luminous mind

Brightly shining mind

I need to understand this concept more clearly because I am trying to point towards it in creating luminous works.  It is a phrase used by meditation teachers describing the mind state that meditation can lead to e.g.

'By letting the mind be uncontrived, in its natural state, the gross concepts will cease.  The experience of luminous emptiness will arise.'  (Gotsangpa)

'The consciousness is transparent, radiating and clear, without drowsiness and dullness, and one thinks one understands all phenomena.'  (Karmapa Wangchug Dorje)

I've had some experience of this myself - it's like going into a completely different realm of being and understanding.  But what is it, what is going on?

In an early sutra, the Buddha is said to have stated to his followers: 'Luminous monks is the mind.  And it is defiled by incoming defilements.'  (Anguttara Nikaya)  There has been ongoing disagreement as to the correct interpretation as this, broadly falling into two schools.  One claims that luminous mind is the 'ground of becoming' i.e. a fundamental consciousness out of which all individual mental activity arises.  The other disputes this on the grounds that it implies some kind of essence to our nature which the Buddha always denied, teaching that everything is subject to change; this school of thought sees luminous mind as an underlying 'dynamic continuum'.

Whatever its ontological status, both schools teach that clarity and luminosity of consciousness is obscured ('defiled') both by the clutter of everyday thoughts and, more deeply, by entrenched views and habits - like blue sky covered by clouds.  Various methods are taught to clear away what obscures: primarily different methods of meditation, enquiry and ethical practice.

Complete luminosity equates with nirvana, a free mind that does not clutter a situation with its subjectivity but can respond spontaneously and creatively.

In working with light sources (natural and artificial), in works that are about mind and attention, I can prompt the viewer to connect with some sense (depending on their own level of experience) of luminous mind.

Bill Viola

interview
with Mary Jane Jacob (ed Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, Uni of California Press 2004)

Encountered Buddhism at uni in 60s, then Zen when he went to live in Japan - had a Zen teacher.

'In Japan it was beginning to sink in that perhaps art resides in life itself, that as a practice it derives from the quality of experience, depth of thought, and devotion of the maker, not the virtuosity of the object or the success of its presentation.  Everything else follows from that.  With those words, my life changed.'

Struck by a statement by Ananda K Coomaraswamy: 'all art represents invisible things'

Makes art in awareness of his imperfection: 'The ideal of perfection, shining out there just beyond reach, is the reason why I make art.'

Struck by Zen being about practice, not theory; saw that what he did was an artistic practice - opposed this to the academic language of art as investigation. 'The idea of practice was the key connecting thread that joined my new experience with Buddhism to my life's work as an artist.'

With his father's dying he became more interested in conveying strong emotion, 'the spiritual undercurrents and invisible root systems present under all our everyday actions.' Exploring what was fleeting, what was deep emotion - like an underground river. 'The true reality is situated beyond appearances and material forms.' Led to his videos on Christ's Passion.  Began to realise the spiritual dimension to electronic and digital media:
'Sound and light have one foot in this world and one foot somewhere else. they're not completely "real" in the sense of hard material things.  There's some intangible essence there - a spark, a flicker of living energy, both physical and metaphysical - and this has always fascinated me.'

Explores compressing and expanding time - mirrors what can happen in meditation. Wants to reclaim spacious time from 'time as money' attitude - 'We must take time back into ourselves, to let our consciousness breathe and our cluttered minds be still and silent' 

Catherine's Room 2001

He sees art as having the power to release people from suffering, that it can communicate invisible forces: 'This is . . . the responsibility of those with artistic talent: to bring images into the world that can benefit all sentient beings.'

The Crossing (detail) 1996

Artist like everybody else projects his/her consciousness out into the world.  Works in a deeply unconscious way but the eventual bringing of the work into the world is a conscious one - moving between these two realms, visible and invisible; this is one definition of spiritual.  Draws on language of myth, of poetry and the human heart, core human experiences - we need to connect on this level if we are to survive.

Jan Svankmajer

The inner life of objects
exhibition in the University of Brighton Grand Parade Gallery Nov-Dec 2013

Amongst the surrealist objects and films I was drawn to the miniature stage sets/vitrines, connecting them with the illuminated boxes I want to make. 

What is it about them?  A whole world conveyed in a tiny space, the connection with children's story books and so my own childhood, fear of the unconscious, the attention to detail, the juxtaposition of realistic and fantastical. . . He says something interesting about the latter:

from his Decalogue

The fantastical needs the realistic to be convincing.  So depending on which way I go with mine, that may be useful to bear in mind.

Lee Mingwei

interview
with Mary Jane Jacob (ed.Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, Uni of California Press 2004)

Born in Taiwan, became a Zen Buddhist.

