My Fine Art BA Dissertation
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| Figure 1 |
Terror Before Sacred:
Numinous Dread in the Art of Francis Bacon and Bill
Viola
Louis Loveless
Fine Art BA Third Year 2020
Abstract:
This
dissertation aims to further the conversation on the idea of the numinous in
the context of fine art. The various definitions that make up the concept will
be discussed and then compared to certain aspects of the work of artists
Francis Bacon and Bill Viola to highlight the connection between the message of
both artists and the idea of the numinous. This dissertation makes the case
that not only is the numinous present in the two artists' work, but it also demonstrates
that the numinous is a helpful term in discussing specific psychological and
spiritual aspects of artists' work.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
INTRODUCTION
“A mystery inexpressible and above all creatures”:
The numinous in Rudolf Otto, Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade
CHAPTER I
Numinous dread in the Art of Francis Bacon
CHAPTER II
Numinous dread in the Art of Bill Viola
Conclusion
Bibliography
Informed research
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my
lecturers: Prof. Fay Brauer, Dr Linda Aloysius and Russell Hedges, thank you
to my tutors: Dan Coombs, Alexis Harding and Sam Keogh, and thank you to Jungu
Yoon, author of Spirituality in Contemporary Art: The Idea of the Numinous, for
introducing me to the idea and guiding my research.
List of Illustrations
Fig. 1: Cover
illustration. Study for Portrait V (After the Life Mask of William Blake)
Francis Bacon, 1956. https://www.artimage.org.uk/4597/francis-bacon/study-for-portrait-v--after-the-life-mask-of-william-blake--1956
Howard, Bill
Viola, 2008 http://www.leilahellergallery.com/exhibitions/bill-viola-the-vast/selected-works?view=slider#2
Fig. 2: Portrait
of Rudolf Otto, https://churchwithoutboundaries.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/theories-of-religion-otto-and-the-numinous/
Fig. 3: Portrait of Mircea Eliade
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mircea-Eliade
Fig. 4: Portrait of Carl Gustav Jung
Fig. 5: Francis Bacon with David Sylvester, https://www.michaelblackwoodproductions.com/project/francis-bacon-and-the-brutality-of-fact/
Fig. 6: Crucifixion,
Francis Bacon, 1933 https://www.mbartfoundation.com/en/the-artist/biography/crucifixion/
Fig. 7: Painting,
Francis Bacon, 1946 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79204
Fig. 8: Study
of the Human Head, Francis Bacon, 1953 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/study-human-head
Fig.
9: Head I, Francis Bacon, 1948 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/head-i
Fig. 10: Head IV, Man with Monkey, Francis
Bacon, 1949 https://www.artimage.org.uk/18082/francis-bacon/head-iv--man-with-a-monkey---1949
Fig.
11: Study of a Baboon, Francis Bacon, 1953
http://francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/study-baboon
Fig. 12: Two Figures with a Monkey, Francis
Bacon, 1973
https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/two-figures-monkey
Fig. 13: Pope and Chimpanzee, Francis
Bacon, 1960 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/pope-and-chimpanzee
Fig. 14: Figure
at a Washbasin, Francis Bacon, 1976 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/figure-washbasin
Fig. 15: Tryptic May-June, Francis Bacon, 1973 http://francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/triptych-may-june
Fig. 16: Painting, Francis Bacon, 1978 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/painting-2
Fig. 17: Painting, Francis Bacon, 1971 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/second-version-painting-1946-museum-modern-art-new-york
Fig. 18: Study from the Human Body, Francis Bacon, 1981
https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/study-human-body-0
Fig. 19: Comparative plate, Mariano Akerman, 2008 http://fb-akermariano.blogspot.com/2014/02/mouth-research.html
Fig. 20: Tryptic, Frances Bacon, 1967 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/triptych
Fig. 21: Study of Red Pope 1962 Second Version,
Francis Bacon, 1971 https://www.christies.com/features/Francis-Bacon-Study-of-Red-Pope-1962-2nd-version-1971-8527-3.aspx
Fig. 22: Man in Blue III, Francis Bacon, 1954 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/man-blue-iii
Fig. 23: Room for St. John of the Cross, Bill Viola, 1983
https://www.moca.org/collection/work/room-for-st-john-of-the-cross
Fig. 24: The Descent from the Cross, Rembrandt, 1634 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_from_the_Cross_(Rembrandt,_1634)
Fig. 25: Five Angels for the Millennium, Bill Viola, 2001
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/viola-five-angels-for-the-millennium-t11805
Fig. 26: Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), Bill
Viola, 2014 https://www.artlyst.com/news/bill-viola-installation-at-auckland-castle-explores-earth-air-fire-and-water/
Fig. 27: Quintet of the Astonished, Bill Viola, 2000 https://www.timeout.com/london/art/bill-viola-the-quintet-of-the-unseen
INTRODUCTION
“A mystery inexpressible and above all creatures”: The numinous in Rudolf Otto, Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade
The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how elements of
numinous dread are signified in the works of Francis Bacon and Bill Viola. It
will start by comparing Rudolf Otto’s description of the numinous with Carl
Gustav Jung's and Mircea Eliade’s descriptions. In Chapter I, drawing upon
Gilles Deleuze’s theories, some dialogue between Bacon and David Sylvester from
their book of interviews and Georges Bataille’s concept of “liminal excess”, it
will unravel their signification in the work of Bacon, and then link Bacon’s
work to Viola’s. In Chapter II, using analysis by Jungu Yoon and Ronald
R. Bernier, and drawing upon Bataille once again, the elements of numinous dread will
be highlighted in Viola’s work, as well as relating it back to Bacon.
The numinous, numinosity and the numinosum are
words derived from the Latin ‘numen’; the word numinous signifies divinity,
divine presence or divine power. While similar in meaning to Immanuel Kant’s
term, ‘noumenon’, it is by no means synonymous, as noumenon aims to describe an unknowable
reality underlying all things.
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| Figure 2 |
The word was coined by Otto in his book The
Idea of the Holy, with Otto saying:
‘For this purpose, I
adopt a word coined from the Latin numen. Omen has given us ‘ominous’, and
there is no reason why, from numen, we should not similarly form a word
‘numinous’ (Otto, 1958, p. 7).
Otto was
part of the German Lutheran movement that criticised Roman Catholicism. This movement insisted that the main tenets of Christianity needed to remain
ethereal and non-rational. Despite trying to work out
the mystical phenomena at the root of all spiritual beliefs, Otto’s Lutheran
identity meant he needed to justify his own beliefs, and so his theories on the
numinous had a Christian bias. At moments in The Idea of the Holy, he
said the numinous could be felt throughout all religions, but eventually
stated that Christian mystics are in the best position to feel it. [1]
[1] Further information on Otto’s description of the numinous can be found in Appendix B
Romanian scholar and historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, built on Otto’s descriptions of the numinous to refine his own description of the sacred, but didn’t emphasise the Christian element of the numinous and instead compared vast amounts of examples from many different belief systems to highlight the shared elements of the numinous that appear throughout history. He also argues that within some of these various religions, the numinous isn’t always an experience felt via an interaction with a supernatural force, but can be manifested via earthly objects, explaining the worship of stones, for example. This could be an argument for how artists can work with the numinous and create artefacts that could possibly work as conduits to connecting viewers with a deep spiritual feeling (Eliade, 1987).
