Paintings for the Future
Hilma af Klint was a visionary, guided by her spirituality which lent her ideas that were, in her time, seen as too out-there. Being a woman didn’t help her case either, so when she died, she insisted on putting a two-decade timer on the work, in hopes that maybe in the future people might be a bit more progressive. It took longer than that, but here we are today, and we all have a much greater appreciation than the people of the past.
Personally, I’ve never been hugely, genuinely ‘spiritual,’ so I’m not sure if I can explore spirituality in an authentic enough manner for my assignment. It doesn’t have a big place in my identity, although I would like if it did. I’ve always found it fascinating but could never relate very much. Even with this position on the subject, I think it’d be dishonest to say spirituality just doesn’t play a role in my own work. The idea of the soul is a recurring theme in my art and the lyrics I write—but I’ve never truly practiced religion or even meditation for longer than a few days. Still, art like af Klint’s could help me since I’ve always been drawn to art more than anything else. Religion as a whole will probably never get through to me, but I understand a few its purposes, as it provides a simpler explanation for a lot of the world’s unknowns. For example, in You Are the universe, Deepak Chopra and Menas C. Kafatos write that “physics can’t actually trace the cosmos back to the absolute beginning,” so it makes sense that, for lack of a better option, humans would seek another example. We are a curious, impatient species after all.
What I do believe is that we are all connected to
the universe, but there doesn’t have to be any deity controlling that. The
universe is wild and random in the truest sense, we were bound to spring up at
some point-- but we were created by this universe, not just dropped in by some
outside force. For my project, my idea is to borrow from Alex Eckman-Lawn’s
style as well as a bit of the second and third images in this post which would
give me the holistic connectivity edge that seems common in her works.
Eckman-Lawn’s style fits more in line with my original pitch, which would see
me essentially peeling back layers of my identity. The soul could find its way into my project, but as I said, it's not a particularly big part of my identity as is.
No comments:
Post a Comment