopaths revel in the attention they get, as everyone knows, he started to "perform" for me, by making sudden movements that brought the young cop to attention. I also marvelled at the patience of the young cop in keeping his calm. I have met cops more like the psychopath in their "swagger". I was sure that the cop had been specially selected for the task because of his patience.
The psychopath (of many varieties, not just killers) has an air of superiority about them that they manifest just slightly subtler than they think anyone will perceive, and they are mostly right in that.
I am convinced that they manifest it as high as they think they can get away with because they need that sensation of knowing that you are too stupid to see them for what they truly are.
There is nothing "supernatural" about the Intuitive Empath's ability to evaluate people instantly. I believe that it is the same skill as exhibited by people who are trained to read micro-expressions and/or body language and do that professionally. It is just that the intuitive empath does it on a more unconscious or "instinctive" level and cannot identify the specific signals consciously. The professional always does it better because it never gets turned off. When the intuitive empath starts to communicate with people, their conscious thoughts and feelings act as an interference of sorts that soon diminishes that ability. Even worse, if we think that our intuition is still strong at such times, we can be a really bad judge of character. We usually have a really horrible early life, painfully shy, unable to ask questions at school when we do not understand something and can often pick really damaging relationships. As we grow older, though, we get much better and in later life we can really shine, We learn what to avoid doing that can hurt us. For many years, I have not watched or listened to news nor read newspapers. If I need some news on a specific topic, I just Google it. If I hear that some poor child has accidentally fallen to his or her death from an apartment balcony. I grieve just as strongly as if that child's mother was my best friend and it can take two to three days before that fades. Needless to say I get frustrated when some friend says "I know you don't watch the news, but did you hear that..." and then proceeds to tell me some ghastly story.
But there is a practical aspect to not watching news, too. It desensitizes us all, and the evil in the world requires ever more violent means to accomplish its goals. In my opinion the sensationalist news reporters are far worse than pornographers. They end their vile programs with something happy because they do not want you to be able to identify them as the evil bastards they truly are.
My life experiences also include working, on a voluntary basis, as an RCMP Security Services (Canadian domestic intelligence) operative when a workmate told me that a terrorist group was wanting to recruit him. He was of the same ethnic minority as that group and they had certainly been exposed to injustices. He was conflicted. This was in the early seventies and the public was already grumbling rather loudly about the SS methods. As some associates and myself had already worked with the RCMP (but regular police) Fraud Squad, to try to expose and disband a certain organization which was conning a lot of people out of their money, I knew who to call and what I had to do. My first agent told me that if a terrorist was brought through the justice system, there would be another six to replace him before the case was completed. SS agents were forbidden to ever come into physical contact with anyone they were investigating. They always used outside operatives for such things. We were also expendable and could expect no rescue if things went wrong, or even expect their acknowledgement of our role or any connection to us, whatsoever. So, a short time after this, when he told me "If your cover gets blown, you can offer him police protection" I was visibly incredulous. "You would do that?" I asked in surprise. "Of course not!" he said, and laughed.
For those of you who believe that the James Bond movies reflect anything realistic at all, I have a little mind experiment you can try for yourselves that will be harmless to you: Get yourself a DVD of a few of the "Lovejoy" British TV series about the lovable rascals that wheel and deal in antiques in England. It uses common methods of "bubble gum" TV entertainment as opposed to more sophisticated literary genres. The likable characters are contrasted with the more plodding and conservative auction people far more superficially than Conan Doyle did with Inspector Lestrade.
Then read one of the novels that the show was based on (by Jonathan Gash). Don't look him up first!
You just might just have the need to take a shower afterward and scrub extra hard to remove the stench of that experience.
If you believe that I could do the things I did quite cheerfully because lives would be saved: to use people and to betray their trust, then you obviously know nothing about the human mind. It is every bit as emotionally devastating as if it were done for no greater good.
I don't know for sure if Emilio's goals are related to mine in his use of mythology, but I include this excerpt from Joseph Campbell's Foreword to his Masks Of God series about the motifs he deals with: "They are all given here in these volumes, with many clues, besides, suggesting ways in which they might be put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends -- or by poets to poetic ends--or by madmen to nonsense and disaster. The terrorist supplies us with the last, and it is my life's mandate to counter this with the other two and more like them. By the way, all of our terrorists just vanished. No one knew of their plot. Not one person was terrorized. The purpose of terrorism is not the destruction you see, you are confusing terrorism with guerilla and urban warfare and the like. The purpose of terrorism is to spread fear and terror among the people in order to rip apart the fabric of their society. The more you protest about the destruction, the more you are supporting their aims. Tomorrow is the anniversary of 9/11. You will not hear from me at all, instead I will present a video that reveals another way in which to thwart the aims of terrorism.
