Spiritual Research: Report on the Visual Art Section

Transcription

Issue No. 36
Autumn-Winter 2011
Spiritual Research: Report on the Visual Art Section
Conference at the Goetheanum, Nov. 24-27, 2011
by Michael Howard
I
f the Visual Art Section meeting at the Goetheanum in November 2010 was shrouded in a dark and troubling mood,
the gathering this year was imbued with a more light-filled and
creative spirit of renewal.
That evening Rik ten Cate warmly welcomed the 70+ members
of the Art Section gathered in the Sudatelier (“South Studio”) of
the Goetheanum. The Social Ethic Motto given by Rudolf Steiner
to Edith Maryon was spoken in both German and English. Rik
then gave a detailed report of all that had happened since the
June conference. The following were among the main points:
1. Rik introduced the four other Council Members; Christiane
Schwarzweller, Martin Zweifel, Gottfried Caspar, and Michael
Howard. He also introduced Tanja Hietsch, who is Seija Zimmermann’s assistant, but who in recent months had done much
of the administrative work for our Section.
2. Rik gave an update on the revising of the contact list of Section
members worldwide, emphasizing that a final letter will go out
shortly in an effort to have everyone who regards themselves an
active member of the Art Section to confirm their contact info
or provide an update.
Rik ten Cate Opening the Conference at the Goetheanum
Significant steps had already been taken at our June 2011 meeting, concluding with the strong mandate given to Rik ten Cate
of Holland to serve as a Section Coordinator for the coming year
until our conference in May 2012. Rik had been urged to form
a Coordinating Council to work with him in attending to the
essential business of the Art Section. This included the forming
of the two Art Section conferences that traditionally took place
in November and May/June of each year. Most particularly, Rik
and the Coordinating Council were charged with facilitating the
process of finding new organizational forms, and in particular
a new organ of leadership, that would serve the future development of the Art Section.
On the afternoon of Thursday, November 24th,before the conference proper began, two First Class Lessons were held in which
the Fourth Recapitulation Lesson and Lesson Five were read in
German, followed by an open conversation.
3. While a year ago the Art Section had no budget, Rik was
pleased to report that we have had a modest but adequate budget
since June and a comparable budget of E 60,000 is in place for
2012. In addition, our Section has received 2 gifts totaling E1500.
Rik went on to introduce the two main subjects of this conference, and outlined the different ways they would be addressed:
Conference participants in the SudAtelier with E. Wagner paintings
Conference and E. Wagner paintings in the Sudatelier, Goetheanum
Elisabeth Wagner explaining her watercolor series
Gottfried Caspar, Seija Zimmermann, Christof Wiechert
Sculpture by Rik
ten Cate
Christiane Schwarzweiler speaking, Martin Zweifel to left
Karl-Dieter Bodack addresses the conference circle
2
Dead pear tree in front of Wood House behind Goetheanum
Autumn-Winter 2011
Issue 36
This issue was produced in the USA by David Adams. Send articles and corrrespondence for Issue
37 (Spring 2012) to Marion Briggs at the address below. Selected back issues are also available.
International Art Section Website: http://internationalartsection.bing.com
Blogsite of the Art Section in North America: www.northamericanartsection.blogspot.com
Art Section Contacts
Goetheanum Tanja Hietsch
Dornach, Switzerland
Tel: +41 61 706 4364/Fax 706 4314
Email: tanja.hietsch@
goetheanum.ch, [email protected]
New Zealand Roger & Gertrud Leitch
11 Woodford Road, Mt. Eden 1003
Tel: 09 6315907
Email: [email protected]
Sweden Filip Henley, Prisma Arkitekter, Tuna gard SE, S153 30, Järna
U.K. Marion Briggs
10 Hoathly Hill, West Hoathly
West Sussex RH19 4SJ
Tel: 0870 766 9657
Australia Brigitta Gallaher
28 Rembrandt Dr., Middle Cove NSW2068
Tel. 02 9882 62 99
Canada Bert Chase, 4700 Mountain Highway, North Vancouver, BC V7K 2Z9
Tel: +1 604 988-6458/Fax 988-6451
Holland Rik ten Cate, Bekensteinselaan44,
Bekensteinselaan 44, 3817 AL Amersfoort
Tel: +31 0033 4616432
USA
Michael Howard, Life Forms Studio
528 Pine Street,
Amherst, MA 01002-3074
Tel: 001 413-549-5954
Italy Doris Harpers
Via Venzia 30
Oriago di Mira, Venice 30034
Tel. 0039 041472881
Van James, 1096-F Wainiha Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96825
Tel: +1 808 395 1268
Subscriptions Annual Subscriptions (2 issues) UK L12.00 US $19.00 CHF19.00 Euro 14.00 NZD 24.00 AUD 17.00
Make checks payable to “Art Section” and send to:
United Kingdom
North America Australia New Zealand
Marion Briggs
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Mark Baxter
Roger Leitch
10 Hoathly Hill, West Hoathly
14487 Burlington Parkway
Level 2, 37-39 The Corso 11 Woodford Road, Mt. Eden
West Sussex RH19 4SJ
Penn Valley, California 95946 Manly, NSW 1095
Tel: 09 6315907
Tel: 0870 766 9657
Tel: 001 530 432 8712
Tel: (02) 9977 7648
[email protected] [email protected]
[email protected]; www.bja.net.au
Contents of This Issue
Spiritual Research: Report on the November Conference
Report on the September Meeting in Dornach
60th Birthday of Christian Hitsch: Near to the Ideal
Form – “A Method for Resounding Limits” Christian Hitsch in North America
Organic Forms: A Proposal
Restoring the Balance of Tao through Art
Report from Free Columbia
1
8
10
11
14
17
18
20
The Electronic Light Art of Leo Villareal
21
Imre Makovecz
27
Lee Ufan: “Marking Infinity” 28
Book Reviews:
The Goetheanum Cupola Paintings ....
29
Easter– Rudolf Steiner’s Watercolour Painting
30
Wharton Esherick books
31
Image-Arts from the Perspective of Spiritual Reality
32
3
to Rudolf Steiner’s painting sketches. As the fruit of a life’s work,
it deserved a more in-depth presentation than the occasion allowed, but it was inspiring nevertheless.
1.Exploring the question of spiritual scientific research within
the realm of the visual arts.
a. Two full lectures by Pieter van der Ree and Heinz Georg
Haussler;
b. 8 workshops meeting three times each.
2.Continuing the process of reforming the Art Section.
a. Four formal presentations by Willi Grass, Espen Tharaldsen,
Michael Howard, and Christiane Schwarzweller;
b. Four discussion groups meeting two times, plus one session
for reporting;
c. Two plenum discussions.
I. Spiritual Research in the Realm of the Visual Arts:
1. Lecture by Pieter van der Ree:
Pieter began with the question: How can spiritual-scientific
research in architecture contribute to mainstream architecture?
He took us on a journey through the history of architecture from
the igloo to the 2007 BMW Welt Building in Munich by Coop
Himmelblau (see photograph). Through this, Pieter drew our
attention to the incredible freedom given to the architect today
through the technological developments of recent decades that
no longer limit architecture to the box. But all this
freedom begs the question: Are we any closer to
architecture truly serving human life and human
development?
Rik concluded his introduction to the conference with three
questions intended to guide our deliberations about the future
of the Art Section:
More and more buildings draw upon the full spectrum of the language of form and have an organic,
free-form quality to them, but what is needed for
this freedom of form to more truly serve the human being? Pieter’s main point was that we have
a long way to go in developing the capacities for
a living architecture, for this depends on our developing to a much greater extent the capacity for
living thinking. Pieter concluded by showing some
examples of his students’ work to indicate how the
schooling of architects must strengthen the middle
Coop Himmelblau BMW Welt Building Munich, 2003-2007, view from crosswalk
realm, where living, pictorial thinking can mediate
between abstract thinking, on the one hand, and the
1. What does the Art Section need to realize its spiritual tasks?
practical demands of the physical world, on the other.
2. What organizational and leadership forms will serve those
needs?
2. Lecture by Heinz Georg Haussler:
3. What process will bring us to the new leadership of the Art
Section?
Heinz Georg recalled how from his earliest days as a student he
had the question: Are there laws of sculpture? He soon realized
that no one could answer this question for him, that he would have
to search for answers himself. He then described the profound
and humbling shock of seeing the work of Michelangelo – what
was left to achieve in sculpture? In 1961 he had a further shock
when he saw the second Goetheanum and the photographs and
models of the first Goetheanum. Much of his subsequent work
has been based on exploring the relationships between the formative forces at work in Michelangelo’s sculptures and those of
the Goetheanum buildings.
The evening concluded with Elisabeth Wagner saying a few
words about her research with regard to developing 8 sets of 12
paintings that were exhibited in the Sudatelier throughout the
conference (see photographs). Each set of 12 paintings started
with placing on successive pages a different colored wash according to Steiner’s twelvefold color circle related to the zodiac.
To each of these different ground colors Elisabeth brought the
same sequence of four colors.
Each set of 12 paintings was based on the four colors Rudolf
Steiner indicated were related to a particular vowel sound.
The first color was the color of the planet to which the vowel
belonged. For example, U is related to Saturn and the color for
Saturn is blue, so the first color brought to each of the 12 different
ground colors was blue. This was followed by another blue that
is the “movement color” Steiner gave for the eurythmy gesture
of U, followed by yellow as the “feeling color” of U, and lastly,
violet as the “character color” of U.
This methodical approach to building up the colors of a painting led to an incredible metamorphosis of motifs through each
sequence of twelve paintings, some of which were clearly related
Heinz quoted Steiner from 1912 in which he indicated there
was a relationship between the fourfold human being and the
four main reclining figures of Michelangelo’s Medici Tomb in
Florence. This led him to some forty years of study and drawing these figures, searching to discover and experience deeply
their archetypal gestures, and eventually publishing his findings
in a book. More important than any particular results was the
process of asking questions and pursuing them through artistic
means. This is what anthroposophy can offer as a new path for
art and artists.
4
Heinz then described the evolution of another research project
ii) The Riddle of Counter Colors in the Small Cupola with Peter
Stebbing.
iii) Painting as an Inner Schooling with Doris Harpers.
iv) Developing the Capacities for Creating Living Architecture
with Pieter van der Ree.
v) Spiritual Research in the Visual Arts with Michael Howard.
vi) Architecture and Mystery Architecture with Espen Tharaldsen.
vii) An Epistemology of the Visual Arts with Willi Grass.
viii) Carving the Schreinerei Pear Tree with Barbara Schnetzler
and Steffen Marreel (working on designing and carving a pear
tree in front of the Schreinerei that had died, see photograph, p.2).
II. The Future of the Visual Art Section
1. Formal Presentations:
Four short presentations on the future of the Section were offered:
1. Willi Grass affirmed that the basic aim of the School of
Spiritual Science is to cultivate the practice of spiritual scientific research. However, this is still little understood among the
members. As for finding new forms for the Art Section, Willi
reminded us that the forms are not for us but are to serve human
evolution. Can we simply invent new forms of this kind, or are
the forms established at the Christmas Conference of 1923 still
the appropriate forms needed now and into the future? The present forms of the Society and School give every member great
freedom to take initiative with others.
Michelangelo Tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici 1519-1524 marble, New
Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence (Figures of Lorenzo, Night, & Day)
The task of a Leader is not to judge but to support and coordinate
the initiative of the members. Without a Leader it is difficult to
unify all the parts as a whole. The challenges of the School cannot
be answered by one Section but must be addressed among the
members of all Sections. As members of the School we need to
research the future. In the 5th Statute Rudolf Steiner is clear that
Dornach is only one of many possible centers for anthroposophy.
that occupied him for the last 20+ years – namely, the carving
of 8 large columns in marble. With the help of the columns in
the “Paradise” (entrance hall) of the medieval Cloister Church
in Maulbronn, he pointed to the meaning of the shaft-ring (see
photograph). This ring in the middle of the columns recalls the
belt (“girdle”) in the costume of the Knights Templar. It divided
the upper and lower body of the monk. It is also the transformed
“Sen Ring” or seal (cartouche) ring of the ancient Egyptians,
the sign for that which was in possession of the boundaries of
their temples [among other things]. On his own columns Heinz
tried to enliven this “middle” of the columns by bringing it into
movement. His wish was that the heart of the columns would
thus begin to “beat.” His columns only recently were placed in
a village for handicapped, partly wheelchair-bound children in
Germany. There the columns can help the children with their
force of uprightness. They stand in a circle with two in the East
representing Life and Death, two in the South representing
Flowering and Fruiting, two in the West representing Light and
Dark, and two in the North representing Thought and Will. The
vertical columns also bore an intimate relationship to a time in
Heinz’s own life, when he as a result of a difficult accident was
left lying for a long time in a plaster cast and then in a weakened
state had, like a baby, to learn a second time to stand up erect.
3, Research Workshops:
The following workshops explored the question of artistic research in a variety of ways:
i) Two Approaches to Painting with Dorothea Templeton and
Caroline Chanter.
“Paradise” at Cloister Church, Maulbronn, Germany
5
But Dornach has a particular leadership role as a center where all
questions can be brought and seen as a whole. Willi concluded
with three questions:
i) Who are those already perceived to be playing a leadership
role?
ii) How can we foster inter-sectional work?
iii) How is the form of our Society and School still right for the
present and future situation?
2. Espen
Tharaldsen
began with
a quotation from a
1911 lecture
where Rudolf Steiner
suggested
that human
beings today need to
experience
b u i l d i n g s Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt, ca. 2500 B.C.
with “walls
that are not walls.” Espen helped us appreciate this thought
by presenting a brief overview of the evolution of human consciousness through the history of temples, making visible that
the temple is the human being. Whereas the temples of the past
– as with the pyramid – were visible imaginations of the spiritual
brought down to the human level, today the gesture needs to show
how the human being can raise him- or herself up to the spirit. It
is in this sense that we need “walls that are not walls,” or living
spiritual walls. Espen concluded with the view that new forms
cannot be invented but must be born out of the spiritual forces
of the Time. In what way are the spiritual forces that were active
in shaping the Society and School in1923 the same or different
than the forces active today?
3. Michael Howard began by bringing together Willi’s thought
about the form of the Society and School given in 1923 being
the form needed today, with Espen’s thought from Steiner that
humankind needs “walls that are not walls.”
Michael was reminded that elsewhere Rudolf
Steiner had spoken of the need for “living
etheric walls.” This led to the thought that
today we need social forms that are not fixed
social forms, but living, etheric social forms.
The forms of the Anthroposophical Society
and the School of Spiritual Science are to be
understood and worked with as such living
etheric social forms that are not fixed but
remain in living movement. With this in mind
we can avoid the danger of holding on too
tightly to the forms of 1923 without inventing new forms abstractly. The principle of
metamorphosis, made visible in the forms of
the Goetheanum, must be worked with in the
forms of the Society and School.
working within the spiritual stream of the Michael School, and
we must keep in mind that many Section members do not have
the possibility of working very often with other Section members.
Michael then quoted the sentence, “The whole purpose of spiritual
science is to prepare for the sixth cultural epoch.” This suggests a
primary task for the Art Section: How can the arts prepare for the
sixth epoch? One indication Steiner gives is that human beings
will become still more diverse in their inner constitution, such
that it will require quite new capacities to create social harmony
and unity out of such diversity. How can the arts develop the
capacities for a social art that will serve communities of aspiring
ethical individuals? What will leadership look like if there are no
followers but all are leaders? How can we today prepare the way
for such a new form of leadership?