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| Figure 3 |
Carl
Jung builds on Otto’s conceptualisation of the numinous in his paper ‘Psychology
and Religion: West and East’ (“C.-G.-Jung-Collected-Works-Volume-11_-Psychology-and-Religion_-West-and-East.pdf,”
n.d.). In the paper, Jung
makes observations on multiple religions, comparing spiritual practices in both
Western and Eastern traditions. [2]
______________
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| Figure 4 |
Jung drew
upon Otto’s concept of the numinous to explain the irrational and personal
experience that lies at the basis of all religions.
Jung elucidates this by saying:
‘If there is any
numinous experience at all, it is the experience of the psyche. We can no
longer imagine an empyrean world revolving round the throne of God, and we
would not dream of seeking for him somewhere behind the galactic systems. Yet
the human soul seems to harbour mysteries, since to an empiricist all religious
experience boils down to a peculiar psychic condition’ (“C.-G.-Jung-Collected-Works-Volume-11_-Psychology-and-Religion_-West-and-East.pdf,”
n.d., pp. 64–65).
Jung theorises how the experience of the numinous could be inspired by an external force, explaining that individuals could experience ‘archetypes’ that exist within the ‘collective unconscious’. [3]
[3] Archetypes, according to Jung, are pre-determined motifs, primordial images and ideas that are shared throughout all humanity and come into the mind fully formed, almost like a psychic instinct. Jung thought these archetypes were derived from the collective unconscious, which he theorised was a part of the human unconscious that is common to everyone and is derived from ancestral memories and experiences: ‘The statement that dogmas are inspired by the Holy Ghost indicates that they are not the product of conscious cogitation and speculation but are motivated from sources outside consciousness and possibly even outside man. Statements of this kind are the rule in archetypal experiences and are constantly associated with the sensed presence of a numen. An archetypal dream, for instance, can so fascinate the dreamer that he is very apt to see in it some kind of illumination, warning, or supernatural help. Nowadays, most people are afraid of surrendering to such experiences, and their fear proves the existence of a “holy dread” of the numinous. Whatever the nature of these numinous experiences may be, they all have one thing in common: they relegate their source to a region outside consciousness. Psychology uses instead the concept of the unconscious, and especially that of the collective unconscious as opposed to the personal unconscious.’
I see Jung’s direction in
examining religious emotion to be useful in its attempt at rationalising the
parts of religion that can no longer stand up to reasoning, without taking away
from the powerful mystery of spiritual experiences that still pervade
understanding.
The
true meaning of the numinous is contested, and there are lots of interesting
and helpful takes on it. This essay will use the basic elements of Otto’s
description, but taking the secular and psychological aspects of Jung and the
universal nature of Eliade’s ideas of the numinous as a broadening of the
concept is more appropriate for discussing art.
CHAPTER I
Numinous dread in the Art of Francis Bacon
Often questioned about why so much of his work had
a feeling of horror about it, Francis Bacon explained that in trying to convey
the internal conflicts that his figures were struggling with, these figures in
his paintings took on a feeling of violence. Bacon had many long discussions
with friend and critic, David Sylvester (Fig. 5). In his book, Interviews
with Francis Bacon. Sylvester comments on how Bacon’s work has often been read:
‘People seem to feel
in looking at your figures that they are seen in moments of crisis, moments of
acute awareness of their mortality, moments of acute awareness of their animal
nature - moments of recognition of what might be called elemental truths about
themselves’ (Sylvester, 2016, p. 92).
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| Figure 5 |
The
haunting and eerie figures in Bacon’s paintings relate to what Otto said was
the initial feelings of the numinous, a feeling of fear that eventually builds
up into a more powerful and spiritual experience. [4]
______________
[4] He was also obsessed with death, the effect of entropy on the living and of animal traits within humans. These are aspects common in many religions and ancient spiritual practices, and Otto says they are signs that people were interacting with the numinous: ‘Such are the notions of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’, belief in and worship of the dead, belief in and worship of ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’, magic, fairy tale, and myth, homage to natural objects, whether frightful or extraordinary, noxious or advantageous, the strange idea of ‘power’ (orenda or mana), fetishism and totemism, worship of animal and plant, daemonism and polydaemonism. Different as these things are, they are all haunted by a common - and that a numinous - element, which is easily identifiable.’
Bacon
was an atheist [5] and in a conversation with Sylvester about capturing the living quality of a sitter in their portrait, Bacon even said, ‘I’m not talking in a spiritual way or anything like that – that is the last thing I believe in’.
______________
[5] Sylvester mentioned his awareness of Bacon’s ‘very positive distaste for all forms of religion – as much for what you call modern mysticism as for Christianity’ (Sylvester, 2016, p. 155)
However, he
followed this by saying ‘But there are always emanations from people’ (Sylvester,
2016, p. 196). Bacon often talked
about emanations coming from people, and trying to capture them in his work,
which he felt involved being receptive:
FB: ‘I don’t think
I’m gifted, I just think I’m receptive.
DS: ‘To some energy
in the ether, so to speak?’
FB: ‘I think I’m
energetic in myself and I think I’m very receptive to energy’ (Sylvester,
2016, p. 161).
Despite his scepticism of spiritual ideas, this description carries a suggestion that he experienced life in an almost extra-sensory way, and his manic search for a kind of metaphysical life force in people meant his art hit on many close observations of reality that coincide with ideas of the numinous in many ways.
He
also showed profound interest in religious stories and symbolism, even saying:
‘I think that most
people who have religious beliefs, who have the fear of God, are much more
interesting than people who just live a kind of hedonistic and drifting life’ (Sylvester, 2016, p. 155).
One
of Bacon’s recurring motifs is that of the crucifixion and of dismembered
animal carcasses. Bacon said himself, ‘I’ve
always been very moved by pictures about slaughterhouses and meat, and to me
they belong very much to the whole thing of the Crucifixion’ (Sylvester,
2016, p. 25).
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| Figure 6 |
In 1933’s Crucifixion (Fig. 6), Christ is depicted as a
simplified figure, a skeleton of sorts, although transparent in many places. He
depicts Christ, the embodiment of God, as being ghostly and barely there, much
like the elusive element of the Mysterium, which cannot be understood or
rationalised. Parts of the figure can be read as soft, fleshy parts hanging
from the cross, like an animal carcass nailed to the solid structure. This
isn’t the only time Bacon uses the visual language of lifeless meat to talk
about human figures. In Gilles Deleuze’s book ‘Francis Bacon’, Deleuze
discusses Bacon’s relationship to meat and how he uses it to discuss the gritty
and horrifying reality of existence. Deleuze says:
‘Meat is not dead
flesh; it retains all the sufferings and assumes all the colours of living
flesh. It manifests such convulsive pain and vulnerability, but also such
delightful invention, colour, and acrobatics. Bacon does not say, “Pity the
beasts,” but rather that every man who suffers is a piece of meat. Meat is the
common zone of man and the beast, their zone of indiscernibility; it is a
“fact,” a state where the painter identifies with the objects of his horror and
his compassion. The painter is certainly a butcher, but he goes to the
butcher’s shop as if it were a church, with the meat as the crucified victim
(The Painting of 1946). Bacon is a religious painter only in butcher’s shops’ (Deleuze,
2017, p. 17). (Fig. 7)
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| Figure 7 |
Bacon
uses abstracted forms to distort his otherwise figurative portraits; he wanted
to visually show the unconscious drives and energetic emissions of the human
before him by using the materiality of the paint. His
pictures include faces that blend representation with a personality, an
immaterial self. [6]
______________
[6] He says most people would prefer an academic or ‘illustrational’ portrait of themselves, to be shown a flattering image of what they want to believe is there, whereas Bacon’s portraits show the disturbing reality of what is behind the veil of appearance.
