31 century museum in Chicago

Kamin,

Attached are the two texts, Overheard Theories of Art and Twenty Overheard Theories of Spiritual Being. The Theories of Spiritual Being have been edited from the version you have and both have been rearranged so the theories parallel one another.

As I indicated in our last conversation the Overheard Theories of Art have not been altered. The Theories of Spiritual Being have been edited by friends who are editors so I think they read as they should.

These texts are not intended to create closure or articulate truths, they are intended to provoke thought. They are contradictory and as a group border on the absurd. What is important is the conceptual space created between the two texts and conceptual spaces created between the theories within each text. Ideally when reading them an indeterminate space is created, a liminal space, a space in which contemplation can/will occur.

Bob

TWENTY-FOUR OVERHEARD THEORIES OF ART

Compiled by J. Ostler & R. Peters

1. THE TINGLE-IMMERSION THEORY1

The proper procedure on encountering a work of art is to strip ourselves of all vestments of knowledge and experience (since they blunt the immediacy of our enjoyment), then submerge ourselves completely and gauge the aesthetic potency of the work by the intensity and duration of the resulting tingle.

(1 Attributed to Immanuel Tingle and Joseph Immersion (ca. 1800). See Languages of Art by Nelson Goodman, p. 112 (Bobbs Merrill, 1968))

2. FEELING ART THEORY

An artist is a person who has access to the universal vibes. She feels what other people have felt. If she feels X then X is part of the universal vibes. Other artists have felt like she now feels. Other persons feel like she feels. If she appreciates X in the Pieta for Y reasons, she doesn’t need to know of the Medicis or Savonarola or the Popes or even of the Catholic Church to understand Michelangelo’s work. She is an artist; that is enough.

3. CAN’T SAY THEORY

I am an artist. I know what art is. But, I cannot say what it is. I only know that it is. Words about art categorize and pigeonhole. Words cut up and diminish art. Art is unique and not translatable. I feel art. But I cannot explain it. I can only point.

4. CAN ‘ T BE FALSIFIED THEORY

I do art. I am an artist. I cannot say what art is. I cannot explain art. It is of no consequence. I feel art. My feelings are primary–irreducible. Art is primary. I am an artist. Art is simply what I do.

5. ASSERTION THEORY

Objects are considered to be art only because it is asserted that they are art. Objects in the museum are considered to be art only because the curators assert that they are art. Anyone at any time may assert anything to be art. Anything, therefore, may be art. Anything that I assert to be art is art. Anyone who asserts that something is art is an artist. I do make such assertions, therefore, what I assert to be art is art and I am an artist.

6. EVERYTHING IS ART THEORY (OR THE DEMOCRATIC THEORY)

Since I am an artist and other men are like me, then other men must also be artists. I am an artist and I do art and I see no clear distinction between the things that I do and the things that other men do. Indeed, all men must be artists–Wyeth, no less Warhol, no less Daley, no less my mother, no less my insurance salesman. What I do is art; what every man does is art. All of life is art. All of earth is art. Everything is art. There is nothing which is not art.

7. ART IS WHAT I LIKE THEORY

I am an artist. I know what I like. I like art. What I like is art. I am an artist. Art is what I like.

8. MODIFIED SOLIPSIST THEORY

The solipsist does not believe that there exist minds other than his own. He knows what it is like to think. He knows what it feels like when he is thinking. He can feel his own mind working–his consciousness–but he cannot feel other minds working. The solipsist may admit that he can observe other bodies moving about but he is not willing to admit that he can observe other minds working. The solipsist will argue, he can observe only one mind, his own. If the solipsist can feel only one mind, then he can know only one mind and the solipsist is willing to argue that he has no reason for believing that there exist minds other than his own. If his is the only mind, then all ideas come from his mind and all ideas are his ideas.

The solipsist-like artist makes a similar argument for his belief that there does not exist art other than his own. The solipsist-like artist knows what it is like to feel art. He knows what it is like to feel an “aesthetic experience.” He knows that he feels art but he cannot feel other people feeling art. As far as he knows he is the only one to feel art. He believes that art is only known by feeling and the solipsist-like artist believes that there does not exist any art other than that which he knows.

