Visionary Art is not a new movement, not at all.  Indeed, there are painters that weave a visionary tapestry throughout the history of art. A complete historical account of the global visionary art tradition would fill numrous volumes. Many have tried to define Visionary Art and as a result we have a picture of it done with a rather broad paint brush. For me a work that is visionary is what I call ‘creatuitive’, that is, it combines a heightened creativity with an acute intuition. It is ‘in-sight’; vision arising from the eye o contemplation ~ the place of the spiritual imagination.  Visionary art is art that transcends but includes the physical world and portrays a wider vision of awareness including ecstatic or mystical themes - or is based in such experiences - accessible through the subjective realm of each individual. What unites visionary artists is the driving force and source of their art: their unconventionally intense psychic imaginations. Their gift to the world is to reveal "in minute particulars," (as Blake would say), the full spectrum of the vast visionary dimensions of the mind and the realms of spirit, from darkness to light, the full multifarious life of consciousness.

 

The term 'Visionary Art' was coined nearly a century ago in 1933 by Carl Gustav Jung in his seminal work: Modern Man in Search of a Soul.  He  describes visionary art as a revelation “whose heights and depths are beyond our fathoming, or a vision of beauty which we can never put into words.” This ''visionary mode‟ in contrast with the  ''psychological mode‟ derives material from the contents of the primordial realm of the archetypes of the collective unconscious and the realms of transcendent consciousness. The result of the ''visionary mode‟ of art when created by able artists can be astonishing, frightening, confusing and at times, even disgusting. The presumption here is that the ''visionary artist‟ is seeking the ''Divine" or subject matter coming out of non-ordinary ‘states’ experienced in ordinary ‘stages’ of consciousness. However, this does not presuppose that all artistic outcomes in this genre' must arise only from the religious, be it a fundamental or new age belief system. Indeed, I have seen marvelous works that are dynamic, inspire and unleash an astounding vision from beyond which was created by atheists and people that have had ecstatic experiences of higher consciousness but are non-religious. That is, they consider themselves "spiritual but not religious", a wide-spread adage often adopted by New Agers. For them 'spirituality', in contrast, is associated with higher levels of interest in mysticism, experimentation with unorthodox beliefs and practices, the use of entheogens and drugs, and, most central,  and at times, negative feelings toward organized religions. Observation reveals that before the 20th century the terms religious and spiritual were used more or less interchangeably. But a number of modern intellectual and cultural forces have accentuated differences between the "private" and "public" spheres of life. The increasing prestige of the sciences, the insights of modern biblical scholarship, and greater awareness of cultural relativism all made it more difficult for educated Americans and to some extent, Western Europeans, to sustain unqualified loyalty to religious institutions. Many began to associate genuine faith with the "private" realm of personal experience rather than with the "public" realm of institutions, creeds, and rituals. The word 'spiritual' gradually came to be associated with a private realm of thought, contemplative practices and experiences, while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in religious institutions, participation in formal rituals, and adherence to official denominational doctrines.

 

As a modern art movement, we can trace 20th century Visionary Art as it descends from Metaphysical art and veristic Surrealism, to the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism and on to the first generations of students that followed and were taught the masterly techniques associated to it. It is important to see and understand that the paintings they produced  varied greatly from one artist to another, and continue to do today, offering a great constellation and spectrum of vision. As an art movement, it arose more than 40+ years ago as an organized force of a handful of artists based in New York and inspired by the Fantastic Realists in Vienna. Most of the New York Visionaries had studied Mische Technique painting with Ernst Fuchs between 1964 and 1974 and included Mati Klarwein, Brigid Marlin, (who had organized a group in England working exclusively from the imagination), De Es Schwertberger, Philip Rubinov Jacobson, Wolfgang Widmoser, Hanna Kay, Olga Spiegel, Isaac Abrams and associated comrades;  Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffmann,  H.R. Giger, Alex Grey, Jose’Arquelles, Mariu Suarez and Ingo Swan were associated in one way or another. It was really quite a small 'tribe'. Their themes were usually spiritual, mystical or expressing some inner awareness, or altered state of consciousnes. The pioneering work of these artists has helped to formulate some emerging definition to what constitutes the contemporary visionary art 'scene'. Prof. Michael Schwartz is a main figure in this endeavor and carries the whole view of visionary art into the realm of an Integral Art inspired by the work of Ken Wilber. (See Ken's Wilber's*  Foreword to Rubinov Jacobson's forthcoming book):
 

Eyes of the Soul - Exploring Inspiration in Art  on the LINK:

http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/Foreword%20to%20EYES%20OF%20THE%20SOUL.pdf

 

* Ken Wilber is widely acclaimed as the foremost thinker on integrating Western psychology and the Eastern spiritual traditions. His many books have reached across disciplines and synthesized the teachings of religion, psychology, physics, mysticism, sociology, and anthropology, earning him a devoted international following.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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