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| Figure 8 |
He
explained that although people saw this as having an element of horror, it was
the best way to depict the unseen elements of his sitters:
‘It’s an attempt to
bring the figurative thing up into the nervous system more violently and more
poignantly’ (Sylvester, 2016, p. 12).
When
describing ways of depicting reality, Bacon often uses terms like injury and
violence. Bacon saw the raw and brutal reality of existence and used grisly
visual devices to show it. This kind of thinking is analogous to the kind of
ideas Otto talked about when saying experiences with a higher reality often
cause fear and horror.
Bacon
often paints his human figures with animal features. Like the images of meat,
the animal imagery is Bacon’s way of reminding us how there is no hierarchy
between creatures when faced with the dread of death. This idea that an
overhanging dread reminds us of our animal nature is interesting when compared
to Otto’s discussion of ‘creature consciousness’ being an experience of feeling
like nothing but a small creature in comparison to the might of the ‘Majestas’.
In Deleuze’s analysis of Bacon, Deleuze says, ‘Sometimes the human head is
replaced by an animal; but it is not the animal as a form, but rather the
animal as a trait’ (Deleuze, 2017, p. 16).
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| Figure 9 |
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| Figure 10 |
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| Figure 11 |
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| Figure 12 |
The
similarities between Otto’s ‘creature consciousness’ and Bacon’s techniques of
showing his figures dealing with mortality and a sense of dread continue with
the very similar wording used in both Deleuze’s description of Bacon’s
techniques and Otto’s description of ‘creature consciousness’. Otto says:
‘Thus, in contrast to
‘the overpowering’ of which we are conscious as an object over against the
self, there is the feeling of one’s own submergence, of being but ‘dust and
ashes’ and nothingness’ (Otto, 1958, p. 20).
Deleuze
summarises his descriptions of Bacon’s techniques by saying, ‘An “abstraction”
that no longer has any need of the Figure. The Figure is dissipated by
realising the prophecy: you will no longer be anything but sand, grass, dust,
or a drop of water . . .’ (Deleuze, 2017, p. 23).
One
of the most compelling observations Deleuze made of Bacon’s work was that the
figures in the works are often twisting, contorting and transforming their
bodies in an attempt to escape from the material plane into a metaphysical
space through holes, exits and screens. Otto says that the immense dread that
is felt when in the presence of the numinous is almost unbearable:
‘It
comprises, first, a manifestation of the numinous awe, viz. the feeling that
the 'profane' creature cannot forthwith approach the numen, but has need of a
covering or shield against the opyn of the numen. Such a 'covering' is then a
'consecration', i.e. a procedure that renders the approacher himself
'numinous', frees him from his ’profane’ being, and fits him for intercourse
with the numen (Otto,
1958, p. 54).
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| Figure 13 |
Bacon’s
figures are suffering in the dreadful lower plane, subjected to the force of the
numinous, and their very matter is trying to transcend to the higher plane,
with Deleuze saying:
‘The body exerts
itself in a very precise manner, or waits to escape from itself in a very
precise manner. It is not I who attempt to escape from my body, it is the body
that attempts to escape from itself by means of . . . in short, a spasm: the body as plexus, and
its effort or waiting for a spasm. Perhaps this is Bacon’s approximation of
horror or abjection. There is one painting that can guide us, the Figure at a
Washbasin of 1976: clinging to the oval of the washbasin, its hands clutching
the faucets, the body-Figure exerts an intense motionless effort upon itself in
order to escape down the blackness of the drain’ (Deleuze,
2017, p. 11). (Fig. 14)
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| Figure 14 |
Not
only are the figures in Bacon’s paintings trying to squeeze through physical
holes in the objects around them [7],
______________
[7] The physical and fleshy bodies distort in order to escape, as well as any metaphysical entities associated with the figures, which are given life and are energised by their transcendence:
‘The shadow has as much presence as the body, but the shadow acquires this presence only because it escapes from the body; the shadow is the body that has escaped from itself through some localised point in the contour. And the scream, Bacon’s scream, is the operation through which the entire body escapes through the mouth.'
they use abjection as a
way for elements of the body to escape from itself:
‘The standard
formula, “To pass through the eye of a needle,” trivialises this abomination or
Destiny. It is a scene of hysteria. The entire series of spasms in Bacon is of
this type: scenes of love, of vomiting and excreting, in which the body
attempts to escape from itself through one of its organs in order to rejoin the
field or material structure’ (Deleuze,
2017, p. 12).
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| Figure 15 |
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| Figure 16 |
Deleuze
cites specifically Bacon’s two versions of Painting, from 1946 (Fig.
7) and 1971 (Fig. 17), in which he says the bottom half of the figure is rooted
into the circular balustrade he stands in, yet he is also being pulled upwards
and disintegrating, escaping out of the point of the instrument. (Deleuze)
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| Figure 17 |
In
this way, it could be concluded that on coming into contact with the numinous, the
figures are forced into contortions and hysteria. The struggle caused by this dreadful
instigator transforms them and converts their meat into a metaphysical form, which then becomes connected with the surroundings. [8]
______________
[8] He also links this to his earlier comment on the use of animal imagery in Bacon’s works, combining this feeling of ‘creature consciousness’ the figures are experiencing with the deafening dread that causes the figures to undergo extreme stress and transformation in their process of individuation[8], transcendence or parting from an ‘aweful’ and terrifying layer of reality:
‘A second tension, is brought into play, one that goes from the Figure to the material structure: the contour changes, it turns into the half-sphere of the washbasin or umbrella, the thickness of the mirror, acting as a deformer; the Figure is contracted or dilated in order to pass through a hole or into the mirror; it experiences an extraordinary becoming-animal in a series of screaming transformations; and it itself tends to return to the field of color, to dissipate into the structure with a final smile, through the intermediary of the contour, which no longer acts as a deformer, but as a curtain where the Figure shades off into infinity’
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| Figure 18 |
In
my research of the numinous in the works of Bacon and Viola, I have noticed a
lot of similarities in the ideas addressed with the ideas of Georges Bataille.
I have made a connection between Bacon and Viola’s embrace of dread and horror
in their work as a way in which to transgress taboos and get closer to a better
understanding of reality in all its complexities. Bacon’s work is full of
references to the sexual, to violence, injury and animalistic tendencies, all
of which Bacon said plainly showed ‘the brutality of fact’. Bataille
consistently argued that there was a direct link between eroticism and death,
saying they were both forms of violence that interrupted the rational world of
‘work’ that man imposed to bring regulation to a chaotic world (Bataille,
2012). One of the most
common gruesome and sexual motifs came from Bacon’s particular affinity for
painting mouths: ‘I’ve always been very moved by the movements of the mouth and
the shape of the mouth and the teeth. People say that these have all sorts of
sexual implications’ (Sylvester,
2016, p. 57).
 |
| Figure 19 |
He
speaks of owning a dentistry book that showed photographs of scarring in mouths
and how it inspired him to make many paintings from it (Sylvester, 2016). Bataille talks
about only two things separating humans from animals, the first being our
disposition to eroticism, which he claimed was separate from normal sexual
conduct:
‘The simple sexual
act is different from eroticism; the former is found in animal life, whereas
human life alone admits of an activity defined perhaps by a “diabolical”
aspect, aptly described by the word eroticism’ (Bataille, 1989, p. 23).
