Down the Rabbit Hole of Visionary Art: Abdul Mati Klarwein, Ernst Fuchs, & Alex Grey

If you are reading this, you are no doubt aware of the enormous impact the Internet has had in recent years in terms of the accessibility of information in any number of different areas.

In the political arena, the role of the mainstream media is playing an ever-decreasing role, due to the large amount of information online-- whether you lean to the left or the right or to another direction altogether, you'll find a ton of information that is right up your alley. The political action on the blogosphere and other Internet political sites has simply exploded. No longer are people forced to rely on the mainstream media outlets for their news and political information.

In like manner, artists are no longer limited to the mainstream art magazines, such as Art in America, Artforum, etc. The periodical market has seen the rise of alternative art mags like Juxtapoz and New American Paintings, both of which I highly recommend. But again, as in politics, in the world of new and alternative art, the Internet is where the action is.

Anyone who has read this blog to any extent knows that my taste in art is pretty eclectic. In recent years, as I have more or less left the world of commercial illustration behind (my former career), I have been digging increasingly deeper into a wide range of different types of art. One of my favorite artists is the visionary/surrealist painter Abdul Mati Klarwein. I had the good fortune to be introduced to his work in the 1970s, and have previously featured him on this blog (click here to go to that page). Through looking at Klarwein's work on the Internet, and then following one link after another, I have discovered that there is a significant art movement that exists more or less underground-- this movement (for lack of a better term) is generally referred to as visionary art. I have fallen down the rabbit hole.


Klarwein, Astral Body Awake, 1969

Visionary art is actually a fairly broad term; visionary artists find inspiration in a number of ways-- from dreams, meditation, religious/spiritual experience, and sometimes through the use of what are referred to as entheogens, "psychoactive substances used in a religious or shamanic context" (as referred to by wikipedia). Visionary art has been around since humans first started creating images, some 30,000 years ago (much of this art [cave paintings, petroglyphs, etc.] is considered to have possibly been inspired by shamanic visions and/or the use of phychoactive plants). More recent visionary artists include Hieronymous Bosch (15/16c.), William Blake (18/19c.), and in the twentieth century, Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo.

Back to Klarwein... Klarwein's work has led me to an increasingly large number of artists working within the field of visionary art. Two of these artists have already been featured on this blog-- A. Andrew Gonzalez, and Luke Brown. I would now like to feature an introduction to the work of two very influential artists, Ernst Fuchs, and Alex Grey.

You will probably not see either of these artists in the pages of Art in America, but you might see them in Juxtapoz, and both have a significant presence on the Internet. Of the two, Grey, an American artist (1953-) is probably more well known in the U.S. There are a number of books of his art that are readily available, and he has also written an excellent book about his philosophy of art, The Mission of Art .


(click on image to zoom in)
Note: On his website, Grey is very specific about not reproducing his art without permission, so if you would like to see his art, follow the link below near the bottom of this post.



Ernst Fuchs

Fuchs (1930-) is, in a sense, the grand master of contemporary visionary art-- Klarwein and a number of other visionary painters such as Robert Venosa and Philip Rubinov-Jacobson have studied with Fuchs. Unfortunately, however, Fuchs, who is Austrian, has apparently not yet been discovered by any American publishers-- there is virtually nothing of his work in any books that are readily available in English. Happily, however, he has an extensive personal website, where you can see a wide range of his work. Grey also has an excellent and very comprehensive website. (I have recently learned, by the way, that Fuchs was featured in Avant Garde magazine in 1969, but look to drop some serious cash if you are looking for a copy.)


Fuchs working, 2000. Photo by L. Caruana


Fuchs with Dali


Crucification and Self-portrait, with Inge Beside the Cross, 1945


The Wedding of the Unicorn, 1952-1960


The Angel of Death Over the Gate to Purgatory, 1951-1956


Moses Before the Burning Bush, 1962
(click on image to zoom in)


The Transfiguration of the Resurrected, 1961-1982
(click on image to zoom in)


The Angel of History, 1992

In a world where the mainstream art world often has little interest in technical skill, the visionary painters typically are highly skilled artists—pretty refreshing, if you ask me.

