Connections – Do I Have Memes to an End?

Southcoast, MA – This post is the second addressing my developing concept of the act of drawing as spiritual. As I compose this post, I’m stimulated by new ideas, concepts and thought connections. In my first post on this subject (Aha! – Eureka! – OMG!), I described how I was thunderstruck by the realization that as I was attempting to explain what the act of drawing is, I discovered what I believe it really is; a spiritual exercise. Wondering why cavemen were drawing as early as early as 32,000 years ago, I offered a personal opinion. This opinion based on experiences teaching art history.

Although the experts consider the activity of drawing (cave painting) as a part of a religious or spiritual act, I offer to you that it was more than that. It was the religion – they were drawing because it was a spiritual act! At this point is perhaps best to clarify that religion is a group concept and exercise. And, although spirituality is a significant part of religion, it is also very individualized.

After reading - What Defines a Meme – (May 2011 issue of Smithsonian Magazine), I was inspired to continue my exploration of this idea that drawing as a spiritual act, especially when I read what Richard Dawkins was quoted in the article. In 1986, he declared, “What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a ‘spark of life.’ It is information, words, instructions.” Based on Dawkins’ statement, could art (drawing) be included in his concept? If so, then Paleolithic cave art was performed an act of providing and sharing (social networking) this information and instruction in pictures since language wasn’t fully developed and writing didn’t exist. As language did develop though, drawing became cruder. Even though I’m only focusing on drawing; sculpture, tool and jewelry making played their own parts. Drawing (art) remained inextricably linked to religion from the prehistoric, to the ancient and all of the ages that followed right up to present time.

Before I ramble further, I have to take this quick side-trip about the marriage of art and religion over the millennia. In one of my favorite books of all time, one that was recommended to me by my sculpture teacher George Mellor - The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach – the author, Ernst Fischer wrote:

Man, became man through work, who stepped out of the animal kingdom as transformer of the natural into the artificial, who became therefore the magician, man the creator of social reality, will always stay the great magician, will always be Prometheus bringing fire from heaven to earth, will always be Orpheus enthralling nature with his music. Not until humanity itself dies will art die.

And here I stop for a moment to offer an apology to George Mellor, my sculpture instructor at the then SMU (Southeastern Massachusetts University) – I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you George. We were always at odds. I didn’t read the book you assigned (The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach) until years after while preparing for an art history lecture on prehistoric art – wow! If, I only had read the book for your class, I could have told you what learned. In the end though, you got through to me! Because of you, Ernst Fischer taught me that, “…work for an artist is a highly conscious, rational process at the end of which the work of art emerges as mastered reality – not at all a state of intoxicated inspiration.”

This rational process, drawing specifically, does emerge as reality mastered but, it’s not the end product. The product is an illusion of reality. The mastery is in the process! Fischer believed, “By his work, man transforms the world like a magician: a piece of wood, a bone, a flint is fashioned to resemble a model and thereby transformed into that very model; material objects are transformed into signs, names and concepts; man himself is transformed from an animal into a man.” But what is drawing then if not a process in which to produce an illusion of reality? It is, by personal experience, not what is referred to as creating. It is also not about replicating, or copying reality. It is also not about creating an illusion of reality. What is it then? This exercise, for a lack of a better description, is about self-actualization. It is about defining our personal space in a manner highly personal to each one of us. Picasso, I believe comes close to what I’m attempting to define for you. He said, “Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

Drawing is a personal act and experience. However, when it is seen, viewed or experienced by others, a whole new dynamic occurs. This dynamic is social and although a drawing is interpreted individually, it may also be interpreted collectively. Fischer said that God is a name for the collective. Applying this concept to art, the art conveys information, instruction and more. Both the individual and the individuals within a collective are needed since without receivers, experiences and viewers, art does not exist. Therefore, there is no music without a listener and words without readers. It seems simple enough in a complicated sort of way. The process is what it’s all about for the artist or creator if you prefer. Then, there is the work (art) itself.

But, there’s something else going on here – to once again quote Fischer - Man takes possession of the natural by transforming it. Work is transformation of the natural. Man also dreams of working magic upon nature, of being able to change objects and give them new form by magic means. This is the equivalent in the imagination of what work means in reality. Man is, from the outset, a magician. Is Man the magician or is the art magic? And, if the art is magic, does that then make who created it a magician as Fischer stated?