Michael urged that we put more time and effort into building up
individual and local Art Section activity, including in Dornach,
so that we see more clearly that at the local level the leadership
qualities we need to cultivate are the capacities to engage in spiritual research, while the work at the more regional and worldwide
levels calls for leadership in coordination of the individual and
local activity. We have the opportunity to demonstrate in the way
we continue to evolve the form of our Section how an artistic experience of metamorphosis can be applied to the metamorphosis
of the forms of the Society and School.
4. Christiane Schwarzweller noted that the present exhibition
in Dornach, Goetheanum 1:1, which highlights the Goetheanum
itself as a work of art, challenges us to understand this last work
of art from Rudolf Steiner. To understand this building we must
understand the activity it is meant to serve. She used this analogy
to suggest that, if we are looking for the form of the Art Section,
we must likewise look to the activity of the Art Section. For this
reason we might use the Goetheanum as the model for the Art
Section. As the Goetheanum did not appear out of nothing but
arose out of the stream of evolution, we too must try to enter into
the stream of forces that have shaped the
Section in order to envision how it might
metamorphose in a living but spiritually
lawful manner.
Michael affirmed the central importance of
Section activity where we work together in
person, but he suggested two reasons for
strengthening awareness for our individual
Section work. Our involvement in the Section originates in our personal experience of Chartres Cathedral, nave and choir, 13th century
6
Christiane also gave a brief overview of the
history of sacred spaces from Noah’s ark to
Solomon’s temple to Chartres Cathedral, and
eventually to the First and Second Goetheanums. Through the image of the Jachin
and Boaz pillars and their metamorphosis
in the Goetheanum buildings, she suggested
that we are now in a time where we have no
teacher to guide us directly but must guide
ourselves. Through the arts we have the
tools to do this; through art we can learn the
language of the gods and thereby find our
way back to the spiritual worlds. Michael’s
spear of light is a spear of insight, not a spear
for slaying. Through Michael our “I” can
develop the strength to develop freedom in
our thinking, feeling, and willing – and in
this way, find our way to the Christ. Particularly, through art we can develop freedom
in the realm of feeling that leads us to cosmic feeling, to the
spiritual beings working in and through feeling. Freedom in the
realm of willing will allow each individual to realize his or her
individual potential in a way that does not hinder but complements the will of others.
perception – as a model for Section leadership.
3. Regarding the process by which we go forward, in the written
contributions posted on the Section website before the conference, there were some proposals for how to appoint a new leader
or leadership group for the Art Section. At the end of the conference itself it was noted that no proposals had been made about
the leadership consideration process. By inference, as much as by
direct statements, it was evident that everyone supported the form
that emerged last June – namely, that the members name a leading
Coordinator, who in turn would form a Coordinating Council. In
other words, there was widespread accord that we should continue
with the present form, understanding that this would naturally and
organically continue to evolve.
Christiane concluded with the thought that we should not be
overly concerned about what is right or wrong, but open ourselves to seeing what is needed. We should only ensure that no
structure of the Section hinders any individual’s will but allows
each to unfold his or her potential. This is what Rudolf Steiner
intended with the Stiftung proposal of 1911. Perhaps the time
is ripe for us to realize this ideal through our present efforts in
the Art Section.
B. Discussion Groups
There were two sessions in which four discussion groups met
to discuss the future of the Art Section. The three questions Rik
presented the first evening were used to guide the conversation:
1. What does the Art Section need to realize its spiritual tasks?
2. What organizational and leadership forms will serve those
needs?
3. What process will bring us to the new leadership of the Art
Section?
The following is a summary of the points made from the reports
made by each of the four groups. They are organized according
to the three questions above:
Closing Plenum:
Two open plenum sessions filled the final morning with a variety
of announcements – too numerous to record here – as well as
closing thoughts about the process of moving forward and about
our next conference in May. Rik urged that we foster the idea of
not waiting for some leadership group to take an initiative but that
everyone develop their potential to take initiative. For example,
wherever we have a question or interest, we should see it as an
opportunity to take it up as a research question. Furthermore,
we should think about developing ways for people to let others
know of their interests so that they might find ways to collaborate,
whether near or far. He especially encouraged us to take up the
research question of how the arts develop social capacities, on the
one hand, and how art is a meditative path for developing spiritual
organs of perception, on the other hand.
1. Each group explored in their own way why each person
belonged to the Art Section, and what they felt the tasks of the
Section were in the world. The practice of spiritual research
in the sphere of the visual arts was emphasized in each group,
especially the need to meet in person to support each other on
the inner path of developing the capacities for doing spiritual
research. Other tasks mentioned were to cultivate inter-sectional
research activity, to exhibit the work of colleagues, especially
those less known, to tend the need for art trainings, and to find
the language for speaking about the anthroposophical art impulse
in ways that can be understood by our contemporaries.
2. In regard to the form of the Section, including the form of
leadership needed at this time, the following points were made:
i) Some felt we should hold back on the question of a leader
and focus on gaining a fuller picture of Art Section activity
around the world;
ii) We should look to see who has the capacities for different
kinds of initiative such as organizing exhibitions, conferences,
newsletters, coordinating activities and facilitating communications;
iii) The idea of a separate Section for architecture was put
forward;
iv) The difference between a leader and a coordinator, and
the pros and cons of both were debated. Most seem to favor the
idea of the members naming a Coordinator of the Section, who
in turn would form a Coordinating Council;
v) There were different views about whether to have a small
leadership group of 2-3 or a larger group that would include a
wider representation of Section activity around the world, in
order to draw upon a wider scope of capacities;
vi) “Servant leadership” was mentioned in most groups, along
with the picture of the heart – not as a pump but as an organ of
Rik hoped we would find ways to go further with these subjects
at our next conference scheduled for May 17-20, 2012, at the
Goetheanum. Plans also have been set in motion to organize a
large exhibition in the Goetheanum during the May conference,
to which all are invited to contribute 2-3 works.
Lastly, in response to comments and questions about the continuation of the Coordinating Council, all five members of the present
Coordinating Council affirmed their commitment to complete
their task through our conference in May. They also made clear
that the question of who will be Coordinator and who will serve
on the Coordinating Council was an open matter to be discussed
and decided at the May 2012 conference.
7
Closing music with song lyrics from Novalis by
Mozes Foris from Hungary; Rik ten Cate to right.
Report on the September Council Meeting in Dornach
by Rik ten Cate
2. It was this new Section Council (Sektionsrat) that met over the
weekend of September10-11, 2011. We worked on a wide range
of subjects.
i) We began by sharing a little from our biographies as a way to
get to know each other better.
ii) We then discussed the scope of the Art Section work in relation
to the 6 areas outlined below in item #6.
iii) We planned an open conference for November 23/27, 2011.
iv) We talked about the structure of the Section and how the Section will be led in the future, including how to initiate a process
by which a new leadership form can be determined.
I
write this to report on the most recent developments in the Art
Section as of September 22, 2011, on behalf of the International
Art Section Council. I am well aware of the deep concerns many
of you have regarding the future of our Section, and for this
reason I would have liked to write you sooner. However, it is
only after a meeting in Dornach this past weekend of September
10/11, 2011, that I can inform you of a number of concrete decisions and initiatives for going forward.
In this report I will touch on a number of different subjects that,
nevertheless, form a whole. Besides conveying some information that I hope is of interest to you, there are also questions for
you to consider and respond to. Above all, I invite you to see the
evolving situation as one that calls for each of us to participate
as we can in the future forming of the International Art Section.
For those who may not be fully informed about the developments
in the Art Section over the last year, let me begin with a brief
review. At an Art Section meeting in Dornach last November, it
was confirmed by the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical
Society that Ursula Gruber would not continue as Section leader,
that Mechthild Theilmann and Luigi Fiumara, who held the other
two paid positions in our Section, would also not continue as of
January 2011, and that the International Art Section would have
no budget through the Goetheanum for 2011.
Michael Howard and Gottfried Caspar in Dornach
Not surprisingly, the primary focus for the annual International
Art Section conference held last June at the Goetheanum was
to find a way forward in light of this rather dark and troubling
picture. Through heartfelt conversation among ourselves as well
as with the members of the Executive Council, we were able to
end this conference on a much more positive note. Many issues
remained unresolved but there was a spirit of optimism that a
new beginning had been made. In the limited time available,
we were not able to determine a new leader or leadership group
for carrying the Art Section. As an interim step, I was asked to
continue for the coming year the coordinating role I had assumed
since the November 2010 meeting. In addition, I was urged to
form a small group to assist me in this task.
v) We decided what to do about the various forms of communication we need as an international Section.
vi) We also discussed what is needed to establish a healthy working relationship with the Executive Council (Vorstand) and the
Collegium of Section Leaders (Hochschulkollegium).
vii) And we reviewed the budget for the coming year.
Each of the above items is discussed further in what follows. . . .
3. Already in June, an understanding was worked out with Paul
Mackay that provides the International Art Section with a modest
but workable budget for the coming year.
With this overview as background, I am pleased to report on
what has happened since June 2011:
1. As Coordinator of the Art Section I have formed a small circle
of individuals to function as the International Art Section Council
to work with me in addressing the various needs of our Section
for the coming year. The individuals who have agreed to serve
on this Council are:
Christiane Schwarzweller, Hamburg, GERMANY - painting,
installation, music.
Michael Howard, Amherst, MA. USA - sculpture, painting,
drawing.
Gottfried Caspar, Dornach, SWITZERLAND - architecture.
Martin Zweifel, Dornach, SWITZERLAND - architecture.
Rik ten Cate, Amersfoort, NETHERLANDS - sculpture, coordination.
4. Particularly through the active support of Seija Zimmermann,
we have established a healthy working relationship with the Collegium of Section Leaders at the Goetheanum. Arrangements are
in place for regular contact, and for me to participate once a month
in the meetings of the Collegium of Section Leaders.
5. We are actively cultivating contact with people in different
parts of the world where Section activity is being developed – in
particular, Germany (2 groups) and Australia.
6. We have reviewed all the topics that were listed on the blackboard at our June conference concerning the tasks of the International Art Section. We have gathered all these points into 6
main groups:
a) To care for and renew Rudolf Steiner’s art impulse. To seek
8
iii) As we are trying to find new ways of working, we felt the
time was ripe to disband the International Art Section Collegium
that for many years met in November. For this reason, we want to
be clear that this conference is open to all Art Section members.
iv) We have yet to determine which Class lesson will be held and
by whom, but it is our intention to continue the effort to find new
ways of working with the content of the Class as we did last June.
v) The main subject of this conference will be “spiritual research.”
We are inviting people who have some experience doing spiritual research in the realm of art, and who are willing and able to
speak about their methods and not only their results. We will also
form working groups on artistic spiritual research so that through
dialogue we can stimulate each other in our understanding and
practical efforts to do spiritual research in the realm of art.
ways the arts can serve and bring new life to the Anthroposophical Society. To tend the need for artistic schooling.
b) To cultivate consciousness of the spiritual foundations of art,
the role of the Art Section within the School of Spiritual Science,
and the content of the Michael school.
c) To maintain a healthy connection to the other Sections and
Section leaders of the Collegium of Sections (Hochschulkollegium). To be in regular contact with the members of the Art
Section and the Anthroposophical Society.
d) To nurture spiritual scientific research in the realm of the
visual arts. The Art Section offers a forum for forming research
groups that encourage and share the artistic research efforts of
Section members. To exchange new ideas on art and art initiatives through in person meetings and publications.
e) To seek a healthy balance between the inner work and engaging with the contemporary art world.
f) To care for the Goetheanum building and the surrounding
land. To foster a working relationship with those responsible
for the Goetheanum archives
and art collection, the ongoing artistic forming of the
Goetheanum, and graphic
design. To initiate exhibitions
at the Goetheanum and other
venues.
You are warmly invited to
comment on these items indicating what you think should
be left out, changed, or added.
9. The final topic I wish to mention concerns the manner in which
we communicate with each other. We are trying to update our address list, but we would like to bring it more into the 21st century
by using e-mail whenever
possible. For this we need
your help:
i) Would you be so kind as to
send us your e-mail address
if you have one, especially
if you receive this report by
regular mail?
ii) If you do not have access
to e-mail, please let us know
and include your present address so we are clear about
continuing to communicate
with you via regular mail.
iii) Ask your colleagues if
they receive this report as a
letter, and if not, would they
like to? If they do want to
receive this and future letters,
tell them to send us their name, address, telephone number, e-mail
address and profession so we can add them to our contact list with
updated information.
As we try to clean up the various old lists, anyone who does not
contact us may not receive communications in future. Of course we
don’t want this to happen, so please err on the side of contacting
us with your latest contact information. You can send it to Tanja
Hietsch ([email protected]). She will assist Christiane
Schwarzweller with the administration of addresses.
7. In addition, regarding the
question of the future leadership of our Section, we
consider it quite essential to
hear from as many of you as
possible who have thoughts
on this subject. Do you have
suggestions about how we find a new organization for our Section? Should there be one leader or a leadership group of 2-3
or more? Would you like to propose one or more individuals?
Should the leader or leadership group be determined by vote or
by some other means? We have already received a number of
helpful suggestions, but we welcome all suggestions.
We ask you to articulate your thoughts in writing by November
1, 2011. It would be best if you can send your comments to the
following e-mail address: [email protected] or: Rik ten Cate,
Bekensteinselaan 44, 3817 AL, Amersfoort, Netherlands. Unless
you request otherwise, we would like to post all comments on
our website www.internationalartsection.com, so that they can
be widely read and discussed. For our November conference we
will collect and form all these ideas about the leadership question so we can make a presentation and proposal about how to
go forward.
8. As for the November conference, it is still being formed but
here is what we can announce for now (excerpts):
ii) One thought under consideration is that the Art Section work
might be formed according to local or regional activity rather
than strictly according to country.
As you can see, much has happened and much is in process. I
hope this gives you a picture of where we are and the direction
we envision for the Art Section in the coming months. I hope this
picture inspires your interest and motivation to participate actively
in the life of the Art Section. Above all, it is our intention to be an
open group, so any comments are always welcome. If you have
questions, we will do our best to address them as we can. . . .
I wish you all a very good autumn time if you live on the Northern hemisphere, and a fine springtime if you live on the Southern
hemisphere! In any event, everywhere it is the season of the
archangel Michael. I wish you Michael’s strength and good will!
9
For the 60th Birthday oF Christian Hitsch, 2011
hristian Hitsch from Austria was the leader of the international Art Section from 1988 to 2003 and is largely responsible for building
C
up the Art Section to what it is today. Borrowing from a similar recent celebration in the German journal Stil, we present here a few
articles and photographs contributed to remembering and honoring Christian and his work upon his sixtieth birthday.
Near to the Ideal: On a Drawing by Christian Hitsch
by Peter A. Wolf
The Drawing
In the middle a larger group of light and shadows springs up, as
light as a rising fume. At the top we see a third group, which is
swelling up into the light with energy. In just the reverse order, one
could say: the light is sinking down into the dissolving shadows.
All over the drawing the lights and the shadows are interacting,
producing lightness along with gravity.
S
ome time ago, when I once was admiring Christian’s drawings, he gave me one as a present. It is done with a soft pencil
on chamois cardboard and has the unique enchantment of his
own hand (see figure above).
At first sight one sees that it is a “landscape,” outside somewhere
with a group of bushes or young trees. But these words are nearly
too fixed. There is nothing hard in the sense of physical hard
things with contours. Much more one sees a living weaving of
light and transparent shadows and uprising strokes, a weaving
which seemingly produces the impression of growing – especially at those spots where nothing is drawn. These are places
of energy and creating light: the invisible (the undrawn light)
conjures up the visible, the “bushes,” which are rising up and cast
translucent shadows (there are no structures of naturalistic trees).
