I WAS POKING AROUND THE BOOKSTORE of the Art Institute of Chicago several months ago, and I found the short book called Christian and Oriental Philosophy in Art, by Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947). I jumped; he is an acknowledged early pioneer of integral thought, and appears to me, after devouring the book, to be a ‘proto-patron’ for the contemporary, post-ironic art world. He was a curator at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and a historian, philosopher, orientalist, linguist, and prolific writer. In his work, he covered the philosophic and religious experience of the entire premodern world, east and west, and especially medieval Europe and classical India. For pete’s sake, he knew 36 languages!

And so the first sentence I read as I initially cracked open the book: ‘Art imitates Nature in her manner of operation.’ [Cue cavalcade of inner bells and whistles.] For me this statement has become a kind of koan. I must point out that ‘Nature’ here is not meant as the environment or natural world, but instead is synonymous with ‘God, Goddess, Spirit, Natura naturans, Deus,’ or (my personal favorite) ‘Creatrix.’

He riffs on the ‘Art imitates Nature in her manner of operation’ statement nearly ten times in his 150-page book. I don’t think he does so because he likes to wield the rhetorical hammer, or that he had a delinquent editor. I think that perhaps the age in which his numerous essays were conceived overly marginalized Spirit from the “what is art?” discussion, and so he reacted to the Zietgeist in which he lived.



Coomaraswamy as Art Philosopher

In general, he shows he is sympathetic to the notion of art as a spiritual activity. In addition to his work to explore the Perennial Philosophy, what I appreciate is his ability to discuss art along the dimensions of the artist, the artwork, and the interpretation of art; his work is startling in its scope. But let me take the discussion of why I like him one step further. If there is a single criterion I use to determine whether an art philosopher’s writing is useful or not, perhaps it is that he or she clearly evokes the recognition which equates with the saying that “talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”

You may think this is counter-intuitive, but let me explain. Naturally, any art writer has to authentically engage the question of “what is art?” and live fully into that question with their heart and soul via the craft of extended prose. Yet the writer must simultaneously realize that talking about art creation is at its best mere “pointing at the moon.” (And at worst, extremely unhelpful.) The best writers evoke and inspire, just as the best art does.

When Coomaraswamy writes that art philosophers should primarily “break down the superstition of ‘Art’ and that of the ‘Artist’ as a privileged person, of another sort than ordinary men,” we can know that Coomaraswamy is not trying to prescriptively put a box around the creative process as much as direct the discussion towards what can be of actual use to artists and art lovers. Artists are not on a mountain, at least not anymore; ‘the Beautiful’ is an inherent potential in all sentient beings. Artists may lead the way, as the avant garde can lie behind our every breath; but it appears increasingly inadequate to have a moral embrace that is anything less than a great big planetary bear hug.



Coomaraswamy as Coach of Artists

In some ways, being an artist is as simple as having a regular subscription to the Muse, as if it is a channel on cable. I am only partly kidding. Just this week, film director Sophia Coppola revealed at the Academy Awards that her Muse for her film Lost in Translation was none other than Bill Murray, the film’s leading man; she wrote her wonderful screenplay with him in mind. How brilliant! Ole’ Bill doesn’t exactly remind me of any of the nine goddesses per se (except maybe Euterpe, the Giver of Pleasure; this is especially the case for his ‘Dalai Lama as golfer’ monologue in Caddyshack.)

If that is what helped Coppola conceive her masterpiece, then so be it! We aren’t living in ancient Greece anymore. Let’s release the idea of the Muse from those origins; in doing so, perhaps we can negate the mythic part yet preserve the inspiration part. Perhaps the Muse is whatever inspires the artist, period. The form or clothing of the Muse is beside the point; it can be Bill Murray, it can be John Candy, it can be Gilda Radner; your muse can be the bass-o-matic if you like! All that matters is whether the artist is moved or not. As Coomaraswamy writes,

The artist’s operation is dual, in the first place intellectual or ‘free’ and in the second place manual and ‘servile.’ ‘To be properly expressed,’ as Meister Eckhart says, ‘a thing must proceed from within, moved by its form.’

and,

It is the business of art not only to ‘teach’, but also to ‘move’....; and no eloquence can move unless the speaker [or artist] himself has been moved.

He expounds upon the dual realities of being an artist. For Coomaraswamy, the artist is simultaneously ‘free and servile’; he/she is ‘theoretical and operative’; and yet again: ‘inventive and imitative.’ All this means that he well-understands the interior meets exterior swirling dynamics of artistry. Perhaps he best summarizes this by saying:

The [person] incapable of contemplation cannot be an artist, but only a skillful workman; it is demanded of the artist to be both a contemplative and a good workman.

As I see it, creativity is a state of consciousness and a body of discrete energy that the artist is driven to preserve in plasticity. Artists prone to contemplation in its many forms experience these more than occasionally; in fact, some meditations are specifically designed to bring forth just these sorts of experiences, as are some creativity exercises. Coomaraswamy encourages artists to continue their deep explorations along these lines; art for him is a means, the ends of which can reach none other than to the manifest essence of “face to face.”

Coomaraswamy on Artifacts

Consciousness, while increasingly fundamental to any discussion of art creation, is nonetheless not the entire story, per se. Art is not only about interiors, but it is about “things” too. Sophia Coppola, even as she contemplated her inner Bill Murray, nonetheless made something concrete and tangible; a person can hold in their hands the DVD of the film, put in to the machine, and sense the audio/visual brilliance via his or her sensorimotor apprehension. The experience of her film can be reproduced around the world, over and over again. Why? As Coomaraswamy would say, it is because her vision, her consciousness, didn’t just remain in her interior; she went further to produce an artifact.

