{"id":569,"date":"2009-05-09T15:58:58","date_gmt":"2009-05-09T15:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/05\/painting-as-an-act-of-compassion-2.html"},"modified":"2009-05-09T15:58:58","modified_gmt":"2009-05-09T15:58:58","slug":"painting-as-an-act-of-compassion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/painting-as-an-act-of-compassion-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Painting as an Act of Compassion"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Co-Written by Nuala Clarke and Patrick Groneman<\/span><\/p>\n

“Painting is a medium in
\nwhich the mind can actualize itself; it is a medium of thought…Painting
\nis…the mind realizing itself in color and space.”<\/span>\u00a0 – Robert Motherwell<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0On Friday May 1st<\/sup>,
\nthe ID Project Arts Group<\/a> went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit one
\nof Robert Motherwell’s paintings from his series of “Elegies to the Spanish
\nRepublic”.\u00a0 He made over one hundred and seventy of these paintings which
\nwere a lament for the people and the culture that died\u00a0in the Spanish
\nCivil War. Motherwell, who was only 21 at the time the Civil War broke out was
\nstruck by the realization “that the world could, after all, regress.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"hb_65.247.jpg\"<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We learned that he was using a process known as \u00a0Automatism<\/a>\u00a0when he\u00a0created these paintings.\u00a0This is a method of painting in which an artist allows the impulses of the unconscious to guide the hand in matters of line, color, and structure without the interference of conscious choice.\u00a0This method provides the means of getting to the innermost, or pre-conscious self, which is what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche calls “Alaya”, the store consciousness. “It is the fundamental state of consciousness..the basic ground where things are processed”. (Training the Mind. p.11.)\u00a0 The act of painting becomes a meditative process where the hand delivers a visualization of the mind.\u00a0 Motherwell said “If the medium is exactly right my hand just flies and I do not even have to think, my hand just does it, as though I am not there” (from “The Third Mind” Catalogue).<\/span><\/p>\n

We saw that in repeatedly exploring the subject of death, it is as if<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Motherwell visits the charnel ground over and over again.\u00a0 It is not out of desire for political justice that he mourns for those who died, but for the sake of bearing witness, of existing with the truth of relative life and death.\u00a0 If we view the painting narratively we could interpret the repeated dash and egg shapes from his “Elegies” as representing life and death, of coming into and out of existence.\u00a0 But if viewed in a single instant, the non-dual nature of the black and white forms becomes apparent. This, for us relates to the teachings of the Buddha in the Heart Sutra<\/a>, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrick:\u00a0<\/b><\/span>\u00a0One of the things that stood out for me in the Elegy is how Motherwell’s struggle is so visible in the brushstrokes. This really gave me a window into his process, and if wakefulness is presence in process, then being present with his process is being present with his wakefulness. In the choice of shapes I felt his use of powerful archetypes like the egg and the dash shapes provided an interface through which I was able to share his contemplation of birth and death, duality and non-duality.\u00a0 This painting became for me a map through my own emotions and subconscious, and pointed me in the direction of my own wakefulness.\u00a0 This painting becomes a generous sharing of the most intimate exploration someone can have.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0“There are three types of generosity…the second one is the gift of fearlessness. You reassure others and teach them that they don’t have to feel completely tormented and freaked out about their existence ” – <\/span>Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche from “Training the Mind.”<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Nuala:<\/span> I was moved by the experience of spending time with the painting. Thich Nhat Hanh says\u00a0<\/span>“<\/span>A bell is a bodhisattiva, it helps us wake up.” \u00a0This painting rang a visual bell for me last week. I had been standing close to it, knowing the story, seeing the paint, the brushstrokes, the corrections and texture, feeling to a certain extent the blackness and lightness. When I stood back from it though It shone, the image came alive and the painting seemed very present.\u00a0I didn’t want to leave it. I kept looking back at it. It had caught my attention and held it. I now have absolute affection for it and I’ll visit it every time I go to the Met.\u00a0What an amazing thing for someone to have done, to have made something durable that could cause wakefulness.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

“The absolute which lies in the background of all my activities of relating seems to retreat as I get on its track; yet the relative cannot exist without some point of support. However, the closer one gets to the absolute, the more mercilessly all the weaknesses of my work are revealed.”<\/span>\u00a0–\u00a0Robert Motherwell\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Co-Written by Nuala Clarke and Patrick Groneman “Painting is a medium in which the mind can actualize itself; it is a medium of thought…Painting is…the mind realizing itself in color and space.”\u00a0 – Robert Motherwell \u00a0On Friday May 1st, the ID Project Arts Group went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"\nPainting as an Act of Compassion - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/painting-as-an-act-of-compassion-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Painting as an Act of Compassion - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Co-Written by Nuala Clarke and Patrick Groneman “Painting is a medium in which the mind can actualize itself; 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