These distinctive elements are accompanied by some sharp hatchings at the corners above. The left corner gives an indication of
the vault of heaven; the right one is a strong stream that comes
down from, as it were, “cosmic range.” This is like a mighty final
beat of the kettledrum after the various symphonic melodies of
the tender lights and darks.
The places of the (not drawn) light flow together into groups,
and by these groups one’s eyes are led, gliding forth from one to
the next one. So the parts are arranged into a whole composition.
Hints toward an Approach
In the main there are three parts in more or less horizontal layers. A wavy area below shows that this is the earthly “bottom.”
In all, the drawing has a double gesture, both earthlike and cosmic,
so it is near to the creating powers, always movable, changing,
interacting.
10
Once in summertime Christian and I sat in a garden looking at the
corresponding forms of the summer clouds and the vegetation.
We were “drawing” with our eyes without a pencil. I asked him,
“What is touching you in drawing ‘landscapes’”? He did not an-
swer by words but by a little sketch on a paper napkin: Above a
circle for the “sun,” some strokes downward for “rays,” upward
some radial rising strokes, and between a wavy line; then to this
he added the written words: “middle” and “changing.” Finally
he said, quoting [Rudolf Steiner], “Light is streaming upward,
heaviness is weighing downward.”
“Now let us go on to consider the new ideal of art. What do we
find when we subject nature and its forms to a deeper, life-attuned
study, refusing to call a halt at externalities [dead contour outlines]
and abstract ideas? My dear friends, you saw what we find before
your very eyes in the capitals of our Goetheanum pillars and in the
architrave motifs that crowned them. None of this was the result
of observing nature; it was the product of experiencing with it.
Nature brings forth forms, but these could just as well be others.
Nature is always challenging us to change, to metamorphose its
forms. A person who merely observes nature from the outside
copies its forms and falls into naturalism. A person who experiences nature, who doesn’t just look at the shapes and colors of
plants, who really has an inner experience of them, finds a different
form slipping out of every plant and stone and animal for him to
embody in his medium. . . .
In reality, every plant, every tree has the desire to look
up in prayer to the divine. This can be seen in a plant’s or a tree’s
physiognomy. But plants and trees do not dispose over a sufficient
capacity to express this. It is there as a potential, however, and if
we bring it out, if we embody in our architectural and sculptural
media the inner life of trees and plants and clouds and stones as
that life lives in their lines and colors, then nature speaks to the
gods through our works of art. We discover the Logos in the world
of nature.”
(Lecture in Dornach, February 22, 1923, in Awakening to Community, pp. 80-81).
We know this gesture, exercised in eurythmy, from Rudolf
Steiner’s lecture on January 12, 1924: The Rosicrucian sign of
the two interpenetrating triangles or “Solomons’s Key.” Rudolf
Steiner indicated how one will obtain a quite different feeling
and thinking if this gesture is exercised (cw 233a. Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation. Mystery Centres of the Middle Ages,
pp. 64-68).
In a tender way Christian thus gave a hint of how to change
simple observing into artistic visioning, by meditation.
An Ideal, Given by Rudolf Steiner
In 1923 when the First Goetheanum building just had been
destroyed on New Year’s Eve by an arsonist, Rudolf Steiner
gave a sequence of very serious lectures titled Awakening to
Community (GA/cw 257).
He intended to enliven the lost enthusiasm for the great ideals
that before the burning down one could see, feel, and experience
in the forms and colors of the First Goetheanum. In this – so he
explained – three ideals were artistically embodied: a scientific
one, a religious one, and an artistic one.
Transforming the sensuality of the physical world into the state
of an ideal is a goal, one that Christian Hitsch has tried to come
near to in many of his works in architecture, sculpture, painting,
drawing, and teaching. He always does this in different ways,
coming more and more “near to the ideal.”
Some sentences about just the artistic ideal may be quoted here,
with the hope that they may change into deeds:
Form – “A Method for Resounding Limits” (Max Frisch)
by Hans Georg Häussler
B
this question for himself, which he approached in
“pre-grasping” (Rückgriff) the principle of metamorphosis from simple form-phenomenona, but in a
highly individual way. There he prepared himself to
know, through the “alphabet” of form-speech, how to
later possibly pronounce the completed “word” or a
completed formal “composition.”
efore I personally learned to know Christian
Hitsch, I was impressed by a series of carved
wooden sculptures by him. It was part of his sculptural work at the closing ceremony at the art school
at Ottersburg.
It was the middle or end of 1970 as we of the Collegium of the Alanus College (Hochschule) and the
Teacher Training Seminar at Witten-Annen met with
the College at Ottersbrug to exchange experiences on
methods and teaching of artistic education.
And the attraction to his sculptures already was that
they were lovingly worked through in detail and from
a light, musical “wingedness” (Beschwingtheit). . . .
I remember that one of the basic questions was: What
status does the artistic impulse of Rudolf Steiner have?
Is it enough to give the students a list of free-floating
quotations on his color and form conceptions or is a
deeper study called for, also including a creative embodiment, for instance, of the capital metamorphoses
of the first Goetheanum? The views about this already
then ranged widely apart – as today.
What belonged still more personally to these first indirect, biographical contacts was the fact that I came
to know as a treasured colleage and friend his later
father-in-law, Wilhelm Reichert, from the subject-area
meetings of working teachers at the Union of Waldorf
Schools (Bund der Waldorfschulen). In later years we
also both worked then together in the Alanus College.
Christian Hitsch Light-Flame
The “young Hitsch” appeared to have already answered 2004 marble
11
So thus appeared the destiny-filled prelude, which
later led to an intensive working together between
What for us was even more intensively connected was the question
of aesthetics. With a few artist colleagues I knew we came into conversation with him so centrally over the “Sensible-Supersensible
in its Realization through Art.” The saying that Rudolf Steiner, in
his first consideration of aesthetics, “Goethe as Founder of a New
Aesthetics” given in 1888, came from a Platonic to an Aristotelean interpretation of art was for us a continuing inner compass.
In Steiner’s sense therein the “what” of the artistic – also a most
beautiful anthroposophical theme – is always still “matter.” Only
in the “how” can the artist raise up a creative idea and approach
an effective and “real semblance” (Schein).
Ever anew from the latest things, with each form differently, working through for that purpose, one may as a creator characterize a
Credo by which we both were permeated. That has much to do
with devotion to the material – wood, stone, bronze – but also
with the specific moral fantasy.
Christian Hitsch painting.
Christian Hitsch and myself.
What already attracted our attention in the 1970s as the “how”
of his sculpture, has in the last years in the “Feldkirchen Era”
[Feldkirchen is where Christian currently teachers] attained a
prominent quality at both small and large levels. . . .
That was the first of many years after that, when he was called
to be the Section leader at the Goetheanum. There in our first
meeting in Dornach we were able to personally meet. We discovered very quickly how to us both many themes of sculptural
form-research were equally inscribed, although the starting point
and aim of form-research was often very diverse, such as perhaps
between Vienna and Florence.
Partial (and somewhat rough) translation by David Adams from
Stil, Michaelmas 2011-12
A Gallery of Artworks by Christian Hitsch
Dr. Hitsch House, Salzburg 1982-85 (Christian Hitsch with students)
Rudolf Steiner-Bau, Salzburg, Austria 1988, exterior front
12
A Gallery of Artworks by Christian Hitsch
Tauerntropfen 2010 green serpentine stone
Sevenfold Plant Metamorphosis ca. 2004 lindenwood
Space-Counterspace ca. 2004 marble
Circular Form ca. 2004 wood
Polar Cosmic Forces ca. 2004 bronze
Christian Hitsch, design; Klaus Herthorn, execution Fireplace Seat 2008
Private “alpine” house, near Salzburg, Austria
13
Steel Sculpture 2007 near Salzburg, Austria
Christian Hitsch in North America
A
s a contribution to the celebration of Christian Hitsch’s 60th
birthday, it gives me great pleasure to share some of the
experiences I have had with him, particularly when he was in
North America. In addition, I would like to take this opportunity
to acknowledge the role Christian has played in my development
as an artist.
by Michael Howard
time with Christian and ask him my questions about his own work
and that of his students, nonetheless, there was no question that
the trip had been worth the effort. I had no idea if we would meet
again, but all the impressions of Christian’s work had gone deep
and I knew they would continue to resonate within me.
In the spring of 1983 I was at the Goetheanum for over a year
with for the purpose of making sculptural studies of the models of
Rudolf Steiner’s great sculpture, The Representative of Humanity.
At Easter I met Michael Holdrege, an American teacher at the
Vienna Waldorf School, who had come to the Goetheanum to
attend a Waldorf teachers conference. Spontaneously, Michael
invited me to drive back to Vienna with him so that I could meet
his colleague, Christian Hitsch, who at the time was the sculpture
and woodcarving teacher at the Vienna Waldorf School.
This I did, spending the better part of a week in Vienna. I
spent several days at the Vienna Waldorf School where I saw
to my amazement all that Christian Hitsch had done to artistically transform the school building – including carved doors
and handles, as well as the carved proscenium in the school
auditorium. Furthermore, there were several spacious clay and
woodcarving studios where I saw the work Christian had done
with his students--most notably, numerous cast and carved relief
sculptures of various metamorphic sequences that had been created by groups of students.
Christian Hitsch & Students Auditorium Door Rudolf Steiner School,
Vienna 1981 carved wood
Christian and I did meet again nine years later in the fall of 1992
when as the recently (1988) appointed leader of the Visual Art
Section at the Goetheanum he made his first visit to North America.
Between Oct. 30 and Nov. 8 Christian visited Spring Valley and
Harlemville, New York. Later in November Christian also gave
talks in Chicago. Fair Oaks, Los Angeles, and San Diego;
However, as circumstances would have it, I saw Christian Hitsch
himself only for 10-15 minutes in his home, where I found him
bedridden in a dimly light room. Although he was frail and unwell, and our conversation was therefore limited, our meeting
seemed significant. Although I had not been able to spend more
Both in Spring Valley and Fair Oaks Christian met with a group
of artists who were members of the First Class to discuss the
founding of the Art Section in N. America. Among the various
things he said that stood out for us was his suggestion that we
begin to work together as if we were an Art Section, and if in a
year or more we and Christian felt the work of the Section had
spiritually come to life, then he would return to formally affirm
and celebrate the founding of the Art Section in North America.
Three years later, in the fall of 1995, Christian returned for the
second time. For three weeks in October he traveled first to Chicago, then Toronto, Vancouver, and finally Spring Valley, New
York. This was the year before the renovation began on the Great
Hall, so naturally his lectures and workshops focused on helping
people appreciate more deeply the motifs Rudolf Steiner had created for the First Goetheanum and how they were being adapted
to the Great Hall of the Second Goetheanum.
Chrsitian Hitsch, design, and Klaus Hertkorn, execution Bed
2008 private “alpine” house near Salzburg, Austria
In the three years since his first visit, a group of artists on the east
coast had been meeting 3 -5 times a year exploring individually
and together what it means to work as members of the Art Section.
Although our efforts seemed very modest, we were committed and
steadfast in our striving. On Sunday October 29, 1995, the last
day of this visit, Christian met with 12 artists in Spring Valley to
celebrate the formal founding of the Art Section in North America.
14
In August of 1996
the renovation of
the Great Hall began. For six weeks
in April and May
1997 I was fortunate to participate
in the carving of
the south architrave and capitals.
While there is
much I could say
about this experience, I will limit
myself to the following:
himself to the east coast. For the first week between May 28 and
June 2nd he worked with a group of artists in Harlemville, NY.
He then joined Virginia Sease and Manfred Schmidt-Brabant in
a two-day meeting at Camphill Village in Copake, NY, for the
formal inauguration of the Collegium of Section Representatives
of North America. Finally, at the end of that first week he gave a
lecture in Spring Valley.
Upon Christian’s request, the second week remained open,
however, without any definite indication of what he did plan to
do. So with six days remaining before he was due to fly back to
Switzerland, Christian asked if I would drive him through parts of
New England for a “drawing tour.” Thus, we began what proved
to be a very memorable journey for both of us.
On Wednesday, June 2nd, Christian and I drove up the Hudson
River Valley to Olana, the estate of the famous American painter
Frederick Church, We spent several hours taking in and drawing
the panoramic views of the Hudson River. Then we crossed the
river to spend the night at a campground on North-South Lake.
The next day we spent most of the day drawing in the vicinity of
the campground, but also at Kaaterskill Falls, a short drive away.
I can only imagine all the pressures and concerns
that weighed upon
Christian as the
lead artist and designer of the Great
Hall renovation. If Hitsch (left) leading Goetheanum architrave clay
I had such respon- project at conference, April 1995 Spring Valley, NY
sibility, I would
find it difficult to resist the temptation to micromanage the 50+
artists who had volunteered their services, for fear that some irreparable mistake might become frozen into the concrete.
Friday, June 4th, we drove north into central Vermont, to the small
town of Barnard. Christian had asked if we might visit this town
because it was where the Austrian writer Karl Zuckmeyer had lived
during World War II and into the 1950’s. With a little detective
work, we were able to find Zuckmeyer’s homestead. We stayed
two nights in a nearby campground and again spent most of our
time drawing in the area, including Zuckmeyer’s homestead.
Christian did speak to us as a whole group each morning before
we began work, and he did come around to each of us once or
twice a day to look at how our work was progressing. Often,
we would look with him at the models we each had, and he
would usually draw our attention to something we had otherwise
overlooked. My overarching impression, however, was that
Christian never said or did anything that would constrain our
individual freedom. To the contrary, he always encouraged us
to exercise our own artistic feeling and intuition in determining
how best to develop the forms we were working on, as well as
how they would be harmonized with the forms our colleagues
were developing around us. Given the diversity of our skills and
experience, as well as our very different stylistic tendencies, it
was nothing short of remarkable how well our individual efforts
harmonized when seen as a whole.
Christian Hitsch “Art Section Groups in America” 1999 drawing
I regard this dimension of the Great Hall project as particularly
significant from a spiritual perspective. In the manner in which
Christian led this project, primarily through his example, he allowed a living community to form itself that was founded on the
enhancement rather than the suppression of individual freedom
and diversity. In this Christian not only facilitated the process
of creating a physical work of art, perhaps more significantly,
through him a social sculpture was formed that forges a path
towards the Sixth Epoch.
On Sunday, June 6th, we drove to Gloucester, Massachusetts, on
the Atlantic coast to draw by the ocean. The next morning we
drew at the campground where we had stayed the night. Then
that afternoon I drove Christian to the airport in New York so he
could catch that evening’s flight to Switzerland.
Although Christian has not returned to the States since 1999, his
influence in America continues to this day. As my gift on his 60th
birthday, I offer Christian the following picture of my experience
of our “drawing tour” and the seeds he planted for my creative
work that, twelve years later, continue to grow and bear fruit.
In the spring of 1999, Christian came for his third visit to
America. This time he came for only two weeks and limited
15
core of my being, as they awoke me to the potential of art to be
an actual doorway into the etheric world. Christian’s drawings
planted the seed of a new aspiration in me: to find my own way
through art to a perception and experience of the etheric.
Near the end of our tour Christian said something that puzzled
me at the time and that I have pondered from time to time over
the years. While I saw only the inadequacies of my own drawings, Christian made the remark that he saw in them the seeds of
a new style of art.
In the following years, I did on occasion make a few drawings of
landscapes, but in every case it was not in situ but rather after the
fact out of the impressions and mental pictures I held – mostly
of the islands of Maine where I would sail each summer. This
already indicates my more expressionistic inclinations as an artist.