9. ART AS MEANS: A DEVICE FOR REDUCING TENSION

A tense mind is not free. A not free mind cannot soar, it cannot introspect, it cannot reflect upon itself. Art is a device to quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. Art is not an end. Art is a means for preparing the mind for revelation, for truth.

10. ART AS AN EMBELLISHMENT OF LIFE:

Art is adorned life. Art is life made special. The corner policeman has developed elaborate hand signals and a piercing whistle for directing traffic. He has made his life-routine special. He has embellished his life; he has embellished the life of others. He has made art.

11. ART AS HEIGHTENED PERCEPTION (WAKEFULNESS THEORY):

All things possess the potentiality for art. Art is a matter of seeing; of perceiving. Art is a matter of wakeful living. Art is not constructing, not the manufacture of objects. Art is seeing now, more intensely, with greater feeling, and with deeper meaning. Art is the flash of new awareness. Art is a matter of paying special attention to some thing–of waking oneself to the uniqueness of the thing and then attempting to wake others to that thing.

It is not a matter of one object (the art object) being inherently different from other objects (the non-art objects). It is a matter of how much wakefulness there is with respect to that object.

Thus the major artists of this culture may not be the sculptors or painters or the dramatists–for the society generally somnambulates through art museums or sleeps in the theater. The major artists are such individuals as the coaches and players of major sports and political campaign mangers and the politicians. Such individuals are intensely wakeful to their craft. In their art they understand the implication of not only their smallest acts, but also the implications of their followers.

12. ART AS A DEFINITION OF ART:

The task of art is to define the province of art. Art as art does precisely that. It demarcates a realm of art just as the axioms of Euclidean geometry demarcate plane geometry. Art as an idea of art defines a class of things as art.

13. ART AS MAKING SPECIAL:

The most general characteristic of a thing or act that is art is that it is some thing made special. Arting is making special. If a thing or act is not special not valued, then it is not art. Making special is to separate from the humdrum and the commonplace. It is an expression of reverence. It is a distinguishing of the particular. It is the ascription of significance. It is the recognition of preeminence.

14.THE NO KNOWLEDGE ARTIST:

The no knowledge artist notes that knowledge of history dies and yet works of art persevere–the gods of Homer are dead; the Iliad remains. As Croce observed, content is subject to all the hazards of history; it is born and it dies; the form of a work is immortal. If works of art persevere through time, the no knowledge artist concludes that:
1. historical knowledge must be irrelevant to the success of the work and
2. the works perseverance must depend on some X factor that works of art share. The existence of this X factor is taken to mean that the work of art that perseveres though time has it and that individuals who aesthetically experience such works sense the X factor. The possession and the recognition of this X factor are not dependent on knowledge or experience. Either the work has it or it doesn’t; either the individual experiences it or he doesn’t.

The artist then is the individual who senses the X factor. Seeing/feeling or understanding the X factor cannot be learned and it is uncertain that it can be cultivated.

15. ART AS SURVIVAL THEORY:

Art allows us to survive. Art fills those psychic and social needs that are not filled by our society or our culture. Art allows us to live the following day. Art gives us the strength to persevere. Art is life sustaining.

16. THE NON-ASSERTION THEORY:

The farmer plowing her/his contoured field–making gently undulating furrows across the blankness of Nebraska–does art. The traffic policeman on the corner beat with her ritual hand signals does art. The chicken farmer constructing his automated hen houses does art. The politician deftly escaping her antagonist’s thrusts does art. The ironworker guiding steel girders eighty stories above the ground does art. The waitress intricately balancing four plates of food and assorted beverages does art. The sea captain attending to her oil painting in her cabin does art.

Art is doing those things that we do because they are meaningful to our lives. Once we assert that any of those life-meaningful things are art, they cease to be meaningful in our lives. Once they become an art piece (are accepted as an art piece), they drop out. They become mute. Art pieces belong to the game of art and because the game of art is now conceived as not dealing with life, art pieces are now conceived as not dealing with life.

