20/07/2022
El gran artista plástico, Alex Grey, haciendo referencia a Muhammad: “Conocerse a sí mismo, es conocer a Dios”.
-Anatomía del ojo humano-
I wanted to be a fine artist. I wanted to be a painter, whatever a painter was. When I was in high school, I started to see Art in America and other magazines, and the artists I felt closest to were the Photorealists. Chuck Close, for example. Even though he treated his subjects very straightforwardly, the subjects were always important to him. Then I saw people like Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, and all the performance artists. I really connected with them in art school because they were making art about stuff that meant something to them, or questioning the nature of art on very deep levels. And there were elements of shamanism in their work, when art making becomes like a ritual theater and the art itself becomes ceremonial. That became really interesting for me because that was where your ethical perspective on putting energy out into the world all comes together.
How do we work as artists? Is it the self as a bundle of fears and upsets and psychodynamics, or clear seeing? What is the focus of the artist? What’s their subject? And so for me, it was always the self. The self is practically the only subject. But what is it? And how can we understand it in its greatest nature? You read the Quran and Muhammad says, “To know one’s self is to know Allah” So this brings it into a religious dimension that self-knowledge is ultimately knowledge of the higher dimensions of self, the eternal self, the Godself.
Anatomy of the Eye, 1993