Do yourself a favor, and check out the work of these two artists in more detail at their personal websites:

Ernst Fuchs, and Alex Grey.

A word of warning: be careful-- you may find yourself tumbling down the rabbit hole of visionary art!

Paul McCarthy's Dog Poo Creates Havok In Berne

I really don't know what to say about this, but I thought that it was worth sharing...

GENEVA (AFP) — A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled "Complex Shit", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

Now THIS is a work of art!

Jacobi, Weapons of Mass Destruction, mixed media, 2008

If you don't know what this is, ask a guitar player!

The Opener of the Way

New painting, just completed (8/8/08).

(click on image to enlarge)


Jacobi, The Opener of the Way, 18" x 24", acrylic, 2008

***

The Opener of the Way
Psycho, Anubis

The Opener of the Way is the title of Robert Bloch’s first book, a collection of horror and fantasy stories, published by Arkham House in 1945. Bloch would be familiar to most people as the author of Psycho, from which Alfred Hitchcock’s movie of the same name was based. Bloch was also a member of the “Lovecraft Circle”. In Bloch’s story, the opener of the way was the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis.




Robert Johnson at the crossroads, Muddy, and Jimi

The opener of the way; the gatekeeper at the crossroads. Legend has it that bluesman Robert Johnson “made a deal with the devil at the crossroads”. In the voodoo tradition of Haiti and New Orleans, the deity Legba is the gatekeeper of the gates to the spirit world, the opener of the way for the gods to possess their devotees. It is likely that the “devil” that Robert Johnson encountered was actually Legba (so the story goes). Johnson’s song Crossroads was popularized by Eric Clapton with the group Cream on their 1968 double album Wheels of Fire.



Voodoo has not been an uncommon theme in the blues. From Johnson, to Muddy Waters singing "I got a black cat bone, I got a mojo too, I got a John the Conqueror root, I’m gonna mess with you..." in the song Hoochie Coochie Man, to Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile, there is a powerful magic in this music.


The painting

This painting came about in a very spontaneous manner. I had nothing specific in mind when I started it, it just sort of unfolded on its own. (It started with a sketch, which can be seen on a post I made back on May 15.) As it progressed, I looked at it and thought, what is this thing? I pictured myself standing out in a field somewhere, encountering this strange entity that just materialized out of thin air. An apparition, an inter-dimensional being, or what? The legend of Robert Johnson came to mind… the crossroads… Legba, the opener of the way. Somehow, it fit. Legba is often depicted as an as an old man on a crutch or with a cane, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and smoking a pipe, or sprinkling water. If this is a picture of Legba, he could be “shape-shifting”, or perhaps this is just one of his many faces.

Then again, this painting could be about something altogether different…

Note: included in this painting you will find the all-seeing eye, the alchemical symbols for fire and for air, and the golden ratio a couple of times (appearing once by chance [to my surprise, when I realized it], and once by intent[inspired by my discovery]).

Mandalas

Tibetan Buddhist Mandalas, c. 1500; Aztec Sun Stone (a.k.a. Aztec Calendar Stone) c. 1500; Navajo sand painting, 20c.; digital mandalas; mandalas from the natural world and the mechanical world; from the atomic to the cosmic.

Note: there are larger versions of many of these images-- click on image for larger view.




























cross-section of a twig


tungsten crystal at high magnification


sound vibrational patterns in water
















Large Hadron Collider (particle accelerator)


"soft" synthesizer module





Note to creators/owners of these images: thank you for allowing me to share these beautiful pictures with the people that visit this blog.

Hieronymous Bosch Action Figures!

While engaging in one of my increasingly favorite pastimes, perusing art on the Internet, I recently came across some interesting items: Hieronymous Bosch action figures! More accurately, they would be described as “figurines”, but “action figures” just sounds cooler. (Technically speaking, action figures usually are “pose-able”, have moving parts, and do not stand on a base.)

