Sophia Between Light and Dark /Anne Stockton
Rudolf Steiner tells us about the new rulership of Michael
which started in 1879. Then came the end of Kali-Yuga in 1889, the dark age of
three thousand years of falling away from the spirit, a spiritual dying away.
Now comes the heralding of the new age of light. What more triumphant trumpet
call to announce its coming could we have than the wave of impressionism, the
Fauves and the impressionists, turning the world into pure color, us upside
down and outside in. As also Freud, Jung and the others were doing. The new
century – then – took a giant step inward.
Rudolf Steiner points to the evolution of man’s
consciousness, and how this can be read through art history among other texts.
He alerts us to the state of our spiritual development as we approach the
threshold of the spiritual world anew in this, our new age. Our thinking,
feeling and willing are in confusion, but beginning to separate in us, going
their separate ways, often without our control, all
creating great confusion and messing up our karma!
We can find footprints of Sophia when we connect
ourselves with the picture of art in this century and realize it as revealing
of the human condition. Art has reached the threshold, too. The modern art
scene shows us clearly where we are in this process – thinking freezing into abstract art, or intellectual Surrealism taking
the place of feeling, certainly willing into the active processes like Jackson
Pollack’s Action Painting. We see the Ego itself falling into many
dead-end isms and egotisms. That glorious announcement of new experience through
color fell into ashes as the fire died down and failed to find spiritual and
soul directions. Individualism, materialism and technology have now taken their toll.
When we look back we can realize that we have had more
than a century of great art, or, if not many great works of art in themselves,
we have had great artists, great artistic activity, and a great artistic
process. As Time magazine says for the Queen Mother, “What a
Century!” Those artists had done all our homework, our exercises for us,
and most of them were seeking to crash the barriers, to get through to Spirit.
We are, in a sense, still waiting. I would name a few: the Blue Riders, Kadinsky,
Picasso, Nolde, who found color magically out of the dark, and more recently
Rothko who got lost in the dark, Esteban who brings new meaning to abstract
colour, and Beuys who brings a social impulse
and tries to take up Steiner’s way of expression in blackboard art. There
are others, of course.
Perhaps sensing that art is at the crossroads, if not
a dead end today, the Pope has written a fine “Letter to Artists”,
Easter 1999, and at one point he has gone through a mini-art history, and
evolution of consciousness, and he begs the artist for continued cooperation
with the message of the Church, dealing kindly with modern art thus:
“the Church has not ceased to nurture great
appreciation for the value of art as such. Even beyond its typically religious
expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that
even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a
bridge to religious experience. In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of
an imagination which rises above the every day, art is by its nature a kind of
appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or
the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the
universal desire for redemption.”
He seeks a new alliance with artists, a “renewed
epiphany of beauty in our time” and goes on in a very interesting way:
“Art must make perceptible….the world of the spirit, of the
invisible, of God.”
Of course he promotes the use of the Gospels, and I
would wish he had seen the paintings of three of the Gospels of Parjani, a
Georgian painter who died recently and who was a student of Anthroposophy. The
trouble is that contemporary artists do not want the old images, but new and alive experiences
and today their experiences descend into Hell, into the evil around them and
they cannot reach its redemption.
Rudolf Steiner helps us thus: “….and if we
wish to really take hold of art we must never forget that the ultimate in art
in the world is the interplay of the beautiful with the ugly, the presentation
of the battle of the beautiful and with the ugly. For only by looking upon the
state of equilibrium between the beautiful and the ugly do we stand within
reality….”
At a recent conference called the “New
Metaphysical Arts” at Sussex University, the same call was issued:
“Ugliness must be portrayed, but must be made sublime. To do this the
artists must have tasted transcendence himself.” Here lies our homework!
In speaking about art and architecture, Steiner also
warns:
“However much study may be devoted to the
elimination of crime and wrong-doing in the world, true redemption, the turning
of evil into good, will in the future depend on whether true art and
architecture are able to generate a definite cultural atmosphere that can so
fill the hearts and souls of human beings – if they allow this atmosphere
to influence them – that liars will cease to lie and disturbers of the
peace will cease to disturb the peace of their fellow citizens. Buildings will
begin to speak. They will speak the language of which people today as yet have
no inkling.
Nowadays people gather at congresses to negotiate
world peace. They imagine that speaking and listening can actually create peace
and harmony. But peace and harmony, and conditions worthy of humanity, can only
be established when it is the gods who speak to us. When will the gods speak to
us? We had better first ask: When do human beings speak to us?”
He goes on to talk of art and architecture as larynx
of the gods. Human beings must learn to speak!