Once a thing is asserted to be art, then it ceases to be art and it will never be art again. Art is therefore that which is not asserted to be art.

17. ART IS A LIVING THING:

The uniqueness of art objects is their life quality. The drawings at Lascaux, the Medici tomb, an Utamaro print, a Mies Van der Rohe building, a Senufo mask, an Annie Sprinkle performance or Jeff Koons sculpture “speak for themselves, challenge us, and seduce us because they are life forms, because they are living things–organic wholes. This is what makes art, art.

a. Only “life forms” can make “life forms.”

Because we are bodies, and bodies are alive, we know when something is alive, is whole. The artist is a body with the unique ability to see life forms in inanimate matter. The artist reorganizes inanimate matter into life forms, giving them life, making them organic wholes. She does this by making with her hands – her body. Objects made by machines, mass-produced objects are not made by a body, so they cannot be art. They are not life forms.

18. THE NON-FEELING THEORY:

Traditional art like religion is an opiate that separates the mind from the body and reduces art to the mimicry of life forms and retinal play. For the non-feeling artist art is about ideas, about thought and not about the possession of secret powers. She leaves the expression of transcendental truths, the discovery of self or the production of pleasurable aesthetic experiences to theologians, self-help groups and decorators.

The non-feeling artist reintegrates the mind into art to awaken consciousness from the numbing effects of habit and pure sensate pleasure.

a. The Philistine

The philistine is a species of the non-feeling artist. The philistine wishes to take the “magic” out of art. For the philistine magic implies the exercise of a secret power. Secrets constitute a restricted knowledge–knowledge accessible only to a select few. The philistine knows that art can maintain its secrets only when they are implicit; when explicit, art loses its magic. The philistine makes that which is implicit explicit, giving the power of art to all.

19. SHARED NEUROSIS THEORY:

When an artist puts her brush to the canvas, her chisel to the stone or her finger to the shutter release, she involuntarily reveals her inner psychological state, her neurosis. Thus if artist X has neurosis Y, neurosis Y will be the content of her work. Others who share neurosis Y will feel neurosis Y in the presence of the work of artist X. When viewer Z recognizes he shares neurosis Y with artist X, the effect is cathartic – releasing viewer Z temporarily from neurosis Y. Art restores individuality-wholeness and consequently societal mental health – art is therapeutic.

a. Art and the mentally healthy.

Art is by and for the psychologically impaired–the alienated–those with a fragmented self. Those who do not share neurosis Y with artist X cannot fully experience the work of artist X. The mentally stable cannot respond to the inner life of artworks because they do not share their inner turmoil. The mentally stable use art for status, decoration or simple visual pleasure – for them art is not a necessity as it is for the psychologically impaired.

a.’ Art and the mentally healthy.

Art is by the psychologically impaired. Those who do not share neurosis Y with artist X cannot fully experience the work of artist X. The mentally stable cannot have the same unmediated experience of the inner life of artworks as the psychologically impaired but they can empathize with the artist’s inner turmoil. In the safety of the gallery or museum they can stand in amazement and desire or pity the psychological imbalance of artist X

20. ART IS WHAT THE MARKET DETERMINES IT TO BE:

Art is a commodity. The demand for art, as for other commodities, is market driven. If the market demands art about inner life, utopian ideals, social critique, play, individual expression, “life forms,” psychological states, wholeness, immediacy or transcendental experiences, artists will make that art. Adam Smith’s invisible hand will lead art producers to the appropriate expressions. Thus, Rembrandt’s paintings are no more individual expressions than are a Pharaoh’s pyramid or General Motors’ automobiles; all are expressions of the market.

Thus the work of the artist is to carefully build a career (market oneself), through the accumulation of cultural capital by reading journals, reading theory, attending openings, cultivating curators, critics, collectors and gallery owners, writing artist statements, appearing on panels, curating exhibitions, reading theory, wearing black, being measured in speech and gesture, and so forth.

