Michele Beck: Mar 13, 2011

Is there a spirit world? Do energies exist beyond what we see?

For most of my life, the answer to these questions have been “no”. Occasionally, I tried to think this way without much luck. I see other people gain a lot of comfort from incorporating a spiritual dimension into their lives although when I have tried it out myself, it always felt a bit fake and fabricated. Recently though, as I have been reading more about prehistoric figurines, shamans, ritual and trance, I am starting to find some connections between the existence of an invisible, spiritual world and my art and life, which makes some sense to me.

I recently watched a BBC television series called How Art Made The World (available from Netflix) that discussed a hypothesis to the meaning and origin of cave painting developed by the South African archeologist David Lewis-Williams. He looks to the cave paintings of the San people of Southern Africa in order to understand earlier cave paintings such as those at Lascaux. He postulates that this type of art is spiritual in nature relating to visions experienced during ritualistic trance-dancing The unrealistic animals, humans and anthropomorphic figures seen in the cave paintings are evoked during a state when the body is no longer in the everyday world, but had reached an altered state. It was interesting watching the program and seeing a shaman chant, convulse and pass out and have the narrator say that this is where the images come from.

Rock painting, and drawing, of San trance dance

I don’t remember anyone saying anything like this when I studies art history at New York University. Shamans entering alternative realities were not part of the discussion in the classroom then. Like the history of the United States, there is a lot of information left out of the discussion. Privileging a more European perspective, we talked more about measurements, timelines and some psychology as a way to understand and explain the history of art.

I am accustomed to looking at art in very concrete ways and I think much art today is made from this very tangible, verbal place. In the contemporary world, art is about concepts, ideas, and money, leaving little room for dreams, spirits and altered consciousness. Ultimately for me, it’s about finding an equilibrium. As a community, we are out of balance on this issue, but I would like to find a way to incorporate some spirit into the concrete.

Michele Beck

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Spirits in the concrete