Hi John B. and Angus:
If I understand you two correctly, the creation of beauty by artists is a
worthy pursuit but hardly capable of bringing about a "mystic
transformation."
Maybe so. But some well-known artists have expressed a somewhat
broader view of art's capabilities and purpose:
>From Kandinsky:
"The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can
weigh colors in its own scale and thus become a determinant in
artistic creation."
>From Mondrian:
"All art is more or less direct aesthetic expression of the universal" so
that "the individual will be open to the universal and will tend more and
more to unite with it."
>From Brancusi:
"Look at my works until you see them. Those who are closer to God
have seen them. Whoever does not detach himself from the ego never
attains the absolute and never deciphers life."
>From Picasso:
"Something sacred, that's it. We ought to be able to say that such and
such a painting is as it is, with its capacity for power, because it is
'touched' by God." But people would put a wrong interpretation on it.
And yet it's the nearest we can get to the truth."
All quotes from Ken Wilber's chapter, "In the Eye of the Artist" from his
book, "Eye to Eye." He sums up:
"Bad art copies; good art creates; great art transcends. Great art
dissolves ego in nondual consciousness, and is to that extent
experienced as an epiphany, a revelation, a release or liberation-great
art as a release from the separate self sense."
Sounds like "mystic transformation" to me.
I certainly agree, John, that many people who cultivate beauty are
unpleasant characters. I've been in enough watercolor societies to
know exactly what you mean. However, that does not necessarily
detract from their art. After all, some believe that Pirsig isn't the must
admirable person you might want to meet since he comes across in
his books at times as a self-absorbed loner.
But I disagree that extolling the virtues of beauty is somehow a travesty
of the MOQ, confusing "Dynamic Quality with an appreciation of beauty."
You recall I'm sure the tune from Chapter 9 that was "so fantastically
good it stops you in your tracks" Pirsig went on to explain:
"The first good, that made you want to buy the record, was Dynamic
Quality. Dynamic Quality comes as a sort of surprise. What the record
did was weaken for a moment your existing static patterns in such a
way that the Dynamic Quality all around you shone through. It was free,
without static forms."
No confusion between beauty and DQ there.
Platt
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