Faltering Steps
Where does art fit in with changing the world?
Some personal reflections from Aloka.
Some years ago I was reading a book on the English carver Eric Gill. In it he said, to the best of my recollection. that if an ‘artist’ found himself attempting to work during a period when society had no overall ‘religious’ ideology, then in his opinion it was pointless working (i.e. being a productive artist). One should rather devote one’s energies to changing that society until such time that ‘spiritual’ or higher human values were established, and the artist had a context and ideology within which to work and be of service. At last!
I thought. Here was a plan of action suitable for the dilemma I had been in — with varying degrees of awareness — for most of my life. Forget about the ‘art’ (in my case visual arts) and get on with helping to transform society until there was once more a context for one’s work to serve — even illustrate, perhaps one day illuminate...
If only life was that tidy and straightforward. If only a new idea was enough to tug all the strands of one’s being in one direction. Gill had predominantly (or liked to think he had) the attitude of the artisan, in the mould of the medieval stone masons working on the great cathedrals — every chip for the glorification of God. It is of course extremely questionable whether a medieval stone mason would recognize this view of his life — we are hardly likely ever to know! It’s not that Gill himself stopped working. He did, however, continue to write and speak on artistic, religious, and social issues in the hope of changing prevailing attitudes.
But I did not have a view of myself as some worthy artisan, however desirable that might have been. I had grown up in a very different world. I found some of Gill’s work interesting and stimulating, but the reason I was so preoccupied with him for a number of years was primarily that he provided a kind of symbol (regardless of what he was actually like) of an English artist with, for want of a better term, ‘spiritual ideals’, attempting to work in an increasingly (in his life) if not entirely (in my life) secular society, the values of which, if one could call them that. seemed to be moving rapidly in the opposite direction. Gill provided at least a glimmer of hope that such a thing was possible, and for this I am extremely grateful. Since then I have discovered within this rather loose category of mine other slightly shell-shocked heroes — David Jones, Cecil Collins, Stanley Spencer making their way through no-man’s land in the shadow (usually) of William Blake, and all of them have provided both example and encouragement.
Attracted and even excited by Gill’s idea, I made many attempts to abandon ‘artistic’ activity, devoting myself, once I was within the framework of the FWBO, to what might appear to be more ‘mainstream’ activities: communities, centres, and team based Right Livelihood. Of course, the only real ‘mainstream’ activity (if one is going to use that language) within the orbit of the Western Buddhist Order is going for Refuge. To think of activities in themselves as being mainstream, or not is rather missing the point. They are only meaningful to the extent that they are external expressions of the continual deepening and working out of one’s going for Refuge.
Eventually I began to realise that although Gill’s statement did put the issues in a certain helpful perspective, I could not implement his tidy solution. My involvement in the language of images is one of the strongest conditioning factors of my life. Almost all I ever did at school was draw. I left ordinary education at thirteen to enter art school at the beginning of the I 960s, and I spent most of that decade in various art schools and colleges. A very formative period in anyone’s life! It was at art school that life began to take on some kind of meaning, confused and chaotic admittedly, but at least a vague inkling that direction was possible. After I left I supported myself with part-time art teaching, while devoting most of my time to continuing my investigations within the realm of the visual arts.
I was well prepared by my education, having caught the end of the old-style art training. The emphasis was on hard work and learning techniques and skills. Issues of ‘art’ or even ‘creativity’ were not on the agenda, at least as far as one’s own abilities were concerned. One of my tutors advised us not to bother about such things unless we were still working ten years after leaving art school. In the meantime one was to learn — not only skills but how to motivate and discipline oneself.
Learning how to work is vital in any area of life. Learning how to organize one’s time and activities, learning how to create a meaningful pattern out of all the elements of one’s life, is an issue for anyone, not just the so-called ‘artists’ of this world. My artistic training helped me to come to terms with this to some extent. It was the search for a more all-encompassing vision of the meaning of human existence that brought me to the Dharma. Trying to integrate the momentum of my previous interests and passions into this greatly expanded context, whilst coming to terms with just how expanded that context is, has, at root, been the ‘stuff’ of my life over the past twenty years.