Doesn't try to make Buddhist art, but art that is 'a sincere and honest reflection of my interior world'.

A theme in all his work is establishing trust, breaking through the protective barrier we each create around ourself. (Breached that trust with his Pregnant man project - a hoax.)

In one work, The Dining Project, at Whitney Museum in 1998, he invited by lottery someone to stay behind each day after closing hours to dine with him - he spent the day preparing the meal and the evening in conversation with his guest.  'I also think about: Can art be made out of attention itself? Can art be the attentive performance of simple actions?  Can art be the manipulation of attention itself, the bringing of greater awareness to ordinary things, thereby transforming our life and our perception of present, past and future?'

In The Letter Writing Project 1999 he set up translucent spaces each with a desk for people to write letters of forgiveness which could either be hung in the booth for others to read or left for posting.  Ended up with some 12,000 which he sent burnt in a ritual.

The Letter Writing Project 1999

Ernesto Pujol

interview
with Mary Jane Jacob  (ed.Jacqueline Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, Uni of California Press 2004)

Multimedia artist (performance, installations, photography), works with particular communities and sites, explores interiority of public and private spaces.

Lived for 4 years as a Trappist monk but later converted to Buddhism.

His work is a particular response to suffering:'My art-making is not about suffering, as the Buddha would say, but about transcending it. . . quietly pointing ways to freedom from suffering through wakefulness.'

Cultivates humility of being, makes himself vulnerable and receptive as he prepares the making of a piece of work.  He wants to make something that will be embraced by the community; respectful of them but also of his own skills as an artist.  'I like the notion of the artist as a cultural worker because it reframes the image of the artistic persona with humility.'  Knows this will be understood by capitalist art world.  But in remaining vulnerable he is open to new ideas and creativity.

'I carefully create meditative installation environments that welcome you in and slowly open themselves, offering critical historical analysis or alternative environmental options.'

Farmer's Dream - Salinas, Kansas 2012

Production image from Tzofia, 12 hour performance, Tel Aviv, 2008

'The monk and the artist alike must be mindful and constantly ask deeper questions.'  Be prepared to admit they don't know.  '. . . the humble process by which one slowly experiences growing clarity and deeper insights along the way.'

'Spirituality lies outside of capitalism; there is no such thing as spiritual achievement.  But spirituality and art are our highest expression.'

Marina Abramovic

interview
with Mary Jane Jacob  (ed.Jacqueline Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, Uni of California Press 2004)

Fascination with process, phenomena changing, drew her from painting to performance art.
Began with body-based work, 'But then, where is the soul?'
Travelled to deserts and encountered their native cultures (Aboriginal, Tibetan), witnessed the lack of possessions and the highly developed mental capacities (telepathy, ESP)
Returned and developed her 'Night Sea Crossing' pieces, sitting with others for long periods - experience of heightened perception, meditative states, spaces changed by this different kind of energy; 'My entire relation to Buddhism came out of doing performances, through pure experience.'

Gold found by the artists, 1981, from the Night Sea Crossing series

Over a long period developed a relationship with Tibetan monks and created performance pieces with them.
Sees herself passing on her skills to new generations of artists in a similar unconditional way to Buddhist teachers.
Initially frustrated by an expectation that her work should develop in a linear way, one idea leading to another whereas in practice it didn't work like that; determined that if an interesting idea came to her, she would pursue it even if no obvious link with what had gone before 'because everything is connected...you are the connection.'
The pressures and deadlines of the performance situation create energy and focus: 'You need the point when you transform your low self into the higher self, and from thehighr self comes creation.'
Has lived the conflict between the pressures of creating art in society and a meditative responsibility-free life - different energy levels. 'So what I found out is the way I can do this is to create that kind of space inside the performance.', as in this piece: 

The House with the Ocean View, 2004

Lived in this space for 12 days, gazing at audience - transformative for her:
'What if I stand in front of the people and try to purify myself, just having this water; and could I purify the space with this energy. . . me as purified and purified space; can this change the energy field of the public? And really it happened. . . because i created a space with no time. I created the feeling of here and now. . . The House with the Ocean View  is really about love. . .I had an incredible feeling of unconditional love toward any person who came there. . .'
Her need to set the Buddhist idea of impermanence against society's worship of youth; some works deal with suffering as caused by attachment.
Sees the role of the artist is to share 'That's how Buddhism works in my own life.  I give art unconditionally so that it might have its own function in the life of everybody.'

drawn to the light

10 December, a bad day for me at uni - grappling with Baudrillard and Ranciere whose texts I have found pretty much incomprehensible, feeling unable to connect any of this with the art I'm interested in (or to express this), the gloom and constraints of the lecture and seminar rooms - I go outside mid afternoon and see a pale, subtle glow through the trees on Grand Parade.  I follow it down to the beach where the sun is setting.  Others too have been drawn to sit in the cold and gaze.