Christian Hitsch American Landscape Sketch 1999 drawing
The drawing above is just one of the many drawings Christian
made on our tour. This one has special significance because it
is the one Christian gave me as a parting gift. Later, he did send
me a set of 20+ postcard reproductions of the other drawings he
had done. (These drawings should be more widely available, if
they are not already). Typically, Christian drew these in an hour
or so. Where I was in the same spot with him – we did go our
different ways some of the time – I can verify that each place is
quite recognizable from the drawings. However, today as much
as when I first saw these drawings, the question that rises up in
me is: What was Christian seeing that I did not see?
Christian did say to me that such drawing was a way to come into
a deeper relationship with the landscape; even one that at first
glance may seem relatively unassuming. In this sense it was clear
that Christian was not simply looking at and recording what he
saw outwardly; he was contemplating and communing with the
place. While my drawings attempted to capture the fixed objects
of trees and hills, Christian’s revealed he was living in the play
of light and shadow. While my drawings reflected my attention
to the physical landscape, Christian’s drawings revealed he was
perceiving the living movement of the etheric landscape.
Michael Howard Drawing with White on a Black Ground
This expressionistic predilection became more apparent when,
shortly after our drawing tour, I began to make drawings that
had no obvious or intended representational elements. I simply
built up strokes in a playful manner to create a weaving world
of moving light and shadow. I tried to harmonize and unify the
hundreds of discreet strokes so that I felt myself living and moving
in a dynamic soul-spiritual space. I did not start with the concept,
but over time I came to the view that I was making “visible” a
world of “music” or visual music. The drawing in the first column
is just one example of this direction, which, when placed next to
Christian’s drawing, shows both the connection to his drawings
but also how I took it in a different direction.
This is not the place to give a full overview of either Christian’s
or my artistic work, but I add two more figures to indicate how the
initial impulse that Christian’s drawings inspired has continued
to evolve in yet other directions. The first above is an example
of a series of drawings I have done in the last ten years where I
use white on a black ground. The second is an example (printed
here in black and white on p. 17) of the drawings and paintings
I do that begin on a black, dark blue, or purple ground, but then
develop with color.
Michael Howard Free Drawing 2000
When at the end of each day we would look at each other’s drawings, I was a little embarrassed by my efforts. At one level, it was
evident that Christian had mastered drawing in the impressionist
stream, while I had never been particularly inclined to draw from
nature. At a deeper level, Christian’s drawings shook me to the
I am drawn to the black ground because, when even a dark purple
or blue is brought to the darkness, the subsequent lightening of
the darkness resonates in me as a more powerful and meaningful
16
Organic Forms
A Proposal by Karl-Dieter Bodack
T
his is a first idea for: Organic Forms – A Continuing Education
Service for Architects and Designers within the Context of the
Art Section at the Goetheanum, Dornach.
To address city planners, architects, interior designers, and those
who find themselves in the study or profession of these fields.
With semester divisions like all other continuing education services, which will be offered from the Goetheanum, that is, from
the Sections: 6 weekends each semester, each 2 ½ days long, every
Friday to Sunday at various places: Dornach, Munich, Berlin,
Holland, Italy . . . .
The contents shall cover the work of (creative) forming and be
adapted interdisciplinarily for all addressed professional groups. It
may be built up from the academic levels, with an aim, a “horizon,”
to expand the fixed form and color canons of the theosophical and
Bauhaus traditions. Thereby shall the question/matter be to form
what is “characteristic” and always be concerned with the quality
of human being and environment.
Michael Howard Resounding Silence 2011 acrylic on panel 4’ x 4’
experience of light than a radiant yellow on white, for example.
When the color or just white is developed on the dark ground in
the weaving dynamic manner that I first explored with the blackon-white drawings, a similar musical quality arises, only now
it is quite evidently a “cosmic” music, a music of the spheres.
Possible themes:
* Organic forming – the development over the last 100 years
* The Foundation: Instruction in form and structure, projective
geometry
* Expanding the instruments of form through metamorphosis
* Reference to the building and formations of nature and the
human being
* Color work and color formation for objects, spaces, and buildings
* Perception with all senses and their complex operations
* Appraising architecture and design quality in reference to the
human being
I am the last one able to assess the fruits of the path I have followed, but I know I would not have found my way to this way
of drawing and painting, and the rich inner experiences they
have brought me, if Christian and I had not gone on our drawing
tour in 1999. For this reason, I feel deep gratitude to Christian
for the influence he has had on my development as an artist and
human being.
In sending my heartfelt gratitude to Christian on his 60 birthday,
I have every confidence that he and his work will continue to
inspire many others for years to come.
A certification will be striven for. The cost for 6 seminars (lecturers
and space): CHF 1,500/Euro 1,200. Plus payment for overnight
lodging and board. To begin in April 2012. Coordination and
Notification: The Art Section.
NOTICE: We just learned as this was going to press that
painter/teacher Anne Stockton died at age 101 in the U.K.
Proposed by Karl-Dieter Bodack, [email protected], October
10, 2011.
th
Letter to the Editor on Joseph Beuys
from Mary Ghurls, Switzerland
I
t may interest readers of the Art Section Newsletter, among
others, to consider a decisive, though overlooked aspect of the
work of Joseph Beuys. This was pointed out by Sergei Prokofieff
in a lecture at the Goetheanum on 24th October 2011 – citing an
example of the work of Beuys at the Guggenheim Museum in
New York entitled Virginity. This work includes, among other
items, a bar of soap, ostensibly to signify “cleanliness.”
Such works may be said to conform to the conception of art held
by the German philosophers Schelling and Hegel. The “idea” (in
this case “virginity”) is brought to expression by means of the
material – by being as it were impressed onto material substance.
In Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetics (Vienna, 9th November
1988) Rudolf Steiner clearly stood for a polar opposite view of art
to that held by Schelling and Hegel: The proper task of the artist
lies not in embodying the supersensible (the “idea”) in sensible
form, but in molding the material, giving it the appearance of the
supersensible.
The question becomes: Do we not negate the art impulse of Rudolf Steiner in continually holding up the work of Joseph Beuys
as a model?
17
Restoring the Balance of Tao through Art
by John Stolfo
hristmas Day Reflections from Hong Kong: “The Tao
expresses – for the greater part of humanity as it has already
expressed for millennia – the highest to which humanity could
aspire, and of which humanity thought that the world, the whole
of humanity, will one day aspire. It is the highest that the human
being carries as a seed, which one day will blossom fully out
of innermost human nature. Tao signifies both a deep, hidden
fundament of the soul and an exalted future.” (Rudolf Steiner,
November 16, 1905; whole lecture as yet untranslated)
C
as, little-by-little, new and very appreciated Waldorf teachers and
mentors cross through the many border crossings into China to
contribute their unique gifts and experience from Steiner education. This shows, in my view, that it is an education for each and
every child, making contributions toward a New World Culture.
Based now in Hong Kong for a little over three years, one has had
countless new and deep experiences teaching and commissioncreating in many larger cities on the Chinese mainland. There
have been eager requests for numerous lazure painting workshops
and for murals both interior and exterior. There have also been
well received intensive two- or three-day weekend introductions
to Rudolf Steiner’s Goetheanum impulse (anthroposophy and
art) coming from the north to the south...in Beijing, Shanghai,
Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, including many very
receptive groups of parents and teachers in the various Waldorf
communities springing up across China in the past seven years.
At most recent count (if anyone is counting) there are nearly
200 kindergarten initiatives in all and nearly 20 primary school
initiatives with more each year in both areas. Mural workshop with youth in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2010
Earlier today here at HeartSource, our home, we enjoyed a time of
good company shared with children and their parents in the sunfilled garden and commencing with good food around the kindergarten table. Yes, much to be grateful for, while in the world that
all of us have known, as Steiner puts it in the opening words
of the Michael Imagination lecture of 1923, “many old forms
of civilization to which people mistakenly cling, will sink into
the abyss and there will be an insistent demand that mankind must
find its way to something new.” So what were those things that
he himself had been offering humanity? Gifts that many of
us have come to know: Anthroposophy as a practical spiritual
worldview ripe for our time, biodynamic agriculture, Waldorf and
also curative education, and a human-based medicine – actually
all of these and more as healing-balancing measures for a world
so way out of balance. A painful heart struggles daily at grappling with the fact that around the world there is unprecedented
oppression, enslavement, and insane extermination of countless
people. Perhaps the second most immediate concern for me is
the thought that a great majority of the seven billion of us don’t
have access to food, let alone healthy food and enough, or even
any drinkable water. These are basic human physical needs!
So one must note that, despite what anyone would have dreamed
of just ten years ago regarding Waldorf schooling or its “mother
ground,” anthroposophy, small but ongoing changes are occurring
Mural painting workshop in private home, Beijing, China, 2010
18
But the third concern for
me is an acute sense of soul
needs that everyone is entitled to have met but only
few have access to. This
is also a basic requirement
on the way to personal
and fraternal fulfillment.
This is art and the creative
process. Friedrich Schiller
had it precisely right in
exclaiming that, holding
the balance between exces- Tao Wisdom and Anthroposophy worksive urge to form (meaning shop, Hong Kong, April 2011
brain-bound and even materialistic thinking) and excessive urge
to sensuality (meaning all our natural urges, even, I believe,
the excesses of materialistic acquisitions), we may become freely
creative beings. This is the graceful potential – God-given – to
become playfully free, transforming the duality of excess by
striving with inner force of heart for balance.
In the realm of creativity most of us will have to lean on a good
“brotherly or sisterly” teacher for encouragement, guidance, and
skillful training. I certainly did. And there is very good virtue
in this endeavor to eventually individually nurture our “child
within.” There is also a future-oriented aim we consciously or
unconsciously work toward. This is where I look to a great teacher
of humanity, the Russian philosopher and writer Leo Tolstoy
(1828-1910), from his “What is Art?” of 1898. For me, he speaks
to us today . . . from the future:
“The task of art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood and love of one’s neighbor (now attained only by the best
members of society) by ordinary feeling and the instinct of all
of humanity. By evoking under imaginary conditions the feeling of brotherhood and love, spiritual art will train humankind
to experience those same feelings under similar circumstances
in actual life; it will lay in the souls of fellow humans the rails
along which the actions of those whom art thus educates will
naturally pass. And universal art, by uniting the most differing
people in one common feeling by destroying separation, will
educate people to union and will show them, not by reason but
by life itself, the joy of universal union beyond the bounds set
by life. ...The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the
of civilization. As reincarnating individuals, we may be directly
part of that geographical region or even elsewhere. For that will
be a true world culture unbounded by region and united in the
etheric. Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood as expressions of the
Color study session during lazure workshop, Suzhou, China 2011
great ideals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness will reign for a good
portion of humanity, though not for all. Some will ward it off with
stubborn egoity. There will be both grace-given joy and also deep
compassion and conscience for the continuing suffering of humanity (for further reading I recommend this online article: http://
www.adrianakoulias.com/ADRIANAKOULIAS/Lectures_files/
Rosicrucianism%20and%20the%20Maitreya%20Buddha.pdf).
So art with its intrinsic creative processes will help us along this
Grail Path – or, if you will, the good way of the Tao – when, as
the third principle of the Tao, the disciplined and at the same time
creative human being finds and maintains balance. The yin and
yang counterforces find equilibrium in the human being between
heaven and earth. As we feel by grace a sense of unbounded freedom, we can and should feel, by ethical necessity, more of the
responsibility we do have for one another and for the kingdoms
of nature, of Mother Earth, in lifting both to higher moral stages
of consciousness.
How do I as a striving artist enact some of the foregoing thoughts
in practice during my China journeys? Well, for me as instructor the most immediate means is by introducing Goethe’s Color
Teachings (just cannot bring myself to say “Theory”). In his color
circle we have a most clear and powerful statement embracing all
the principles of the Tao...of Oneness (or wholeness), Duality (or
polarity of light-dark, warm-cool, complementaries, etc.), Trinity
(or transitional enhancement = metamorphosis) moving between
and utilizing the primary and secondary triads), and finally Myriad-ness (or limitless relational combinations), sensing always
the grand unifying principle of wholeness.
Eurythmy during lazure painting workshop, Guangzhou, China
realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being
for humanity consists in their being united together, and to set
up, in place of the existing reign of force [by false experts and
leaders in every domain of modern life] that kingdom of God –
that is, of understanding love – which we all recognize to be the
highest aim of human life.”
If you are like me, you tremble, perhaps even with a few tears, in
absorbing these words of inspiration. Steiner called Leo Tolstoy
a representative of that future time, the Sixth Cultural Epoch.
Steiner described that time as the Community of Philadelphia,
or that world culture centrally founded in the Slavic peoples when
brotherhood or fraternity will reign as a principal characteristic,
19
At each step the human being, in this case the artist as painter,
uses the sound scientific/artistic judgment gained in researching
the color wisdom in Goethe’s circle (being “as old as the world”)
to make quiet or bolder steps at creating a unique image never
before manifested by anyone, anywhere at anytime in the flow
of time and space. Color exercises through both painting, which
also explores Rudolf Steiner’s twelvefold color circle, together
with eurythmy facilitate an intimacy with our medium. Eurythmy
in inner color gesture and movement feels an innate kinship with
the visual art of painting. These are my main areas of expertise:
eurythmy-aided lazure painting on walls and watercolor painting
on canvas or paper, taught in intensive art workshops or accomplished by commission. There also has been work we were able to create back on the North
American continent in Toronto this past autumn at Michaelmas.
After being invited by master architect Bert Chase of Vancouver,
I participated, together with other active art educators in the field
of sculpture, in leading two lazure painting workshops in an art
symposium at Hesperus Village. One of the workshops was a
mural painting workshop for a few participants who continued
on after the first art conference. A unique effort was made of using an all-natural glaze medium from Bioshield in Santa Fe, New
Mexico (www.bioshieldpaint.com) combined with all-natural
plant pigments obtained directly from Stockmar in Germany.
Along the way, I took the opportunity to visit friends in Chicago
and brother Patrick and wife Lynne in Harlemville, New York.
A Report on Free Columbia
by Nathaniel Williams & Laura Summer
I
f you travel north by train from New York City along the arm
of the sea (the Hudson River), you will come to the town of
Hudson in the county of Columbia. One of the many things
going on in the area of this whaling-town-become-antique-hub
is a project dedicated to the practice and study of art and culture
called Free Columbia. It has been growing over the last four years.
It began as the collaboration of two artists but now includes the
contributions of many more. The main activity of this project
has been the creation of workshops, conferences, puppet shows,
lecture evenings, and, most ambitiously, a nine-month full-time
course. This course is currently in its third year and it includes
painting, drawing, puppetry, eurythmy, philosophy of aesthetics,
Goethean observation, and study of anthroposophy. Our faculty
includes Laura Summer, Nathaniel Williams, Ella Lapointe, Karen
Derremeaux, and Henrike Holdrege. In addition, we welcome
guest lecturers Sarah Hearn, Craig Holdrege, Seth Jordan,
Michael Howard, Ted Pugh, Fern Sloan, Doug Sloan, Patrick
Stolfo, and Steve Talbott. With the participation of such able
faculty Free Columbia can be seen as an experiential Foundation
Year in Anthroposophy as well as an introduction to painting.
No matter the project at hand, Free Columbia is always an attempt at
approaching art’s spiritual aspects. Working with spiritual science
and Steiner’s anthroposophy is a great leaven in this. Free Columbia
is a place to cultivate the dialogue on culture with Kandinsky,
Rothko, Van Gogh, Beuys, Cezanne, Goethe, Schiller, MerleauPonty, Gadamer, Klee, Steffen, and Deleuze, among others.
Over the last year the project has grown. The year-long
course has quadrupled in size. The work is intensifying with
the growing number of people investing their participation.