As the Pope, Steiner shows the artist as reaching to
express the “something more” of his experience. But he sits between
two stools, the Icon and the Madonna. Now he must get up and MOVE.
Soloviev also gives us indications of the
artists’ situation and possible directions for a new art. At
Dostoevsky’s death he compared the static soul-understanding of Tolstoy
with Dostoevsky’s dynamic movement. Three months later he gave three
lectures in appreciation of Dostoevsky as man and genius against the background
of the development of art:
“In the beginning of human evolution the poets
were prophets and priests. Art served the gods. But as civilization
developed, art, along with human activities in general, separated from
religion. Artists who had formerly been servants of the gods considered art itself as their idol. Priests of pure
art were born who regarded the perfection of artistic form the most important
factor….
Modern artists will not and cannot serve pure beauty
or seek only for content. However, since they
have been estranged from the former religious content of art, they are now dependent
on attempting to imitate reality slavishly and secondly,
upon responding to the tastes of the public and changing morality.
Naturally it is easy to condemn the present trend of
art, but this is unjust. Behind the façade of poor art of the present,
the promise of divine greatness is hidden. The modern artist more or less
consciously wishes his art to enlighten mankind. However, earlier art offered
light and joy to humanity, but modern art draws attention to the evil in life.
If art seeks to make the evil in life better,
but it is not sufficient today simply to work out of realism.”
In ancient times art lifted man to the heights of
Olympus. The art of the future will return to earth, expressing love and
sympathy, not in order to bury itself in the darkness of earthly life, but to
help the latter and renew its spiritual substance. However, to work efficiently
on this earth for this renewal of art, it is necessary to draw to art forces
which are not of this earth.
Art which has been separated from religion must be
reunited with it, but in perfect freedom. Artists and poets should become
priests once again, but in a far deeper sense than formerly, for they will have
to gain control over the idea of religion and consciously control its earthly
incarnation. Even at this moment, the traces of the religious art of the future
can be detected in today’s seemingly anti-religious art.
Dostoevesky’s world is the exact opposite of the
prevailing realism. Here, everything is in movement, nothing is fixed, for he
is the only one of our contemporary Russian writers who concentrates on
movement.”
For the painter, taking his/her start from
color, it is movement in color, how the color moves, not the form, but the
color in itself.
We can now think of two of the giant artists of our
latest millennium moment at the frontier. I will not attempt to go beyond them,
or explain “Tracy’s Bed” or Francis Bacon’s howl of
pain, or some of the decadence we can see in the Tate Modern Museum, even
though it probably applies to all that as well.
I mention Joseph Beuys and his social art, even if it may
be more intellectual than artistic; and Mark Rothko in his genuinely artistic
search to reveal the human soul through color and its innate movement on the
surface….. “expressing
love and sympathy for the human soul through color, but getting buried in the
darkness of earth.” Tragically, Rothko came to an end at the Threshold in
black squares; squares, only at the least content-laden form with which to show
the color but still not understanding the spiritual movement and gestures of
the colors. Kadinsky tried and did.
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Having
come through that excursion into art history, I would continue the trail of
Sophia, but it is going to lead through another question which belongs to the
picture for which I am groping: Where do the colors come from? Please bear with
me while I go far back in time!
Genesis
tells us that “God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was
without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And God moved
upon the face of the waters. And God said ‘Let there be light!’,
and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness.”
So
there was light and darkness but not yet color until later, when Noah saw it
from the Ark. One of Steiner’s Rainbow meditations translated from his
notebook reveals what Noah may have experienced
In
the darkness I find God’s Being
In
Rose Red I feel the source of Life
In
Ether Blue rests the yearning of the Spirit
In
Life’s Green breaths all Life’s Breath
In
Gold Yellow radiates Thinking’s clarity
In
Fiery Red is rooted the Strength of Will
Sun’s
White manifests the Kernel of my Being
In Occult
Science, Steiner has given us a description out of his Initiate
insight into details of evolution. There is also another lovely series of
lectures called “Inner Realities of Evolution” about the sacrifice
of love of the Seraphim to the Cherubim and Thrones of the First Hierarchy.
This was not accepted and led to later difficulties. He traces development
through the state of warmth on Ancient Saturn, to the division of light and
darkness on the Ancient Sun, where air was created. Then he comes to the
Ancient Moon period where he describes how air was the shadow of light and was
wrung out, so that water resulted. The water reflected the light and the
darkness and through refraction the colors began their weaving in the
interaction of air, mists and water….the rainbow appeared!
