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Spirit and Cosmos
Jay DeFeo's painting The Rose, on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art until December 1997, provides the impetus for this grouping on the theme of "Spirit and Cosmos." The Rose is a mandala-lime image/object (composed of one ton of paint) of luminous, radiating lines and planes. Its simultaneous physicality and immateriality capture a sense of great spiritual power immanent within the forms and substances of reality. The simple, star-like image echoes innumerable representations of the spirit and cosmos throughout history, from the "Rose" windows of the Gothic cathedrals to the Native American "God's-eye" weaving to the Buddhist lotus blossom.
The other works in this section suggest a variety of approaches to spirituality and cosmic vision. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's three-channel video Passages, Paysages is an evocative, open-ended exploration of physical and spiritual dislocation. Her work embraces multiple languages and media to suggest an experience that is simultaneously intensely personal and universal. Charles Ross's Sunlight Convergence/Solar Burn captures in sculptural form evidence of the daily movement of the sun over consecutive days, thereby indicating our presence in a larger cosmic order.
Other works in this section attempt a similar goal, albeit in more symbolic fashion. Terry Fox's Diagram of the Turns in the Chartres Labyrinth explores the hidden order and meaning of the labyrinth embedded in the floor of the Chartres Cathedral. Based on the spiritual formulae of Tantric mysticism, a group of drawings from the Rajasthan region of India suggest a similar appreciation of correspondences between geometry and spirituality. The Indian artist Acharya Vyakul's drawings also derive from Tantric models; however, in these contemporary works, the artist has imbued the images with personal emphasis and aesthetic sensibility. Several twentieth-century American artists, such as Bruce Conner, Mark Tobey, Paul Kos, and Louise Bourgeois have alluded to the cosmos and experiences of the spirit through abstract, personally-derived imagery.
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United States . Sunlight Convergence/Solar Burns: 10 Days, July 27 through August 5, 1971, New York City . 1971 . wooden planks, painted white, some with solar burns
. 1972.104.1-10
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry W. Anderson, California
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