Jiddu Krishnamurti On The True Artist...

The philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti on what makes a true artist ...

 

Yet many great artists are nothing like that at all.Many have even led quite dissolute lives. or been people filled with passion. Maybe too much perfection would not lead to much creativity.

 

As per Gurdjieff and Osho, art can be divided into subjective art and objective art. You can see their definitions in the links.

The parameter here is the state of consciousness from which the artist wielded his brush or instrument or pen , the chaotic mind or the still no-mind.

 

If it's art we're talking about, I'd say the work is everything. But I'd be interested to know some examples of pictorial art you'd define as objective.

 

How interesting!
I understand all of this very well.....but it is annoying when people try to describe that which cannot be described....
but I will further this by saying......if you look at a piece of art...
How does it make you feel?
dizzy?
nauseous?
sick?
confused?
scratching your head and telling yourself, I know I should like this piece as everyone tells me I should and the experts deem it as so.....but I am not getting it.....
or does the piece make you feel happy, peaceful, serene....able to use your own imagination to an extent.....

Art is the direct relationship between the artist and viewer...Something which makes me feel sick and dizzy may make you feel happy....It is all subjective.

i fight so hard all of the time to put into words what cannot be.

 

"All Western sculpture is sexual. You see the Roman sculpture: beautiful, but something creates sexuality in you. It hits your sexual center. It does not give you an uplift."
-Osho.

I assume this gentleman never saw Trajan's Column or many statues of emperors senators or other worthies of Rome of which huge numbers exist, most of which are to my mind decidedly un-sexy. This is the trouble when people try to generalize about a thing a broad as Roman sculpture. Obviously Osho was thinking only of the sexy statues with which he was familiar.

If you expand it to western sculpture in general what he says is simply ludicrous. How many totally un-sexy statues are there in European cathedrals for instance? In European cities?

 

This is because most of these artists of the west lived and created their art on the background of the chaotic mind. Some even went insane and committed suicide.

They did not know the art of meditation, of stilling the mind and operating out of a state of pure consciousness which would have enabled them to transcend the madness and chaos of the mind.

As Osho says, " All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation. When it comes out of meditation, creativity is sharing the joy, sharing the blissfulness that you have. Mind has no joy - it is really a wound, very painful."

Would just technical excellence count as art ! There are many nazi propaganda paintings used as posters which are technically sound but are quite superficial in their content. There are technically sound quacks who can copy famous paintings which even experts would find hard to differentiate.

A criterion which can be used to define art would be that of Leo Tolstoy's saying on art.

Art is a human activity , whose purpose is the transmission of the highest and best feelings to which men have attained.


And objective art , which enables one to bring the viewer to an elevated state of consciousness himself or herself, would qualify in this regard.


Objective art helps to induce in the viewer , as Gurdjieff and Osho put it, a meditative consciousness which brings along with it joy and bliss.

The cyclone is chaotic in the periphery but calm and still in the centre . This is a good analogy for the mind as well.

Objective art thus helps to make the mind centred and balance the consciousness, which otherwise is imbalanced and vacillating due to the numerous unconscious psychological tendencies within, manifesting as various likes and dislikes, cravings and aversions.

Subjective art definitely has its utility. Many find painting and playing music therapeutic.

Subjective art is a catharsis ; it helps the mental health of the individual who has created it by helping him or her to throw out the inner unconscious turbulence within and relax the mind.

But as Osho stated, half-humorously and half-seriously, he should not display his creation to others as it might endanger their own mental health. There are films and literature which has inspired serial killers and criminals, and all those would come under extreme subjective art.

Subjective art is like dreaming. Your dreams are but a way of ejecting out of the system all that you have repressed in your day to day life. If you have repressed sex you will have sexual dreams. Whatever you repress will manifest subtlely as dreams.

Those who are deeply meditative have no dreams whatsoever because they experience everything totally and intensely without allowing any mental residue to linger. They are able to attain deep sleep thereby which is refreshing and peaceful.

 

What Osho meant to say was that the state of consciousness from which the artist applied himself was that of the mind, and not that of thoughtless awareness which comes with meditation. And this is understandable because the west is not familiar with meditation as it is in the east which helps the artist to transcend the mind and observe reality as it is without the interference of the conditioned mind.

The greatest sense-pleasure is obviously sex, and this colours the perception of the mind and leaves its residue in its works.

Here are some more notes on objective art by Osho.



Here's one by Osho himself.







A link on more of his paintings.

 

I find it useful to try and understand where the art comes from. What inspired the artist, and what technique is he/she trying to use.

 

Don't hate me, but that piece by Osho you are showing here makes me feel kind of dizzy and i cannot relate to it very well......physically......
I try not to get too cerebral about art....and let it be a pure experience of feeling and connection or not....I just know what I connect to on all levels with sight only when it comes to art......and that is very subjective to each viewer......as we are all bringing what we have inside of us to anything we see, also......

 

Thank you for your comments. I would say that the painting was an expression of a blissful consciousness, not a turbulent mind. It is similar to what a blissful and happy child paints.

There are people who develop headaches while attempting to learn and practice meditation. The mind is so used to turbulence and incessant thinking, that the initial attempts to still it can provoke a reaction.

 

An another way of putting this is that the state of consciousness of the one who creates permeates his creation as well.

There are seven chakras or life-force energy centers in the body. The chakras in each person vibrate at different levels corresponding to the state of consciousness in the person.

The lower chakras are associated with fundamental emotions and needs, while the higher chakras with spiritual and intellectual refinement and perfection.

One's energies may be dominant in a certain chakra, and one would show charecterestics related to that center.