The
second being our awareness that death was coming eventually, ‘What we know about
them enables us to say that they knew what animals do not know: that they would
die’ (Bataille, 1989, p. 23). [9]
______________
[9] This is very similar to the way in which Otto compared the numinous to the sexual impulse and how it goes from being a purely animalistic instinct to a human level:
‘Taking another familiar case, in which a universal human feeling that of personal affection, is similarly interpenetrated by a likewise thoroughly non-rational and separate element, namely, the sex instinct. It goes without saying that this latter lies just on the opposite side of ‘reason’ to the numinous consciousness; for, while this is ‘above all reason’, the sex impulse is below it, an element in our instinctive life. ‘The numinous’ infuses the rational from above, ‘the sexual’ presses up from beneath, quite wholesomely and normally out of the nature which the human being shares with the general animal world, into the higher realm of the specifically ‘humane’’ (Otto, 1958, p. 46).
Otto even goes as far as to echo Bataille’s words and say that once the animal instinct of sex is elevated to that of the human, that is when it reaches the ‘erotic’:
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| Figure 20 |
Bacon’s
violent and sexual figures link directly with Bataille’s ideas of death and eroticism
and help explain why Bacon might see the human experience as having a complex
underlying rhythm of sex and violence. Bacon’s readiness to accept the
uncivilised tendencies within us in order to depict reality aligns with
Bataille’s belief that society needs to transgress its taboos in order to
change the status quo for the better. The extreme transformations that Bacon’s
figures are undergoing in their attempt to escape the punishing and dreadful
plateaux are likeable to Bataille’s ‘limit experiences’. Bataille described limit
experiences as an extreme transgression which pushes an individual to their
very limits and, in doing so, allows them to experience the greatest pleasure and
enlightenment (Bataille, 2012). Bataille said that
awful experiences like torture or sexual experiences like BDSM can cause limit
experiences, relating the extremes of the negative and positive, saying:
‘What I suddenly saw,
and what imprisoned me in anguish - but which at the same time delivered me
from it - was the fact that these perfect contraries were identical, divine
ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror’ (Bataille, 1989, p. 207)
Bataille
argues that experiencing extremes like this can provide ultimate understanding
and pleasure, and Bacon’s work echoes this.
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| Figure 21 |
Bacon’s
work links to Viola’s in many ways, including through their relation to Bataille’s
theories. It also relates through their mutual use of hauntingly empty, decontextualised spaces around their figures.
The figures exist in a void, usually one colour, or simply dark; this is a
recurring technique in spiritual art throughout history, and the void is often
used to show the ultimate unknowability of the numinous. Bacon said himself, ‘I
had a feeling that I could make these images much more poignant in the darkness
and without colour’ (Sylvester, 2016, p. 12).
Viola’s
figures are often surrounded by large empty spaces as well, and I will discuss
this and how it relates to the numinous in Chapter II.
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| Figure 22 |
CHAPTER II
Numinous dread in the Art of Bill Viola
Despite
Bill Viola not using the term ‘numinous’ himself, his work embodies a large
number of the characteristics that are associated with it. One of the first characteristics is his referencing of
religious thinkers and aspects of established religions. In his book Spirituality
in Contemporary Art, Jungu Yoon says, ‘Viola, like his peers,
appropriates the discipline of a particular religious tradition in order to
explore a less restrictive concept of spirituality’ (Yoon, page 24). The aspects of religion Viola references most often are
ideas from Christian mysticism, Islamic Sufism and Eastern Philosophy. Yoon
says that he is ‘Engaged in subjectively reforming our beliefs and awareness of
metaphysical existence rather than making a dogmatic statement against
Christianity specifically, or religion in general’(Yoon, 2010, p. 24).
In
his book, The Unspeakable Art of Bill Viola, Ronald R. Bernier observes
the way Viola channelled ideas discussed by St. John of the Cross, a 16th
century Christian mystic and Spanish Counter-Reformer [10], in his installation A
Room for St. John of the Cross (1983) (Fig. 23). Viola had read St. John’s
book of poetry that was written whilst the saint was imprisoned for nine months
and tortured.
______________
[10] This is interesting when considered in relation to Otto’s position as a Lutheran Reformer
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| Figure 23 |
The
book spoke about how this abandonment and suffering had helped the saint
understand his faith and the complexities of God. Bernier says:
‘Room for St. John of
the Cross is a dramatic metaphor for solitude, anguish and abjection as sources
of strength, conveyed through the dialectic of nature’s terrifying tumult and
the mind’s inner tranquillity’ (Bernier,
2014, p. 22).
The
installation helped viewers feel the claustrophobia and loneliness that St.
John felt. This idea that suffering can bring about a sort of enlightenment is synonymous
with Bataille’s theory of limit experiences, and with Otto’s description of the
Tremendum feeling being both grisly and dark, whilst ecstatic and
fulfilling.
Viola
also channels ideas of the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing,
another medieval mystic who wrote about a ‘naked blind feeling of being’. This
14th-century monk championed a type of worship that involved negating all
cognitive activity and allowing silence and emptiness to stand in for words in
describing the holy, as words would never be complex enough to describe the
‘most high’. Not rationalising a higher power relates to the numinous’
rejection of the rationalised idea of God, and that the holy is uncanny and
impossible to comprehend. Bernier notes this and says:
‘In these meanings,
faith is the darkness of un/non-knowing, the stripping away of material
elements that hamper apprehension of the divine. [...] This process of
privation or renunciation of the attachments of the self to the self’s own
operations and its objects is dark because it removes from us our foundations
of familiar comfort and sources of fulfilment, and transplants us into blinding
nothingness—again the feeling of abandonment or “powerlessness” (Bernier, 2014, p. 31).
Using
darkness to signify unknowing and a fear of the unknown is a large part of
creating a numinous atmosphere, and Viola also incorporates light to build on
this atmosphere further. Yoon
links Viola’s use of dramatic lighting with traditional manipulations of light
and dark in artwork of a spiritual nature, referencing Rembrandt’s Descent
from the Cross as an example (Yoon, 2010). (Fig. 24)
 |
| Figure 24 |
Works
like Five Angels for the Millennium (Fig. 25) utilise powerful lighting
to get across feelings of a numinous nature, with bright projections in
darkened gallery spaces. This is reminiscent of Otto’s words on the use of
specific lighting that can produce numinous feelings:
‘The darkness must be
such as is enhanced and made all the more perceptible by contrast with some
last vestige of brightness, which it is, as it were, on the point of
extinguishing; hence the 'mystical' effect begins with semi. darkness. Its
impression is rendered complete if the factor of the sublime comes to unite
with and supplement it. The semi-darkness that glimmers in vaulted halls, or
beneath the branches of a lofty forest glade, strangely quickened and stirred
by the mysterious play of half-lights, has always spoken eloquently to the
soul, and the builders of temples, mosques, and churches have made full use of
it’ (Otto,
1958, p. 68).
