abstraction

Myriad Things

~ Cakeordeath ~ 1 Comment
Wei Ligang-Myriad Things Examined: Autumn-2016

In the primal chaos
Before
Time and things

A split second
Of stillness
Silence

Condensing into a point
Almost disappearing
Smaller than a drifting speck

Of dust
Yet somehow vaster
Than all dimensions

Rushing to fill
The remaining real estate
This is the one

The way
Tao
This is the only

All opposites reconciled
All contradictions resolved
A magistry beyond measure

The integral harmony
Unity in its perfection
Desired multiplicity

Engendering the two
Who fought and loved
Birthing the three

That emanated
All the myriad things
Beneath Heaven

A floating world
Of impermanence
Fleeting phantasies

Transitory thoughts
Nothing so-of-itself
Yet longing for ideal
A oneness yet undivided

Cosmic Geometry

~ Cakeordeath ~ 30 Comments

Emma Kunz
Emma Kunz

In 1938 the Swiss clairvoyant and telepathic healer Emma Kunz began to channel large scale drawings on graph paper using coloured pencils, crayons and a pendulum. During the creation of a piece, which could take up to 48 hours, Kunz neither slept or ate, subsisting entirely on liquids. Neighbours commented that the light was always on at her home. The drawings were then used as a therapeutic tool for her patients, whom she would encourage to meditate upon the mandala-like patterns.

I was first led to this astonishing artist by a comment about my post on the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, (thank you herongrace). There are indeed similarities, both were female abstract artists with an all consuming interest in mysticism and spiritualism, whose mediumistic art goes far beyond aesthetic formal concerns. Both Klint and Kunz were only discovered after their deaths, and indeed were two-thirds of an exhibition on leading female abstract artists, the other being Agnes Martin. However Klint was a professional artist who kept her groundbreaking innovations a secret, while Kunz had no formal artistic training but thought highly enough of her work (and rightly so) to publish two books.

Since the first exhibition in 1973, ten years after her death, Kunz’s work has been show around the world, including a joint show with Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner. The Emma Kunz Museum in Wurenlos, Switzerland houses 70 of her most important artworks.

Emma Kunz 1
Emma Kunz 2
Emma Kunz 3
Emma Kunz 4
Emma Kunz 5
Emma Kunz 6
Emma Kunz 7
Emma Kunz 8

Smoke Signals

~ Cakeordeath ~ 16 Comments

H0027-L15193093[1]
Land of Medusa-Wolfgang Paalen 1937
One of the most important of the abstract Surrealist artists, Wolfgang Paalen invented the automatism technique of fumage, where impressions are made on paper or canvas by the smoke of a candle or a kerosene lamp.

Paalen was born of a wealthy Austrian Jewish family in 1905. He joined the Surrealists in 1935 . In 1936 he invented the fumage technique, the same year he discovered that his wife Alice Rahon was having an affair with Pablo Picasso, which resulted in the first of many depressive episodes. Like many of the Surrealists Paalen left Europe for Mexico during WWII, where he was to be at the centre of avant-garde activities with his art magazine DYN, which contained a critique of Surrealism that the even the autocratic Pope of Surrealism Andre Breton, not a man to take criticism lightly, took on board. Paalen would later reconcile with Breton and re-join the Surrealists on his return to Europe in 1951.

An archaeological expert on Pre-Columbian art and artefacts, particularly the Olmec civilisation on which he wrote a number of essays that radically challenged the prevailing orthodoxy, Paalen returned to Mexico in 1954. However his last years were dogged by debt, depression and his implication in the illegal sale of artefacts to the American market. In 1959 Paalen, like a number of Surrealists and two of his brothers, committed suicide.