Finally, I knew that I would have to do something with my Mythos/Logos theory that Emilio inspired but I did not want to think about what that would entail. It was because I gave a few tips to an American adjunct professor who teaches world religions, and who has started her very demanding journey toward becoming a Jungian therapist at the American Jung Institute, and her subsequent encouragement, that I have decided to start writing a book to add to the Jungian canon. Despite studying Jung in isolation for about thirty years, and being inspired to actually tackle the task. This job will be in many orders of magnitude more difficult than anything I have done with any archaeological subject and it is daunting, indeed. It's working title is "Our bipolar world",and I will start to introduce the themes of Mythos/Logos along with evolution to our subject of the Palaeolithic artist on Monday. I will be away from the keyboard a lot of the weekend as I am going to be very busy with non-computer related work. Rest? What rest?
This episode is dedicated to Dr. Emilio Valli and to Dr Catherine Alvarez Ph.D. Have a good life-changing weekend, everyone.
for beauty's sake seems incongruous with the cave at Altamira. And what of the aesthete? In our mind's eye we see him as someone who knew Oscar Wilde.
Why would it be that I can place a small dark line along the edge of a shape, but not all of it, and when asked about its essence say only "It felt right"? Now that is not the feeling of the senses, I had not touched the line with my fingertips, The key is really "rightness". So can we then say, like Keats, that beauty is truth and truth is beauty? Certainly not. I have never experienced any sort of beauty in such a line. Even with the entire painting, if I was happy with the result, I would say "It's good", never "It's beautiful". Yet, if I said my picture was bad, that could mean many things: it might be that I just was not inspired; it might mean that I made mistakes; perhaps I had bought cheap paint. I can find no real opposite to good in this context. Of course, "good" or "bad" can refer to whether something is a forgery or not, but this has nothing to do with our question. Similarly, an art critic might accuse a painting of being "contrived" and that just means that its process is too visible. The trick is to make the process fade away so it is not even noticed. No woman ever wants to hear "I like your makeup". We struggle with this, we have a vague sense of something poorly expressed as right, a feeling but not a feeling of something that has no opposite: something right or not right, but never right or wrong. something good or not good, but never good or bad.
The dictionaries do not help with "aesthetic" either. The older dictionaries especially so. We find something better with Dictionary.com, and at the bottom of the list of adjectives:
relating to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.
The lexicographer might have done better with "thought" than "intellectuality", but while emotion and sensation are frequently experienced together, and often quite enthusiastically so, thought can only enhance their strength and can hardly be placed in opposition.
Perhaps we should journey back in time to seek our answers. Finding ourselves in the Age of Enlightenment, we see that reason is trying to replace authority, but aesthetic is nowhere to be found at all. The Buddhist seeks enlightenment but could never achieve that state through reason or authority. Psyche seems absent here, too. although perhaps she lies bound with authority in the back of a church somewhere. There is something very disturbing in this time, perhaps we should go much further back.
Ancient Greece. In looking for the aesthetic, we see it in the built-in order of the temple to a deity; Pythagorean numbers that are supposed to lead to a spiritual enlightenment, but Oscar Wilde sees only the ephebe. There is everything here, sometimes in strange association: Apollo and Dionysos.
Could we have reached the crucible for everything that came later?
As we go further back, the light seems to fade into darkness until everything becomes black, and the blackness seems to stretch forever. But after what seems like an unconnected infinity, We see just a little light ahead in the tunnel. Then we can just make out the figures of animals and as things get brighter still, we make out the boar on the cave wall, It seems strangely flat, though. Suddenly, we see a person who looks a lot like ourselves. He smiles at us and then draws a little black line, our line, at the back of the hindquarters of the animal, and then a couple more around the edges of the flat shapes. Suddenly the animal gains volume everywhere, and motion. But something was just done in one place, yet a reality is created where he did not touch at all. We seem to back where we started. But how can this be? Is he really us? What strange magic. What synchronicity. We tire. Perhaps the solutions will come in the morning, It is time to rest.