 |
| Figure 25 |
Another
technique of Viola’s that chimes with ideas of the numinous is the depiction of
the four basic elements of nature. Almost all of Viola’s works include one or
more natural elements in them, with none more blatant than his piece Martyrs
(Earth, Air, Fire, Water) (Fig. 26), where four figures are being submerged
(sometimes played in reverse) by an element each.
 |
| Figure 26 |
One
of the most intriguing cases for Bill Viola’s work, involving strong elements of
numinous dread I’ve seen, is the aspects of the uncanny that appear in his
work. The uncanny can produce feelings of the numinous in a person. C.S. Lewis’
description of the uncanny explains its link to the numinous:
‘Suppose you were
told that there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in
danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told ‘There is a ghost in
the next room’ and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear,
but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for
no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact
that it is a ghost. It is ‘uncanny’ rather than dangerous, and the special kind
of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny, one has reached the
fringes of the Numinous. Now, suppose that you were told simply ‘There is a
mighty spirit in the room’ and believed it. Your feelings would then be even
less like the mere fear of danger, but the disturbance would be profound. You
would feel wonder and a certain shrinking described as awe, and the object
which excites it is the Numinous’ (Lewis,
2015, pp. 5–6).
The
experience of something that isn’t quite rational can leave you with an uncanny
sense of Dread, and you are therefore able to experience the numinous, and these
feelings can be excited by some of Viola’s installations. Viola’s works can
cause the viewer to feel a sense of unease whilst continuing to draw them in.
This mix of reluctance and curiosity is a large aspect of the uncanny and is
very similar to how Otto described the ‘wholly other’. The wholly other was
described by Otto as something that fell completely outside the realms of the
canny, and so leaves the individual experiencing it in a stupor or a sense of
complete blank astonishment. This force is both terrifying and inviting.
Much
like the discussion of silence and unknowability that relates to The Cloud
of Unknowing, Viola uses the void in his work to create a feeling of the
uncanny and the ‘wholly other’. The figures in his videos are almost always in
a dark, nondescript space, such as underwater or in an empty room. There is a tradition
in spiritual art, particularly in the East, to include the void in artwork as a
way of representing a spiritual connectedness and unknowability. Otto also
noted this and said that having areas of void in artwork was the best way of
depicting the wholly other:
‘Besides silence and
darkness, oriental art knows a third direct means for producing a strongly
numinous impression, to wit, emptiness and empty distances. [...]
The factor of void or emptiness in Chinese painting. There, it has almost become
a special art to paint empty space, to make it palpable, and to develop
variations upon its singular theme. [...] The ‘nothingness’ and the ‘void’ of
the mystics, and on the enchantment and spell exercised by the ‘negative hymns’.
For ‘void’ is, like darkness and silence, a negation, but a negation that does
away with every ‘this’ and ‘here’, in order that the ‘wholly other’ may become
actual (Otto,
1958, p. 69).
The
use of time and multimedia technology is another aspect of Viola’s work that is
analogous to ideas of the numinous. Yoon and Bernier both highlight how the use
of multimedia technology adds to the transcendental and metaphysical nature of
artwork and, in this way, helps it to achieve a sense of the numinous. [11]
______________
[11] Using video to manipulate time is a modern idea and one that is still unusual and unnatural when viewed, and presents a new way for the numinous to be expressed that is wholly different to different religions’ traditional ideas of time, such as the Buddhist ‘Wheel of Time’ or the Christian linear timeline that begins with creation and ends in judgement day.
Viola’s use of video in
his work is poignant as it is a time-based medium. Viola often films in high
speed with film and then converts that to digital, slowing down the footage
greatly, allowing a longer look at some of the quick, smaller details that would
usually go unnoticed, which adds to the overall viewing experience. Yoon
mentions this idea and goes on to say:
‘The complex feeling
created by the collision between technology and nature can produce a numinous
feeling because their juxtaposition presents the audience with the realisation that multimedia technology has the potential to disorder our sensory experience
and to distort, disturb and control our usual understanding of natural
phenomena, even when virtually created’ (Yoon, 2010, p. 125).
Viola’s
ability to edit footage allows new ways to structure time in a visual way and
allows viewers to see a hidden spiritual aspect to reality that exists beyond
the ordinary, the natural order and the physical. This gives Viola the ability
to allow his viewers an encounter with the numinous, as the numinous is an
experience with the out-of-the-ordinary. Multimedia frees Viola from the
constraints of the plastic arts and allows him to use the manipulation of time to
conjure up the ‘unseen’, which links in turn to his depiction of the
‘unknowable’ as mentioned prior. [12]
______________
[12] Bernier argues that Viola’s use of modern technology doesn’t hinder his spiritual message but instead strengthens it, saying ‘Viola’s work, I want to suggest, uses the technology of spectacle against itself, in resistance and opposition to the medium’s materialist attitude and this-worldly motivations.’
Bernier
uses Henri Bergson’s philosophy of time as a way to link Kant’s idea
of the sublime and Viola’s obsession with ‘the preciousness of time’ and
slowing time down by saying:
‘Central to Bergson’s
thinking is the primordiality of experiential time in consciousness: conscious
states understood, not in the mathematical, scientific notion of time, as a
sequence of successive, atomistic, and discrete moments—the time of clocks—but
as a multiplicity continually unfolding in “duration”’ (Bernier,
2014, p. 43).
Bergson
described time in the way in which it is experienced subjectively in our
consciousness, and says that is able to be manipulated, unlike the scientific
measuring of time, and that different consciousnesses are able to penetrate one
another. This links to Viola’s statement that we all have the “ability to
extend the self into time with the capacity to anticipate and recall”. This philosophical
take on the subjectivity of time and the way in which it can be altered via
experience chimes with the sort of mystic thinking that predated modern ideas
of time that Viola often references in his work. Viola himself mentions the
manipulation of time in the art of antiquity, saying:
“Artists in the early
fifteenth century were not burdened by the idea of optical representation as
being locked into a single moment of time, so they were able to show the same
person in multiple places within the same landscape in a single picture” (Sellars
et al., 2003, p. 212).
Bernier
strings together Viola’s interest in premodern ideas of time, Bergson’s
philosophy of time and Kant’s transcendental idea of the sublime [13],
______________
[13] Further information on the link between the sublime and the numinous can be found in Appendix D
allowing us to see how
Viola’s work can cause us to experience deep spiritual feelings, saying:
‘As such, we are
invited, by implication, to imagine a process “before” signification or coding,
a “pre-linguistic” experience, and thus a shift from the (modernist)
certainties of mechanism to the (postmodern) potentialities/anxieties of
indeterminacy. These manipulations of temporal experience are suited to the
technologies of time-based media, which therefore allow for a new consideration
of the sublime in contemporary art.’ (Bernier,
2014, p. 49).
Viola’s
work references religious thinkers, including St. John of the Cross and the
Cloud of Unknowing, uses dramatic lighting and darkness, consistently
references the four basic elements of nature, creates feelings of the uncanny, and
uses technology to distort time. In these ways, the numinous is present in many
of its variations.
