V. N. Grikkov, A. B. Strakhov
In the continuation of almost ten years from January 1978 to April 1987, regularly-twice a month-in the premises of the Moscow Scenic Studio, four artists conducted collective meditation.
The images which have arisen in the course of meditation, immediately after leaving the meditative state were fixed by its participants verbally – in the form of protocols and visually – in the form of pictures. The paintings were performed with tempera on cardboard.
The meditation was conducted according to the method, identical to the autotraining, under the guidance of the Guide and wore directional character. In some cases, before the beginning of the session the Mediters spent some time contemplating the flame of the candle. During the relaxation the text was pronounced, the content of which could provoke the emotional experience of the meditating. This experience in turn contributed to the appearance of images clarifying the meaning of the key provoking words of the text. The text was spoken by a guide. A specific sound background was often created. The selected music melodies were played by the tape recorder.
Words-stimuli of meditations were concepts: time and color (blue, red, yellow, etc.). There was a rather large collection of paintings from which a sample for this article was made.
Let’s look at these pictures. They are not similar to the common visual systems: traditional (subject) and pointless painting, images of advertising, graphic design, surreal images… Something similar can be found, perhaps, only by such artists as Paul Klee and Odilon Redon. Some characters are identical to the visual symbols of ancient cultures.
The authors themselves are presented with special texts. It is enough to arrange them by some unfolded set, as they will appear in the form of a bright original text.
Individual paintings often consist of one, two signs or subjects, laconic in color. Others, on the contrary, have a detailed thematic composition. Some are purely abstract, hermetic, others – diffuse, blurred, third – subject, filled with things.
What unites them?
The impression produced by these paintings is characterized by a sense of uncertainty of the compositional system, which does not seem to be banal. In the pictures not a plastic ratio of objects and signs is valuable, not the contrast of their scale ratio, not the rhythm of their arrangement in the depicted space or on the visual plane, but something else. The value status gets the fact of simultaneous occurrence of signs and figures in the local space of imagination of meditating. In this case, the size of these images is not important, no matter what and how limited the field of space in which they reside. The perception of the discussed series of paintings from the system of painting, where the rules of plastic and color perception, often, at first glance, very freely vary from one pictorial work to another, is also significantly different, however, initially “Hard”.
In this case the spectator is oriented on comprehension of these rules, without which the deep perception of a picturesque structure seems to it impossible, and aesthetic experience of structure is connected with a sense of satisfaction from consistently produced Series of more or less successful “recognizings” of these rules.
Pictures with images of meditations offer “open images”. The figurative conventianality in them is only a given and, if anything, one of the countless forms of existence for entities endowed with autonomous, boundless existence. Their perception cannot be different, as “free” reading, performed outside the search of “artistic rules”, if only because there are no such “rules”. There is only a door behind which in the interweaving of various interpretations lies the way to the comprehension of the truth, the door on which the keys-the symbols that launder it are covered.
The participants of meditations testify that the images, which come out in a meditation session, are only a part of some non-manifesting completely extended world for them. The images of each of the following mediation are his other, previously unknown particle or part, and maybe a new form already manifested in another entity of the essence, a new metaphor, the earlier opening sense. The infinity of this pattern of images, sometimes repetitive, which is not in a rigid order and always stays in new combinations or in a new space-color situation, as if indicates the inexhaustible world of the opened. The completeness of the paintings is fiction. These are separate phrases from the complex, branched, constantly growing text of the universe created according to the plan, in which the invisible hand continuously introduces new and new corrections.
There can be no accurate decoding of these pictures. They resemble dreams that only push the comprehension of the mental experience, but the verbal detailed explanation of them often infantilize and distorts the content of sleep.
Painting of paintings (here the word “colouring” we try to give a terminological meaning) also has its own peculiarities.
The color, which arises in consciousness during meditation, exists, according to the evidences of the artists themselves, most often as a colored light: in the form of glowing, shimmering space, then in the form of rays, shimmering color shades, then in the form of objects-images, Radiating light, like a stained-glass window, or brightly reflecting light, like a polished surface…
The sensation of color arises as a result of radiation, and not as a perception of the object consisting of colored matter. At the same time, the color during meditation is often not localized in one source, not limited to color/light/stain. Meditating does not leave the feeling of infinity of the process of its propagation.
