You are here: HOME » TRANSPERSONAL & ART » ART GALLERY

Gallery

The Transpersonal Art Gallery is going to contain spiritual artworks of professional artists from all Europe.

The Transpersonal Art Gallery will help to connect spiritually-orientated artists for organising international exhibitions, performances, summer camps and other creative actions.

If you are interested in exhibiting your transpersonal art works in our Gallery – please, contact Elita Vansovica - elita@makslasmaja.lv

What is transpersonal art?

The roots of transpersonal art are to be found in shamanism, mythical perception of the world, rituals, mysticism, collective sub-consciousness and ancient healing. All of these sources are associated with man’s “subtle bodies” and non-ordinary states of consciousness. By delving into antiquity we can deduce that originally art was highly different from the artistic depiction of social and political life or just a pleasant, cultural and educative mode of spending time.

Art was the central link with life and due to person’s belief or magical thinking helped people to integrate with the environment and cooperate with their peers. Cave dwellers’ drawings induced courage, reliance and luck in hunting. Signs on the walls of burial grounds guarded peace of mind of the deceased. Magical talismans protected people from disaster. A shaman’s ceremonial garments, accessories, and sounds of drums led into a healing trance. Splendid paintings provided information about the gods and lives of the saints, at the same time propagating ethical and esthetic norms and ideals. Originally the process of creating art, in its essence, was a transpersonal phenomenon. Later it was also adjusted to the reflection of a person’s daily life and thinking.

Mythological and sacral painting dominated until the 15th and 16th centuries. In the Middle Ages the most relevant was the “ the divine vision” or “the spiritual message”, which was conveyed by a shaman, monk, or artist chosen by God or gods as a medium. Certain canons or iconography were of the utmost importance. Some religions even prohibited the depiction of humans.

The Renaissance with its rapid development of science and medicine brought significant changes. People started to take an interest in a realistic depiction of the world, and the emphasis was on perspective, proportions, proper representation of a human figure, and illumination. The origins of the Dutch landscape and still-life painting in the 17th century, with the traditions of realistic depiction, dominated European art for many years. Even with that domination the spiritual (transpersonal) trend was maintained, mainly in the monumental paintings of the cult buildings, icons, and several applied art pieces.

At the end of the 19th century impressionists (classical modernists) started to break with these traditions. Emotions, imagination, spiritual dimensions, dreams and surrealistic visions gradually reappeared in artworks, in yet another quality. In the early 20th century, when modern art flourished, this tendency grew stronger and artworks were no longer claimed to be skillful copies of visual reality. Instead they tended to convey the unique world-view, feelings, and attitudes of their creators. The idea of creativity was developed. Original attitude and the ability to inspire were of great value. The ancient man or woman stared and was mesmerized at the magical symbols and the extraordinary attire of the shaman dancing in the middle of the circle and from this achieved a non-ordinary state of consciousness. Their counterpart, the academically educated person of the 20th century, was able, as if in trance, to pensively stand for hours in front of Malevich’s “The Black Square”, Picasso’s masterpieces of cubism, or abstract color fields by Marco Rothko.

Visually plastic art ceased to be just fancy decorative articles that served their owners’ prestige and displayed their kinship and religion. It regained its status as a peculiar means of spiritual communication between artists and viewers, representatives of various philosophies and societies. Interest in primitive art aroused, because as in ancient times art did not have to be explicitly beautiful and aesthetical to be able to fulfill its functions. A tremendous road of development seems to have been covered, and contemporary art nowadays, though occasionally lamenting and complaining that everything has been conceived and new ideas cannot emerge, continues its way trying to come across a new predestined twist in its development.

The notion of transpersonal art originated from transpersonal psychology, which was started in the USA in the late 1960s by representatives from humanistic psychology. They paid great attention to human creativity and self-realization.

We could assert that art as a whole is transpersonal. Here we analyze transpersonal art as a separate genre and concentrate on the artwork itself, not on the process of its creation. Nowadays artists and psychologists define transpersonal art as an important intermediate stage, a place between two worldviews, one of which is gradually perishing, and the other has not been born yet. “We, certainly, can consider those few cases in the past when sub-culture affected the transpersonal sphere and integrated it into architecture, poetry, paintings, crafts and music. But in the past we can find only hints, since our edifice of tomorrow can only be decorated by the artists that are standing on the threshold of those changes today” (Tom Armstrong, American psychologist).

In the future, transpersonal art could develop together with design, by fostering creativity and self-realization. In the urban milieu in particular, it will be necessary to design places that could provide inspiration and mental strength. Psychological motives are becoming more and more relevant both in art, architecture and design, since the requirements for positive emotions, emotionally healing places, and a harmonious environment have been growing. But, something similar to the magnificent Renaissance art might come back, only on a different level that we can hardly foresee. That kind of art could ignore proportions and perspective, but could be dealing with more refined spiritual dimensions.

Ingrida Indane

Transpersonal Art is an expression of higher guidance, inspired by intuition, the heart, the soul, and not the brain!

It's themes are not that much different than other works of art, the techniques are for the most part the same and yet, the way they are being produced is different. Often they are being produced under trance, deep inspiration, visions, and meditation and driven by a tremendous  energy. Soul's communication is made visible or audible. The whole process is a process of transcendence. The resulting art is used for meditation - it is meditation in itself. However, this is art that is meant for the large public, it is meant to be distributed among the people of the world.

Examples are: W. Turner, A. Jawlensky, W. Kandinsky, M. Rothko, N. Roerich, A. Goldsworthy, A. Grey .......

Sergej Fausto Sommer


^ Top

← Previous page: Transpersonal & Art | Next page: Some Poems from different Artists →