21. ART AS THE MAKING OF VISIONS:

Art is not mere self-expression. Outpourings of the self are not in themselves of interest. Art functions to anticipate social and technological developments. The artist then, is a visionary, a seer, a person endowed with extraordinary moral and spiritual insight. Her concern is not one of revealing self, but of anticipating that which is new and significant for development of humankind. The artist functions as a sort of cultural pulse-taker and predicts the unfolding developments of the culture.

22. THE ART AS EMPTY CONTAINER THEORY:

The ‘art as empty container’ (AAEC) artist understands also Bennedetto Croce’s observation that knowledge of history dies and yet works of art persevere–the gods of Homer are dead; the Iliad remains. The form of a work is what is immortal-universal. The form is the content. The material facts and internal relations of the painting are what is important, not the water lilies depicted; the internal structure of the sculpture is what is important, not David with his sling.2

The AAEC artist’s task is to make the containers (forms) into which content would be poured if it were consequential. The AAEC artist puts nothing irrelevant in his work (fills the container with nothing other than the container) because (i) it will inevitably be lost in history and (ii) it will distract the spectator from experiencing the essence of the container (form). Pure form (empty containers, the highest levels of abstraction) bypasses the rational mind, seizes the imagination and allows the spectator an unmediated experience, a pure experience — an aesthetic experience.

a. A less rigorous empty container artist is one who makes forms that adjust to any content, to the desires and projections of any spectator. Upon recognizing that the ‘container’ adapts to any content, the spectator has an epiphany – – the container is the art.

(2 “….Pursuing this analysis, one might define non-representational painting by two features. On which it has in common with ‘easel’ painting, consists in a total rejection of the contingency of purpose: the picture is not made for a particular use. The other feature characteristic of non-representational painting is its methodical exploitation of the contingency of execution, which is claimed to afford the external pretext or occasion of the picture. Non-representational painting adopts ‘styles’ as ‘subjects’. It claims to give a concrete representation of the formal conditions of all painting. Paradoxically the result is that non-representational painting does not, as it thinks, create works which are as real as, if not more real than, the objects of the physical world, but rather realistic imitations of non-existent models. It is a school of academic painting in which each artist strives to represent the manner in which he would execute his picture if by chance he were to paint any.” Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, pp. 29 (University of Chicago Press, l970))

23. ARTISTAS A GENIUS THEORY:

Fine art cannot be reduced to reason and rule, craftsmanship and skill, but is the product of something vaguely known as ‘genius’. Genius is an understood talent for producing original exemplary models. Though the models serve as prototypes, no rules can be given for constructing such original models. The genius is a conduit for these models. He does not know where they come from; we do not know where they come from. In art there are no conventions, no orthodoxy– just genius.3

(3 “….genius (i) is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given: and not an aptitude in the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule: and that consequently originality must be its primary property. (ii) Since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e. be exemplary; and consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for other, i.e. as a standard or rule of estimating. (iii) It cannot indicated scientifically it brings about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where an author owes a product to genius, he does not himself know how the ideas for it have entered his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would put them in a position to produce similar products.” –Immanuel Kant)

24. ARTIST AS SOCIAL CRITIC, OBSERVER AND RECTIFER OF SOCIAL INJUSTICES

The artist as social critic reveals the ideological underpinnings of cultural practices. For example, in art and its institutions she sees rampant isiming, (sexism, racism, ageism, classism etc.), in classical Greek sculpture she sees slavery; in Minimal Art’s reduced forms she sees a celebration of capitalist endeavors and corporate hegemony; in Monet’s water lilies she sees an honoring of bourgeois values, in the chance operations of John Cage she sees endless self indulgence, in all non-objective forms she sees academic pretense, in Jackson Pollack painting she sees rampant individualism, in Mark Rothko she sees stupefying beauty. The artist as social critic is our social conscience, making us aware of our own complicity and that of our cultural practice in the social inequities surrounding us.

a. The artist as populist is a well-established subset of the Artist as Social Critic. This artist finds under-served communities, communities in distress, neglected communities, economically depressed communities, i.e., communities in need and communities ignored by the art establishment. She brings with her the powerful methods of art and in collaboration with community gives them a voice, a voice that will unshackle them from their unfortunate circumstances.

