 Hunger |
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"With a greater or lesser degree of facility, virtuosity and brio, objects are given life upon the canvas, which belong to coarser or finer categories of 'painting'. The harmonization of the whole upon the canvas is the path that leads to the work of art. This work is observed with cold eyes and indifferent spirit. Connoisseurs admire the 'technique' (just as one admires a tightrope walker, enjoys the 'peinture' (just as one enjoys pâté). Hungry souls go away hungry. The great masses wander through the rooms, find the canvases nice or great. The man who could have said something to his fellow man has said nothing, and he who might have heard has heard nothing. This condition of art is called l'art pour l'art.... The artist seeks material rewards for his skill, his powers of invention and observation. His aim becomes the satisfaction of his own ambition and greed. Instead of a close collaboration among artists, there is a scramble for these rewards. There are complaints about competition and overproduction. Hatred, bias, factions, jealousy and intrigue are the consequences of this purposeless, materialist art." Über das Geistige in der Kunst ["On the Spiritual in Art", in Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art 1901-1942, Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, ed.s., London, 1982, p. 130] |
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The sharing of food in a religious context, to symbolize the integration of the holy within ourselves, is a ceremony common to many religions. The early matriarchal Greeks, the Pelasgians, consecrated their mysteries with bread and wine (and often a human sacrifice). The Eleusinian mysteries devoted to Demeter [Gr: Barley mother], substituted a doll made out of a sheaf of grain, after the Dorian invasion, and they were the last remnants of the pagan religion to survive (probably until the 6th century). Do people hunger for spirituality today? If they search for transcendence, then transcendence from what? |
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| Reliquary ©Scott Bodenheimer, September 12, 1997, revised November 25, 2003,d | ||||
