“Self Portrait, Between the Two Temples,” (work in progress), charcoal on linen, 60 x 48 inches. 2021.
My previous interest has been the artist’s role in culture. Now I’m thinking about how to incorporate a relationship to more traditional aspects of culture into the artist’s role.
What do I believe an integrated actor in culture would be?
I once believed that we could all be like artists — heroically discovering our own path (in the Rankian sense). That every individual was a unique factor — in the Jungian sense — able to determine their potentiality into life expression through the development of awareness of what interests & inspires them. I believed in Individuation as a cause. But, I’m not sure I buy that now; I’m not sure that this is enough.
Today, I think tradition is useful. It is a surprising realization for an artist to have, and it came out of my artistic endeavor — a path down into the unconscious — and was an outcome of an interest in the dream world — that autonomous domain of experience that manifests itself each night.
After a year of engaging with the religion of my Jewish ancestors in the most proper sense, a tradition so vast, rich conceptually, as well as demanding responsibility to the individual, that I’m overwhelmed by it. Growing up completely secular, so many of the expectations are foreign to me, and I am reading voluminously to uncover what is dogma and what is essential.
I question if I actually made life simpler, or if I just opened up a new domain of discovery, a domain that demands so much of me in order to integrate it with my previous life as an artist. And yet, I’m engaged -- mysteriously, sometimes despite myself.
So how can I say so simply that tradition is useful at all?
When writing on how I understood the purpose of art and the role of the artist, I described how “integrating the multitude of past aesthetic and ideological developments (art movements), to resolve the disassociated conflicts, into a greater whole” was the unarticulated driver behind artistic production and identity. (See: http://www.samuelabelow.com/blog/mapping-origins-3) As time has gone on, I question whether or not this is a task that most individuals — or possibly any individual — can accomplish in a vacuum. Traditions provide time-tested methods, and really -- in the most beautiful sense — limitations on behavioral impulses, tendencies.
The way in which tradition is embedded in vast time scales, while human beings tend to be short-sighted — not to mention short-lived — and follow fleeting trends, is key. This is because, it is apparent throughout all of my studies — Jungian, historical-anthropological, political, religious — that we can’t get outside of archetypal forms, that is patterns of behavior that are perennial. Therefore, we either deal with the material of our ancestors or deny it, ironically becoming trite repetitions of past tropes. All the while, we excitedly feel that we are super original.
For instance, the Don Juan, the archetype of the boyish man who can never grow up and chases one woman to the next, in search of the infinite bosom. This man, who can never commit to a single woman, is actually inflated, acting as if he was Zeus, able to have a piece of all womankind, to conjure up a perfected impossibility, rather than a human being willing to embrace and ground into a single, imperfect, yet a real possibility. Artists — particularly musical artists — glamorize their endless exploits, piecing together poetic ramblings about harem-like experiences.
Meanwhile, the Sacred Prostitute, the archetype of initiation and transformation for women, seems revolutionary and exciting. We come up with new terms for the same motifs of antiquity: there once were temple priestesses engaged in sexual rites, now there is online sex work. The nude figurines found from Phoenicia to Canaan are now embodied by women, liberated and accumulating millions of views in their yoga pants and sports bras on TikTok, or sans the clothing at all on OnlyFans.
Notice now, that I’ve not made any moral judgments here. You may have a moral reaction quite readily. This is because the clichés attached to these examples are loaded with historical moralizations known all too well by all of us. All that said, I am speaking candidly, urging you to consider these ideas yourself. The point is not to propose some kind of repressive conservatism, but to say that tradition at least addresses these forms — the archetypes — filling out the multitudinous landscape with narrative and commentary.
Personally, I find the Judaic stuff continuously surprising, often humorous, nuanced, if not argumentative and therefore marvelously avoidant of hard dogma. But, I acknowledge this material may be difficult in style for many, our Talmud (oral tradition) being exotic in construction. I used to read a lot of Greek myths, and popular culture is attracted to that stuff. If Christianity has gone out of style, it may be because it was either too literal (Catholicism), or too minimalistically bland (like reformed Protestantism), and I think that’s where C.G. Jung’s sort of intrapsychic inner quest with Christ, as somewhat Dionysian, is revivifying.
What is bad about just being an artist?