After a session of meditation at execution of a document-painting the artist first of all realizes the tested colour impression, with the help of a paint fixing the color design seen. In other words, in the picture the compositional function carries a set and a mutual correlation of colors having a symbolic meaning. And the artist tries to paint to convey not the richness of shades and not the strength and character of the light effect, and the value of color.
Another specific feature is the stylistic color “alignment” of the paintings. When comparing verbal texts it is easy to notice that they constituents OP style and content-depending on the nature and degree of branching of the appeared images. The protocol can be an emotional description of a peculiar experience of the behavior of meditating in space. Another time it will be a description of one or two characters, vividly remembered, or a detailed report on the journey done by the Medito.
When writing paintings, the artist selects the most essential, preferring symbolically images, often to the detriment of domestic, naturalistic details and situations.
Here is one of the protocols:
“I knew that I would be overcome by various worldly memories, events of the last year, and that they would leave quickly from me, I mentally decided to send them to the flame of a candle.
Quickly comes a pleasant relaxation, or rather a desire to be in peace, in the mood that has arisen for me, condition. Suddenly there are visions: hiking Knights in helmets with closed visor, on helmets double lemon-coloured fluffy sultans.
Battle of the Knights with some people (without armour).
I’m in the form of a little black man in the yellow desert, maybe it’s just a yellow plateau. Suddenly from the eyes on the cheek rolled large tears. But there is no desire to stir, shake them. The condition is unusual for me (for the first time!) ecstasy… I’m riding the same knights with spears painted white and red.
Almost flooded, passed by, not raising dust, in the distance, where (beacon) other riders, but without armour. And the Knights are rushing to them, as I thought, enraged.
I feel that my heart beats very much, but to my surprise I hear this knock in the right half of the body!
I am all tense and at the same time in pleasant relaxation. There is no desire to stir.
New images:
-Black white flowers with large petals, similar to jasmine.
-On the inclined left from top to down slides a golden ball (diameter 4.5 cm)
-Falls in a flat, horizontally located pink flower and begins to rotate in the direction counterclockwise.
-The Golden weathervane on the black sky is cut to the left, on a gold spire crowned with a gold ball.
The sky begins to glow, pink,-morning. It becomes silvery and there is a very clear image of the golden Cross. (a clear sense of its hardness-made of metal?). The edges are bent like a flower.
Then the confusion of fragments of different images, dips visions, again kaleidoscope fragments. A clear image does not arise, but there is a feeling that the previous images “overlapped” on each other-as flat projections and created a complex symbol.
The elements of this symbol, except for the weathervane, begin to rotate in the counterclockwise direction.
The symbol image disappears. A sense of chaos. Black. It’s hard to breathe. The nose is laid. Consciousness cannot break through chaos. I feel like I’m numb. It’s even harder to breathe. Now the heart knocks. Gradually out of the state of relaxation, or rather polutransa.
I’m surprised to find the nose is clean. The face burns. Tears dried up (on hot cheeks).
January 10, 1982»
“Open” character of images-texts provides and “open”, “free” their reading. The following is a suggested interpretation (one of the possible) of some of the nodal moments of this vision and of the picture, made on its basis, from the viewpoint of ethnographer and the myth, familiar with the methods of Yungian psychology.
So, “large tears rolling from the eyes of a ego-a little black man in the yellow Desert, transformed subsequently into a golden ball, sliding on an invisible inclined plane” from top to bottom “. His fall in the Pink Flower’s vine is fertilization (cf. Universal Folklore motive of awakening-the return of the dead to life dripping tear). Then the Golden Ball, crowned with the golden spire of the weathervane, fully discovers its Fallikic symbolic nature. On the turn of the golden Weathervane to the left (and the left-hand side is closely connected with unclean, feminine, chaotic, etc.) marks the known incompleteness of the victory of “masculine” over “female”, “Cosmos” Over “chaos”. Because of the onset of the morning, which seemingly should banish the gloom and chaos of the night (cf. The appearance of the golden Cross – the symbol of the static sun) should be nevertheless “confusion”, “dips”, “Kaleidoscope of fragments”… It is also appropriate to recall that the golden color and gold in the archetypal World Consciousness Slavic essence attributes of the afterlife.
