Of course Art need means. But at the same time, the Spirit blows where it wills. The Spirit also blows in the banal, in adhesive tapes in a museum in North Rhine-Westphalia.
That may not be beautiful, but it may be spirited.
Part 2
I.L. What means does art have to express the Spiritual in visible form? Last year there was a William Turner exhibition in Munich. Turner used the means of his time to try to depict light, sometimes nothing but light. That is one of the reasons why he became famous but was also ridiculed by his contemporaries. One of your paintings is called ‘Alignment’, where you have arranged creations of nature in a circle and a dazzling bright light radiates from the centre. What means does art have to express the Spiritual in visible form? I’m thinking of symbols – you like to use the egg, for example – but also proportions like the sectio aurea, the golden ratio, or colours. What do you use in your works?
A.B. Of course you need means. But at the same time, the Spirit blows where it wills. The Spirit also blows in the banal, in adhesive tapes in a museum in North Rhine-Westphalia. That may not be beautiful, but it may be spiritually motivated. That’s why I don’t see beauty as a dictate, but as an active means of expressing the Spiritual. So, the answers to your question about which means are suitable for this purpose refer back to my first sentence. I said that as an artist you develop and train the strength within you to align the greatest contradictions that are at work in us – feelings, reason, future, past, everything that every person experiences in their own individual way, in which they are active, with which they are built, with which they themselves build their lives – to align all of this with this wholeness, which is a spiritual dimension that cannot be grasped by the individual part, but at the same time grasps and also maintains each individual part. And if this alignment succeeds in the process of their artistic training, then artists are free to express this as they wish, in their own way and in a way that corresponds to the Zeitgestalt and to the conditions of the time. This can be a social sculpture, as Beuys postulated. It doesn’t have to be a picture on the wall. It can be a wonderful way of conducting a conversation with another human being. It can be an encounter with other human beings or with nature which is created through one’s open heart. These are all the means of art.
The means of the painter are, of course, colours and shapes, and the relationship between emptiness and the diversity of Creation, void as the pure ground – as in Malevich’s Black Square as the primal void – in the beginning there was nothingness, so emptiness as the basis, as potential, from which everything is formed that we then recognise as diversity. And because we are creatures addicted to orientation, we search in diversity for accordance with our own selves. We collectivise our individual partial identity with others into groups and parties and then look for wholeness in this way. But the unified whole is more than the sum of its small and large parts. It is that which contains everything. And because it contains everything, it is also in every detail, and it unites opposites.
Therefore, I only have to delve into my innermost, into my centre, and there I am connected to the whole. Every person has that connection. This is the key. In every person there is a specific characteristic that enables their specific connection to the All-One. Basically, it is about developing the ability to prepare for it, to open up to the flow of energy that comes from the whole and condenses into forms. And here the artist naturally works with proportions. There are, after all, several possibilities for creating forms that open up meaning through the senses. First of all, there are universal polar principles, such as circles and rays, which work together to produce, in a playful manner so to speak, the vital figures of the spiral in almost unlimited variations. That’s why all our aspects of life show spiral forms. Then we also have the means of statics and dynamics, which complement each other in symmetry and the golden ratio. In our body and also in pictures, we need a balance, a balance between statics and dynamics. This applies in nature and is particularly evident and wonderfully recognisable in the dancing geometry of flowers, and also in music. So, as fundamental means of design, we have the circle and the ray, from which the spiral emerges, the balanced calm of symmetry, the dynamics of the golden ratio and colours.
When we use it to create and act, then something universally valid opens up through our subjective existence. It is perceived by other people in their subjective way, in their eyes, as such. It is not the case that what we perceive as beautiful is only in the eye of the beholder – I don’t quite agree with that saying. There are certain basic harmonies that act on human vibration. At some point, something is getting too bright, too loud. There is a balance, the resonances to the effect, which are not arbitrary. That’s why I like to say, somewhat ironically: ‘Yes, it is in the eye of the beholder, but look at the eye of the beholder closely. It is usually beautiful.’
The phrase says that the prerogative of interpretation lies in the eye of the beholder, whether they find something beautiful or not. This is partly true, it is culturally and personally conditioned, but it is not completely true. Otherwise, all the qualitative power of beauty would be arbitrary. And that is not the case. Harmony as well as an octave in music is not arbitrary, but absolutely precise. It is a law. And these laws underlie creation and we are in resonance with them, because we originated from them. They are embodied in us. When we resonate with them, we experience an opening and an affirmation of our own existence, which makes us capable of receiving intuitions. For this, we have to create space. This is our inner workshop. This is for me a very important thing I would recommend to every person to take very good care of this inner workshop, to keep the work table clean and also to really work on it. This job is irredeemable. The workshop corresponds to the apace of the heart space where the alchemical processes take place. This is the artistic work of designing and opening up and manifesting in the inner studio.
