When we define a form of Transcendental ArtTranscendental Art in 12 Statements
1. In Transcendental Art, artistic action is a moment of contact with the sacred and with our inner depths.
2. In Transcendental Art, growing artistically means elevating oneself spiritually.
3. The aim is to work with higher levels of consciousness.
4. The aesthetic objective corresponds to the spiritual objective.
5. The work of art is above all an energetic phenomenon.
6. The perceiver is as important as the artist.
7. The barrier between the outer and inner landscapes is broken down, restoring contact between what we do and what we experience while doing it.
8. The artist is not an individual genius but a shamanic figure, a bridge between other realities and our own.
9. Art should fulfil the social function of raising consciousness.
10. Altered states of consciousness are explored and studied without drugs or other substances.
11. There is no separation between everyday life and artistic practice: art is not an escape from the world but another means of knowing it and becoming integrated with it.
12. Transcendental Art is a path towards inner unity, rejecting the subtle psychological violence that permeates us and seeking new aesthetic models that are also new psychological, ethical and emotional models., we attribute to it a qualitative value related to a function that any artistic creation may fulfil, regardless of its form or means. Transcendental Art may be painting, sculpture and drawing, as in the case considered here, but also poetry, dance, cinema, video, installation, photography, comics, illustration and every known or yet-to-be-invented form of expression, whenever through it human beings transcend their condition of material finitude to manifest their immortal dimension.
What transcends is the artist’s intentionality, which moves from the individual to the universal and thus transcends time and space, earthly dimensions bound to the presence of biological consciousness in the body. This immortal dimension of our vital energy is above all an experience. It cannot be reached by logical-rational means, but through the union of all the spheres of life: feeling, thought and action, overcoming the fear of death as the ultimate end, as that towards which existence would otherwise lose its meaning.
Even when it is not formulated in these terms, as a rational recognition of the fear of death, this transcendental impulse has moved humanity in a direction tending towards immortality. This dimension has always been considered sacred, because it is a quality permanently attributed to God or the gods, allegorical models of a human reality of profound psychological truth. The question here is not whether an immortal divinity exists outside us; what certainly exists, has existed and will always exist is the tension of human will towards transcendence. That is why we define Transcendental Art by its inner, psychological and existential reality rather than its outward appearance: in it we recognise the driving force of an intention to transcend.
This qualitative element of human will, called Transcendental Intentionality, creates a substantial difference in ways of living, in the meaning of life and in artistic creation. Whether or not it is explicitly described in these terms, this attitude places what is immanent, mortal, finite, provisional or material in a secondary position in relation to transcendence. For someone moved by transcendental intentionality, the immanent dimension is a means rather than an end, and death is a change of state rather than the termination of existence. This attitude towards life, nature and all phenomena consequently defines a “sacred” vision of creation and a profound respect for all things, living and non-living, because they are the means through which life expresses itself and transcends. A worker does not deliberately damage or despise the tools of their trade, which are “sacred” as the means of earning a living. Similarly, for transcendental artists, art is something sacred through which to overcome death, not a means of accumulating money or personal prestige, because they know or sense that the earthly and material dimension does not endure.
Works of art may therefore manifest this dimension at different degrees of transcendence. Someone might argue that art either transcends or does not, but the boundary is not so clear-cut: intentions and hopes of transcending must also be considered as acts approaching the goal. These attempts contain the seed of transcendence, at least potentially, and should therefore be interpreted differently from works in which there is neither an intention nor even an awareness of transcendence.
We can consequently identify creations that are not transcendental, moved instead by immediate and pragmatic aims. We have called this creative orientation Immanential ArtImmanential Art in 12 Statements
1. In Immanential Art, artistic action corresponds to an escape from the world and to personal catharsis.
2. Spiritual growth is not taken into consideration.
3. Everything is art, provided that the person declaring it so is convinced.
4. What matters is not the work itself but the beliefs represented in it.
5. The idea is more important than the work itself.
6. The aesthetic objective corresponds to economic, ideological, visual, conceptual, propagandistic or self-celebratory aims, but never, or only partly, to a spiritual aim.
7. The perceiver is passive: the artist is the one who makes the artwork.
8. The artist is a genius, often misunderstood and rarely well paid.
9. The promotional apparatus—gallery, curator, museum, critic and so forth—is far more important than the work itself.
10. Society is turned into an audience.
11. Nonviolence is not a guiding sensibility; an ethics of expediency prevails.
12. There is no intention to overcome death inwardly: transcendence is understood only as remaining in people’s memories, that is, becoming famous..
Immanential Art consists of works that appear to us as the triumph of immanence, of the desire for permanence, possession and attachment. They express the victory of the meaninglessness of death over the meaning of life. Between Transcendental Art and Immanential Art, therefore, there is a spectrum of values that helps us understand that Transcendental Art is not an object to be attained, just as happiness is not an ultimate object or goal. It is a means, a force or vital tension guiding the artist and anyone wishing to experience a release from the fear of death. Such an experience is possible through certainty in the immortality of one’s intentionality. Transcendental artists use art as their preferred means of reaching that experience and certainty, but other paths are possible too: mental or physical meditation, such as yoga and tai chi, and philosophical, scientific or spiritual enquiry.