Abstract
This chapter will discuss how certain Jewish, Christian, and Muslim visual artists have been provoked by mystical thought. Beginning with the question of what mysticism is, the chapter turns to the work of a handful of modern and contemporary painters and sculptors, addressing their conscious and unconscious engagement of mystical principles within their work.
Practitioners such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Samuel Bak, Bruria Finkel, Jane Logemann, Amy Beth Swartz, Victoria Martin, Makoto Fujimura, Anselm Kiefer, Parivz Tanavoli, and Ahmed Sarel offer very visually different approaches—covert or overt—to the concerns of mysticism; each not only connects to the realm of the Divine in different ways, but forges connections to different aspects of the human realm.
In the end, the narrative asks how these artists’ work resonates specifically from notions articulated in the words of mystics like St Francis of Assisi, Jalaluddin Rumi, and Abraham Abulafia, as instruments for improving the world.
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Notes
- 1.
For a discussion of how the term “sacred” derives from the Latin sacer and of the broader implications of the Latin term, see Soltes, Magic and Religion in the Greco-Roman World, 15–28.
- 2.
From the Greek mythos, meaning simply “account,” but in the context of early Greek literature, “gods’ truth account,” since by definition, stories such as those Homer tells, of divine activity in the context of the Trojan War, or that Hesiod tells regarding the very birth of the gods, can only derive from the gods themselves. Such accounts—mythoi—are thus understood to derive from sacer sources that have inspired these poets with their knowledge of such matters.
- 3.
For more detail on what mysticism is all about, see Soltes: Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Searching for Oneness, 1–10.
- 4.
The “ ‘ ” represents the glottal consonant ’ayin.
- 5.
Or, more literally: “digging beneath the surface,” which is what midrashic interpretation seeks to do.
- 6.
For more detail on this, see Soltes: Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source, 1–48.
- 7.
They were intensely discussing this in each others’ studios in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Their interest in the question of Jewish art, and in Jewish mystical thought, especially that of Isaac Luria, was first presented in my 1984–90 video course Tradition and Transformation: A History of Jewish Art (Cleveland: Electric Shadows Productions). In the late 1990s the subject began to emerge for other art historians, notably Donald Kuspit. Note that in this discussion I have only been able to include a handful of artists and even fewer illustrations, due to space. See Soltes (2016).
- 8.
Tzimtzum (“shrinkage,” “withdrawal)”) was the response of kabbalist Isaac Luria (1534–72) to the question: How is there room for the universe, when God is everything everywhere? God withdrew into an infinitesimal space.
- 9.
‘Atzilut (“emanation”) was the response to the question of creation on the part of the classical Kabbalah as presented in works like the Zohar. God emanated from Its absolute singularity out into the reality of creation.
- 10.
And even that “Name” is a circumlocution for the ineffable Name of God known only to the High Priest in the Temple in Jerusalem when it stood in the past and to the messiah who will arrive in the future.
- 11.
This is most obvious in the so-called Rothko Chapel next to the de Menil Museum in Houston, Texas, the interior space of which comprises simply white walls adorned with large Rothko paintings.
- 12.
Kiefer’s spelling is consistent with the German pronunciation of “z” as what in English would be “Ts” or “Tz.”
- 13.
In his 1435 treatise Leon Battista Alberti discussed how a painter could create the illusion that his flat surface is volumetric, and thus that his two-dimensional image has three dimensions, by graphing out a series of diagonal—orthogonal—lines from the lower corners toward a meeting point, in the middle of the horizon line, that he termed the “vanishing point.”
- 14.
Perhaps the most effective overall discussion of these works, based on extensive interviews with the artist, is found in the article by Sholeh Johnston, “Heech: Poems in Three Dimensions,” in the journal Sufi.
- 15.
Nihonga (ni-hon is Japanese for “Japan[ese]” and ga means “painting”) uses finely ground vegetable and mineral pigments suspended in washes, glazes, and emulsions. This yields a delicate and clear quality more reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts than of large paintings (at least until the advent of the Chromaticists) in the Western tradition.
- 16.
In Japanese architectural design shoji refers to a screen that functions as a room divider, whether free-standing or as a sliding door, typically made of a wooden frame with transparent washi paper (paper made using fibers from the bark of one of several kinds of plant or tree) stretched over it. Fujimura has had to layer his pigments very delicately over such a material.
- 17.
For a more detailed discussion of these mystics, see Soltes: Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Bibliography
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Kohav, Alex S., ed., Mysticism and Meaning: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. St Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2013.
Soltes, Ori Z. Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source. New York: Westview Press, 2005.
Soltes, Ori Z. Mysticism in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Traditions: Searching for Oneness. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.
Soltes, Ori Z. Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish Art & Architecture. Boulder, CO: Canal Street Studios, 2016.
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Soltes, O.Z. (2023). Mysticism, Visual Art, and Repairing the World in a Strife-ridden Secular Age. In: Shafiq, M., Donlin-Smith, T. (eds) Mystical Traditions. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27121-2_2
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