Viola’s
work links to Bacon in quite a poignant way, a way that points to the numinous
and Bataille's ideas of violence. In both Bacon's and Viola’s works, the figures are
all going through a dramatic form of transformation or annihilation. Viola’s
figures are physically beaten down and destroyed, whether they are engulfed in
fire, drowned in water, tied up and buffeted by wind or hit by a huge wave. They are also suffering in non-physical ways, such as in the piece The Quintet of the Astonished, 2000 (fig. 27),
where the figures are collectively grieving and going through emotional trauma.
[14]
______________
[14] Which is similar to Jung’s description of what he called individuation, a process of psychological integration:
‘The numinous experience of the individuation process is, on the archaic level, the prerogative of shamans and medicine men; later, of the physician, prophet, and priest; and finally, at the civilised stage, of philosophy and religion. The shaman’s experience of sickness, torture, death, and regeneration implies, at a higher level, the idea of being made whole through sacrifice, of being changed by transubstantiation and exalted to the pneumatic man—in a word, of apotheosis.’
 |
| Figure 27 |
Bernier
says the figures are going through a ‘painful experience of spiritual
maturation, through loss, dissolution and the transformation’ (Bernier)
and that they are experiencing ‘privation and purgative suffering in the
pursuit of unity, oneness, or identity with spiritual truth or God’ (Bernier). “Self-annihilation,” Bill Viola had remarked in a similar context,
“becomes a necessary means to transcendence and liberation” (Sellars
et al., 2003, p. 52).
Conclusion
As discussed, both Bacon and
Viola intersect ideas of the numinous in their artwork in multiple ways. It is therefore fair to say, despite neither artist using
the word ‘numinous’, their work displays many feelings of numinous dread.
The strongest connection between Bacon and Viola’s work when discussing themes
of the numinous is the pain and suffering the figures are going through in vast
expanses of void. The violent changes these figures are going through could be
related to the religious feelings Otto described as being the result of humans
experiencing the numinous. They could also be compared to Jung’s process of
individuation, a process that caused dramatic effects on the psyche, and can often
be terrifying and dangerous. These two experiences would be described by
Bataille as limit experiences. The difference between the experiences of the
figures in Bacon’s and Viola’s artworks, however, lies in the result of their
suffering. In Viola’s work, the figures go through trials and suffering and, as
a result, emerge on the other side with a form of spiritual enlightenment.
Bacon’s work, on the other hand, displays the figures as never completing their
process; they are perpetually in a state of pain and transformation. This could
be due to Bacon’s nihilist thinking and his connection to Existentialism. Whereas
Viola is more concerned with ancient religious ideals like Christian mysticism
and Eastern philosophy. Both artists, however, explore
the dramatic and dreadful belittlement experienced in the face of a great and unclear
Wholly Other, and this is a deeply numinous experience.
Bibliography:
Directly referenced:
Bataille, G., 2012. Eroticism,
Penguin Modern Classics. Penguin Books, London.
Bataille,
G., 1989. The tears of Eros. City Lights Books, San Francisco.
Bernier,
R.R., 2014. Unspeakable art of Bill Viola: a visual theology. Pickwick
Publications, Eugene.
C.-G.-Jung-Collected-Works-Volume-11_-Psychology-and-Religion_-West-and-East.pdf,
n.d.
Deleuze,
G., 2017. FRANCIS BACON. BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC, Place of publication not
identified.
Eliade,
M., 1987. The sacred and the profane: the nature of religion ; [the
groundbreaking work by one of the greatest authorities on myth, symbol, and
ritual], A Harvest Book. Harcourt, San Diego.
Lewis,
C.S., 2015. The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis Signature Classics Edition.
HarperCollins, London.
Otto,
R., 1958. The idea of the holy: an inquiry into the non-rational factor in the
idea of the divine and its relation to the rational, A Galaxy book. Oxford
University Press, New York.
Sellars,
P., Walsh, J., Belting, H., 2003. Bill Viola: The Passions. J. Paul Getty
Museum in association with the National Gallery, London, Los Angeles.
Sylvester,
D., 2016. Interviews with Francis Bacon, Rev. format edition. ed. Thames &
Hudson, New York, NY.
Yoon,
J., 2010. Spirituality in contemporary art: the ideas of the numinous. Zidane,
London.
Informed research:
Bataille, G., 1985. Visions of
excess: selected writings, 1927-1939, Theory and history of literature.
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Hansen, M.B.N., 2006. New
philosophy for new media, First MIT Press paperback edition. ed. MIT Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Kant, I., n.d. The Critique of
Judgement.
Lipsey, R., 2004. The spiritual
in twentieth-century art. Dover Publications, Mineola, N.Y.
Townsend, C. (Ed.), 2004. The art
of Bill Viola. Thames & Hudson, New York, N.Y.
On the Sublime and the Numinous [WWW
Document], 2017. URL https://www.friesian.com/sublime.htm
(accessed 1.31.20).
Appendix A:
Spirituality in art
Throughout the
history of art, there have been many reasons why craftsmen and creators have made
artworks. As an artist, I often wonder what the purpose of art is, and what it is that drives me to make objects and images whose purpose doesn’t lie in any
form of utilitarianism. The outcomes of such ponderings usually result in
answers like: “It makes sense that human beings question reality and try to
experiment with its matter”. In this way, art can be seen as serving a similar
use as spirituality: a way to interact with our surroundings and explore the
big questions of existence. No one tells you to make art; it is something
we feel within ourselves we need to do, something illogical and intuitive. It
is even more surprising when it takes great effort and struggle to create art,
and threatens your economic and social well-being, and yet we still actively
pursue it. The artist crafts sculptures like totems and drawings like sacred
symbols. We mix pigments like potions and aim to create messages that speak
without words. In these ways, and many more, the practice of artmaking feels
like a spiritual one, and so I have become interested in how spirituality has
been explored in artwork throughout history, and I plan to continue my research
in this field. In my research, I have come across the idea of the numinous as
discussed by a handful of theologians, philosophers, psychoanalysts and
historians, and this has changed the way I think about the concept of a shared
spirituality. I am interested in the idea that in art’s pursuit of further
understanding of the mysterious in existence, it comes across experiences with
the numinous, and in a sense, can create feelings of the numinous in its
viewers. I think this is an important topic in our current stage of the
conversation about art. Since the shift in popular belief from religion to
science in the 19th century, the role of the artist as spiritual
explorer has diminished. In his book, The Unspeakable Art of Bill Viola,
Ronald R. Bernier asks: ‘Is it possible to propose an alternative perspective
on the “human condition,” one that speculates on the place of the numinous and
a life of faith in contemporary art and culture?’. Finding a way to discuss spirituality
in the 21st century without the dogma of organised religion allows
us to consider the most basic elements of fine art with fresh and renewed interest.
Modernism allowed progress in spiritual art experimentation without the
shackles of traditional religious art, and we can now explore the metaphysical
and philosophical aspects of spirituality within the contingency of
postmodernism.
Appendix B
Further
description of Otto’s numinous
In
The Idea of the Holy, Otto breaks down the elements of the numinous. The
main aspect of the numinous is what Otto called ‘Mysterium Tremendum’, the
title for the complex mix of feelings at the root of numinous dread. Mysterium
Tremendum can be broken into two parts. The first of the two is Mysterium,
Otto’s name for the experience with the mysterious and uncanny (1. Links to
Freud’s Uncanny) side of the numinous, explaining that:
‘Taken in the
religious sense, that which is ‘mysterious’ is - to give it perhaps the most
striking expression - ‘the wholly other’, that which is quite beyond the sphere
of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite
outside the limits of the ‘canny’, and is contrasted with it, filling the mind
with blank wonder and astonishment’.