TWENTY-FOUR OVERHEARD THEORIES OF SPIRITUAL BEING

Adapted by R. Peters, 2011

from TWENTY-FOUR OVERHEARD THEORIES OF ART compiled by J. Ostler & R. Peters

1. THE TINGLE-IMMERSION THEORY1

The proper procedure on encountering the world is to strip ourselves of all vestments of knowledge and experience (since they blunt the immediacy of our feeling), then submerge ourselves completely and gauge the spiritual potency of the situation by the intensity and duration of the resulting tingle.

(1 This is a rewrite of the theory attributed to Immanuel Tingle and Joseph Immersion (ca. 1800). See Languages of Art by Nelson Goodman, p. 112 (Bobbs Merrill, 1968).)

2. FEELING SPIRIT THEORY

A person who embodies the principles of the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit is a person who has access to the universal vibes. She feels what other people have felt. If she feels X, then X is part of the universal vibes. Other individuals have felt like she now feels. Fox example, in art, if she appreciates X in the Pieta for Y reasons, she doesn’t need to know of the Medicis or Savonarola or the Popes or even of the Catholic Church to understand Michelangelo’s work. She is an aware individual; that is enough.

3. CAN’T SAY THEORY

I am a spiritual being. I know what the spirit is. But I cannot say what it is. I only know that it is. Words about the spiritual being categorize and pigeonhole. Words cut up and diminish spiritual being. Spiritual being is unique and not translatable. I feel spiritual being. But I cannot explain it. I can only point.

4. CAN ‘ T BE FALSIFIED THEORY

I do meditation. I am an individual. I cannot say what the experience is. I cannot explain meditation or individuality. It is of no consequence. I feel life. My feelings are primary–irreducible. Life is primary-spiritual. Life is simply what I do.

5. ASSERTION THEORY

Objects are considered to be spiritual only because it is asserted that they are spiritual. Objects in the museum are considered to be spiritual only because the curators assert that they are spiritual. Anyone at any time may assert anything to be spiritual. Anything, therefore, may be spiritual. Anything that I assert to be spiritual is spiritual. Anyone who asserts that something is spiritual is a spiritual being. I do make such assertions; therefore, what I assert to be spiritual is spiritual.

6. EVERYTHING IS SPIRITUAL THEORY (OR THE DEMOCRATIC THEORY)

Since I am spiritual and other men are like me, then other men must also be spiritual. I do art and I see no clear distinction between the things that I do and the things that other men do. Indeed, all men must be spiritual–Wyeth, no less Warhol, no less Rahm Emanual, no less my mother, no less my insurance salesman. What I do is spiritual; what every man does is spiritual. All of life is spiritual. All of earth is spirit. Everything is spirit. There is nothing that is not spiritual.

7. WHAT BELONGS IN THE 31ST MUSEUM OF THE SPIRIT IS WHAT I LIKE THEORY

I am a spiritual being. I know what I like. I like things spiritual. What I like is spiritual and belongs in the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit. I am a spiritual being. Spirituality is what I like.

8. MODIFIED SOLIPSIST THEORY

The solipsist does not believe minds exist other than his own. He knows what it is like to think. He knows what it feels like when he is thinking. He can feel his own mind –his consciousness—working but he cannot feel other minds working. The solipsist may admit that he can observe other bodies moving about but he is not willing to admit that he can observe other minds working. The solipsist will argue that he can observe only one mind, his own. If the solipsist can feel only one mind, then he can know only one mind and the solipsist is willing to argue that he has no reason for believing that there exist minds other than his own. If his is the only mind, then all ideas come from his mind and all ideas are his ideas.

The solipsist-like spiritualist makes a similar argument that there does not exist any spirit other than his own. The solipsist-like spiritualist knows what it is like to feel life. He knows what it is like to have a spiritual experience. He knows that he feels the 31st century spirit but he cannot feel other people feeling spirituality. As far as he knows he is the only one to feel the 31st century spirit. He believes that the 31st century spirit is only known by feeling and, the solipsist-like-spiritualist believes that there does not exist any spirit other than that which he knows.

