Today, people increasingly choose what to study for economic or professional gain. Education is seen as an investment in a career rather than in the person. This is deeply troubling: it has reduced us to the condition of worker bees.
At other times, education is viewed in the opposite way: we study for pleasure—as anyone who has studied art knows—while neglecting practical considerations. Yet we may then end up doing work we find alienating, because what we studied seems impossible to apply to everyday life.
Thus we often experience a division between pleasure and duty.
In our view, a balanced education should help us grow in the different dimensions of life—emotional, intellectual and existential—while also developing skills that can spare us the tragedy of having to work merely to survive, only to end up living for work.
For reasons we explain in our writings on Transcendental Art, we believe that when one system of beliefs declines, another emerges. Today we are witnessing a dramatic decline in Immanent Art, especially market-oriented art, although the problem goes beyond the market: it was a particular mindset that created the market, not the other way around.
We believe that today, and even more so in the future, an artist who expresses nothing of depth risks disappearing or becoming increasingly isolated. When an artist loses their strength and social role, they are pushed to the margins rather than included.
By contrast, an artist who performs the social function chiefly expected in our era—that of fuelling financial speculation—is supported.
It can also happen that artists and society come into conflict because society is no longer willing to listen to them.
A third situation, which we see today, is that both artists and society have become estranged from themselves. How, then, can either be truly present in the world?
In forums devoted to contemporary art, complaints about the emptiness of the works presented at official events—biennials, triennials and quadriennials, for example—are becoming increasingly common.
How can we counter this phenomenon that is drawing us all in?
How can we develop spirituality in art?
How can art once again become a beacon for humanity?
How can we reconnect with ordinary people, if not by researching and cultivating the spiritual dimension of art—with method, time, energy and financial commitment?
We have taken these concerns to heart. Through our course, we seek to offer practical responses and encourage new possibilities for development in this direction.
We are convinced that this is already the present, and even more the future, for artists who hope to find an audience and a market—that is, for those who aspire to offer the world something genuinely useful, and to have its value recognized both spiritually and economically.
>>> Further reading
Developing Spirituality in Art: A Choice for the Future
Spiritual Development in Art and the Need to Work