This
might be considered ‘fairy-tale science’, but let us not throw the
baby out with the bath-water. As modern science developed, we have Newton
telling us that color is to be found by breaking up the light, out of light
alone. He made a box with a pin prick in its side, and sent a beam of light
through a prism to the opposite wall, where it divided into the spectrum of
seven colors. This one-sided theory sent Goethe into a fury. He did the
experiment over and over observing all the phenomena, saying of Newton,
“He has forgotten the darkness!”
A
phrase of Goethe’s is often quoted: “The colors are born of the
deeds and suffering of the light.” Here is where truth and poetry, art
and science come together, for we can see the light suffering as it is overcome
by the darkness resulting in the reds and warm colors of the sunset seen
through earth’s dust, while the sunlight lights up the black of outer
darkness as a brave deed, shining through the sky revealing the heavenly blues.
Goethe brings a qualitative element to science.
Rudolf
Steiner was chosen as editor of the Weimar Edition of Goethe’s scientific
works. He was especially involved with the color research, and it laid the
basis for his own development of understanding of color. He laid great emphasis
on the importance of Goethe’s method through observation and his
phenomenological approach. The English artist William Turner drew on
Goethe’s research in his study, resulting in his liberating works with
colors, and in Paris at the Jeu de Paume, in a large poster on the genesis of impressionism,
credit is given for its color discoveries to Goethe and Turner.
The
Newton-Goethe controversy sparks a dividing line for the future, a parting of
the ways between a materialistic science and one leading to an understanding of
an etheric realm. Ralph Waldo Emerson prophetically recognized this in his
writings on Goethe.
Newton’s
experiments led to the wave theory and materialistic handling of color through
measure, weight, and number. But there are situations where it simply does not
work, for instance, in the case of the experimental Land camera leading to the
Polaroid.
In
1970, MIT published a facsimile edition of Goethe, introduced by D. J. Rudd
with the comment: “Perhaps after 160 years, Goethe’s mystical
theory may come to be recognized as foreshadowing, however, dimly, the next
advance in the theory of color.”
Henri
Bortoft, physicist and teacher of science, its history and philosophy, in Kent,
England, describes Goethes’s method:
“When observing the
phenomenon of color in Goethe’s way it is necessary to be more active in
seeing than we usually are. The term ‘observation’ is in some ways
too passive. We tend to think of an observations as just a matter of opening
our eyes in front of the phenomenon, as if it were something that happens to us
when visual information flows in through the senses and is registered in
consciousness. Observing the phenomenon in Goethe’s way requires us to
look, as if the direction of seeing were reversed, going from ourselves toward
the phenomenon instead of visa-versa. This is done by putting attention into
seeing, so that we do really see what we are seeing instead of just having a
visual impression. It is as if we plunged into seeing. In this way, we can
begin to experience the qualities of colors.
But Goethe’s encounter
with the phenomenon did not stop at this stage of observation. He could then
repeat the observations he had made, but this time doing so entirely in his
imagination without using the apparatus. He called this discipline
‘Exacte sinnliche Phantasie’, which can be translated ‘Exact
sensorial imagination.’”
Bortoft
continues with a description of how to see the colors through the prism with
black and white printed forms, repeating the process Goethe described as
‘recreating in the wake of ever-creating nature’. This is
impossible, he says, by simply having thoughts…and working it with the
intellectual mind, and he goes on to describe the dynamic movement within the
colors in a holistic way.
For
the new art, undisciplined fantasy is not enough. It can lead far afield and to
insanity to which many artists are witness. For Goethe and Steiner, it must
have a grounding in reality of spirit and experience. So, Goethe describes a
sound path through observation and connection with the laws of nature and
metamorphosis, exploring what he called Nature’s Holy Open Secret and
saying ‘Art begins where Nature leaves off.’
Steiner’s
revelations of new aspects of color were grounded on Goethe’s theory and
the day spectrum of color. If Goethe called attention to the soul aspects of
color, Steiner spoke of spiritual aspects as he leads the discipline further
through his Anthroposophy. He pointed also to
the ‘night spectrum’ of shades of violet, mauve, purple, magenta,
and peach-blossom color.
In another
lecture, Steiner gives a moving description of the Rainbow, going on to reveal
these hardly seen colors of the magenta family in their spiritual-psychic
connections; the result of weaving of the Hierarchies in and out of the colors
and behind the rainbow as if it were tubular! And all this in an atmosphere of
glowing rapture! He points out how frozen we are today with our cold theories.
