A Josh Smith painting, photographed at the Frieze Art Fair, 2019.
i.
I remember the controversy of whether or not the “Balthus should still hang at the Met,” and the formidable articles asking “If Men Should Still Be Able to Paint the Female Nude” in 2019.
What is art history and painting, “without the nude” though, anyways?
The model makes themselves available, vulnerable, open; the artist does too.
Every portrait is a self-portrait. The artist makes their psychological makeup completely open and available; whether it is pure color or surrealistic; each artist brings their self fully into the picture, in publication, in gallery showing; motivations, unconscious or otherwise, can all be discerned.
The art world seemed confused by my questions and prodding attitude.
One thing is for sure! The themes of the Great Goddess (archetypal feminine) have raved through painting since the beginning. And, it seemed front and center upon my entry into the NYC art world around 2018.
This milieu, these were the people who grew up around statues, paintings and books. These lives were as much cosmopolitan and capitalist as they were high-flying metaphysical hysteria, as in CG Jung’s CW Vol 9.1 — and in this modern age we all embodied and lived like the myths in Erich Neumann’s Great Mother; I don’t know this as a fact I just know it to be true.
But, it always seemed like Picasso was so much “up to something” with those endless portraits (muse or self), and De Kooning started with the terrible, awe-inspiring Great Mother and ended with the arabesque — Masters! Right?
Why do I address this? I ask: Why do we paint?
(That gets to why we “look” at things — things that refer to other things. That is, especially paintings that are just about painting, that is “physicality,” sensation. An interesting notion: paint on a surface.
(The Goddess, so to speak, possesses individuals with the fascination for all things beautiful and physical.)
Many artists today believe that “exposing my unconscious is public good” is the “saving grace” for a monk-like devotion to the Goddess of Beauty (“art for art’s sake”). The Old School (Michelangelo-Picasso) saving grace was “I’m penetrating the hidden pagan Goddess of the Christian unconscious and being sacrificed as “Dionysus-Christos” — “that ought to mean something later.”
Remember, most of these “artists” have historically been mad, perverted, schizoid, or fully schizophrenic, homosexuals or mixed-jews (Picasso-Mattisse, Da Vinci-Michelangelo), if not cursed like a shaman (Think: Pollock, F. Bacon). This was their destiny: to commit their life (as shadow-artist-heroes) to the Goddess of Beauty, as an instinctive move towards salvation for the European Schizoid dominant.
But, this narrow “identity” for the term “artist” has been left behind increasingly since the 80s. Today, art proceeds to penetrate into Beauty and long for Truth, often with a focus on the “aesthetic itself” — “art for arts sake.” The hidden axiom is the sacrifice — as the artist opens their unconscious onto canvas, and in that schizophrenia, become spectators to a life that is not their own; The daemons of the psyche play their roles; open for expression are the channels into the material world.
(It’s hidden primarily because artists are focusing on the next project, rationalizing their efforts with arbitrary aesthetic theories, or else high-minded philosophical goals.)
All of this is a product of contemporary ideologies, as well as the pressure from the collective ego, to open up the realm of the feminine archetypes, in order to descend into the potential renewal of total darkness.
For the past couple years, I was employed to cover art for a Parisian Journal (art-critique.com/samuelabelow), in that work, I studied the psychology and phenomenology of “art” — that is to say it’s origins, trajectory and unconscious motivations.
(Remember, my blog is most popular for articles on the “collective shadow” and “archetypal feminine”.)
This was a dark period, because what I discovered was cruel and truly dark.
Beneath the European-Schizoid patriarchy (the one the feminists hate so much) are two primary elements (Images) of the “Shadow”: The Jew and the Black Woman. The Jew represents the Goat, the Devil-Priapus and, eventually, Redeemer of Truth; the Black Woman represents the Erotic Dancer, and The Great Goddess, Herself, as Shamaness-Witch, Sacred Prostitute and, eventually, Queen of Heaven.
In order to get to this shadow, we collectively fall into the Greek-Hindu “Dionysus” — the realm of instincts, and relativistic attitudes towards traditional Western systems; this causes the global consciousness (collective ego) to fragment into schizophrenia of no center (relative meaning-lessness). Everything is mixed up, literally speaking (ponder that; your habits, fool!) and figuratively so (as in our ideas, ideologies). Our ideas? Yes. We compete against ourselves, and have little understanding of our own motivations; and merely offer ourselves to the Gods: Money-influence, satisfaction-pleasure, narcissistic-struggles. The incessant momentum of images, on Insta, or at the big art fair, is the “underworld” itself.
(And those possessed by archetypes become like junkies to the expanding pantheon — the many images, their daily dose, deepening the addiction.)
Populating the world and individual psyches are the many “gods” — pantheistic dominants of the Greek-Hindu pantheon, that fractals into infinities of underworlds, in dualistic struggles with the conscience. The definite impossibility of living an organized life in this realm results in this “make it up as you go,” “winging it” thing. “Follow your bliss.” “Imagination as virtue.”
So, this schizophrenia (a psychic reality with no center) always leads to decadence (and downfall). (Note: This is the reason why art press releases and even reviews are so hard to grasp, and that we are never making any sense to one another.)
Decadence means ambiguity of moral responsibility or ethical consciousness and is a pull into the primal instincts. When the instinct overwhelms the collective ego (“conscience”), forces of “beauty” fascinations and “pleasure” seeking become hallmarks of the decadent society, as well as lawlessness. Dionysus does well in inviting Chaos: The collective Spirit (Jung: Ego-Consciousness, Hebrew: Ruach) is thoroughly fragmented, existing in the dark moon, muddled unconsciousness; we see concepts that pull in “everything-and-anything.”