I.L. Ancient wisdom teachings already knew that the whole world and also the human body are built according to vibrational laws. This was recognised in sacred Indian dance. For example, the Vedas provide knowledge about synaesthesia, about colours, sounds and structures, and about how vibrational states are related and interact. The question is to what extent we will be able, as you say, become enabled to resonate with cosmic vibrational laws. Through our being here as physical as well as spirit-soul beings, these vibrational laws can take effect. If we are present in the world and in life in this way, then this can radiate outwards as a beauty that can also be seen and felt in encounters between people.
A.B. Yes, definitely. This is the inner work that each person undertake in themselves by harmonizing their streaming diversity, which is constantly happening, with the individual from the outside, with the individual from the inside, with physical levels, with karmic levels, with emotional levels, and harmonising or creatively transforming them. It is an incredible complexity. We take it for granted in our everyday lives, it is a flowing dynamic. Every human being is a microcosm, a world. To realise this entire dimension in all its complexity is already a big step. It is important to approach this complexity without the need for an external enemy. To face this complexity means to have the courage to face the disorientation associated with it. Where is my identity? Where am I really at home? What is this passage from birth to death all about? Where is the meaning in that? The meaning of all these dimensions and questions, all these realities of feelings, other-directed borrowings that make me human, of conditioning, gender imprints that we have embodied and that we represent? As an artist, I would say that this is my raw material, this is my projection screen, these are my colours, these are my binding agents and with that I can get started, I can open myself up to re-create. I can’t choose the raw material that I am. I don’t want to waste time and energy by saying: I’d rather not be German, not a man, I’d rather live in the 15th century… I can struggle with and agonise about everything I have been given. I can always blame the circumstances for my being stuck. The artistic element consists in saying, okay, that’s my basic material. I work with that. I try to transform my trauma into a dream B. And then I take initiative for myself and am responsible for what I express. If I’m aggressive, fine, I can be, but if I transform such aggression into intelligent humour or if I transform it into a great drum solo, then it’s possibly invigorating for others, but certainly for myself, because it frees me from my ghetto. All this creating and transforming is essentially a work of liberation from the incessantly emerging ghettos that enclose consciousness.
I.L. It is a question of consciousness, whether I experience myself as a fragment, as an antagonist, or whether I recognise the big picture and feel that ultimately – despite all diversity and individuality – I am part of this big picture and striving towards it. As an artist, you have also been very concerned with polarities and how they can be brought into harmony.
A.B. Yes, polarities are important. I distinguish between duality and polarity. In contrast to the good-evil duality, polarity is an expression of unity. As a creative element, polarity always results in a new unity. That is the principle of life. Polarity always gives rise to a new creative dimension, because all life, all evolutionary life, is always oriented towards a higher level of organisation. The spiritual dimension, this whole, invites material being and becoming to align itself with a higher, more complex whole. Then we also grow vertically and do not merely proliferate in breadth. But if we do not choose polarity as a field of tension, which is not comfortable, if we cannot stand polarity and create nothing out of it, but fall into the good-evil trap, then we create our identity through division and say: Here am I, I am the good one and you are there and you are the bad one. The enemy images are the trick to create identity that simulates an apparent wholeness, but always remains a partial aspect. Through enmity, there will never be constructive elements of growth. Instead of gardens, there are battlefields. This is not beneficial in the long term. The destructive element is, of course, also part of the whole. It is the moment when the egg breaks open. The perfect shell has to be cracked so that life can unfold. But if destruction becomes a principle, ruled by fear, and is not the necessary breaking open of more mature forms that surrender themselves for life, then there is no wholeness. Those who build their identity on an image of the enemy and are neither willing to take back all the forces and dynamics that they outsource into the enemy image nor to realise their wholeness with these forces cannot develop into a whole human being.
I.L. So we as human beings are on a path of experience and act with forces that we do not yet really master and understand. What then is the connecting element between people, despite all their differences and all the violence that prevails between them? What is the bottom line?
A.B. It is joy, it is love. Ultimately, it is love. That is a word that is, of course, used in very different ways. Ultimately, it is that which is willing to surrender itself. Nothing would exist if light did not give of itself. Light surrenders permanently itself to every being. The connecting element is giving. Love is effective in giving. Love is an expression of the perfect whole; love is always an expression of abundance. We, however, remain in a state of lack and then demand love, light power for ourselves; to compensate for the lack, which is okay. If we want to give love, we have to give from our abundance, but then we have to come into our abundance first. Love is the power that overflows, that has much, much more than it needs itself. The sun has much more power than it needs for itself, so it surrenders itself. That is the divine principle. It gives itself freely. That is why the creative is an expression of the power of love. It is about the expression of abundance. And that is happiness, true human happiness. When we are joyful, when we are inspired, when we succeed at something, no matter on which level, then we are happy, then our hearts are full, then we want to share, give, give away We have abundant aliveness within us, but we are not aware of this abundance, or don’t dare to trust ourselves for fear of losing what is theirs. In this respect, it is truly a task of consciousness to discover ourselves as beings of abundance and to implement this in reality.
I.L. Wonderful. That is a nice conclusion. Thank you very much for this conversation.