Free Columbia has a circle of supporters who value what we are
trying to do. They contribute materials and supplies, books and
monthly financial pledges. We are trying to create an atmosphere
at Free Columbia that supports creativity and autonomy, so we
are not interested in external accreditation or funding with strings
attached. We are also trying
to make it accessible to those
who should participate in it due
to their interests and abilities
regardless of their financial
means. There are no fixed tuitions for participation in any
courses. The annual expenses
are presently a humble $55,000.
Lazure mural workshop at Hesperus Village, Toronto, October 2011
On the home front here in Hong Kong we are about to embark
on the physical restoration of a newly acquired school building,
which will be transformed into Hong Kong’s first Steiner/Waldorf primary school. Wife Sinmei, a native Hong Konger, has
been teaching a small Waldorf home-schooling kindergarten as
well as facilitating a two year part-time Waldorf kindergarten
teacher training here in the city. As the designated “president”
of the newly formed Rudolf Steiner Education Foundation Hong
Kong, I will be called into service more and more to offer adultlevel courses and lectures in basic anthroposophy and, of course,
art classes of various sorts. I’m gearing up, because this is what I
have been preparing for my whole life. Now it’s all or nothing...I
prefer the former.
John Stolfo’s contact information:
email: [email protected] or [email protected]
website: www.artspirit.asia
blog: http://artspiritasia.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
Simmei Chan’s contact: [email protected]
blog: http://children-garden.blogspot.com/
20
We are at the beginning of
this year’s journey. If you
would like to follow along
with us block by block, you
may do so at http://freecolumbia.blogspot.com. We will
accept applications for the
2012-13 year from March
1st to May 1st 2012. Information about the course and the summer intensives can be found at http://www.feecolumbia.org/.
The Electronic Light Art of Leo Villareal, Rudolf Steiner’s
Light-Play-Art, and the Time-Image
by David Adams
A
s I prepared to enter the “retrospective” exhibition of the
art of Leo Villareal (“Animating Light”) at the Nevada Art
Museum in Reno, Nevada, last April, I was confronted at the entrance with the approximately 5-foot-square panel for Primordial
(2009). Although its moving light patterns were only in black
and white, I stood transfixed for at least 20 minutes on that spot,
marveling as the moving imagery seemed to recall at one moment
the events within some prehistoric evolutionary “organic soup,”
at another a microscopic view into internal body functions, and
at another some kind of cosmic or galactic formation process.
Although in the still photographs from Primordial (see illustration below), it often appears something like a grid arrangement
of small lights, in the actual perception there are mostly smooth,
seamless transitions between ever moving, metamorphosing
forms in various gradations of white, gray, and black. The gestaltforming processes of our visual perception tend to smooth over
the transitions between the individual lights.
ent sizes and shapes, most also flooding their surrounding spaces
(wall, floor, ceiling) with colored light reflections or radiations. I
went to the show primarily to investigate if Villareal’s technique
had implications for the further development of Rudolf Steiner’s
unfulfilled project for a new colored “light-play-art.”2 I found this
most to be the case with some of his larger pieces where the actual
light from the colored bulbs was also diffused, usually behind
sheets of translucent Plexiglas.
For example, there was one rather beautiful wall-size (20’ wide)
piece titled Amanecer (2010, Spanish for dawn or sunrise) that
clearly related to the imagery one can have watching a sunrise in
an expansively open landscape (similar to the photograph of Field
on the color insert). The changes in the “flash patterns” of the tiny,
variously colored LEDs moved at such a slow pace that the diffusive colors and patterns only very gradually and subtly seemed to
change, at about the same pace as colors change during a sunrise.
A somewhat similar
example would be the
24-foot-wide Field
from 2007, now in
the Museum of Modern Art in New York
(see photographs on
color insert). These
works can call up in
the viewer a sense of
the sublime, of wonder, expansiveness,
and spectacle.
Villareal is one of a
growing number of
contemporary artists
who work with moving non-objective or
abstract imagery –
usually computer animations that are either
viewed on a monitor
or projected as part
of large-scale, multiscreen, immersive
installations.1 These
Along with the exworks, along with a
related tradition in
hibition was a helpfilm and other meful 191-page catalog
dia, are sometimes
book, Leo Villareal,
classified as part of a
edited by JoAnne
growing “visual muNorthrup of the San
sic” movement in art
Jose Museum of Art
(also known as color
(which organized this
music, light-space
traveling show; page
art, expanded cinema,
numbers in parenetc.). However, the
theses that follow are
medium Villareal uses
from this book). This
is different than most Leo Villareal Primordial 2009 white LEDs, plexiglas, aluminum, custom software & hardware, 9 stills volume supplies some
contemporary practihelpful background
tioners; while the movement or “flash” patterns of his works are
and perspectives on this unusual artist. Born in 1967 in Albuquercomputer-driven, his primary visible medium is tiny, specialized
que, New Mexico, Villareal was largely raised in the bi-national
LED (“light-emitting diode”) bulbs. Hundreds or many thousands
border region of El Paso, Texas, where the desert landscape left
of these are typically arranged in fields or “pixelscapes” of various
a lasting imprint. When he left the Southwest for high school in
sizes, as small as a foot wide to as large as architectural facades
Rhode Island, he gradually became more acquainted with conor entire buildings hundreds of feet tall or wide.
temporary and historical art and culture, especially through trips
to New York City and Europe.
As I eventually entered the gallery rooms of the Villareal exhibition, I noticed a variety of types of moving light pieces of differHis undergraduate education began as a theater major at Yale
21
University, where he designed and lit sets for student productions,
but he soon changed his major to art. There he was especially
influenced by the work of Marcel Duchamp (in the Yale University Art Gallery), Mark Rothko, Kiki Smith, Anselm Kiefer, Alice
Aycock, Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, and Jeff Koons. His 1990
thesis exhibition created a series of interior environments in an
abandoned campus solarium filled with old medical equipment,
mercury vapor lights, and videos assembled from discarded nurse
training films – all to allude to an environment like the lab of
Dr. Frankenstein.
pect and to community
interactions. His first
design for Burning Man
in 1997 consisted of 16
strobe lights and a Basic
Stamp microcontroller
assembled in a grid arrangement on a wooden
lattice mounted on his
camper. He found it
intriguing and hypnotic,
like staring into a digital-age campfire. Just
after this he encased
the lights in a translucent acrylic box to
form Stobe Matrix (see Leo Villareal Firmament 2001 Burning Man
photograph left).
In 2001 he started “Disorient” there, a dance-club-like environment featuring a dome, video projections, and a round, 80-strobe
sculpture titled Firmament (see photograph above). He continued
in succeeding years to create additional light sculptures for Burning Man, including the 2004 Bok Globule planetarium dome with
fisheye projections along with the exterior network of lights, Supercluster (see photograph). His pulsating light sculptures as well
as various versions of the large illuminated name “Disorient” (with
complex, choreographed flash-patterns cycling through “theme,
variation, and permutation”) were visible for miles in the desert
Leo Villareal Strobe Matrix 1997 plexiglas, strobe lights, custom
software and electrical hardware 60 x 60 x12”
Villareal then studied film and video editing at New York University, worked as an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection of modern art in Venice in 1991, and in 1992 enrolled as an
M.A. student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at
NYU, studying computer graphics, programming, and interactive
television. He came to know and be attracted to earlier efforts
in light installation art by artists James Turrell, Dan Flavin, and
Bruce Nauman. After his 1994 graduation he became an intern
at the Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, California,
working on “Immersion, ’94,” a use of 3-D rendering techniques
and stereo imagery to create a virtual hike through the Banff
National Forest in Canada.
Installing Strobe Matrix at Burning Man 1997
At this time he also
began regularly attending the annual
Burning Man festivals in the Black
Rock Desert north
of Reno, Nevada,
experimenting
with creating lightart pieces there beginning in 1997.
There he has been
attracted both to
the “spectacle” as-
Leo Villareal & Carter Emmart Bok Globule 2004 LEDs, metalized cloth,
aluminum, zero gravity couches, and fisheye projection system, ca. 18’ dia.
night, providing both an orientation point and simultaneously urging caution in
the crazy, chaotic environment of Burning Man.
22
Burning Man
allowed Villareal to experiment with work
with and for
many different
kinds of people
in a desert environment of various kinds of electronic nighttime
lighting that can at times recall experiences of virtual spaces in
computer games. He relates this to his student experiences where
“there was the untouchable virtual world that existed on the other
side of the screen where we would do our projects, and then there
was the world that we lived in. I was trying to imagine a way to
cross the membrane of the screen. Going to Burning Man started
me thinking about ways that I could synthesize the experience
of those two worlds.” (p. 50)
would allow him to also truly be a colorist, able to compose more complex sequencings in a range of thousands
of colors. His exuberant Chasing Rainbows installation
of 2004 included 3 separate light-sculptures, each with
20 8-foot semi-translucent plastic tubes (for diffusion
and protection) densely packed with multicolored LEDs,
installed next to each other (see photographs on colored
insert) and flashing with constantly changing color patterns. Soon using tiny pin-dot lights (smaller than a grain
of rice), he developed coloristically layered patterns that
create an effect of interacting multiple dimensions.
After his initial artistic work with strobes and incandescent lights
(both white and colored), he had already begun to work with the
smaller LEDs (light emitting diodes) by 2000. He discovered that
The fact that Villareal installs his “programmed mithey provided up to 16 million different colors through a combinacrocosmos” (p. 11) or “electronic performances” into
tion of red, green, and blue lights controlled individually through
physical environments gives his work a spatial and social
dimming, according to a scale of brightness from 0 to 255. The
dimension that goes beyond most of what we usually refer
LEDs the viewer sees in his work dancing in changing patterns
to as “digital art.” Some pieces even include motion-capare driven by microconture technoltrollers (small simple
ogy to involve
computers on a chip)
visitor moveor Macintosh minicomments in what
puters running custom
is perceived.
software. The kind of
“The life on the
higher-intensity LEDs
screen is not
Villareal uses only bemerely a prigan being developed in
vate exchange
the 1980s with steady
between viewincreases in power and
er and soft affordability since the
ware. Instead,
1990s. Typically used
it becomes part
on a larger scale for adof a large pubvertising television billlic encounter.
board messages (think
Seeing those
Times Square in New
flocks and trails
York City), LEDs were
forming on the
adapted by Villareal to
panels above
his own purposes, pro- Leo Villareal Multiverse 2008 site-specific installation of LEDs, custom software and electrical makes us see
hardware 200’ long, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. underground walkway
gramming them into
the flocks and
creative and interesting
trails of human
sequential patterns. In an artistic way the very form of his work
groups around us with new clarity.” (p. 11) In addition
reflects aspects of our contemporary experience: quickly changand by the artist’s intention, the works Villareal creates
ing, complex, integrated with technology.
make viewers viscerally aware of the activity and temporal pace of their own visual perception, while at the same
To program his displays he employs relatively simple algorithms
time Villareal is trying to use his work as a vehicle for a
(lists of rules that govern a predictable sequence of operations),
preconscious, preverbal kind of communication, even an
although sometimes including randomly selected sequences. But
alteration of viewer’s consciousness. Sometimes a work
out of this simple logic of rules surprisingly emerge the coloreven seems to have a more explicit spiritual import, as
ful, entrancing, beautiful, even joyous results that the viewer
in the mandala/yantra-like changing central patterns of
perceives. Steven B. Johnson in the catalog writes, ”This moveBig Bang (2008, 59 inches diameter, see photographs
ment from algorithmic code to emergent swarms is the source
on color insert).
of the rare and infectious joy that Villareal’s work elicits. It is,
in some strange digital sense, life-giving.” Yet there is also a
But Villareal does not put his light technology in the
degree of unpredictability involved, as Johnson explains: “But
service of some larger conceptual mission. Rather, he
with emergent art, the change is not merely interpretive, because
uses it as a medium in itself with its own language. For
the work is constantly changing: new shapes and clusters and
Villareal it is the algorithmic computer code that is the espatterns rippling across the screen, shapes that Villareal did not
sence of the work, even the real medium; how the colored
deliberately envision. What Villareal creates is not so much a
light manifests is, in a way, the secondary phenomenon
work as it is a space of possibility.” (p. 12)
(although he has come to appreciate more and more that
the colored light patterns emerging from this code is all
It was not until 2004 that Villareal gained access to the tools that
the viewer perceives).
23
work can recall aspects of popular culture like Las Vegas, Christmas lights, lava lamps, concert light shows, etc., his work, like
much art in our postmodern age, combines both high and low
artistic imagery and effects and thus exerts a much wider appeal
than most products of the traditional elite “artworld.” It has been
said that he is fusing modernist ideas of optical experience and
color exploration with postmodern digital artmaking, or that he
is embodying the 1960s aesthetic for the digital age.
One other aspect of Villareal’s art is his architectural installations, where site-specific light structures are either inserted into
building interiors or onto facades. These works add a fourth,
temporal dimension to the usual three dimensions of architecture. His most famous work of this type is the 200-foot-long
tunnel connecting the east and west buildings of the National
Ever since I saw the Villareal exhibition, I have been asking myself
how suitable his use of moving patterns of colored LEDs might
be for anthroposophical art. Some earlier work (especially using
ordinary incandescent light bulbs or strobe lights), where you
can almost visually follow the pattern of the flash sequences, is
clearer to follow than the later dense fields of constantly changing tiny LED lights, but also is less subtle and loses its interest
more quickly. At times the artificial-intelligence, wind-up-key,
mechanical quality of changing colored lights whose illumination
is driven by computer programming can be felt to be somewhat
alienating to the human soul life, somewhat removing what is perceived from the sphere of art to that of technology (although this
is assuming these two areas cannot be combined). While in some
senses mimicking the system of a living holistic organism, the
“emergent behavior” (an idea from complexity and chaos theories)
in Villareal’s art occurs within a non-living, non-etheric complex
system. Only quite careful, sensitive design in this medium will
overcome this mechanistic quality, as will a knowing mimicking
of real astral phenomena. One can question when too much of an
Ahrimanic element has been introduced into Lucifer’s realm. It
also would help if an awareness of the Goethe/Steiner color theory
informed the programming of changing colored lights.
Leo Villareal Supercluster 2003 P.S. 1, New York City LEDs
Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Called Multiverse, this 2008
permanent installation consists of 41,000 LEDs clipped within
the gaps separating the aluminum slats that line the tunnel (see
photograph, p. 23). A captivating trail of starry white light seems
to move in ever-changing forms through the space, controlled
by an unseen digital control panel.
Another example is Supercluster of 2003 that was attached to
the building façade of the P.S. 1 gallery in New York City. Its 45’
by 120’ matrix of LEDs mounted on a nylon webbing created
an intense series of moving light patterns. Other architectural
works include exterior installations for the Albright-Knox Art
Gallery in Buffalo, New York (Light Matrix, 2005, 16’ x 80’), a
12,000-LED work for the Neuman Museum of Contemporary
Art in Kansas City
(Microcosm, 2007, 25’
x 50’), the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida
(Sky 2010, 45’ x 300’),
a current renovation
of the Bahrain airport,
and an unaccepted proposal for the 1,821’ tall
Lotte Super Tower in
Seoul, North Korea (to
use sequences of LEDs
bursting and fading all
over the exterior, making parts of the façade
seem to disappear (see
photograph). Seemingly, the only content
of all of these works is
the architecture itself.
Rudolf Steiner spoke about the need for future visual art to become
more musical, to involve more the element of time.3 His initial
work in this direction – for example in the metamorphic forms
in the first Goetheanum – placed the focus of the metamorphic
movement between the forms (of column capitals and architrave,
for example) or through color perspective dynamics within the soul
of the viewer (while the outer physical work remains passively in
place). The real work of art lives not in the outer physical object
but in the soul of the viewer, said Steiner.4 This raises the question
of how appropriate introducing an external movement into colored
visual forms is for an anthroposophical artistic work, especially a
mechanical or computerized movement.