9. SPIRIT AS MEANS: A DEVICE FOR REDUCING TENSION

A tense mind is not free. A not free mind cannot soar, it cannot introspect, it cannot reflect upon itself. Engaging the 31st century spirit is a vehicle for quieting the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. This engagement is not an end. It is a means for preparing the mind for revelation, for truth.

10. THE EMBELLISHMENT OF LIFE:

The 31st century spirit is adorned life. The 31st century spirit is life made special. The corner policeman has developed elaborate hand signals and a piercing whistle for directing traffic. He has made his life-routine special. He has embellished his life; he has embellished the life of others. He has engaged the 31st century spirit.

11. HEIGHTENED PERCEPTION (WAKEFULNESS THEORY):

All things possess the potentiality to engage the 31st century spirit. Life is a matter of seeing; of perceiving. The 31st century spirit is a matter of wakeful living. Through the lens of the 31st century spirit seeing is now, more intense, feeling is greater, and meaning is deeper. Objects of the 31st century museum of the spirit contain the flash of new awareness. The 31st century spirit is a matter of paying special attention to some thing–of waking oneself to the uniqueness of the thing and then attempting to wake others as well.

It is not a matter of one object/situation being inherently different from other objects/situations; it is a matter of how much wakefulness there is with respect to that object/situation.

Thus the major figures of this culture may not be the professors, sculptors, painters or dramatists–for the society generally somnambulates through art museums or sleeps in the theater and is distracted in lectures. The major spiritual figures are such individuals as the coaches and players of major sports and political campaign managers and the politicians. Such individuals are intensely wakeful to their craft. In their “art” they understand the implication of not only their smallest acts, but also the implications of the acts of their followers.

12.SPIRIT IS A DEFINITION OF SPIRIT:

The task of life is to define the province of life. The 31st Century Museum of the Spirit does precisely that. It demarcates a realm of the spirit just as the axioms of Euclidean geometry demarcate plane geometry. The spirit as definition of the spirit defines a class of things, events and ideas that are spiritual.

13.ACTS OF MAKING SPECIAL:

The most general characteristic of a thing or act included in the 31st century spirit is that it is some thing made special. Locating the spirit is making special. If a thing or act is not special not valued, then it does not contain the spirit. Making special is to separate from the humdrum and the commonplace. It is an expression of reverence. It is a distinguishing of the particular. It is the ascription of significance. It is the recognition of preeminence.

14. THE NO KNOWLEDGE INDIVIDUAL:

The no knowledge individual notes that knowledge of history dies and yet objects persevere–the gods of Homer are dead; the Iliad remains. As Bennedetto Croce observed, content is subject to the hazards of history; it is born and it dies, but the form of a work of at, an action or an idea is immortal. For example, if works of art, actions or ideas persevere through time, the ‘no knowledge’ individual concludes that:

1. Historical knowledge must be irrelevant to the success of the work, action or idea:
2. The works/ideas perseverance must depend on some X factor that works, ideas, or actions share. The existence of this ‘X’ factor is taken to mean that works, ideas or actions that perseveres though time have it and those individuals who fully experience these works, actions or ideas, sense the ‘X’ factor. The possession and the recognition of this ‘X’ factor are not dependent on knowledge or experience. Either the work, action or idea has it or it doesn’t; either the individual experiences it or he doesn’t.

The no knowledge individual is the individual who senses the X factor. Seeing/feeling or understanding the X factor cannot be learned and it is uncertain that it can be cultivated, but it will of necessity be present in the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit

15. SPIRIT AS SURVIVAL THEORY:

The 31st century spirit allows us to survive. It fills those psychic and social needs that are not filled by our society or our culture. The 31st century spirit allows us to live the following day. It gives us the strength to persevere. The spirit is life-sustaining.