Those
particular colours are a far-reaching mystery
connected with the Tree of Life, and he wanted physicists to bend the spectrum
with a magnet to reveal the meeting of the poles of the infra-red and
ultra-violet, but the Dornach scientists were not able to find a magnet strong
enough! Now, I am an artist, and am over my head in science so I will say no
more, but hope that others will bring more light as Bartoft is doing.
Steiner
went on to describe other color circles: active,
sun colors and passive moon colors in their qualities and inner movements and gestures
of the colors which Kadinsky, almost alone, explore in his “Concerning
the Spiritual in Art.” This is all work for future artists, which goes
beyond the needs of this talk.
How
do those different gestures of the colors want to be painted? I met Anthroposophy
at age 21, and this question with many others, poured in. Life did not become
easier with these challenges, but they led me to study further, and finally led
me to the Art Therapy I found in Germany and Switzerland. Francis Edmunds then
asked me to teach at Emerson College, which I did for some years. I remarried,
and when space gave out at Emerson, my second husband, Kurt Falk and I founded
a new Tobias School of Art to help bring these
into the world in a practical way.
The
questions live on! What is the relation of all this to the main stream of Art
as I have related its development? What is good and bad art? Spiritual art? Art
of the etheric? Christian Art, and I don’t mean art which illustrates the
Gospels? Out of a new awareness of Christ and the etheric, of Sophia, can art
be fertilized again to bring something new to humanity? These are all
qualitative questions that we are working with in our School in England –
Tobias School for Art, Education, and Art Therapy – for they bring with them
a new aspect of color, and a potential for healing.
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It
is time to return to the present and the theme, which changes as constantly as
Sophia herself. Another anecdote is relevant. My friend, Rachael Shepherd said
last year before she died that we should look back every evening on the miracle
of each day!
One
such review came to me during the last few months of carrying this question of
Sophia about with me. I went to a workshop with Coenraad Van Houten called,
“Practicing Spiritual Research”. I took my notes and the question
“Who is Sophia and does she work in the color?” For me it had
always seemed to be the Christ working in the middle stream of color, in the
soul, between the light of Lucifer and the darkness of Ahriman.
I
will spare you details of my experience in the workshop, and only hope that you
will not agree with the feed-back I first received from the group! Groups can
be very helpful, so after demolishing me at the first session, a kind Norwegian
woman said to me, “Why don’t you just ask Sophia?” I think this confrontation was exactly
what I had been avoiding.
I
went home tired and discouraged that first day, but just before I went to sleep
I put my questions to Sophia. I woke after two hours sound sleep, at 2 a.m.,
and on the tip of my soul was the memory of my teachers’ voice, quoting
Steiner: “Color is the Soul of the World.” And further was added,
“Sophia is Color.” In the morning I reached for a book by my bed,
and on the last page, read: “Sophia is the sister soul of Christ.”
This is a mystery.
So I
offer this on the alter of what will be a mystery for long to come: recent
meditations borrowed from the Christian Community run: “The Father god
lives in us. The Son God creates in us. The Spirit God enlightens us.”
May
I add a comment from a mundane source but illuminating, from the Radio
Four’s “Thought for the day”: “ Beauty is not a luxury,
but a necessity to human life. When it is realized, not as superficial
aesthetics, but as God’s love, shining through!”
I
understand this as: the World Ground gives us the substances, the color. With
the Son, we create: when you create you must forget all and dive into chaos, a
kind of death. You hold a conversation with the color between your karmic
biography, your constitution and the objective spiritual nature of the colors;
you may come through to understanding to the Holy Spirit, Sophia, to conscious
realization.
WE
SEE – not the substance of the material, but of the archetypal forms of
this world given to us.
WE
SEE – in creating with the Passion of the Christ.
WE
HOPE TO SEE – with the insight of Sophia’s conscious light and
wisdom.
Anne Stockton was born in
Manhattan, NY, USA in 1910. She decided to devote her life to painting and
art at 13. At 15 she was allowed to go to the Art Student's League. A
first exhibition in New York of Impressionists was a great
awakening.
In Santa Fe,
N.M.she established herself with a group of painters and a gallery.
Her brother's death
brought Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy into her life with
new meaning and a new impulse in Art. Since then her life has been
filled with research, both artistic and spiritual,and full of questions.
She studied at the School of Artistic Therapy of Dr. M. Hauschka, and with
Gerard Wagner in Dornach. Asked to teach at Emerson College in
England, she left 12 years later to found, with her husband, the Tobias
School of Art. Ms Stockton was the recipient of the1999 Sophia Award, given at
the Sophia Conference in Hickory, N.C., by The School of Spiritual Psychology.
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