This integration is not just a question of fitting everything in somewhere, but more a process of purification. One’s motives are always mixed, so my involvement with the visual arts includes many factors — some of use, some not, and some definite obstacles to the practice of the Dharma. This mixture is purified through contact with the Dharma. It’s no good my avoiding Dharma study on the grounds that I’m more a ‘visual’ or ‘devotional’ type. I have needed — need — to ‘know’ what the Dharma is. Without an understanding of its concepts and ideas, any ‘purification’ is likely to be rather tepid.
Study and meditation have been of tremendous benefit to me, even in terms of my ‘work’. Once I met the Dharma, my artistic activities took a back seat for about six years. When I took up figure drawing again, much to my surprise my drawing had improved! Well, it’s not so much that my drawing had improved as that my awareness and general emotional state had improved. If I was drawing someone I was inure capable of really seeing that person rather than just a product of my own assumptions and prejudices, or even likes and dislikes.
I rather hoped, having encountered the Dharma, that I could drop the struggle of my artistic activities. I have not been able to, and as I tee it now I am glad I could not. But in what sense am I a ‘Buddhist artist’? I have to admit to not ever thinking of myself as a ‘religious’ person. Nor have I found much of what passes as ‘Buddhist’ art particularly exciting, often finding myself being sidetracked by its immersion within Eastern cultures. In terms of Sangharakshita’s four categories of ‘art’ as enumerated in The Religion of Art, I see my fascination centering on art that is ‘religious’ in content but not in form, rather than ‘religious’ in both content and form.
At the same time I recognize that although I am attempting to practise the Dharma in a Western context, its principles are embedded in an Eastern setting, whether in ‘literature’ or in visual images. One needs to be able to see through the form to the content. In the West, like it or not, we have inherited with ‘Buddhist’ art iconography foreign to us in style and history. However, it is not untranslatable if one can understand the ‘language’ and sort out essentials from cultural and historical conventions.
With our perspective on history, we cannot be confined to the Buddhism, or the artistic traditions, of any one culture. And we cannot necessarily ‘read’ images in the way that they were intended to be read at the time and place of their creation. This goes for any area in the history of art, not just so called ‘religious’ art. We do not see a Vermeer in the way his contemporaries saw it. It is not that nothing is communicated, but we must be aware of unthinking assumptions. Just think of the innumerable marble ‘ice goddesses’ produced by the Victorians, blinded by a romantic notion of the pristine purity of classical Greek sculpture from which time had removed the pagan paintwork long before the Victorians (or indeed even Michelangelo) ever clapped eyes on it!
I work as an artist because at the moment it is the only way for me to deal with certain areas of my life. That is the more subjective end, if you like. Objectively, it is important that people have images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that to some extent reflect a Western sensibility, rather than just being copies of oriental antiquities, and because I have certain skills I am able to attempt this, I am more then happy to do so, although, as I said, I like to think that a non-religious ‘form’ is also possible. But I have to make my work a meaningful undertaking for myself. I am not a fourteenth century Tibetan or an eleventh century Kashmiri. I am a late twentieth century Westerner. I can admire the products of other cultures, I can learn from them to the extent that I can ‘see’ them, I can even be inspired by them, but I think it would be unintelligent merely to copy the form (except as an exercise in investigation).
For me, taking faltering steps at the beginning of a great adventure, walking into a room of paintings by Joan Miro causes my heart to leap towards the magic of unexplored possibilities far more than walking into an exhibition such as the recent show of Tibetan art held at the Royal Academy in London. This is not to disparage the Tibetan exhibition; it simply reflects the actual state of affairs in the life of a 45-year-old Western artist attempting to practise the Dharma in a realistic fashion — imperfectly, but hopefully with a degree of sincerity.
Reprinted from Golden Drum 33.