If, indeed, truth is beauty and beauty truth, then the monastic and the artist are one.
Monasticism, in fact, cultivates the artistic spirit. Basic to monasticism are the very qualities art demands of the artist: silence, contemplation, discernment of spirits, community and humility.
Basic to art are the very qualities demanded of the monastic: single-mindedness, beauty, immersion, praise and creativity. The merger of one with the other makes for great art; the meaning of one for the other makes for great soul.
It is in silence that the artist hears the call to raise to the heights of human consciousness those qualities no definitions ever capture. Ecstasies, pain, fluid truth, pass us by so quickly or surround us so constantly that the eyes fail to see and the heart ceases to respond.
It is in the awful grip of ineffable form or radiant color that we see into a world that is infinitely beyond our natural grasp, yet only just beyond our artist's soul. It is contemplation that leads an artist to preserve for us forever, the essence of a thing that takes us far beyond its accidents.
Only by seeing the unseen within can the artist dredge it out of nothingness so that we can touch it, too. It is a capacity for the discernment of spirits that enables an artist to recognize real beauty from plastic pretentions to it, from cheap copies or even cheaper attempts at it.
The artist details for the world to see the one idea, the fresh form, the stunning grandeur of moments which the world has begun to take for granted or has failed even to notice, or worse, has now reduced to the mundane.
It is love for human community that puts the eye of the artist in the service of truth. Knowing the spiritual squalor to which the pursuit of less than beauty can lead us, the artist lives to stretch our senses beyond the tendency to settle for lesser things: sleazy stories instead of great literature; superficial caricatures of bland characters rather than great portraits of great souls; flowerpots instead of pottery.
Finally, it is humility that enables an artist to risk rejection and failure, disdain and derogation to bring to the heart of the world what the world too easily, too randomly, too callously overlooks.
Charles Peguy wrote, "We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see."
From "The Monastic Spirit and the Pursuit of Everlasting Beauty," which appeared in The Journey and the Gift: The Ceramic Art of Brother Thomas.
I do find the kind of art referenced here interesting. In "The Tantric View of Life", Herbert Guenther discusses a Buddhist understanding that aesthetic experience is spiritual experience. It is not an "other world" spirituality, but one that is grounded in acts of creative engagement and appreciation (an artistic way of living).
Great art, as I have experienced , spending days in the national gallaries in Washington DC, connect me to that alien nature within man. Yet, to put things in perspective for myself, I would choose one breathing human to be with rather than a great art museum to live with for a year.
Choosing the other way is fine also of coarse.
Thank you for the fine article. It helped me to remember and contemplate the phrase " Ye are the light of the world" (Jesus)
my .02
There are millions of artists in the world, and each one has her own totally unique process. Generalizing about the artistic process is a bit like trying to herd cats.
My feeling is that the author is trying to sweep artists and monastics, into one big tent, which is a tent that the vast majority of artists, including myself, wouldn't enter without first being bound and gagged. There's a kind of tyrannical inclusiveness here, that smacks of zealotry. It makes this artist very uncomfortable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8
And artists make mistakes. Hoo boy, am I aware of all the mistakes and inadequacies of my own works. Then again, I've met clergy who are painfully aware of their own sins, too (and not the sex-scandal type, more the type that most people might consider patehtically "cute").
"Francisco Toledo, one of Mexico's greatest contemporary artists, did not travel to Stockholm, but was represented by his daughter Natalia Toledo. She said: 'In our mother tongue, Zapotec, beauty and justice have the same meaning - we use the word 'Sicarú' to designate them. This means to search for a way of life based on beauty and justice for all. This, for us, is the way ahead.'"
http://chinaobservatory.org/headlines.cfm?refID=77802