The Artist as Mystic and Prophet

Art as Catalysts for Change, Part I of 2

Both philosophers Hegel and Nietzsche considered art, along with religion and philosophy, to be “man’s most sublime pursuits.”[i] In a world that brings horror and sure death, Nietzsche viewed “…the sublime as the artistic conquest of the horrible.”[ii] He celebrated the person “who has looked with bold eyes into the dreadful destructive turmoil of so-called world-history as well as into the cruelty of nature” and, without yielding to resignation or to “a Buddistic negation of the will,” reaffirms life with the creation of works of art.”[iii]

The artists are akin to the mystics and educators. Not all artists, of course. “Only some artists and philosophers fulfill the aspirations of humanity,” noted Walter Kaufman, Nietzsche’s most prolific biographer.[iv] “They alone realize the state of being that the rest of mankind, too, desire and toward which they grope…”[v]

Like mystics, artists are more sensitive to the joys and suffering of life and to the patterns of the cosmos. Their creations emerge as if they are tapped into some universal consciousness. They speak to us as visionaries and prophets. Not as prophets of the future, but as the Semitic prophets did, with great clairvoyance of the present, so that we may better prepare for our collective future. Gertrude Stein said, “…a creator is contemporary, he understands what is contemporary when the contemporaries do not yet know it…”[vi]

Like the mystic, the artist sees more clearly how society contradicts our bodies, minds, and psycho-spiritual health. Like the educator they communicate their insights and can help us to discover them within ourselves. Their work serves to raise the awareness of their audience, and so society at large. At their best, they are messengers from our unconscious and perhaps a higher consciousness.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote, "Creative artists are mankind's awakeners to recollection: summoners of our outward mind to conscious contact with our inner selves, not as participants in this or that morsel of history, but as spirit, in the consciousness of being. Their task, therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time from one center of consciousness to another.”[vii]

In both creation and in contemplation of that creation, art can lift us from our individual islands of id and ego and reconnect us to the whole. “Art can evolve our consciousness through the contemplative reception of a new map of awareness,” writes the visionary Alex Grey. And William Blake “held that the way to truth and higher consciousness was through the contemplation of art. He proposed that by immersing oneself in art, a person could experience it not just as an aesthetic but more akin to the meditative exercise a mystic performs in preparation for achieving a higher state of spiritual enlightenment.”[viii]

These are not outlier views but rather the deep beliefs of many artists and critics. The Dadaist, the Surrealist, the Stijil movement and many others thought that art could set people free, help transcend the dominant paradigm, and as the Zuric Dadaist Jean Arp hoped, “…save mankind from the furious madness of these times.”[ix]

And like the previous ways of raising consciousness that reviewed in previous posts—education, meditation, and psychedelics—art has been praised for all sorts of benefits, including inducing altered states and feelings of transcendence, increasing mental and physical health, aiding in palliative care, treating substance dependence, and facilitating courtship and lovemaking.[x]

Clearly, art has often served as the medium of liberation and of awareness. It has inspired revolutions of thought and of nations. It has been the language of inspiration. It would be impossible to enumerate even a short list of all the artistic creations that have transformed the way in which humanity sees reality. Among them will be included…

… the songs of freedom and of the promised land sung by African slaves in America; the music of jazz and rock-and-roll;

… the paintings on the walls of deep caves long ago, of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and Picasso’s Guernica; the murals of Diego Rivera and the street art in 21^st century Cairo and Tripoli;

… the poems The Road Not Taken and Still I Rise;

… the plays Hamlet, A Doll’s House, and Waiting for Godot;

… the photographs Earthrise from Apollo 8, Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, and The Burning Monk;

… the novels Frankenstein, All Quiet on the Western Front, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Jungle, 1984 and Brave New World;

… the movies Doctor Strangelove, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey;

… the TV shows The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and The Simpsons.

And so on. You pick your favorites. The art by some artists helps to clear away culture’s fog and to awaken in us our own potential and possibilities. Like Joseph Campbell said of mythology, art can help connect us to nature—to the universe, to the Earth, to life, to society, and to ourselves.

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[i] Kaufman, W. (1974:175) Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Fourth Edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

[ii] Using Kaufman’s (1974:131) translation rather than his translation of Nietzsche, F. (1886/1967:60) The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, Translated by W. Kaufman. Vintage Books, New York.

[iii] Using Kaufman’s (1974:131) translation rather than his translation of Nietzsche (1886/1967:59).

[iv] Kaufman (1974:285).

[v] Nietzsche believed that there was more difference between these people and the rest of humanity than between humans and apes (Kaufman, 1974).

[vi] Stein’s quote in Hughes, R. (1981:56) The Shock of the New. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

[vii] Joseph Campbell (1976:92-93) Creative Mythology: Volume 4 of The Masks of God. Penguin Books, New York.

[viii] Shlain, L. (1993/2001:95) Arts and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light. Harper Perennial, New York.

[ix] Hughes, R. (1981:61) The Shock of the New. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

[x] Kramer, E. (2000) Art as Therapy: Collected Papers. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London.

Dissanayake, E. (2008) If Music is the Food of Love, What about Survival and Reproductive Success. Musicae Scientitae, Special Issue, p. 169-195.