The art at Altamira has been approached through ideas about its function and through examination of the artists techniques. However, there is a quality of that art where technique can have no bearing on function. It is simply impossible. That quality is aesthetics.
Just about anyone who has never been an artist could not understand this at all. For them, aesthetics is just how pretty something looks, regardless of which word or words might be used in substitution for "pretty". It is evaluated only from an observer's viewpoint.
When we "turn this on its head", which is one of my most favorite methods of analysis the association of form and function completely breaks down. This is accomplished by asking how the artist made it "pretty". The knowledge of what, exactly, makes something pretty is not now, or can ever have been analytical or subjective. Granted, once such prettiness has been obtained, it is possible to explain why. But this can only occur afterward. In drawing the "accent lines" on the hindquarters of the boar I showed in the first episode of this series, what is the criterion used to establish the weight, position, and length of that line? You could say that the artist was taught how to do this, but that just passes the question on to that person. At some point, one person must have known how to do this.
Now that we have experienced many thousands of years of doing, studying, and writing about art, then the answer should present no problem, right? Wrong. Talk to any modern artist and point to such a feature in their work and then ask them: "How did you get it looking just so? (or "the right length"; "...reveals such a good representation of form", and so on). The artist can only say "it felt right".
The reason that he or she cannot describe the process that makes it "feel right" is because, in that part of the mind neither processes nor language can exist. It is the unconscious mind.
As I became involved in something both exciting and very important this morning, and have commitments this afternoon, I will leave you to ponder that and I will be back tomorrow with C.G. Jung in tow.
When I left you on Friday, I had made an observation about a tenth century Chinese Zen Buddhist painting which was based on something I had heard a long time ago but do not remember where. So I decided to ask a scholar of Chinese history. Had I known a scholar of Chinese art, or of Chinese iconography I would have sent my question there. Mi Gyung Kim specializes in pre-Qin history and that is more than about 1200 years earlier than the painting. Still, I reasoned that she would know more than me. I knew too, that although she truly loves the culture that she studies, she loves the truth even more. That is a rare quality. Even scholars who are trying to be that honest, can often miss something that goes against their hypothesis, or can be tempted to allow poor evidence to prop up something positive about the culture they love. Dedicated honesty in research can annoy some and gratify others. Fortunately, the latter are far more important than the former, and the former, if they have even just a little intelligence, realize that.
I had not spoken to her in about three months and I did not even know whether she was currently in Beijing or Seoul. I had a lot riding on this as I had even invited my readers to bet on whether I was right or wrong and should it be the latter, invited them to laugh and point at me. I sent her an email early Friday evening and I had to wait 24 hours before I heard back from her. For the first part of Saturday, I was busy with correspondence and that helped with my impatience but, all the same I kept worrying. What if she was off traveling somewhere and not checking her email? and even worse, what if she answers and proves me right?
Then I would...
Sorry, what was that? ...
No, I did not mistype "right".
Remember, I had been luxuriating in the fact that there were things that I could say about the Palaeolithic artist that had a fair measure of objectivity and evidence is rarely that obliging to us. Next, by way of contrast and wallowing in subjectivity, I had taken things that I heard about one of my favorite works of art, and then did a little further checking on the web, only to find some evidence that might conflict with what I had heard. Because I had forgotten the source, I could not just use what I already had. If you can quote someone like Tacitus, or Niels Bohr who supports your hypothesis, you can just write it all up as a fait accompli and then get on with something else without having to worry about whether the former just made something up or whether the latter was just one of several great minds with differing ideas about things difficult to prove.
So, at 7.30 pm. on Saturday, I was pleased to see that her name appeared in my inbox. Of course, she explained: "I am not so familiar with the symbols of Buddhism." (Buddhism had appeared in China in the Han, which was just after the the end of her main interests and these same interests almost butted heads with the Neolithic at the other end) but then went on to offer an interpretation:
"I think this tiger symbolizes the things which the patriarch must overcome in his mind during the practice "Zen". The patriarch without the tiger means that the patriarch successfully overcame the obstacle in his mind by practicing "Zen"."