The image is such a cliche but at the same time so powerful and my inner state shifts immediately.  Light diffusing through air, the entire seascape luminous, the fragile capturing by the waves of reflections, expansive, archaic, the sun's connection with life, joy. . . . more cliches, impossible to express -  but there it is.

James Turrell

Creation of the World

Mark C Taylor, Refiguring the Spiritual (Columbia University Press, 2012)

Roden Crater discussed at length - its combination of art practice and scientific experiment, its relationship to Hopi mythology.

'You create the world around you, but you are not aware that you are doing so. You generally do not see light filling space, we are not aware of the material nature of light. In my work you become aware that the act of observing can create color and space.  But it is never 'just' an impression that you get, your eyes actually experience light as physically present, and present it is.'

'At the crater, I make an architecture of space and I use these forms to capture the light, to hold it, in a way, give it form, give it the space to reside.'

'But the most interesting thing to find is that light is aware that we are looking at it, so that it behaves differently when we are watching it and when we're not, which imbues it with consciousness.'

[What does he mean by this?!!]

James Turrell: Spirit and Light

Lynn M Herbert et al (Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 1998)

JT grew up as a Quaker  'This is going into meditation and waiting for the light to come...It has to do with spirit, spirituality, thought'.  Clear influence on his aesthetic, its simplicity.

Called himself 'an intranaut', someone who explores inner space

She describes religion as 'man's total reaction upon life'

James Turrell: the other horizon

Ed. Peter Noever (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 1998)

Skyspaces 1975 onwards

'light materialising into surface'

'the working of space and colour through light'

Essay by Georges Didi-Huberman:

'The artist is an inventor of places. He shapes and incarnates spaces which had been hitherto impossible, unthinkable: aporias, topical fables.'

Turrell enacts closure/privation - which then reveals light.  Architectural forms in which seeing takes place.  The frame as a rite of passage into another zone.

Essay by Daniel Birnbaum

'his art is light and perception'

He manipulates perception rather than presenting an art object.

Quotes Walter Benjamin on a dream:

'I was nothing but seeing.  All other senses had been forgotten, had disappeared. I myself did not exist, nor did my intellect which infers what things are like from the images presented by the senses. I was not somebody seeing but only seeing.  And what I saw was not the objects but only the colours.'

JT's work addresses appearance itself, light revealing itself.

'In his works Turrell has incorporated nature's immense dimensions: celestial light and the infinite spaces of the sky.'

His House of Light meditation guest house in Niigata, Japan (1998), inspired by Zen and traditional Japanese construction; incorporates a Skyspace in the roof which casts light through the second and first floors.

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Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan (Peabody Essex Museum, 2007)

A religious inclination - attended in 1920s at an East Village church a series of experimental services that drew on Hinduism, Buddhism and Baha'i; involved with Christian Scientist church.

'His use of the words "transfiguration", "religious", and "transcendency" suggests that he made an early distinction between aestheticism and spirituality and also considered spirituality on a par with experience as a significant resource for art and the perception of beauty."

Began with collages then moved into the 3-dimensional with his boxes - shadow boxes, lidded, with opening doors, compartmentalised. Hiding and revealing.

Juxtaposed images from different sources - old books, prints, daguerrotypes, magazines - and objects found and made.

Images drawn from worlds of science, astronomy, home movies, puppetry, ballet, birds, old shops. . . 

A love of spectacle - ' a sense of people engaged in wondrous performances'
Invoking strange worlds. Surrealist humour. Poetic, lyrical.

Les abeilles ont attaque le bleu celeste pale, 1940

Oliver Gosling

Space and form

Oliver talked about his work on 2 December at Brighton Uni. 

I was particularly interested in how he used space in his paintings, the balance between space and form.  He spoke of space as being the emotive anchor of a work, and as being how the work unfolds.  Both liberating and compressing. It can be layered, giving the sense of spaces within the space.  It can infiltrate form. Form emerges out of space, gathering materiality.  The materiality of space.  It supports meanings such as absence, loss, abandonment. It's expansiveness counters all the input in our lives.  A lot of space throws greater emphasis on to the forms. It can be disorienting (where am I, who am I?) Space leaves freedom for interpretation.

Influenced by paintings and ideas of the Song and Yuan dynasties, developed in Chan art which made its way to Japan - Zen art which was more highly developed.  Simple, reductive use of space and form.