Otto
explains that a key part of experiencing the numinous is to be:
‘In the presence of
that which is a mystery inexpressible and above all creatures. Conceptually, Mysterium denotes merely that which is hidden and esoteric, that which is
beyond conception or understanding, extraordinary and unfamiliar.
The
second part is Tremendum, which Otto describes as:
‘The deepest and most
fundamental element in all strong and sincerely felt religious emotion. The
feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind
with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may burst in sudden eruption up from
the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest
excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has its
wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering.
It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it
may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious.
The
Tremendum is therefore the intense feeling that sweeps over a person when they
experience the ‘wholly other’ and can be felt in many ways. Otto gives a couple
of examples, the first being the feeling of ‘awefulness’, aweful being meant in
the original sense, as in being full of awe. Otto talks about the fear of
ghosts, haunted areas and other mysterious and terrifying experiences as being
a brush with the numinous, those feelings being the early versions of
experiences that, with time become fuller and more sacred. He mentions how this
feeling of ‘awefulness’ can lead to holy ground:
‘The primal
numinous awe which has been undoubtedly sufficient in itself in many cases
to mark out ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ places, and make of them spots of aweful
veneration, centres of a cult admitting a certain development’.
He
uses the example of Moses discovering an unusual and unexplainable experience
to show how experiences with the holy are often fear-inducing:
‘The echo of such primeval experiences lingers in Gen. xxviii. 17 (Jacob at Bethel) and Exod. iii (the burning bush). The places here set apart by Moses and Jacob are genuine ‘haunted places’, at which ‘es spukt’, places about which ‘there is something eerie’
Another
way to experience the Tremendum is via a feeling of ‘Creature Consciousness’, a
term used to describe how someone experiencing the ‘wholly other’ would be led
to feel, saying:
“It is the emotion of
a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to
that which is supreme above all creatures. Submergence into nothingness before
an overpowering, absolute might of some kind”.
An
image I have found that signifies the feeling of creature consciousness quite
well is that of Ezekiel's Chariot Vision by Matthaeus Merian, which, interestingly,
comes from the time of the Counter-Reformation, which is particularly
interesting considering Otto’s Lutheran beliefs as mentioned prior. The main
difference between the image and Otto’s descriptions of the numinous, however, is that in ‘Chariot Vision’ the beings and objects that are the cause of the
awe-filled terror are depicted explicitly, whereas Otto describes the great
power that causes terror in the same way as being invisible, indescribable and
incomprehensible. This important distinction in the ways that Merian and Otto
choose to describe creature consciousness illustrates effectively how the two
belief systems differ in their ideas on describing a higher power.
Alongside
the ‘Mysterium Tremendum’, Otto discusses two other aspects of the numinous, he
describes the ‘Majestas’, or the ‘Overpoweringness’, essentially the higher
power, the force or uncanny event that causes the feeling of the Tremendum in
the person who has the numinous experience, and he talks of the ‘Energy’ or
‘Urgency’, which is the description of the power or energy that is admitted by
the ‘Majestas’, relating the way in which it acts to the idea of the fear of
God in the Old Testament:
‘Specially noticeable is the Emah of Yahweh (‘fear of God’), which Yahweh can pour forth, dispatching like a daemon, and which seizes upon a man with paralysing effect
Appendix C:
Further
description of Jung’s numinous
Jung
uses his research into mental conditions as an example of how we might consider
religious experiences, saying that patients he’s observed often regard mental
afflictions as self-inflicted, but had they been an affliction of the body, an
outside source would always be considered. He says patients feel a guilty
possession over their mental conditions and that the outside element causing
this condition is thought of as less important than the way the patient is
dealing with it. He then goes on to say that in a similar way, it isn’t
unrealistic to suggest a powerful and mysterious outside instigator might be
provoking the feeling of the numinous. Despite describing all religious
experience as a psychic event, he doesn’t simply label numinous activity in the
psyche as unimportant or unholy:
‘However obscure the historical core of this phenomenon may seem to us moderns, with our hankering for factual accuracy, it is quite certain that those tremendous psychic effects, lasting for centuries, were not causelessly called forth, by just nothing at all.
Jung
also stresses that by calling the numinous experiences a psychic event, it does
not diminish the power or importance of the event, and that they should be
taken just as seriously:
‘It is clear that these changes are not everyday occurrences, but are very fateful transformations indeed. Usually they have a numinous character, and can take the form of conversions, illuminations, emotional shocks, blows of fate, religious or mystical experiences, or their equivalents. Modern man has such hopelessly muddled ideas about anything “mystical,” or else such a rationalistic fear of it, that, if ever a mystical experience should befall him, he is sure to misunderstand its true character and will deny or repress its numinosity. It will then be evaluated as an inexplicable, irrational, and even pathological phenomenon.
This
idea that the dread and horror that is part of a numinous experience can come
from an archetype is interesting when looked at alongside Jung’s theory of the
‘Shadow’. Jung’s Shadow is similar to Freud’s ‘Id’ in which it is the elements
of a person’s psyche that they are not consciously aware of. Subjects in
psychoanalytic experiments conducted by people like Jung and Freud were often observed
to ignore or reject the undesirable aspects of their personality (like sexual
or aggressive impulses), and therefore, the Shadow has many negative
connotations, but it can also include positive elements of the unconscious.
Encountering fearful and horrific things when coming into contact with a
numinous experience could be theorised as an individual being led to confront
the dark and destructive elements of their own psyche.
‘Although our whole
world of religious ideas consists of anthropomorphic images that could never
stand up to rational criticism, we should never forget that they are based on
numinous archetypes, i.e., on an emotional foundation which is unassailable by reason.
We are dealing with psychic facts which logic can overlook but not eliminate.
Appendix D:
The numinous in
relation to the sublime
I
feel it necessary to discern the difference between the concept of the numinous
and the concept of the sublime. This in itself is a vast and difficult topic
and could easily take up the size of an entire essay, so I aim to keep
it brief and not include all the information I could, so that we don’t get
distracted from the main goal of this essay. I find it necessary to compare the
two, as I found in my research of the numinous an overwhelming amount of ideas
that are very similar, if not identical to those of the sublime. Indeed, when we
are discussing feelings of awe, terror and a belittling of the self in the
presence of an immense power that can’t be categorised as either good or evil,
we are talking in terms of the sublime as well as the numinous. Otto mentions
the sublime in ‘The Idea of the Holy’, and comments on their similarities:
‘The sublime exhibits
the same peculiar dual character as the numinous; it is at once daunting, and
yet again singularly attracting, in its impress upon the mind. It humbles and
at the same time exalts us, circumscribes and extends us beyond ourselves, on
the one hand releasing in us a feeling analogous to fear, and on the other
rejoicing us. So the idea of the sublime is closely similar to that of the
numinous, and is well adapted to excite it and be excited by it, while each
tends to pass over into the other.
Both
ideas are obscure and are difficult to define, and the few details we can put
our finger on seem to slip from one idea to the other. However, I think we can
use elements of each concept to help us explain the other, and so it is
necessary to discuss both if we are to really understand what the numinous is.