The sculptures may have been made by sculptors in whom the sex centre or muladhara was dominant , and this is reflected in the viewer as well.

Osho has indeed praised Roman sculpture as beautiful in form and detail , and at the same time he could perceive the state of consciousness of the sculptor who created it as well, and gave his critical report in that regard.

 

Objective art , that is art created from a higher state of meditative consciousness, also elicits a positive response from nature as well.


http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/plant_experiments.asp


In 1973, a woman named Dorothy Retallack published a small book called The Sound of Music and Plants. Her book detailed experiments that she had been conducting at the Colorado Woman’s College in Denver using the school’s three Biotronic Control Chambers. Mrs. Retallack placed plants in each chamber and speakers through which she played sounds and particular styles of music. She watched the plants and recorded their progress daily.


Plants which were exposed to rock music were found to be unhealthy and stunted and were bending away from the radio.

Plants which were exposed to soothing music were growing healthily and their stems were starting to bend towards the radio!

Similar results were oberved when the plants were subjected to western classical music like Bach and the plants leaned toward the speakers.

Retallack observed that the plants exposed to Indian classical music leaned toward the speakers the most.

The most noticeable positive reactions were to classical Indian music for plants.

Scientists Vidya Chivukula and Shivaraman Ramaswamy published a research paper in the International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, Vol. 5, No. 5, October 2014, citing the effects of music on the growth of plants. The plants were divided into five groups and each group was subjected to one of the following types of music, Indian Classical music, Vedic chants, Western Classical music, and Rock music while one group was kept in silence as the control group. Vedic chants and Indian classical music were found to promote the growth of plants the best as compared to the other music systems.

http://www.ijesd.org/papers/522-CD0162.pdf

 

If this is an example of 'objective' art, I think that the genre has a very long way to go. I'm afraid this looks to me like rubbish.

If you say that art that was produced by an artist who wasn't into meditation is inferior, then pretty much the whole of western art is to be written off. According to the standard Osho gives, one would have to consider this kind of daubing as superior to Rembrandt, Michael Angelo, Turner or a whole host of other painters generally considered great artists.

 

I din't say technical skill alone can produce great art. I said the work is what counts. Jean Cocteau said 'art is a form of sweat. What interests me is the exercise a man takes to produce that sweat'. Personally, I just look at the work.

I can think of a very long list of western artists who didn't go insane or commit suicide, and to judge by many works of art, it's hard to imagine that the artist was in a chaotic mental state when they produced the work.

Tolstoy is perhaps an unfortunate example here, as he repudiated all of his novels later in life when he became religious.

But there's a great deal of western art, produced without any formal meditation on the part of the artists that can be uplifting. Look at some of the works of the great painters of the Renaissance for example

 

The question here is :did Bach meditate? Probably not in any formal sense.

 

See, Osho was enlightened. He operated from a perpetual state of thoughtless awareness, and intuition guided his brush, not thought or imagination. In other artists, the latter is the case, that is , thought and imagination with some intuition as per the degree of spiritual development.

The state of consciousness in which art is produced constitutes a vital difference, even if it is not properly perceived or comprehended now at present. The response of the plants in the experiments to the various musical systems offers a clue in this regard.

 

Osho's enlightenment or otherwise is a matter of some debate. To many he appears to be a charlatan. You say thoughtless awareness and intuition guided his brush - well, clearly it wasn't any kind of artistic skill.

The response of plants to classical music doesn't help your case, as none of those composers were meditators.

 

At Osho's (then Bhagavan Rajneesh) ashram, followers took drugs and danced naked to rock n'roll. That's based on accounts of 2 people I knew who were followers back in the 70's. So called 'orange people'.

If focus on sex is on an inferior level, and rock music is no good, how does that square up?

 

Objective art, wherein one creates from a state of awareness or total love, is not just confined to painting and music, but can be applied to one's profession as well.

An example is the case of Luther Burbank,an American botanist and horticulturist, who created cactus of a thornless variety for the first time ever.

As Burbank stated, " The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love. "

Paramahamsa Yogananda , in his book 'The autobiography of a Yogi' records this conversation that took place between the two.

Burbank told Yogananda , "While I was conducting experiments to make 'spineless' cacti, I often talked to the plants to create a vibration of love. You have nothing to fear. You don't need your defensive thorns , I will protect you. '

Gradually, the thorny cactus evolved into a thornless variety.

The book Autobiography of a Yogi was itself dedicated to the memory of Burbank by Yogananda, acknowledging him as 'An American Saint'.

This is a classic example of inculcating art in one's own profession to bring about great results which is aesthetic as well.

Similarly cooking food can be an objective artistic activity too.

Most people prefer to take food made by their mother or wives or girlfriends or close relatives and friends , rather than going to the restaurant which may have a wider variety of cuisine and delicious food.

This is because food made with love has a special taste of its own which cannot be replicated by a restaurant chef focused on profits. Osho had stated that food cooked with love changes the chemical texture of the food itself. And I would say it would have more prana or vital energy in it.

Similarly food cooked with prayers and eaten saying grace by dedicating it to the divine, also tastes better than that eaten without dedication. Many have testified this to me, and it is my own experience as well.

A friend of mine once told me of his religiously minded uncle, whom he used to visit. The uncle prepared food for him, chanting in the middle of the cooking process steadily. And in my friend's own words, even though the ingredients of the food were often not in proportion, the food somehow tasted quite good.

Food thus created with awareness or love can be put under objective art.

The restaurant chef may create food specially decorated and aesthetic looking, but without awareness or love within, and just in his capacity as a trained professional chef.

Such food created would come under subjective art.

It looks good and tastes good, but somehow, you are not content within.