Leo Vallreal Project for Lotte Super Towar, Seoul,
Although Villareal’s North Korea 2006 LEDs
24
When in 1918 Steiner proposed the creation of a new light-play-art
to Jan Stuten to counteract the effects of the early cinema (moving pictures), it seems that all of the movement of the colored
lights and forms they envisioned was to be generated by human
hand movements (perhaps also manipulating small objects or
silhouette forms in front of the projected colored electric light, as
later worked out by Hans Jenny and Christiaan Stuten5; surviving
information is not fully clear). That might offer an alternative to
the more mechanical movements of the filmic process (a “humanly
detached technical device,” as described by Steiner). Thus, this
would be an external movement but one under direct human
control. Yet given the enormous development in technology and
forms of art since the time of Steiner (including film technology),
I wonder how essential this aspect is. At the base of any external
artistic movement is always some foundation of human control
(from an artistic imagination), whether this is at the level of
computer programming or operation of a camera or the variety
of external movements (of performers, sets, and lighting) in
theatrical or even eurythmy presentations.
tion (CRT, plasma, LED) to lasers to bioluminescence to flames
to sunlight to the “inner light” of etheric and astral realms – and
to consider the suitability, applicability, and limits of use of each
for a spiritually informed visual art. There is also the difference
between direct and indirect (either projected or reflected) light as
well as the impact of different lenses or other “filtering mediums”
through which the light might shine and be manipulated.
Elements of time and movement have been added to the visual
arts throughout the twentieth century. In mainstream modernist
art physical motion began to be added to sculpture already in
Color perspective effects seem to work with colored light as well as
the 1920s by the Russian Constructivists and moreso by Alexpigment, although the impact of the relative
ander Calder in his “mobiles” (moved either
by motors or by wind and touch). Also the
colors may differ somewhat. For example,
in the art of stained glass it is normally the
early development of “kinetic sculpture” in
deep blues that project forward the strongest,
art was created in works by Laszlo Moholyrather than the reds (the opposite of the efNagy, Naum Gabo, and, a bit later, Jean
fect of painted colors). But, of course, it
Tingely ((and probably others as well). In
also is different using color perspective on a
two-dimensional and color art we have the
flat screenlike surface and as projected light
moving images of “visual music” pioneers
within three-dimensional physical space and/
like Thomas Wilfred (the lumia creations of
or on objects.
his clavilux inventions), several inventors of
“color organs,” and the tradition of abstract
I want to raise these various issues so that we
film (e.g., lost Futurist films, Walter Ruttcan start contemplating, discussing, dialogmann, Hans Richter, Viking Eggling, Oskar
ing, and artistically researching them in the
Fischinger, Len Lye, John and James Whitcontext of developments in contemporary
ney, Mary Ellen Bute, Jordan Belson, Stan
art that have moved quite a long way from
Brakhage, and others).6 Also in the Futurist
and Dada movements we saw the beginnings
Steiner’s original work in traditional visual
of “performance art” that only fully emerged Leo Villareal Diamond Sea 2007 white LEDs,
artistic media in the early twentieth century.
in the 1960s and beyond (along with video mirror-finish stainless steel, cusotm software and
In a succeeding article I hope to write more
art, which further developed into today’s electrical hardware 120 x 180 x 6” 2 still shots
about the long modernist tradition of “visual
computer animations). I am coming to favor
music,” whose original center of activity
the general use of the term “time-image” for these new visual
was the sometimes-named but often forgotten “absolute music”
artworks where elements of time and motion (or “music”) are
movement in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s – part of the
integrated with visual elements. This is a term used (in a more
context in which Steiner’s original proposal for a colored lightrestricted sense for films) by postmodern philosopher Gilles
play-art (a term used by others at that time) took place.
Deleuze in his two books on cinema (and borrowed from earlier
philosopher Henri Bergson).7
Although large scale is an important factor in many of Villareal’s
light pieces, you can view smaller videos of Villareal artworks
Although Villareal’s way of adding motion to visual images is
at the following addresses on youtube (and find others yourself):
computer-driven (or actually, algorithm-driven), it is actual LED
(i.e., semiconductor) illumination perceived by the viewer as an
Primordial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylySRh7gzak&
“object” in physical space rather than a computer animation movfeature=related
ing in illusory or “virtual space.” Also, especially when the LEDs
Big Bang:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvHIdyhkE74&fe
are diffused, the motion can take place at a very slow and subtle,
ature=related
more “human” pace, so that colors seem to very gradually blend
hsttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvHIdyhkE74&feature&r
into each other or become transformed into other colors or color
elated
patterns. Do these distinctions really matter? Are there some kinds
Multiverse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&
of actual motion in art that are too “outer” or “virtual” to be acv=uRWceAgDey0&NR=1
ceptable? Do certain kinds of outer motion not leave the viewer’s
Various works in Reno show:http://www.youtube.com/
perception free enough? Is a mimicking of the moving colored
watch?v=_7pOKkH4Gmk
forms within the astral body (or astral world) an appropriate (or
Villareal speaking about his work: http://www.youtube.com/
even possible) criterion for evaluating these kind of time-images?
watch?v=ykki6m96Pgk
What (if any) are the boundaries of an anthroposophical colored
Visiting Villareal in His Studio http://www.youtube.com/watch?
‘light-play-art”? These are some questions it would be nice to
v=HplsGiSmnJI&feature=related
see the anthroposophical art movement begin to grapple with.
San Jose Museum Interview with Villareal:hsttp://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=ML88Lf6D0PE&feature+related
Part of this research could also concern itself with comparing
National Gallery of Art Interview with Villareal:http://www.
and contrasting qualities of various light sources (colored or
youtube.com/watch?v= Jxjhki-s3V8&feature=related
not and by what means colored) – from the various types of
7 Wo r k s i n S a n J o s e : h t t p : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m /
electric bulbs (incandescent, fluorescent, quartz, mercury vapor,
watch?v=RvgASzxLeN8
semiconductor LEDs, etc.) to computer/video screen illumina
____________________________________
25
Endnotes (for Leo Villareal article)
Masters,” Animation Journal (Chapman University, 1999) but also
available at www.centerforvisualmusic.org; and Tom DeWitt, “
Visual Music: Searching for an Aesthetic ,” Leonardo, 20 (1987),
pp. 115-122.
For example, see my review of Jennifer Steinkamp in Art Section Newsletter No. 28 (Spring-Summer 2007), pp. 24-26 + color
insert. Some other books on this contemporary trend in media
art: Bruce Wands, Art of the Digital Age (London: Thames &
Hudson, 2006); Michael Rush, New Media in Late 20th-Century
Art (London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1999); Michael
Hudson, Video Art, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2007); Oliver Grau, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (London and Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,
2003); and Mark Tribe and Reena Jana, New Media Art (Cologne:
Taschen, 2006).
1
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1986); and, especially, Gilles
Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1989).
7
See articles on the light-play-art idea and its later development
in Art Section Newsletter No. 22 (Spring-Summer 2004): pp. 1-9
+ color insert.
2
See Rudolf Steiner, Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom,
trans. Pauline Wehrle and Johanna Collis (London: Rudolf Steiner
Press, 1984), pp. 22-28, 117, 121; and The Balance in the World
and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman, trans. D. Osmond and D. Adams
(North Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre, 1997; reprint of The
World as Product of History of Balance (London Rudolf Steiner
Publication Company, 1948), p. 28; and Practical Advice to
Teachers, 2nd ed., trans. Johanna Collis (London: Rudolf Steiner
Press and New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1976), pp. 52-53
3
See Rudolf Steiner, Art as Seen. pp. 8-11, 14-15, 17, 27-28; Life
between Death and Rebirth, trans. R. M. Querido (Spring Valley:
Anthroposophic Press, 1968), p. 159; and Architektur, Plastik, und
Malerei des Ersten Goetheanum (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag,
1972 [1920]), p. 28 (a manuscript translation exists).
4
See Wolfgang Veit, Bewegte Bilder: Der Zyklus ‘Metamorphosen
der Furcht’ von Jan Stuten: Entwurf zu einer neuen Licht-SpielKunst nach einer idée von Rudolf Steiner (Moving Pictures: The
Cycle “Metamorphoses of Fear” by Jan Stuten: Sketches for a
new Light-Play-Art after an idea of Rudolf Steiner) (Stuttgart:
Urachhaus, 1993.
5
For example, see William Moritz, Optical Poetry: The Life and
Work of Oskar Fischinger (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2004); Kerry Brougher et al., Visual Music: Synaesthesia
in Art and Music since 1900 (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2005); Paul Young and Paul Duncan, eds., Art
Cinema (Cologne: Taschen, 2009); Robert Russell and Cecile
Starr, Experimental Animation: Origins of a New Art (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 1988); Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz,
and Steve Seid, eds., Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in
the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2010); William C. Wees, Light Moving in Time:
Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film (Berkley:
University of California Press, 1992); Cindy Keefer, “’Space
Light Art’ – Early Abstract Cinema and Multimedia, 1900-1959”
in White Noise (Melbourne: ACMI, 2005) but also available at
www.centerforvisualmusic.org; William Moritz, “The Dream of
Color Music, and Machines that Made It Possible” at www.awn.
com/articles/profiles/dream-color-music-and-machines-madeit-possible; William Moritz, “Jordan Belson, Last of the Great
Leo Villareal Particle Chamber 2000 installation at Exit Art, New York
6
Leo Villareal Star (Toulouse) 2003 installation in Socrates Sculpture Park,
Long Island City, New York; LED tubes, steel armature; 9 still shots
26
Imre Makovecz 1935-2011
by Jonathan Glancey
T
he Hungarian architect Imre Makovecz has died at the age
of 75 on September 27. Makovecz headed a loose-knit band
of architects, designers, and craft workers who established an
alternative way of building, thinking, and existing during the long
years of communist rule and soulless, Soviet-style architecture
forced on Hungary and Russia. A fierce critic of communism, materialism, and globalism, he was banned from working in Budapest
in 1976 and moved north to Visegrád, a beautiful stretch of countryside by the Danube. There, he developed his compelling,
idiosyncratic, and organic style, borrowing from nature and
re-interpreting the
ideas of, among others, Rudolf Steiner,
Frank Lloyd Wright,
Antonio Gaudi, and
the Hungarian architect Ödön Lechner.
1959. When asked to design a fish restaurant as part of his training, he shaped one in the form of a pair of interlocking fish. His
tutors were not amused.
Deeply religious and a lifelong Catholic, Makovecz believed in
angels. He sensed a guiding creative spirit in the patterns found
in nature, such as the shapes of trees, and in Celtic carvings and
Scottish reels. “My buildings and architectural designs do not
come from me,” he said. “They come from the landscape, from
the local environment, and from the ancient human spirit.”
In the early 1980s, as an assistant editor of the Architectural Review, I went to meet Makovecz in Hungary during a heavy storm.
Before travelling, I was interviewed at the Hungarian embassy in
London, where Makovecz’s name raised eyebrows, not smiles....
[His wife] Marianne, a fluent English speaker and talented weaver,
introduced me to her extraordinary husband. A profoundly and
defiantly individual architect and philosopher, Makovecz was a
warm and friendly man with a powerful build, pronounced Magyar
moustache, and a love of God, Celtic, and Scythian culture and
Scotch whisky. He was at once fierce and kind, intensely serious
and very funny.
Makovecz shaped holiday shelters, restaurants, camping grounds,
and visitor centers that were as highly charged aesthetically as
their purposes were low-key. These designs were what he described as “building beings.” Erring on the folkloric and
looking a little like trees in children’s
stories, sprouting arms and sporting
faces, they really did feel alive. Wooden
shingles might be made to resemble
the feathers of a bird’s wings. Some
buildings appeared to grow like plants.
Windows were like eyes. He sensed a
guiding creative spirit in the patterns
found in nature.
I had only known of him through a small, smudged black-andwhite photograph of the strangest
imaginable interior, published in a
Hungarian quarterly that had been
among the dozens of international
publications that landed on our desks
at the Architectural Review’s offices in
London. The image appeared to show
a gloomy and cavernous chamber in
the guise of a giant timber ribcage. It
proved to be the emotionally charged
mortuary chapel of the Farkasreti
(Wolf’s Meadow) cemetery at the end
of Budapest’s 59 tramline. Dug into a
hillside, the building is a representation
of the human chest: coffins are placed
at its heart. Béla Bartók and Georg
Solti are buried there, and so is Mátyás
Rákosi, Hungary’s Stalinist dictator.
Makovecz returned to Budapest in the
1980s, after the communism system
collapsed, set up his own studio, Makona, and became something of a national
hero. Alongside the low-cost community centers he built in villages, and a Imre Makovecz Hungarian Pavilion 1992 Seville Expo, interior
Makovecz traveled to Britain in the
string of spirited new Roman Catholic
mid-1990s and visited the Prince of Wales at Highgrove. For a mochurches, he was commissioned to design the Hungarian Pavilment, it looked as if there might be a Makovecz exhibition in Lonlion for the Seville Expo of 1992. From the outside, the building
don, but sadly this never happened. Back in Budapest, he went on
resembled a cluster of fairytale church steeples. Inside, real trees
to design theaters, community halls, university buildings, and a sewere reflected in a mirrored floor. Like so much of Makovecz’s
quence of haunting Catholic churches: in Paks (1987) and Százhawork, it was strangely lyrical and curiously beautiful.
lombatta (1995), in Hungary, and Csíkszereda (2001), in Romania.
In 2010 he closed his studio and retired to focus on the Hungarian
Makovecz was born and educated in Budapest. His father was
Art Academy he founded in 1992. He was an honorary fellow of
a carpenter. Imre spent much of his boyhood in and around Nathe Royal Institute of British Architects and, in 1997, recipient of
gykapornak, to the west of Lake Balaton. He helped his father
the gold medal of the Académie d’Architecture. . . .
sabotage German tanks during the second world war. He studied
(Edited from The Guardian, London)
architecture at Budapest’s technical university, graduating in
27
Lee Ufan: “Marking Infinity” at the Guggenheim
by Nathaniel Williams
T
his fall the Guggenheim Museum in New York City hosted
a retrospective of the contemporary Korean-born artist Lee
Ufan and called it “Marking Infinity.” His work and questions
concerning art are extremely revealing, not simply of his person
but of the greater questions of our time. If I were to try to encapsulate the fundamental mission of Lee Ufan, it would be in two
points. One is to fight against culture and visual art being thought
of as objects that exist in self-sufficient contentment. The second
is to facilitate experiences for people, in which they could genuinely say that they encountered some aspect of nature, or reality.
It is unfortunate that we experience culture as contained in some
few magical objects and not as simply aspects of the great cultural reality of our daily life. The desire for artistic creations to
be experienced as meaningful, not only as specialized objects for
a highbrow society, but for all human beings and modern life in
general, is easy to understand. We do not have this culture currently. In fact, our inner experience of life, our “assumed values,”
are so barren that we want to escape our culture. But where can
we find solace? Ufan offers encounters with nature, or things as
they are. With this he testifies that human culture has lost touch
with spiritual inspirations of the same elemental power as natural
inspirations. In the past these spiritual inspirations have never
been the same as natural inspirations, although they share in the
same spirit. When the cultural vigor wanes, it is understandable
that we run to nature for nourishment.