16. THE NON-ASSERTION THEORY:

The farmer plowing her/his contoured field—making gently undulating furrows across the blankness of Nebraska–engages in a spiritual act. The traffic policeman on the corner beat with her ritual hand signals engages in a spiritual act. The chicken farmer constructing her automated hen houses engages in a spiritual act. The politician deftly escaping her antagonist’s thrusts engages in a spiritual act. The ironworker guiding steel girders eighty stories above the ground engages in a spiritual act. The waitress intricately balancing four plates of food and assorted beverages engages in a spiritual act. The sea captain attending to her oil painting in her cabin engages in a spiritual act.

Acting spiritually is doing those things that we do because they are meaningful to our lives. Once we self-consciously assert that any of those life-meaningful things are significant, then they cease to be meaningful in our lives; they become mute. Once removed from context, placed in the museum, their life ends.

Once a thing is asserted to be significant, then it ceases to be significant. The spirit is therefore that which is not asserted to be the spirit.

17. SPIRITUAL THINGS ARE LIVING THING:

The uniqueness of contents of the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit is their life quality. The drawings at Lascaux, the Medici tomb, an Utamaro print, a Mies Van der Rohe building, a Senufo mask, an Annie Sprinkle performance, a Jeff Koons sculpture, or a community garden speak for themselves, challenge us, and seduce us because they are life forms, because they are living things, organic wholes. This is what makes them belong in the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit.

a. Only spiritual beings can make spiritual things.

Because we are bodies and bodies are alive, we know when something is alive, is whole. The spiritual person is a body with the unique ability to see life forms in inanimate matter. The spiritual person reorganizes inanimate matter into life forms giving them life, making them organic wholes. She does this by making with her hands – her body, her mind. Objects made by machines, mass-produced objects are not made by a body or the mind, so they cannot contain the spirit. They are not life forms.

b. Only life forms can experience life forms.

“Life forms” are experienced through bodies. Thus knowledge of the Medicis or Savonarola or of the Pope or even of Michelangelo is not necessary to experience the Pieta as art because it is a life form. One needs a body; that is enough.

18. THE NON-FEELING INDIVIDUAL:

Traditional practices like religion are an opiate that separates the mind from the body and reduces life to the mimicry of life forms and intellectual play. For the non-feeling individual the quest for the spirit is about ideas, about thought and not about the possession of secret powers. She leaves the expression of transcendental truths, the discovery of self or the production of pleasurable aesthetic experiences to theologians, self-help groups and decorators.

The non-feeling individual re-integrates the mind into everyday life to awaken consciousness from the numbing effects of habit and pure sensate pleasure.

a. The Philistine

The philistine is a species of the non-feeling individual. The philistine wishes to take the magic out of life. For the philistine magic implies the exercise of a secret power. Secrets constitute a restricted knowledge–knowledge accessible only to a select few. The philistine knows that life can maintain its secrets only when they are implicit; when explicit life loses its magic. The philistine makes that which is implicit explicit, giving power to all.

19. SHARED NEUROSIS THEORY:

When mind questions itself it involuntarily reveals its inner psychological state, its neurosis. Thus if individual X has neurosis Y, neurosis Y will be the content of her actions. Others who share neurosis Y will feel neurosis Y in the presence of individual X’s actions/objects. When viewer Z experiences individual X’s actions/objects, he shares neurosis Y with individual X. The effect is cathartic – releasing viewer Z temporarily from neurosis Y. Through this process objects/ideas in the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit have the ability to restore individuality-wholeness and consequently societal mental health – the contents of the Museum are therapeutic.

a. Social practice and the mentally healthy.

The Museum is by and for the psychologically impaired–the alienated–those with a fragmented self. Those who do not share neurosis Y with participant X cannot fully experience the works of X. The mentally stable cannot respond to the inner life of the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit contents because they do not share the inner turmoil of those who amassed the Museum’s contents. The mentally stable will use the Museum’s collection for status, decoration or simple visual/intellectual pleasure–for them engaging the spirit is not a necessity as it is for the psychologically impaired.

a’. Social practice and the mentally healthy.

Museums are for the psychologically impaired. Those who do not share neurosis Y with individual X cannot fully experience the museum’s contents as individual X. The mentally stable cannot have the same unmediated experience of the inner life as the psychologically impaired, but they can empathize with their inner turmoil. In the safety of the museum they can stand in amazement and desire insight into or pity the psychological imbalance of individual X.