About the other “vixen” world, as a loci stay ego the meditating artist, said and inverted character of the main spatial oppositions (heart beating in the right half of the body, and other accents on the levitors, the rotation of the golden ball against clockwise).
The symbolic three-component image obtained in the end can be deciphered as a hidden swastika (ancient Indo-European symbol of Solstice and life: Dr. Indus. Su-Astika, ie “good being. This symbol is one of the modifications of the four-leaf cross. In our case, with this possibility of reading the “golden Cross” from the meditation vision says the fact of its imposition on the projection of colored bud,-“socket” (ornamental motive of sockets is often a transformation of the motive of the swastika). The vector (“weathervane”) sets it to the right-to-left movement, i.e. Against the Sun, which is realized in a vision. It is possible that this motor inversion is the reason of feeling of some gravity, sensation of not quite defeated chaos, which has arisen at the artist.
When analyzing the protocols on C did not leave the idea that we are as if dealing with a skillfully written book: The interchange is unknown to the reader, but many details seem not accidental, “selected” by the author in order to facilitate the understanding of the junction. Thus, the appearance of knights in the desert at the beginning of the discussed vision could warn the meditators about the inevitability of the appearance of the cross at the end of the meditation session.
What is this? Is this a property of consciousness, which in the process of fixation of images instantly begins to organize them, artificially bringing cause-and-effect relationships in the space-time sequence of appearance (or presentation?) of these images? Or is it the property of the meditation vision itself, in which the symbol accumulating its semantics is defined by origin, but is in the unmanifested potentiality, imperceptibly, gradually organizing the figurative fabric of vision?
It seems interesting to comment (and this is again just one of the possible comments!) series of pictorial Protocols of artist B. Safronov.
The dominant image of the series is a multi-coloured target with a marked center. This complex image can be considered as the result of imposing a cross on a circle, additionally blossomed by a spectrum. In the spectrum, in turn, it is possible to see the color realization of the archetypical number 7. So, the dominant image of the scenic series is reduced to three simple “deep”, “primary” symbols. Circle, Cross and “Sacral seven” (the last symbol stays more in potency).
The symbolism of the other images of the series is mainly based on the primary elementary symbolism. Images form chains. The motivation of their links is quite easy to decipher. Color realization of the number 7-Spectrum gives Rainbow, Rainbow, according to the known universal mythological tradition,-a snake. One of the images of the snake gravitates to the “eight”, ie 7 + 1. Another image of a snake gravitates to the symbolism of “unclosed eternity” (The snake only slightly underfalls to its tail to form a closed ring). To some extent, here you can see a hint of the implementation of the principle of completion to perfection in sacral numerical formations of type 7 + 1 = 8, 9 + 1 = 10, etc.
The image of the Rainbow in the future in the imagery of the series was evluated into the image of the eye. The image of a multi-colored target converted into rainbow nymphs around the heads (saints?) and in the figures of the Virgin Mary (Terra Mater?)
The images of butterflies and four-petal flowers are reduced to the arhetipicheskomu symbol of the cross.
The tendency to disimage images by constructing a table or matrix of some sort of “stigma” (Influence of Church icon-painting tradition?) is evidently due not only to the desire to rationalize the chaos of visions and the diversity of associations Different cultural series, but internal tension, resistance of the artist dynamics of the flow of mutually motivating, rapidly evolving images.
The tendency to the rational alignment of the association looks at the artist in the design of the prestigious sacral associative “Egyptian” series: Scarab-(the artist considers this sign “Egyptian”). It seems that the last sign actually is the inverted “seven” (7), and like the spectrum realizes in the hidden form an element of the deeper archetypical formation of consciousness of the artist, ascending to the symbol – universe.
This note does not pretend to be the role of research even part of the huge archival fine material, which is accumulated by a small team of enthusiasts. This note is of an informative nature, if anything, and therefore all the questions that may arise leave open. And of them, perhaps, the most important question for the artists-participants of the described Meditations is the question: “and whether painting all this?”