So, this reaches a head (Corona), as the collective mind fights to pull on what is “truth” — is anybody “right about anything”?
More images? Revolution?
(This is the search for the moon’s dew, that which could potentially renew.)
A desperate mania floods in, threatening those who cannot hold tide, as decadence further fragments what was already — a lot.
Psychologically speaking, this regression into the Goddess and the Greek-Hindu (Aphrodite-Kali) calls for a quest for meaning. (That is the way out of the underworld.) This is a regression to the participation mystique, the Great Mother archetype, that Jung points to, and is, in fact, a dark night of the soul. This collective death (into schizophrenia) and rebirth (into what is to come) is marked by a darkness matched by potential consciousness. That is to say, as much as there is absolute Chaos, the opposite quality of Clarity becomes available — an enantiodromia (conversion of one extreme into its opposite).
It’s the darkest before the dawn, etc.
So, Wisdom recalls that those who resist an ethical (individual) stance in this realm of confused opposites — which we are all inherently surviving within — will surely perish (metaphorically, into neurosis, and literally with earlier-than-necessary death). Too harsh? That's psychoanalysis — again, the Jew (I’m jewish) is beneath all of this, but that will be for another time. Let us focus on the Great Mother and why we paint.
The element that is pushing into consciousness, but still unfavorable and adolescent to general public — “shadow-Goddess” — is Aphrodite-Ishtar (Remember: we left behind Hera-Demeter [house-mother] in the 60’s, and the Artemis [career-woman] is largely integrated, although when unintegrated, overwhelmed, or else lonely.)
So who is Aphrodite? Well, to speak as the great Greek poets did: She wants to be “revealed.” Right there, on the mountain-top. And the love-children are: Eros (romantic-love-lust), Priapus (the horny goat-man), and Hermaphroditus (the gender-bending, or ambiguous).
What does this mean for artists? I prod further.
ii.
The Shadow-Goddess — the sacred prostitute (lovemaking, mania of all that is beautiful, alluring and mysteriously magically moody — that is “aesthetic” “lovers”, “connoisseurs”) — has been at the center of “art” since it’s first emergence from the artisan. Poetically: this tendency lingers in all paintbrushes. And it lingers through the academy (to take the sacrifice, to give yourself to Beauty and Truth as a “practice” and profession).
I spent a brief time on Instagram recently. I saw a few of those Josh Smith paintings — the one’s of the turtle:
Is Josh Smith really painting a "turtle" or is this image connected to the Uroborus? A great serpent, with a womb-like center, and insect-like extremities. He is revealing the underbelly of “contemporary painting”: a terrible abyss; consciousness on a reptile level.
Smith’s other great motif, "Death" himself, placed in Munch’s great “anxiety” scene: It is as if, Smith, in artistic devotion, has managed to convey the hidden truth beneath all of this “beauty” and “eroticized” paint — death.
But, like all Dionysian-possessed minds (Gauguin and Picasso) who traverse the many underworlds eternally always portray death as balanced out with paradise. This is, for Smith, the auxiliary theme. But the palm trees and sunsets offer little respite, as they merely refer back to the looming Death figure. (Note: Paradise is where grounded truth is known, and is for those who are willing to think and work for it.)
The addition of his “name” (Josh Smith) as a composition for large canvases, is his greatest contribution of all: as if hubris is so passé that he knows that they know their idol of Beauty and Pleasurable-Nothingness rests on wafer-thin truth-claims and flimsy ideas of value. This only enhances the hysterical pleasure; as the high-cash value is self-evidently a result of their own magical mastery over the perception of Beauty and inversion of Truth into meaninglessness.
New American Magazine
Those who are attracted to the lascivious, erotic and “art for arts sake” are struggling amongst deep conflicts, which are, at root, an abyss, or void associated with the negative mother complex.
I worry that the “Goddess,” so to speak, is being humiliated, and made into a porngraphia. Overall, it is obvious that a great orgy of high-culture decadence has destroyed distinctions between good and bad, and that judgement and compassion have no balance. (On mother's day, I saw the splendor of pregnancy and breastfeeding being used to promote artistic careers, as if this spreads awareness of body consciousness and the importance of a natural life.)
Why produce these Aphrodite’s? To stir more Priac tendencies? New American Magazine editors: Does exposing the Hermaphroditus image help us comprehend the meaning? Also, remember, on a spiritual level: erotic exhibitionism results in an erection, at least on the unconscious level. What is this erection and this nude calling for?
Weiner, Weinstein and the other one, may his name be erased (the one with the island), have all been gigantic stories. The cultural ego hates Priapus, but is mesmerized by Aphrodite. All the while, her other children, Eros (beauty and poetic love), as well as Hermaphroditus (androgenous-nonbinary) are being exalted (as ideals of Spirit).
This labyrinth is a difficult one; a powerful daemon instituted itself in Europe, which carries on with many artist’s making and producing. But it will be the shame of Michelangelo and Picasso, that artists took their legacy and remained caught in the shadowy, first-stage of alchemy — narcissism and instincts — and believed it was “all there was” or that it was even “real.”
I say the jew is beneath this; what exactly did Rothkowitz die for? (Rothko)
iii.
A brilliant Priestess once left the Frieze in peril, distraught by so many images. Then, she skipped amongst the greenery and found a pond. She said:
“No Art is as Beautiful as Nature, Herself.”
iv.
That all being said:
I did think that this Jasmine Little was a very nice work; a piece of art that has use; the beauty adding to the usage; and that art brings forth the great art, a vessel for natural life. (People put plants in her ceramics)