20. SPIRITUALITY IS WHAT THE MARKET DETERMINES IT TO BE:

Spirituality is a commodity. The demand for spirituality, as for other commodities, is market driven. If the market demands manifestations of spirituality, inner life, utopian ideals, social critique, play, individual expression, life forms, psychological states, wholeness, immediacy or transcendental experiences, that product will be produced. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” will lead spiritual producers to the appropriate expressions. Thus, Rembrandt’s paintings are no more individual spiritual expressions than are a Pharaoh’s pyramid or General Motors’ automobiles; all are expressions of the market.

21. THE MAKING OF VISIONS:

The 31st Century Museum of the Spirit is not mere self-absorption. Outpourings of the self are not in themselves of interest. The 31st Century Museum of the Spirit functions to anticipate social and technological developments. The makers of the museum of the 31st century spirit are then, visionaries, seers, and persons endowed with extraordinary moral and spiritual insight. Their concern is not one of revealing self, but of anticipating that which is new and significant for development of humankind. These practitioners function as a sort of cultural pulse taker that anticipates the unfolding developments of the culture.

22. THE SPIRIT AS EMPTY CONTAINER:

The spirit as empty container theory also stems from Bennedetto Croce’s observation that knowledge of history dies and yet works of art persevere–the gods of Homer are dead; the Iliad remains. The form of a work, action or idea is what is immortal-universal. The form is the content.

It is the spiritual individual’s task to make the containers (forms) into which content could be poured. The spiritual individual puts nothing irrelevant in his work because (i) it will inevitably be lost in history and (ii) it will distract the spectator from experiencing the essence of the container (form). Pure form (empty containers, the highest levels of abstraction) bypasses the rational mind, seizes the imagination and allows the spectator an unmediated experience, a pure experience — a spiritual experience.

a. A less rigorous empty container creator is one who invents forms that adjust to any content, to the desires and projections of any user. Upon recognizing that the ‘container’ adapts to any content the user has an epiphany – – the container is the content.

23. GENIUS THEORY

The world cannot be reduced to reason and rule, craftsmanship and skill, but is the product of something vaguely known as genius. Genius is an understood talent for producing original exemplary models. Though the models serve as prototypes no rules can be given for constructing such original models. The genius is a conduit for these models. He does not know where they come from; we do not know where they come from. In the life of the 31st century spirit there are no conventions, no orthodoxy- just genius.2

(2“…. genius (i) is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given: and not an aptitude in the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule: and that consequently originality must be its primary property. (ii) Since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e. be exemplary; and consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for other, i.e. as a standard or rule of estimating. (iii) It cannot be indicated scientifically it brings about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where an author owes a product to genius, he does not himself know how the ideas for it have entered his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would put them in a position to produce similar products.”–Immanuel Kant)

24. THE SOCIAL CRITIC, OBSERVER AND RECTIFER OF SOCIAL INJUSTICES

The social critic reveals the ideological underpinnings of cultural practices. For example, in art and its institutions she sees rampant isiming, (sexism, racism, ageism, classism etc.), in classical Greek sculpture she sees slavery; in Minimal Art’s reduced forms she sees a celebration of capitalist endeavors and corporate hegemony; in Monet’s water lilies she sees an honoring of bourgeois values, in the chance operations of John Cage she sees endless self indulgence, in all non-objective forms she sees academic pretense, in Jackson Pollack painting she sees rampant individualism, in Mark Rothko she sees stupefying beauty. The 31st Century Museum of the Spirit as social critic is our social conscience, making us aware of our own complicity and that of our cultural practice in the social inequities surrounding us.

a.The social critic as populist is a well-established subset of the social critic.

This individual finds under served communities, communities in distress, neglected communities, economically depressed communities, i.e., communities in need. She brings with her the powerful methods of her particular discipline and in collaboration with community gives them a voice a voice that will unshackle them from their unfortunate circumstances and bring them to the 31st Century Museum of the Spirit.