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The importance of spirituality in shaping contemporary visual culture has mostly been disregarded. Mentioning art and spirit in the same sentence was considered embarrassing. In contrast, most of the significant twentieth-century art movements developed in conjunction with spiritual inspiration. This book explores the topic through the lenses of media ecology, art history, and psychology. Media ecology is a theory that media shapes how messages are delivered. The non-commercial nature of spiritual concepts would prevent messages from being offered through commercial media. As a result, many respected artists whose works are familiar have escaped understanding because people haven't yet pierced the spiritual history of modern art. Images once considered devoid of meaning are now being re-examined in terms of their spiritual underpinnings. Kandinsky thought that he could correct nineteenth-century materialism by replacing it with twentieth-century spirituality. However, it was not until the twenty-first century that modern art's spiritual value started to be publicly recognized through scholarship and gallery exhibits. Abstraction provides the opportunity to explore design as a psychological self-revelation of the artist. Automatic drawing, once a tool for spirit messages, became a psychological method with the introduction of Surrealism. Psychology introduced the notion of creative dissociation to replace the idea of mediumship as a basis for art created in altered states. Art, as a personal and reflexive expression, can be used to steady our culture from one that denies spirituality to one that embraces it. We can all use artistic techniques to become more balanced people. Spiritual and psychological artistic techniques created the world of art we experience today. Understanding these influences can help us to better know the world in which we live.
Table des matières
Acknowledgments - Introduction - Revealing the Spiritual in Visual Culture - Spiritual Crisis and Communication Theory - Spirituality and Modern Art - Abstract Spiritual Artists - Spirituality and Non- abstract Art - Spiritualism and Art - Outsider Art - Art, Psychology, and Spirituality - Changing Perspectives, Visual Culture in the Twenty-First Century - Creating Art: A Spiritual Path - Conclusion - Spirit Artists - Index.
A propos de l'auteur
Susan B. Barnes received an BFA from Pratt Institute, an MFA in Theater, and a PhD in Media Ecology from NYU. She taught communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology, wrote nine books, and won an NSF grant along with MEA book awards.
Commentaire
"Through her latest book on Visual Spirituality, media and visual theorist Susan B. Barnes articulates the need to acknowledge the role of the spiritual in making and experiencing art in contemporary secular visual culture. She calls us to recognize art as intrinsically spiritual and the spiritual as intrinsically art. By balancing rational and intuitive ways of knowing and being (Omniphasism) and inclusively drawing on both rather than shutting out one or the other, humans can enhance their spiritual awareness and connect the spiritual to the art of living." -Julianne H. Newton, Professor of Visual Communication, University of Oregon