A further reason to mention the sublime in this analysis of the numinous is the sublime’s relationship to art. The sublime has been discussed in
direct relation to art since its beginning, whereas the numinous is only
starting to become relevant in the wider discussion of the spiritual in art.
Rudolf Otto himself said, ‘In the arts nearly everywhere the most effective
means of representing the numinous is 'the sublime’.
The
two concepts had enough in common at the time for Otto to comfortably say that
his new, ground-breaking idea of spirituality can be represented by the already
present idea of the sublime when in the context of art. However, time has moved
on since Otto said this, artwork has changed, and ideas are represented in a
multitude of new ways. The definition of the numinous has also changed as other
people have brought much-needed additions to Otto’s concept, and so now the
ideas of the sublime are not vast enough for the term to represent the numinous
in all art. I would argue that now, art will benefit from having the word
numinous used in discussion, in addition to the sublime. Otto also said that
the sublime wasn’t as vast and complex an idea as the numinous, saying, ‘The
sublime is nothing but a suppressed and diminished form of the numinous, a
crude form of it which great art purifies and ennobles’.
The
main difference between the numinous and the sublime is the numinous’ inherent
holiness, sacredness or spiritual attachment. Although it is true to say the
feeling of the sublime can be experienced as spiritual and various forms of
spirituality involve feelings of awe in the stead of nature, as the sublime
illustrates. However, the condition is that the experiencer of the sublime
brings his spirituality to the experience of the sublime, and so it is also
possible for people to experience the sublime and feel it not spiritual or at
all related to a divinity or holiness.
The
theory of the sublime started in a Late Roman essay, which was written in Greek,
by an unknown author often referred to as ‘Longinus’. The title of the essay
was ‘Peri Hypsous’, which was later translated to ‘On the Sublime’. The word
‘Hypsous’ originally meant ‘the height, top, summit, crown’ in Greek, and the
word ‘beauty’ descended from the same root (On the Sublime and the Numinous,
Friesian, 2017). Therefore, we can see that the sublime and beauty (two words
later discussed by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, who are considered the
godfathers of the theory of the sublime) are a philosophical discussion of the
utmost, and absolutes of things that exist in reality. The numinous has its
root in the Latin word ‘numen’, originally meaning ‘nod of the head’, which is
believed to have come from stories of statues of gods nodding in reply to
questions directed at them by worshippers (On the Sublime and the Numinous,
Friesian, 2017). We can see here that the ‘numinous’ has its beginnings in a
word directly linked to a sacred or godly power. When considering the etymology
of the two words, we can see how one might be more tied to aesthetics and the
other to a religious feeling, which helps us understand why Otto said:
‘We are often prone
to resort to this familiar feeling-content to fill out the negative concept
‘transcendent’, explaining frankly God’s ‘transcendence’ by His ‘sublimity’. As a figurative analogical description, this is perfectly allowable, but it would be
an error if we meant it literally and in earnest. Religious feelings are not
the same as aesthetic feelings, and ‘the sublime’ is as definitely an aesthetic
term as ‘the beautiful’, however widely different may be the facts denoted by
the words.
This
attempt at discerning the difference between the two concepts is strengthened
when we consider who discussed the topic of the sublime later on down the line,
and for what purpose. The sublime became a topic enjoyed and examined by
philosophers who kept the concept separate from religious discussion. The
sublime in the writings of Burke and Kant remains totally secular, and
discussed in relation to the physics of nature, mathematics and science,
whereas the numinous was discussed only in conversations involving either a
direct conversation about God, or in gentler discussions in which the writer
wanted to allude to an unknowable ‘other’ or higher power in vague and
undogmatic terms.
Although
Kant clearly states that nature itself isn’t sublime, it is the feeling or
experience in the mind of the viewer that is sublime (The Critique of
Judgement, Kant). The philosophers who discussed the sublime never managed
to discuss the sublime in relation to anything other than nature (or things
that echo nature). The numinous, however, has its beginnings in an encounter
with a deity or presiding god of a place. Even if we take into account the
modernisation of the term and its detachment from strict religious beliefs, the
role of the god is simply replaced with the ‘wholly other’, an event that is
supernatural in a sense, something quite unlike anything one normally
experiences. Therefore, the numinous has a strong centring principle; it is a
mysterious thing that can be experienced anywhere. The sublime is an experience
of an impressive thing, but exists only in the realm of man in nature, whereas
the numinous allows nature to bend around it, the numinous not coming from
nature, but being shown by means of nature. The sublime has no centre; if it
had, it would be man itself, allowing it to situate itself in the postmodern,
where every man is the centre of his own universe. The sublime has a sense of
presence behind nature, but cannot exist beyond nature in order to be directly
experienced. The numinous is the direct experience of the sublime alluded to.
Without this centring principle, the sublime is weakened by the pointless search
for understanding of something that by definition is always out of its own articulation.
Otto
said that feelings of the sublime may have even been provoked by the deeper and
more obscure feelings of the numinous:
‘It is probably that
the feeling of the sublime is itself first aroused and disengaged by the
precedent religious feeling - not from itself, but from the rational spirit of
man and its a priori capacity.’ (Otto, page 44)
This
was Otto’s understanding of the numinous, and although I have talked about
Jung’s addition to the topic involving a scientific view of the numinous, I
nevertheless still don’t feel that the numinous loses its inherent spiritual
nature, even when discussed as a psychic event. Jung refuses to comment on what
outside influence could be causing this psychic event, and instead chooses to
only talk about the observable elements to a psychoanalyst. This means to me
that the numinous could remain as a feeling aroused by an uncanny event outside
of the mind, and that experience could still be deemed as spiritual. It is due to
this that I believe the numinous and the sublime still remain different from
each other, and even with the numinous becoming more rational with each new
definition, it still hasn’t been relegated to the purely aesthetic, as the
sublime was discussed.
From
this line of reasoning, I see the numinous as the preferred term for discussing
the wide variety of spiritual elements in art, as opposed to using the term
sublime, which still holds the connotations of landscape painting and abstract
expressionism. I see the numinous as having many more elements to it that are
easily discussed than the vague and non-centred sublime, and therefore the
numinous is a better term for describing elements of art that wouldn’t usually
be described as sublime but can still be described as having spiritual
influences, whether the artist is aware of it or not.
Bernier
also links Viola’s slow-moving, mesmerising images to the sublime, saying that
Kant’s description of the sublime differs from others who have discussed the
idea, saying:
‘Kant, however,
shifts the emphasis from the realm of the physiological—in Burke’s sense of
pleasure derived from self-preservation and security in the face of terror and
onto the grander plane of the transcendental. That the sublime came to be thus
characterized by the experience of transcendence and ineffability is observed
by Rudolf Otto in his seminal 1913 study, The Idea of the Holy, in which he
makes the perhaps more Romantic association between the sublime and the
numinous: While the element of “dread” is gradually overborne, the connexion of
“the sublime” and “the holy” becomes firmly established as a legitimate
schematization and is carried on into the highest forms of religious
consciousness—a proof that there exists a hidden kinship between the numinous
and the sublime which is something more than accidental analogy, and to which
Kant’s Critique of Judgement bears distant witness.’ (Bernier, page )
Bernier, making the link between Viola’s work and the sublime, and between the sublime and the numinous, supports the idea that Viola’s work contains strong elements of the numinous.