Research in Art

I remember falling into profound awe many times, staring at the peaceful faces of Buddhist statues in various places in China. It is this appeasement that I have wanted to study in a physical and spiritual sense. My interest in old statues can be explained by the quest for a magical smile, closed eyelids, and faces frozen in a timeless pose. It is seeing and observing in a mystical impulse to represent a divine face bearing anthropomorphic symbols, giving an image to the ultimate wisdom, and creating a head of Maitreya by tearing the void. But with what attributes?

Kneaded in the clay of time and space, I move forward with the feeling that a thick curtain falls on the imprint of my footsteps. From linguistic to mythical metaphor, thinking goes beyond language. Thought cannot escape a fundamental contradiction. If the word is illusory, the train of thought persists in wanting to understand and create an image of the unexpressed, the unsaid. As I engage in a dialogue between my soul and the Universe, I continue my research: an iconographic study focusing on immaterial aspects, may they be the Four Selves. One day, Maitreya, whom I pursue, will have a gaping head, without a forehead or closed oval, because its celestial sapience falls like rain and nourishes it, inhabits it. But only the neck, not the body, will be visible because it is immaterial. It is the prince and princess of the future, the heroes of future times, facing the beyond and equipped with ears to perceive magical sounds and hear the voices of living beings, a sign of compassion.

These are the signs of Maitreya. Suppose one objective must be achieved in the carving of a Buddhist-inspired figure. In that case, it is the one mentioned by John H. Dryfhout in The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens regarding the Adams Memorial: an expression mimicking a profound psychological content and mysterious aura and a suggestive abstraction and haunting grandeur. Buddhist sculptures aim to provoke awakening by meeting the needs of the soul. Compared to this utilitarian goal, aesthetic rules come second.

If the image bears a name, the name does not replace the signified. Much of what we know is inferred by deduction, induction, and abduction. Through a process of abstraction and addition of lines, contours, and missing links, the brain deduces what sight omits. From the perceptible to the conceptual, it is hampered in its perception and processing of sensations derived from the spatiotemporal environment it temporarily occupies. There are three symbolic forms by which we understand the Universe: language, mythical thought, and (scientific) knowledge. The ideographic medium of thought functions as a two-way passage from ideas to images, from visual representations to articulated concepts. The word is a practical tool to learn and retain the lessons learned, a vehicle in which the soul travels. There remains knowledge to be discovered that the mind and our natural propensity to speak encourage us to explain, define, analyze, and demonstrate. But we must recognize the power of the unspeakable. The artist-researcher, more than any other, is a mediumistic being who only knows how to communicate with the Universe tacitly.

At the bottom of a black hole lies a well in which sensitive souls hear the Call of the Universe. Cave art is one of the first pieces of evidence of the work of artist-researchers, the early beginning of a collective quest with the aim of expressing the inexpressible. It is in art that people have deposited their most intimate thoughts and their richest intuitions. Art, writes Hegel, by virtue of its nature, has no other purpose than that of manifesting, in a sensitive and adequate form, the idea which constitutes the basis of things. As Giacometti once said, the art of reproducing each form is an attempt to see better and immerse oneself in the gaze of others as if each copy added a stone to the foundations of one's own body of work from the Tower of Babel to the statues of Gandhara. By tracing an outline or a sketch, the artist-researcher integrates within a series of snapshots and carries the power to reflect the mystery of existence. A copy is not trivial. The dance of lines and strokes is unique to each artist. If research in art involves imitation and adaptation, the map is in the layers of shapes.