Is it solely the imagination, combined with the work process that creates an illusion of reality? If so, where does the physical nature of observation and execution (drawing) fit in? What is imagination? The dictionary definition states that imagination is the act of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses. Not actually present to the senses? Drawing, real drawing, is not about imagination, it is about observing what is present to the sense of sight and rendering (execution) it as faithfully as possible. The process is continual, evolves through observation, work (the act of making art – drawing) and improves through trial and error. It also involves what Fischer called making alike, giving the creator (artist) a power over their environment. There are many forms of power. Sir Francis Bacon said that knowledge is power. Knowledge comes from experience. Information is knowledge disseminated.

Before I move on, let’s look at religion, faith and belief. Fischer described religion as the collective. Hebrews 11:1 tells us …faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Finally, belief is confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately apparent. With this in mind, the act of drawing is a spiritual act and the completed work (drawing) is based on the belief of our perceptions. It will be accepted as truth based on the faith that what is seen; exists within the collective consciousness. Wow, the tail is chasing the dog. Let me try to look at this human activity in another way from the relatively new perspective of memetics.

Memetics is a theory that was proposed in Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene (1976) and describes the transfer of information culturally. A meme (rhymes with genes), is then both similar and parallel in concept to a gene. A meme is described as a unit of culture containing ideas, beliefs, behavior patterns and the like hosted in one or several individual’s minds. These memes can reproduce or replicate from mind to mind.

In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins wrote, “It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.” That “soup” is human culture; the vector of transmission is language, and the spawning ground is the brain. According to James Gleick who wrote - What Defines a Meme? Our world is a place where information can behave like human genes and ideas can replicate, mutate and evolve. So why then can’t drawing be looked at in the same light? Drawing is a form of information – visual information. Gleick states in the article, “The belief in God is an example Dawkins offers—an ancient idea, replicating itself not just in words but in music and art. The belief that Earth orbits the Sun is no less a meme, competing with others for survival.“

Art (drawing) and religion have a long relationship going back to the Paleolithic era. If we reference Genesis 1:26 - And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… we perhaps can better understand Gleick’s comment on Dawkins’ concept – “Wherever there is life, there must be replicators.” And, if Fischer’s perspective is that God is a name for the collective, then conversely, without the collective (believers) there is no, or there are no gods. Drawing then, was the genesis of the collective’s religious belief. It was, in and of itself, the religion. As language developed, drawing took a back seat of sorts. The images became supportive of the philosophy.

In the midst of receiving the tablets from Yahweh himself, Moses finds the Israelites worshiping an idol. In Exodus 32:4 we read that Aaron, in an attempt to placate the people who were distressed because of Moses’ delayed return from Sinai, ordered the people to Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me… And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf."

Back in the Paleolithic there were replicas of Venus of Willendorf figures throughout Western Europe – why? The entire belief system of the ancient Egyptians was their art. The ancient Greeks, illustrated that (Acts 14:11-12) that, “...men were turned into gods and gods were turned into men.” Early Christians adopted the religious iconography of the Greco-Roman world. The image of Jesus that we have come to know was patterned after the god Apollo. The early Orthodox Church was split by the Iconoclasm and religious art helped drive Catholicism through the Gothic Age and the Renaissance. Art and religion were inseparable it seemed. At some point in time, however, perhaps its beginnings can be traced to the Seventeenth Century, the collective’s concept of God shifted from a mystical, untouchable being to one found in every rock and plant (a throwback of sorts). God then, was Nature; therefore, the imagery of God was the landscape. Then, God was perceived as Science as Man’s knowledge expanded.

Modernism reflected the emerging technological age. Impressionism was a scientific view of nature. After the Second World War, Art was pretty much a standalone religion again. Then fast forward, as I wrote in my - A Jar of Change & Cable TV – See it Ain’t So Bad! post - The Sixties gave us Vatican Two and the Birth control pill. Women left the Church in droves. It was the Sixties – and society, tradition and conformity were old and tired ideas. Art stumbled along until just around the time of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s death. Now what? Art is dead. Religion is dead. Or, are they really? Perhaps it’s the organizations that controlled Art and Religion that are dead. According to Friedrich Nietzsche who wrote in his book – The Gay Science:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?

What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned

has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?

What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?

Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?

Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

He continued - God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. Will we see his shadow again and where are those caves?

I’ll close with Fischer again who said, “The usefulness of a work of art is determined not by its capacity to satisfy a determinate human need, but by its capacity to satisfy the general need that man feels to humanize everything he comes in contact with… Art is the creation of objects that essentially satisfy only spiritual needs; that is, these objects are distant not only from direct, physical, immediate needs, but also from the practical needs that are satisfied by the products of labor.”

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: This theory or concept is going to take a lot of work and revisiting this time and time again.]