Artists are in the public eye — not just their work, but their person. It matters how they behave, what their families are like, their homes — everything. That same public has learned with significant upset that established artists can be terrible people. An example that comes to mind is the sketchy behavior that Chuck Close has allegedly committed. The question is: can we as a society reconcile our moral intuitions and our allegiance to artistic exploration?
This may be where traditional views and systems of organizing society might be useful to look into. For example, I read a recent article in Vanity Fair about sexual abuse that went on at the elite boarding school Exeder, which mainly focused on faculty and young students, but also mentioned the rape of a young woman, sedated by anxiety medication by a young man who later threatened to self-harm because of how distressing the accusation was for him. Schools in traditional societies were often separated by gender so that these situations were less likely to occur. In fact, Jewish traditions make the avoidance of crossing personal boundaries a type of metaphysical goal — shomer negiah (keeping/guarding the touch). For that matter, ancient societies from many regions had complex systems of separating the sexes and regulating sexual behavior. On the other hand, archaic societies also had very mixed-up — utterly boundaryless traditions — which we would find highly questionable today.
There are useful and not useful traditions, but knowing about them informs our choices today — it is the collective past that can tell us what it means to be human. There unquestionably has been social progress in recent centuries. Traditions keep old social customs alive — good and bad alike. Traditional teachings can serve as a guide rail for progress, keeping us from slipping back into the regressive underbelly of human nature, or on the other hand, stifle ethical development. The backdrop of ideas and codes of conduct just can’t be ignored.
Back to the Exeter issue: The crux of the matter is why is rape culture spreading in communities of young adults the world over so prevalent? If we find intoxicated hook-ups morally egregious — in some contexts or in retrospect — and yet tell our youth to “follow their hearts” what do we expect but a mess?
I started off talking about art, and ended up with sexuality. Why? Art — since Gauguin, Picasso, Klimt — is often an exploration of the instincts. And since Basquiat, Tracy Emit, Emma Amos, so much about identity, and therefore the conflicts which come up between the individual and the culture, outside of the sexual arena.
So why is being an artist useful?
When the individual sources creativity he or she deals with the past — personal and collective — and reinvigorates the new. In artistic pursuit innovation — both aesthetic and conceptual — can occur and find its way across societies. By representing the mystery, that which is challenging or difficult to face in the present with beauty and sensitivity a new truth is generated. Artists have an ability to open up what is cut-off from the dominant set of attitudes, values or images. When authentic, artists can collaborate with the unknown, mis-appraised or oppressed dimensions of self and society. In the dialectic of artist and audience, we reconcile the past with the present and generate a new future.
For example, I discovered with the Black Models exhibition at Columbia University and the Musée d’Orsay:
“Manet and Matisse [...] played a crucial role in breaking up social stubbornness” functioning as pioneers in a “cultural progression” that is still in “need for further understanding today.” See:
I think this is why the Jungian-Rankian individuated-artist-individual is a sort of best-solution, still. In the Neumann sense: It may well be possible that we, as a people, understand the grand scope of archetypal influences and re-integrate that into conscious life, today.
What does tradition have to add to artists specifically? Tradition, in relation to the artist, is really about managing the personal life of the artist, which influences the broader culture — as an exemplary and thought-about figure.
But, I also wonder if — after a few centuries of the avant-garde in the direction of unleashing the unconscious drives — it might be revolutionary to introduce a sort of carefulness and social uprightness, righteousness. And by that, I don't mean stiffness, but a meaningful attentiveness to the complexities of managing sexuality, longing for the divine, aesthetics of beauty, authority, power and everything else that builds our individual and social lives.
How would a society look, in which everyone would be an artist and also tied down by tradition?
The balancing of opposites — exploration & tradition, sensuality & spirituality, etc. — is an eternal mystery, which I hesitate to give any simple or explicit advice on.
For many years, my artwork (particularly the paintings) has been a search for images that represent these opposites — call them, Heaven & Earth, Logos & Eros, or whatever other metaphor for the Masculine & Feminine.
I can say that engaging with the process itself, with careful attention, respect, reverence, and submission of egotism towards a greater cause, are valuable attitudes to carry while embarking on this quest.
My MAPPING Origins and Shema Studios essays, videos and so forth, attempt to organize and describe navigation of these complexities.