This was substantially different to my borrowed interpretation, but, in the light of my sneaky way of making the bet, if you won or not is a matter best discussed between you and your bookie. Her interpretation, however, is in keeping with this quote from a book on Chinese Buddhism about Chán Buddhism which had started in the fifth century AD and had extended right up to the time of the painting which was a representative example of the Chán Buddhist style:
This is truly fascinating because Chán Buddhism is essentially doing the same thing that C. G. Jung was doing, but the old man was doing it in the twentieth century. And in the west, he was the first, Not only that, but eschewing any text as "sacred" reminds us of the way that archaeology frequently appears in the news media with its "Experts say that..." without identifying (sometimes) the experts in question and (always) why they are saying such. Reports such as this are sacred texts. They are pure oracle. While not an example of synchronicity, this is terrific literary elegance.
But Mi Gyung is not going to just leave it there: the symbol of the tiger also appears, as part of Buddhism, in different times and places, each with their own Weltanschauung. so she gives me a Tibetan Buddhist example. You see what I mean about her intellectual honesty. The only way to track any continuity between the two would be by their contextual content, and this example contains little of that.
Another person with intellectual honesty is Professor Raimund Karl at Bangor University, and a few days ago, Ray was discussing, on a list, this phenomenon of people sometimes so dedicated to a theory that with the aid of a single quote believe that their work is done and they rest their case. He said:
"...and that's how it should be: there is nothing more boring than an answer that doesn't create a bunch of new questions, an answer that stops us from feeling we need to progress even further but instead lets us think we have come to an end. Because ends almost invariably are dead ends."
At that point I had one of those "I wish I had said that" moments and then joked about having corrected just one simple typo when I requoted it back I should be able to use the corrected version as my own. More banter ensued where Ray mentioned that no one would ever plagiarize something they thought was utter nonsense.
After a couple of emails back and forth with Mi Gyung and looking up some references about our tiger symbol I thought it would be nice to rephrase Ray's idea in the style of the Tao. It's always nice to try and absorb something of another's culture while you are there. I composed this in one of the emails to her (reformatted):
We can always learn from being wrong,
We can never learn from being right.
Why do people want to be right all the time?
It never leads to advancement!
I signed it: (The Tao according to John ;-) )
Now while I think it is not too bad an attempt, I would think that Mi Gyung might laugh a lot at my crude attempt to mimic classical Chinese literature: we all see things very differently from within our own cultural viewpoint
Everyone has heard the phrase: "...cannot see the forest for the trees". I think this might also be reversed to say "...cannot see the trees for the forest" and be applied to those too seriously wed to a theory. I had some friends, long ago, who would shift between English, French and German depending on what sort of subject came up in the conversation because this gave just the right nuances to the conversation. I remember, too, that a person once wanted to discuss Palaeolithic art with me online, but as that would consist of much philosophy, he insisted that the conversation be conducted entirely in German as that is a good language for the subject. I can muddle by reading French works on Celtic coins, but German has always defeated me. I tried an online translator but while that might be adequate for something posted on Twitter it was, of course, useless where nuances were required.
Carrie (Carin Perron, my late wife) was my only, ever, line editor. I remember her saying once: "If you are stuck for a subject for an allusion and your only two choices are between Aeschylus and Bugs Bunny, always pick Bugs Bunny if you want to be widely understood."
So here is an allusory piece about some of my own experiences in different sorts of forests:
You just never know where a trail will take you. You expect trails to all go somewhere and so I set off one day, along a trail through the hills just above the Ghost River to be able to avoid having to keep wading across the damned river every time one bank turned into a cliff. After going along the very faint trail for a while, I came to an area that was so steep and covered with large slabs of loose rock that to continue would have been suicidal. I realized that the animal trail I had been following must have been made by a mountain goat. Some trails can be dangerous in other ways if you are not too careful: I was trout fishing with some friends up by Exshaw in the backwaters of the Bow made extra interesting with all of the beaver damns, lodges and pools among the trees. My friends were getting impatient to leave because we had seen no trout. I wanted to check out one last spot and promised to hurry. You really should never hurry along a trail. I was jogging. Well, all of a sudden, just in front of a shallow channel, I saw the bull moose about 60 feet in front of me. I stopped, and watched the huge animal stomp the ground so hard that I felt the ground vibrate beneath my feet, even on the other side of a water channel at least a foot deep. He was also rattling his huge antlers against the branches of the trees around him. I made it back to my friends even quicker than I had left them. A beaver swore at me as I rushed by.