Rudolf Steiner indicated this already on the multiple occasions
that he described the advent of landscape painting as a result of
the withdrawal of a higher cultural inspiration.2 He also pointed
out that no artist stood a chance in competition with nature. The
landscape will always triumph. It is when painters bring something
new to nature, as an inspired higher nature, that their work is really
justified. Ufan has at least given up rendering nature and simply
brought her into the museum.
Lee Ufan, “In Search of Encounter- The Sources of Contemporary
Art” (1970-1971).
Rudolf Steiner, The Social Future (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1972), Lecture 4 of October 28, 1919.
Lee Ufan Relatum 2008 stone and steel plate, 80” tall
An illustration of the first and second point would be a work consisting of two objects in a room, a natural stone and a metal plate.
The plate is leaned against a wall and the stone resting on the
floor. The experience is of the whole space and the relations alive
in it, which de-objectifies the art. The experience is of materials,
objects, and spaces, which Ufan has minimally engaged. Ufan
wants to facilitate meetings between natural objects and people
and sees that the museum is one place where everyday awareness
can be infiltrated. For Ufan, contemporary inner life is a place of
images that have lost “their exteriority. Generally speaking, we
can see gesture as an artistic act that cuts into and opens up holes
in the systemized fiction of the everyday environment determined
by assumed values.”1 So for Ufan, Duchamp’s placing a porcelain
urinal in a museum in 1912 was such an incision, where suddenly
assumed values fall away and we meet an object we supposedly
knew already. The artist’s job is to facilitate such meetings.
Quotations from Ufan’s “In Search of Encounter”:
“Through a process of representation unique to conscious beings...all things were continuously made into reified conceptual
entities, and as a result, modern space has become saturated with
ideas....what human beings continually confront is nothing but
themselves.” “Kierkegaard and Heidegger describe encounters as
events attending the point of rupture between self and other, between consciousness and world....
An encounter is a moment mediated by a kind of directness in
which an interactive event, involving elements from both here
and over there, breaks through the
systematic shell of the everyday. .
. . I see encounters as expressive
acts that shift art away from the
modern process of represenation
and allow us to reexamine the
ambiguity of self and other in a
relationship involving interiority
and exteriority. . . . The primary
reason for engaging in expression can be described as a desire
to sustain the encounter and to
universalize the relationship that
Lee Ufan Shadow Room Naoshima Mus.
produces it.”
28
Perhaps most astonishingly, as a result of this painting research
Wagner further relates his felt intuition that the various motifs
“are all in fact metamorphoses of each other. It is as though one
motif, were to manifest itself again and again in different ways,
as determined by the various background colors . . . .”
Book Reviews
Peter Stebbing, ed. and trans, The Goetheanum Cupola
Motifs of Rudolf Steiner: Paintings by Gerard Wagner.
Great Barrington, Massachusetts: Steinerbooks, 2011.
246 pages, 208 illustrations.
As Stebbing comments in his preface, these paintings by Wagner
“cannot be separated from the Goetheanum itself and the art
impulse for which it stands. They can be fully understood only
in the context of anthroposophical spiritual science, of which the
Goetheanum is, in Rudolf Steiner’s words, a ‘true emblem.’” Thus,
there is a variety of material presenting the original Goetheanum
work as well, including a short foreword by Sergei Prokoffieff,
recollections by artists, and an appendix of biographical sketches
and photographs of the original cupola painters (with an earlier
section listing who was assigned which motifs), as well as a somewhat longer biographical presentation on Wagner
himself. There is even a short section describing
and picturing some interesting 1982 experiments
by Wagner for metamorphosing the large cupola
motifs and color scheme within the context of a
new second Goetheanum ceiling structure and
color base (“slightly subdued background colors,
i.e, ‘broken’ with black”). Most significant, I
would say, is the inclusion of two related lectures,
an essay, and a number of brief excerpts from
lectures by Rudolf Steiner on specific motifs,
most of which have not previously appeared in
English (although manuscript translations of the
two lectures have been available from the Rudolf
Steiner Library). I only found missing one very
suggestive Steiner quotation on the large cupola
paintings, which he gave in his lecture of Dec. 29,
1918 (in English, on p. 112 of How Can Mankind
Find the Christ Again?).
T
his large-format, hardbound book is a most significant publication for anthroposophical art in the English-speaking world,
and once again we have Peter Stebbing to thank for putting
together a finely crafted tome presenting a stellar collection of
paintings and complementary texts. The book is beautifully laid
out with intelligently selected photographs and artwork relating
to passages in its texts.
We are given not only high-quality colored
reproductions of all of Rudolf Steiner’s original motif-sketches for the paintings on the two
cupolas of the first Goetheanum and the colored
photographs that were taken of his painting on the
small cupola, but also all of Assya Turgenieff’s
colored engravings of each of the Goetheanum
windows – and other vintage photographs and
artwork as well. Most of this visual material has
appeared in English-language publications before
(especially in Hilde Raske’s The Language of
Color in the First Goetheanum [1983] and the
Wilhelm Rath/William Mann publication, The
Imagery of the Goetheanum Windows [1976]),
but what particularly distinguishes this latest
work are the juxtaposition with several lectures
and excepts of lectures by Rudolf Steiner and,
especially, the colorful and impressively executed
collection of glowing watercolor paintings on many of these same
motifs by Gerard Wagner. Wagner’s multi-decades creative occupation with Steiner’s Goetheanum motifs (apparently beginning
around 1977) reveals something of the abundance of expressive
possibilities still contained within the organic “living entity,” as
Wagner puts it, in each of these motifs.
I found the most interesting and important lecture to be the first
one, “The Renewal of the Artistic Principle” from Oct. 25, 1914. In
it Steiner begins by noting that the art in the Goetheanum building
embodies something new in human evolution that is now essential for humanity’s further development. He characterizes this as
calling something that had been at rest into life, into motion. One
example is the metamorphosing forms of capitals and architraves
in the Goetheanum. Another follows changing motifs from below
upwards. Another in the realm of painting is a movement from
imitative, local-color painting that tries to record what is static
and on the surface of things to a new living within the flowing,
creative element in colors that of itself can give birth to form in
painting. In this way painting, too, can be freed and set into motion.
Aside from Wagner’s own short explanatory essay about his
painting work (“practice and study”) with the large cupola motifs,
Stebbing wisely does not include further analysis or discussion
of the specific paintings but lets the gallery of Wagner’s work on
each motif speak for itself. In his essay Wagner suggests that the
Goetheanum motifs “can be experienced as if one motif were to
wander through the various colors of the rainbow – extending
over the large cupola space in great waves of color – undergoing in this way a transformation corresponding to the influence
of the particular background color.” His painting research with
the motifs then explored both the sequential development of
the different colors within each motif that would “lead into the
formative forces giving rise to this motif” and the varying effects
of specific background colors on the metamorphic development
of that color-sequence within the organic whole of the motif. It
is a method aimed at patiently gaining free access to the original
spiritual “archetypal sources of the motifs, out of the color.”
The lecture also covers differences between drawing and painting; thinking, feeling, and willing aspects in the design of the
Goetheanum; humanity’s need to discover the “spiritual America;”
the future end of both material and spiritual evolution; learning
to think not only with the physical brain; the creative language of
the distant future common to all humanity; and how the Goetheanum cupola is “an expression of the Mystery of Golgotha in
architecture.” Here are a few telling quotations from the lecture:
“Only they are true artists who live to an extent together with
29
things out there in the cosmos and for whom artistic activity is
but the occasion for reproducing their life within the cosmos.”
“If one releases color from objects and lives with color, then it
begins to reveal profound secrets, and the entire world becomes
a flooding, surging sea of color.” “The form will be born out of
the color. . . Indirectly, by means of color, one will thus enter
into the creative element in the world. Only in this way can it
happen that painting not only covers the surface, but directs us
out into the entire cosmos, uniting us with the life of the whole
cosmos.” “What is to be created in our building, however, will
not be there in order to be looked at, not in the least! . . . But what
is done here is not only there to be looked at, but to be properly
experienced.” “The material substance of what is painted should
be forgotten. Rather should it be as though transparent. In looking
out beyond what is painted on the surfaces, one than looks out
into spiritual distances.”
of the north side of the small cupola in the “counter-colors” (vs.
complementary colors) to those he had used in painting the south
side and also the relationship of this to the Steiner’s “twelve-color
color circle” (vs. Goethe’s color circle). The second essay is “Indications of Rudolf Steiner for Engraving the Window Motifs” by
Assya Turgenieff, describing her various interactions with Steiner
in developing her etchings of the Goetheanum window motifs and
the technique of black-and-white shaded drawing.
Finally, in the appendix is Stebbing’s translation of another essay
by Wagner on the development of his approach to painting out of
Steiner’s motifs and training sketches, titled “A Path of Practice in
Painting.” Let me close this too-long review by reminding again
how pleasurable it is just to look through this book visually. I count
152 color illustrations, most of them full- or half-page in size and
tastefully presented, as is the book layout in general.
David Adams
The second Steiner piece is a shorter essay titled “Goethe and
the Goetheanum,” which points out that Goethe “introduced
into knowledge the spiritual activity by which he was effective
as an artist. He sought the path from artist to knower and found
it.” Out of Goethe’s worldview Steiner was able to lead his idea
of metamorphosis over into artistic work, thereby approaching
inwardly the creativity of nature. In the process, one can also
realize that each soul power (thinking, feeling, and willing) is a
metamorphosis of the others. By living into and together with
sense appearances, thinking can become objective, as Goethe
discovered. If one further adopts and applies the metamorphosis
idea in the realms of soul and spirit, one’s thinking
becomes “spirit-enlivened” or “spirit-bearing.” As
Steiner puts it, “It undergoes a metamorphosis to become ‘seeing’ and has then become free of the body.”
Angela Lord, Easter – Rudolf Steiner’s Watercolour Painting.
London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2011.
T
his book is a meditation on all aspects of Steiner’s watercolor
painting titled Easter (the Three Crosses) – pertinent and interesting to the general reader and essential for anthroposophical
artists and students. Steiner’s enigmatic picture, painted between
the 7th and 19th April 1924, shows three crosses on top of distant
hills within a landscape containing the rainbow sequence of colors,
in which there are five figures “below the earth.”
The book is well structured. The writer asks four
questions at the beginning: “Why did Rudolf Steiner
use the rainbow sequence of colors? Why are the
crosses so small, seen only from a distance? Whom
or what are the white figures “below the earth”? and,
“What is actually being expressed in the painting?”
We are enlightened on each of these topics as we
read through the book, the clarity of which is also
enhanced by its division into four chapters that are
further arranged in short, manageable sections.
The final Steiner lecture, “The Paintings of the Small
Cupola: The Goetheanum as a True Emblem of
Anthroposophy” of Jan. 25, 1920, is Steiner’s only
sustained coverage of the cupola motifs within a
lecture. In the process he also says some important
things about the nature of color and its relation to our
human experience (as well as to elemental beings).
One example: “Anyone able to immerse themselves
in the world of color will be able to rise to the feeling
that out of this mysterious world of color, a world of
‘being’ sprouts forth. By means of our inner forces,
color wants of itself to evolve into a world of being.” Stebbing
helpfully illustrates this lecture with the original black-and-white
details of the small cupola paintings used by Steiner (although it
must have been tempting to use colored examples). At the conclusion is attached another only slightly jocular quotation from
Steiner linking the two centaur-like creatures in the “Germanic
Initiate” motif to American President Woodrow Wilson and his
influential wife (especially telling today when one sees what
has become economically and socially of the direction Wilson
launched then with his 14 Points). Stebbing even managed to
find a suitable photograph of the Wilsons to juxtapose amusingly
with the detail of the centaurs!
Two further quite interesting written pieces follow. One is a study
by Stebbing (mostly following the work on this by Daniel van
Bemmelen) of Steiner’s instructions to complete the painting
The two middle sections are “The Colors” and “The
Cosmic Aspects of Color,” and it is here that the
writer’s lengthy study and practice in anthroposophical art are fruitfully evidenced. Much is based on Steiner’s
Colour lectures, but the sumptuous illustrations and the writer’s
own perceptions show us how Steiner’s indications can be used
in a practical and meditative manner. The final chapter, “Toward
Painting the Easter Motif,” guides the neophyte into the process
of using the picture as a template for producing his or her own
work. The teaching here is not simply a list of instructions, but the
observations of a practitioner who has lived and worked with this
painting for many years, creating an understanding of the picture
itself and how it can inspire the student.
30
Steiner Press and the writer herself both must be commended on
the illustrations; it is a beautiful book. In addition to paintings by
Gerard Wagner and Angela and Robert Lord, directly inspired by
the watercolor, there are well-chosen and unexpected illustrations
showing the historical depictions of the Easter theme.
their camp sessions. Members of the Alfred Stieglitz artistic circle
in New York City often also attended. The book contains several
color photographs of the long pine trestle table Esherick designed
for the camp (also in the exhibition) and which was carved with
abstract images inspired by listening to music. Since that time,
the table has been at the Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut
Ridge, New York – an anthroposophical center where Esherick
and his wife also visited (p. 110). While it was most likely at the
camps that Esherick first came into contact with anthroposophists
from the Threefold Group (especially pianist Louise Bybee) and
the work of Rudolf Steiner, the text is incorrect in calling Doing
and Gardner anthroposophists themselves. Eisenhauer writes (perhaps somewhat speculatively): “Esherick rejected the spiritualism
in Anthroposophy, but nonetheless, took from Steiner the notion
that design should be based on the forces of nature, the gradual
metamorphosis of living organisms, and human needs (a style also
described as “organic” or “spiritual” functionalism.).”
The initial chapter presents a brief but thoughtful summary of
“The Image of the Crucifixion in Art History.” This poses the
(unstated) question of how, in our time, can such a well-worn
theme be presented anew? Just as anthroposophy presents the
“Mystery of Golgotha” in a fresh and radical manner, Steiner’s
picture indicates innovatory paths in the artistic depiction of
this event. The author shows us how Steiner had the capacity to
combine the esoteric with a color process so that esoteric content
is revealed through the color process itself in a manner never
previously attempted. Here is presented a truly contemporary
perception of the Easter image.
The rest of the first chapter is an interesting exploration of some
immediate connections to this work – the 23rd Psalm, The Soul
Calendar, and a lengthy and revealing quotation from “The
Apocryphal New Testament” describing the descent into limbo
shown in the picture. The four questions with which the author
commences cannot be answered in a neat, finite manner, but we
are given in this book material which, appropriately for an annual
festival, provides a foundation to which one can constantly return.
Trevor Dance
The language of this statement betrays the influence of Mark Sfirri
and Roberta Wagner in both the book and exhibition projects and
the article they co-authored, “Early Expressions of Anthroposophical Design in America: The Influence of Rudolf Steiner and Fritz
Westhoff on Wharton Esherick” in The Journal of Modern Craft
2, no. 3 (November 2009): 299-324. I also worked closely with
them on this article, particularly on the influence on Esherick of
the anthroposophical designs of Fritz Westhoff from the Threefold
Group (for more on Westhoff, see Art Section Newsletter No. 32
[Spring-Summer 2009]). This book further documents Esherick’s
likely encounters with both Westhoff’s designs and anthroposophical ideas in New York City, in the “west 50s” region where the
Threefold Vegetarian Restaurant was located (also Doing’s School
of Rhythmics and Eherick’s friend, author Theodore Dreiser, who
also possessed books by Steiner – including the 1927 English edition of Ways to a New Styule in Architecture). Much more about
Westhoff and Esherick is scattered through the text, including
many photographs of both Weshoff’s furniture and the Threefold
Group. In fact, we learn that the Threefold Group even hosted
an exhibition of Esherick’s prints and paintings in 1923. (p. 98)
Also interesting are photographs of Esherick’s letterhead ca. 1930
with an anthroposophical “corner graphic” and his design for an
angular chair as part of a 1930 stage set at the Hedgerow Theatre
(in Pennsylvania) that somewhat recalls
Steiner’s “thrones” in the small cupola of
the first Goetheanum (see photo to left).