These figurines are based on two of Bosch’s paintings, as seen below. (click to enlarge)


The Garden of Earthly Delights (center panel), ca. 1500


The Last Judgement (center panel), ca. 1510

(From this point on, all text and images of figurines are from: http://www.3d-mouseion.com/engels/bosch_eng.htm)

Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)
From an artistic point of view, the world famous brilliant forerunner of surrealism was, in his day, unique and radically different. Hieronymus Bosch was born during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in 's-Hertogenbosch, in the Duchy of Brabant [Netherlands]. Bosch places visionary images in a hostile world full of mysticism, with the conviction that the human being, due to its own stupidity and sinfulness has become prey to the devil himself. He holds a mirror to the world with his cerebral irony and magical symbolism, sparing no one. He aims his mocking arrows equally well at the hypocrisy of the clergy as the extravagance of the nobility and the immorality of the people. Hieronymus Bosch’s style arises from the tradition of the book illuminations (manuscript illustrations from the Middle Ages). The caricatural representation of evil tones down its terrifying implications, but also serves as a defiant warning with a theological basis.



Helmeted Bird Monster (from The Garden Of Earthly Delights)
This helmeted bird monster is carrying a pencil box and an inkpot in its beak, in which the nun, decaying into a pig, is dipping her pen. A severed foot is swinging from the bird's helmet referring to the horrible corporal punishments which could be expected in hell. The pig, indeed an indictment against the decay of clergy life, is tempting the man who is sitting beside him and it appears that he is drawing up a contract. Is the man possibly selling his soul?


Devil On Night-Chair (from The Garden Of Earthly Delights)
It is presumed that somehow Bosch had knowledge of the Visio Tungdali, a twelfth century handwriting that describes a vision of a journey through hell. This was possibly the basis for this devil, crowned with a cauldron, symbolising the diabolical inferno fire. He is sat on a night chair, which offers him the possibility of excreting the gorged souls. His curious footwear in the shape of pitchers symbolises dipsomania. (original art below)





Tree Man (from The Garden Of Earthly Delights)
Many recognise a self-portrait in one of Bosch's most famous hybrid creatures. The hollow space in the egg-shaped body offers space for a pub. All breaks adrift through the two boats in which the tree-shaped paws are situated. Music and dance may have lead to licentiousness, symbolised by the bagpipes on the headwear. (original art below)





Ears With Knife (from The Garden Of Earthly Delights)
Two enormous ears, held together by an arrow and a knife jammed in between. Is there an allegorical medieval symbolism behind this, or are the horrible tortures one might expect in hell pictured here once more? Is the monogram on the knife an M of the B of Bosch? Maybe we will never know what Bosch ‘had between his ears’ when he was painting this picture.


The Witches’ Kitchen (from The Last Judgment)
On the left of the central panel of the triptych ‘The Last Judgement’ is a diabolic tavern. People are being cooked, smoked, put through mincing machines, squeezed, fried and roasted on the spit. In this witches’ kitchen, sinners are subjected to the ‘Judicium Extremum’ of the Supreme Judge. The punishment reflects the nature of the sins committed, in this case indulgence and gluttony.


Blue Flutist (from The Last Judgment)
On the left hand side on the middle panel of the triptych The last Judgement a cheerful blue creature adds lustre with his music to the horrifying spectacle. He symbolises the lawlessness, ending in many not being admitted to heaven on Judgement Day.


Freak with Beard (from The Last Judgement)
The middle panel of the triptych The Last Judgement shows a 'rillo' with beard, a freak with merely a head and legs. Furthermore, this creature has been adorned by Bosch with the tail of a reptile. He looks with a frightened expression at the mincer, where sinners are put through on Judgment Day.


Headfooter (from The Last Judgment)
On the foreground of the shocking central panel stands a creature characteristic of Bosch's work, consisting of only one head on two feet. His anatomical imperfections are covered by a headscarf. The painter has embroidered upon a classical Greek form in his own distinctive way. In ancient times, omitting body parts was also considered frightening. The character, amusing to us, seems to be taking a carefree stroll through the bloody scene of the Last Judgement.


To see more of Bosch’s paintings, click here.