Even when you do not rush, it is best to make a bit of noise. It was up around Moraine Lake, I was seventeen years old. I turned a bend in the trail and almost bumped into the rear end of an elk who did not even bother to check me out. With an enormous crash he turned left into the forest and then there was dead silence. There was little undergrowth but he had vanished as if some forest wizard had waved his wand. It is amazing how animals can do that sort of thing.
A few years later, Sam and I were in Cougar Canyon, and quite a ways in at that. Sam had wanted to continue, but I was getting fed up with passing bend after bend to see only the same things, and we had reached a very nice wide spot. I wanted to rest there awhile, but Sam wanted to push on. I told him that he could do that and I would wait for him there, he agreed and set off on his own. It was a lovely spot: there were a couple of deeper pools there, a gentle waterfall came down from the mountain where I could take a shower if it got too hot, and there were some nice big flat rocks by the creek where I could dry off afterward. It was idyllic, No one else would happen along. I had the place to myself, or so I thought. It was getting much later and Sam was still not back. I was getting very hungry. I picked up an interesting rock and then imagined myself as some prehistoric hunter eager to find a deer to club to death... My God, I could really use a burger and fries about now! The forest extended a bit down into the canyon, I think the trees were aspens, They were fairly small. A permanent resident of the canyon must have picked up on my intent. I heard the Yeeeoowwwl! snarling growl of the mountain lion among the trees just in front of me. I took this to mean "Keep your thieving hands off my deer". I dropped my rock. This was in the days before mountain lions attacked people much, so I followed the sound into the trees, but again, saw nothing. Sam arrived back not long after that and we headed off to eat, bend after boring bend all the way back to the highway and the closest diner.
Sometimes, even a very big trail can be hard to find: it was with my friend Rob that afternoon, We were looking for gold up on Camp Creek, a tributary of the Goldstream River about midway between Revelstoke and Mica dam in British Columbia. It was cedar forest with very dense undergrowth and very dark. I was getting a bit claustrophobic and the rare moments where there was almost a clearing and you could see blue sky was a tonic to me. The previous night was when we had to camp in the forest in just a pup tent. It was very unpleasant experience: anything we had that could absorb moisture did so. It was also a bit dangerous, There was some active clearcutting on the approach and that attracted a lot of grizzlies. I saw two eroded footprints that looked a lot like a sasquatch that crossed the logging road that crossed a marshy area, I could barely jump from one to the other. I thought it might be more likely to be the last remaining traces of grizzly tracks, though. I actually believe, now, that some alleged sasquatch sightings are really just of grizzlies. The clue, I learned just a couple of years ago, was that grizzlies smell like a rotting body when you get close enough (black bears like a rotting stump). People had reported the corpse smell when they reported seeing a sasquatch. The mind can play tricks on you: it might have been due to a desire to see a sasquatch, but I think it far more likely that it was the desire not to see a grizzly that close.
That morning, instead of trying to light fire and cook something, it seemed like a much better plan to drive quite a few miles south to where a prospector ran a small gas station, sold gold panning stuff, and, if you arrived at his own breakfast time, would sell you some bacon and eggs and hot coffee. Before we had camped, it seemed fairly obvious that apart from his claim, there was nothing but flour gold in the creek. We had not encountered his claim, but he had told us when we stopped for directions the previous day that he had built a trail to it.
Over breakfast, I asked him if he got much from his claim. "Oh no, It;s just a hobby claim" he said.
when we got back to the cedar forest, I saw a porcupine and followed it into the undergrowth. Suddenly, there was his "trail". It had obviously had been built with the aid of a big leased Caterpillar probably a few hundred dollars an hour, I thought. We followed it to see what his claim looked like. Not an illegal thing, prospectors have to cross claims all the time. It is only illegal to work one. It was impressive: he had cut three new channels with the Cat, diverting the creek and sluices were set up on all of them. Typical prospector tale to avoid too much attention. No one does that for flour gold. He knew we would be unlikely to find his road. He had taken it in from a distance from the creek. If I had not followed that porcupine we would have missed it. It was invisible anything distance greater than about the length of a bus. Sometimes, you cannot see even a huge trail unless you stumble upon it by chance, following something else.