Paul Eisenhauer and Lynne Farrington, eds., Wharton
Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern. Atglen,
Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, 2010. 160 pages, 321 illustrations; and Mansfield Bascom, Wharton Esherick: The
Journey of a Creative Mind. New York: Abrams, 2010. 276
pages, 311 illustrations.
S
everal recent publications have presented the evidence for
how well-known American artist Wharton Esherick (18871970) was influenced by Rudolf Steiner and, particularly, the
anthroposophical furniture and architecture of Fritz Westhoff.
These two important 2010 books were waiting for me under
the Christmas tree this year. The first of these two strikingly
designed, large-format, hardcover volumes also served as the
catalog for a large Wharton Esherick exhibition installed at both
the Kamin and Kroiz Galleries of the University of Pennsylvania from September 7, 2010, to February 13, 2011 It is also the
clearest, most informative, and most accurate about Esherick’s
anthroposophical influences.
In his Introduction, Eisenhauer characterizes Esherick’s diverse artwork: “Esherick
saw himself as an artist, not a craftsman,
and his concern was with form, not technique. He doggedly pursued his artistic
vision in forms that might turn to furniture
or other functional sculpture. More importantly, these were but one aspect of his art, complemented by the
paintings, prints, drawings, poetry, and sculpture he also created.
Moreover, his furniture was as much influenced by Brancusi,
Matisse, and Picasso as by Chippendale, Greene and Greene,
and the Shakers.” (p.10)
From 1920 until well into the 1930s the Eshericks attended the
dance camps run by Ruth Doing and Gail Gardner in the Adirondack Mts. In fact, Doing used Esherick’s illustrations to advertise
31
Although larger and more impressive in the
quality of its design and images, the longdeveloping biographical study by Bascom
includes much less on anthroposophical
influences on Esherick. Consider: “Wharton ... may have seen some of Westhoff’s
furniture ... but, while Westhoff continued Steiner’s designs, Wharton had grasped the sculptural concepts and taken them forward
without the burden of religious connotations.” (p. 101) In conclusion, let me also remind readers of another important large-format,
hardbound art book with chapters on both Westhoff and Esherick:
Reinhold J. Fäth’s Dornach Design: Mobelkunst 1911 bis 2011.
Dornach: Futurum Verlag, 2011. 272 pages. Although in German, anyone can appreciate the ca. 650 beautiful photographs of
anthroposophical design from Steiner to contemporary examples.
Image Arts from the Perspective of Spiritual Reality
by Andrew Gilligan
One was obliged to walk slowly for these few days. As you moved
through the Basilica’s space, you could find yourself around a low
cradle between an equally shaped space of many small white bowls
and a pile of earth (installation by Nick Shiver Pomeroy). After
your first encounter with this, the left side of your brain might ask:
“Why did the artist make this? What is he saying?”
T
his is a report on the conference titled Image Arts Seen from
the Perspective of Spiritual Reality that took place between
the 6th and 9th of August 2011. This is a distillation of what I
experienced and the ideas I have tried to understand. For what
it’s worth, it is a small window into the time we shared. It was a
beautiful meeting. Thank you to all who have been, and will be,
involved with this event.
There are many ways to perceive an artist’s intention. A view
common among people today was presented – namely, that
the subjective mind, with reflections of an individuality barred
from participation in anything but itself, is the human experience and thus the foundation of the communication of an artist.
Artists cannot contribute anything but their own take on the
world. The symbols of their art stand only for their own experience. It is thought by many that only through completely
antipathetic, abstract, ways of knowing can we form any correct
presentation of the laws of the natural world. In this view, all
imaginations of the natural world that smack of the artistic are
susceptible to the whims of an artist’s fancy and bear less truth.
What was recognized at the conference, and is perhaps believed in a larger circle than some may imagine, is the reality of the human being’s connection and communication with
spiritual worlds. This is the belief that through the practice
In Hudson, New York, beside the river and the trains, sits the
Basilica Industria, a vast old factory. On August fifth, about
seventy people came from many parts of the earth to investigate
the meaning of art today. This is the second year of the conference’s life, put together by members of the Art Section of the
School of Spiritual Science and the community of the Free
Columbia art course. The evolution of consciousness in relation
to artistic and technological evolution was explored, and the
metamorphosis of fear, as well as movement, group collaboration, and new searchings into what it means to be an artist and
what the role of art is in these times. The high ceilings of the
Basilica and the brick walls played with the echoes of expectation.
The conference Image Arts Seen from the Perspective of
Spiritual Reality was unique today within the flood of
technological innovation, the escapism of mainstream culture, and the dismissal of the reality of the spiritual world.
Coming Events
Nick Shiver Pomeroy Untitled Installation (Metamorphosis of Fear) ceramic
Free Columbia Summer Seminars
Color & Music through the Circle of
the Year, with Manfred Bleffert:
August 10-14, 2012 Crestone, Colorado US
June 18-22 - Musical Instrument Building
Morning veil painting, afternoon brush & ink
June 18-22 – New Music Improvisation
work outdoors, evening presentations:
July 2-6 – Color & Tone: Soul Calendar
Jennifer Thomson on Chagall; Dr. Philip
Incao on “Our Health.”
Color, Light, Music, and Puppetry
July 14-18 – experimental work
$325 tuition (includes supplies & 5 lunches)
$75 nonrefundable deposit. Space limited. Seeing the Word through Painting
Contact: Jennifer Thomson
July 23-27 with Laura Summer
P.O. Box 894, Crestone, CO 81131
. . . and more! (in New York, USA)
Tel. 719-256-5747
Contact: [email protected]
[email protected]
518-672-7302 suggested donation amts.
Crestone Art Retreat
32
Rudolf Steiner’s Painting Impulse in the First Goetheanum
Reading motifs, “counter-colors,” and more
March 10-11, The Columcille Centre
2 Newbattle Terrace, Edinburg, Scotland
Fee: L50 (L25 Saturday only)
Features slide talks and painting work
Led by Carol Haston
Contact: Terry Mullen
Tel. 00 44 (0)131 447 6219
[email protected] OR
[email protected]
of art individuals may so transform their souls that they are
able to access and collaborate with the creative world that
lies behind all physicality and present imaginations of the
natural world that are in line with scientific fact. In a time of
many who believe that an individual cannot speak for anyone
but themselves, there is belief in the possibilities of empathy.
If we were to again encounter these white bowls, how different would be the experience if we felt the artist was
communicating something that we all share in, an ob-
Emily Hassel Untitled (“Metamorphosis of Fear”) 2011 photograph
with live bullets inserted into plexiglas cover
From the Advance Conference Announcement
The Manual Animation Workshop at the conference
jective, natural law. The possibility to make art through
which the gods may speak was explored in this way.
The workshops on manual and stop-motion animation took
place over the weekend. One group worked with an overhead
projector and found objects – tissue paper, cardboard, colored
light, poetry, and sound – and collaborated in the creation of a
puppet show. The other group with a digital camera and iMovie,
worked with moving configurations of tissue paper, string, light,
and chalk, slowly to the snapping of pictures, manufacturing
movement image by image. In the deluge of digital media, the
importance of returning to source, of understanding the many
different ways a story can be told is invaluable. Explorations of
the effects of the artist on the medium and of the medium on the
artist began, and how the use of old and new technology today
can be relevant to humanity, how we can redeem the medium.
During August 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of 2011 a gathering will take place
in Hudson, NY, which has grown out of last summer’s gathering.
Our question has become more specific: Image Arts from the Perspective of Spiritual Reality. The relationships between painting,
photography, and cinema, and the greater effect technological
reproduction (particularly of artwork) has had on the world and
culture, have been central themes for artists over the last decades.
The task of striving to achieve clarity in these relationships out
of a spiritual understanding of reality is left to those working
with spiritual science. The conference will include presentations
by Nathaniel Williams, Johanna Berger, Faye Shapiro, Simeon
Amstutz, Laura Summer, and Larry Young. This year the format
will be different with short presentations and conversation in
the morning, artistic workshops in the afternoons, and artistic
presentation and conversation in the evening.
A group of artists is also preparing an exhibition to take place
parallel to the conference. The theme of the exhibit is The Metamorphosis of Fear [the theme of Rudolf Steiner’s initial unfulfilled
collaboration with musician Jan Stuten in 1918 toward developing
a new moving, colored “light-play-art” as a humanly performed
alternative to cinema].
The middle space of the Basilica was gathered by three large
canvasses with paintings on both sides hanging from the ceiling
(painted by Laura Summer). They swayed, revealing currents of
air, asking, “How do you move toward an object, and how does it
move toward you?” The arrangement of the space in the former
factory asked the question of movement. It implicitly acknowledged movement as reality, spiritual as much as physical reality.
There was a searching during the weekend for what this means.
A chalk spiral was drawn on the floor. As you followed it, pictures
moved around you, a circle form slowly breaking into color.
Experiments in putting the observer of art into motion became a
metaphor for the inner movement of the observer, the re-creation
of the forms and colors in the viewer’s own soul. Rudolf Steiner
said about the interior of the first Goetheanum, “Our building is
meant to be ... like a jelly mould that does not exist for its own 33 Laura Summer “Spiral” 2011 hanging two-sided paintings on canvas
ing their medium. Some were moving the material, adding color
to blankness, photographing what they had chosen, silencing
the judgmental mind, opening the creative. You could see them
talking with each other, talking to themselves, and conversing
with their medium, returning to their intention, keeping their hypothesis open, listening. Others were asking, “Where is it true?”
Some stood back in resolution, finally letting their art work on
its own. The flow forms of artistic process loop from beginning
to end and back again in myriad forms through the inner space
created when someone accepts entering the creative process.
This particular group of individuals was working around the ideas
that lay behind the large wooden structure that stood in the corner of
the great room, where a small table covered with white match boxes
lay, next to a crevice entrance (Espacio Negro by Johanna Berger).
Holding a small wavering match-light at your fingers, you entered
the darkness and came to a small room made of brick. The shadows
danced across a series of small pictures on the wall, depicting a
process of organic metamorphosis in small, burnt, cave drawings.
Laura Summer “Spiral” 2011 hanging two-sided paintings on canvas
More than putting art objects on the wall, this structure spoke
of the entire experience of art. It was the approach to the drawings that mattered, as it is your entire biography that has led you
to an object on a wall that creates the experience of art. This
large wooden structure was created by a great
painter who put down her brush to turn gallery spaces into cafes, parks into performance
spaces, bringing the artistic into everyday life,
finding new ways to welcome people into the
experience of life, attempting to transform fear.
sake but for the sake of the jelly ... and the important thing with
our building is what a person who goes inside it experiences in
the innermost depths of his soul, when he feels the contours of the
forms. All that the forms do is set the process going that creates
the work of art. The work of art is what the soul
experiences when it feels the shape of the forms.
The work of art is the jelly.” (Art as Seen in the
Light of Mystery Wisdom, Lecture 1, page 28).
To think of not only moving the physical forms,
but of what the forms could move in the viewer,
is a great responsibility for the artist. Equally,
for the work of art to exist in one’s soul as the
observer, as a re-creation of experience, would
take a new kind of listening, a new response to art.
As you came out of the spiral, you saw a table
covered with color come to rest in sticks and
tubes, transformed wood waiting to be redeemed,
supplies, individuals bent over their work, going
through the inner movements of the artistic process. Capturing vs. Creating Artistic Images
“Everyone is an artist,” Joseph Beuys said. This
was discussed at length. It was seen that the
expansion of the definition of art would have
far-reaching effects in the world. If doctors, politicians, businessmen, teachers, farmers, carpenters,
everybody, realized their creativity, what changes
we would see! So much good is held in the phrase
“Everyone is an artist.” It became apparent that
artists have a role other than the creation of art in
empowering others to realize their own artistry.
The difference between photographing an image and creating it
by hand was also explored throughout the weekend by a group
of people – opening a dialogue on the rush of technological
innovation artistry has been subject to, and offering the opportunity, and sparking the question, to stop and think of what the
use of new technologies means to the human being. As culture
veers sharply into the digital world and kindergartners are being given i-pads in America, it is truly a time to think about
the differences between drawing a line and photographing one.
They had accepted entering into a process They had set their
intention. Others were gathering materials, collecting, choos-
As the group studied the differences between capturing and
creating images (see photograph), presentations of how the
technological evolution has affected consciousness deepened
the inquiry. We explored the phenomenon of how people have
come to feel that they are not communicating with a creative
world, but capturing an already created one. It was seen how
people have come to relate to the camera more than the harp.
Johanna Berger Espacio Negro 2011 top of table at entrance
34
The Stop-Motion Animation Workshop at the conference
In the past, people felt they were “harps” the wind of the gods
played through. They felt they interacted with, and participated
in, a creative world. With the camera series, evolving from a pinhole of light to digital reproductions of images, we can perceive
how people came to believe they were capturing a pre-fabricated
world, not collaborating with a creative world. This has happened.
We are living through the uncanny valley, where the difference between reality and virtual reality is very slim, and we have a choice.
Group observation of installation by Lailah Amstutz and Emily Hassel
Happily, the conference ended in questions: How to reestablish
our connection as individuals and communities to the creative
world, and rise above the deadening influences of these times,
transforming our souls so to achieve true empathy, and creating art that transcends the experience of isolated subjectivity?
How a group can work artistically to lift “art” out of the object, and place it in the observer? How to engage people in an
experience of art that would lift them up, awaken their souls!
And how to evolve what has begun in Hudson, New York? The
conference itself is a living question.
Group conversation with paintings by Laura Summer in background
Water/River: From the workshop led by Nick Pomeroy and Laura
Summer on experiencing qualities of painting vs. photography.
NOTE: Next year’s conference, called “Beyond the Object,
Beyond Sensation,” will be held in Hudson, New York, July
20-22 , 2012. The theme will be approached from many sides in
experimental presentations, discussions, workshops, performances, and an exhibition. For further information, see http://www.
freecolumbia.org/ or http://northamericanartsection.blogspot.
com/ or contact Nathaniel Williams [email protected],
Tel. 518-672-4090 or Laura Summer Tel. 518-672-7302.
35 Johanna Berger Espacio Negro 2011 Entrance to installation environment
Artworks from the Exhibition The Metamorphosis of Fear at the “ImageArts from the Perspective of Spiritual Reality” Conference, New York
Elizabeth Lombardi “Metamorphosis of Fear” Installation 2011
Brooke Nixon The Metamorphosis of Fear 2011 oil on canvas
Dan Pate Children Who Eat the Fire 2011
Nick Shiver Pomeroy Untitled (Metamorphosis of Fear) 2011 (left)
Stephen Hawks Untitled (“I Am Alone/with
Others”) 2011
36
Johanna Berger Espacio Negro 2011 interior room of installation
Color Insert for Art Section Newsletter No. 36, Fall-Winter 2011
Leo Villareal Field 2007, 7 x 24’ LEDs. diffusion material, custom software & hardware
Leo Villareal Sunburst 2002 60”
dia. incandescent bulbs, plexiglas
Leo Villareal Chasing Rainbows (New Haven) 2004 5 x 24’ 4 still shots
Leo Villareal Multiform 2007 LEDs, plexiglas 72” high
Leo Villareal Field 2007, 7 x 24’ 16 still shots, details as above
Leo Villareal Big Bang 2008 59” dia. LEDs 4 still shots

Spiritual Research: Report on the Visual Art Section

Transcription

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