What is an artifact, and why such an archeological term? Essentially, the term artifact is synonymous with ‘artwork.’ So that is the very short definition of the word. But Coomaraswamy offers a bit more perspective on why calling artwork an ‘artifact’ can illuminate our understanding of art.

Art, from the Medieval point of view, was a kind of knowledge in accordance with which the artist imagined the form or design of the work to be done, and by which he reproduced this form in the required or available material. The product was not called ‘art,’ but an ‘artifact,’ a thing ‘made by art’; the art remains in the artist.

Artwork then can be thought of a kind of archeological remnant left in the blazing trails of emerging inspiration. The actual material entity that is Lost in Translation is an artifact, which was produced primarily by Sophia Coppola’s vision-consciousness, and her unique invention. Her “movie” is just not only in Sophia, but through the modern miracle of film, it is in the viewers. To this, Coomaraswamy says works of art are reminders; i.e., they ‘put us in mind again’. Artworks are ‘supports of contemplation’ that ‘attune our own distorted modes of thought to cosmic harmonies.’

I would suggest that artwork-artifacts are sometimes a reminder of who you were, sometimes a reflection of who you presently are, and sometimes a transcendent glimpse of who you can become. Again Coomaraswamy: “Beauty is at once a symptom and an invitation”; a symptom of what Kandinsky called the artist’s “inner need” as well as a beckoning and call to bring forth transcendence via art.



Coomaraswamy as Interpreter of Art

The timeless $64,000 Question: so how are we as viewers and lovers of art to best understand the works of art of our age? The art writings of Ken Wilber have begun to show that there are many different schools of art interpretation, and that a particularly comprehensive interpretation can emerge by first acknowledging each and then consciously taking all of them into account, as best as is possible. While not as comprehensive as Wilber, Coomaraswamy nonetheless echoes this sentiment:

The study of art, if it is to have any cultural value will demand … an understanding and acceptance of the whole point of view from which the necessity for the work arose, and in the second place a bringing to life in ourselves of the form in which the artist conceived the work and by which he judged it. The student of art, if he is to do more than accumulate facts, must also sacrifice himself: the wider the scope of his study in time and space, the more must he cease to be a provincial, the more he must universalize himself, whatever may be his temperament and training.

Interpreters and viewers cannot literally step into the shoes of the artist. That particular virtual reality software hasn’t yet been scripted. But ‘bringing to life in ourselves of the form in which the artist conceived the work’ can mean an extended meditation upon the artwork, from the point of view of its creative roots, and its creative source. It is an opening process, opening into the artwork, as the artwork. We have to try to touch in ourselves what the artist touches. In an extended embrace, the boundaries blur and fade away.

I just love his phrase “must also sacrifice himself.” That is another way of saying: end fixation, end attachment, see beyond your comfortable limits. Or simply, die to bring forth a flowered rebirth.

It is just because so much is demanded that the study of ‘art’ can have a cultural value, that is to say may become a ‘means of growth.’ How often our college courses require of the student much less than this!

Indeed! But perhaps that last part is about to change…



Conclusion

According to Coomaraswamy, art can transmit a gnosis, or esoteric knowledge of spiritual truth. It is precisely here where methods to gain such spiritual or essential knowledge align directly with the practice of art. We know intuitively that a person cannot talk about something authentically if one does not already have some sort of experience of it; art is no different. Therefore the crux of the matter: how do artists gain essential knowledge?

If what humans need from artists are imitative depictions of energies just poking forth over the subtle horizons, and just behind our every breath, then artists themselves ought to expand and embrace in these directions, else the art intended to depict such energy will fail on the simple grounds of authenticity. For Coomaraswamy, ‘art is a conscience about form—a conscience in both senses of the word, as a rule and as an awareness.’ Or put differently:

[Artists] impress on primary matter a 'world picture' already painted by spirit on the canvas of spirit.

Does it get richer than that? — painted by spirit on the canvas of spirit. It is another koan.

So artists, I ask can we explore our art as a conscience about form? Can we pursue mastery of our craft, while at the same time strengthening our contemplative muscles? Mind you, Coomaraswamy is an expert in art that is at least 500 years old. As best as he can tell, these are the kinds of ideas that some artists intuitively and unconsciously used in their art making way before most of us can trace back our family trees. We are newbies at this particular dinner table. Art, Morals, and Science are not longer housed under a single roof, thankfully; artists of ancient day were not so fortunate. But does that mean we ignore the paths blazed by those before us? Can we be humble in the face of several millennia of creative artifacts that precede us?

We of the contemporary postmodern age are, as the rock band Living Colour intoned, ‘children of concrete and steel,’ as well as I might add an endless list of sociocultural “isms.” We have a tremendous amount of art within a day’s drive. Some artists understandably tire of theory, but in reality complete avoidance of theory is a theory itself; humans are metaphysical creatures. We have this thing called ‘self-reflection,’ inescapably. Sometimes, we are spooked by a discussion of art that includes the words “consciousness” and “meditation.” But must we be, as a rule? These are but focused means of self-reflection; focused means of, in a sense, being human, and bringing forward that which makes us human.

So what are ways we can negate the dirty bathwater (if it exists in the use of ‘spirit in art’) yet preserve the divine baby? Can we accept ‘spirit’ into the vernacular of contemporary art? Would the term “essence” be better? Does it matter?