Part (separated) of a handscroll attributed to Shi Ke (石恪) Five Dynasties period (907-960). A Chan (Zen) Buddhist work that was of primary importance in the subsequent development of Chinese art. Tokyo National Museum, Japan.
Yesterday, I introduced the importance of the unconscious to forging a connection between the artist of today and the earliest Homo sapiens, and the day before that I used the sense of smell as another connection that might have significance. Both of these are experiential matters. One came from the unconscious and the other from shared biological senses. In neither case, do they rely on cultural matters nor on conscious thought. This gives us an avenue of considerable objectivity.
Where can we go from there? Given such a rare opportunity, we must tread very carefully, one stepping stone at a time. At any moment we could find ourselves facing subjectivity. The first step takes us to the Great Divide, and I am not speaking of the line of mountains with their shrinking glaciers which separate Alberta and British Columbia, Mind you, what an excellent metaphor this makes. I am speaking of the division between eastern (introverted), and western (extraverted) thought.
Allow me to demonstrate this with the mythical use of thunder: Here in the west, our mind turns to Zeus with his thunderbolts and to Thor with his hammer. Already, we are in the midst of subjective bifurcation. We have to back up a bit to find some common ground: and this thunder punishes and avenges. In turning to the east, we encounter a very different sort of thunder:
This is the yi-jing hexagram 51, Zhen (thunder). It consists of the trigrams Zhen, doubled.
Zhen indicates pervasiveness. When Zhen comes, it frightens people. Later, it makes people talk and laugh. Its majesty reaches one hundred li in all directions. There is no misplacement of the ladle or sacrificial wine.
Translation: Chung Wu, Ph.D., The Essentials of the Yi Jing, St Paul, Minnesota, 2003. Once again, we have to back up a bit. Zhen is also the spring thunder, scary at first but then then the rains come, the crops flourish and the people rejoice.
Zeus gives little laughter, even to his wife, Hera, but Zhen is pervasive: it permeates everywhere. Fear leads to blessings. It is the complete package. In the west, the thunder is only mean and scary: Do as I say, or else. The west is pushy and extraverted.
As I look around the world's art, I look for the qualities I saw of the cave painting of the boar in part one. It was there that I recognized the same things that I would do as an artist, not only in its deliberate tricks I would use, but in its unconscious content where similar tricks would come from the part of my mind that I cannot consciously access, the part where objectivity lies. I look for signs of an impression. Mostly what I see is overlying structures and rules, academy styles where all creativity is always subservient to attempts at reality. In his later years, Rembrandt could accomplish that with the sort of line we see in the boar's hindquarters where, although nothing real, it would give an impression of such. But with Rembrandt it is a natural-looking drip of paint that has landed on his nose in the self portrait as a highlight, and as if by accident, but when you stand back, all you see is the reality, and technique. What we are looking for seems to start in the nineteenth century and it is not well received at first. The critic tells Monet it is just an impression.
But I am already seeing it in the east by the tenth century. Zhen and Zen are also connected: Zhen is the realization of the completeness which will start with fear, and Zen is the sudden shock that brings wisdom from the depths of the psyche.
As I was looking for information about Shi Ke's painting this morning, I found a lot of misattributions, and I remembered things that I had heard and thought about the painting over the years. Subjectivity was trying to gain a foothold again. A new idea sprang to mind. I wondered if the meaning had changed when the scroll was cut. In the famous example, perhaps the second patriarch is now the tiger. Perhaps the poem might contain something that might go along with that. In what way are the two patriarchs harmonizing their minds? There is a Chinese character, Wang, on every tiger's head. It means "prince". Are the two patriarchs harmonizing their minds in laziness? Tiger bones were used in Chinese Medicine to cure laziness. But the tiger has meanings that would deny that it is lazy. But I had also heard that the tiger is fat and lazy and so was the prince. It looks that way in the brush drawing. Now I have been interested in Chinese art for a long time, but how well could I read it? I decided to find out.
I emailed a friend who is an academic in China whom I thought would know. No reply yet as it is too soon. It is about 7.20 a.m. in Beijing as I type this. Let's find out how right or wrong my subjectivity is. I expect I will hear by Monday so you will be able to either pat me on the back, or laugh and point, or perhaps this particular academic is too busy to respond right away. You might want to bet on the outcome among yourselves after you read this about the artist in context. (just above "five dynasties" heading)
