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The Numinous Gate: a Philosophico-Phenomenological Study

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The Numinous Gate: a Philosophico-Phenomenological Study Maine State Library Maine State Documents Academic Research and Dissertations Special Collections 2015 The uminouN s Gate: A Philosophico- Phenomenological Study of Wonder and Image Consciousness in the Fabulist Art of Varo and Borges Robert Kalivac Carroll IDSVA Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalmaine.com/academic Recommended Citation Carroll, Robert Kalivac, "The uminousN Gate: A Philosophico-Phenomenological Study of Wonder and Image Consciousness in the Fabulist Art of Varo and Borges" (2015). Academic Research and Dissertations. Book 13. http://digitalmaine.com/academic/13 This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections at Maine State Documents. It has been accepted for inclusion in Academic Research and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Maine State Documents. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE NUMINOUS GATE: A PHILOSOPHICO-PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF WONDER AND IMAGE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE FABULIST ART OF VARO AND BORGES Bob Kalivac Carroll Submitted to the faculty of The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts for the degree Doctor of Philosophy September 2015 Accepted by the faculty of the Institute of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ___________________________ Dissertation Director Sigrid Hackenberg, Ph.D. Doctoral Committee ___________________________ George Smith, Ph.D. ___________________________ Simonetta Moro, Ph.D. Date of official submission: September 17, 2015 ii © 2015 Bob Kalivac Carroll ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii Seré todos o nadie. Seré el otro Que sin saberlo soy, el que ha mirado Ese otro sueño, mi vigilia. La juzga, Resignado y sonriente. —Jorge Luis Borges —“El sueño” [I shall be all or no one. I shall be the other I am without knowing it, he who has looked on that other dream, my waking state. He weighs it up, resigned and smiling.] Personalmente, yo no me creo dotada de poderes especiales, sino más bien de una capacidad para ver rápidamente las relaciones de causa a efecto, y ello fuera de los límites ordinaries de la lógica corriente. —Remedios Varo —Cartas [Personally, I do not think I am endowed with special powers, but rather an ability to quickly see the relationship between cause and effect beyond the current limits of ordinary logic.] iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Numerous faculty members as well as doctoral candidate colleagues served my doctoral studies and the process of writing this dissertation. Scholarly acknowledgements must begin with IDSVA Founder and President Professor George Smith, whose unstinted sharing of his passion for and experience in scholarship, as well as his challenging yet compassionate admonitions, clarified for me the doctoral studies pathway. Similarly, the tolerant and highly intelligent feedback of my dissertation advisor, Professor Sigrid Hackenberg, helped me to navigate the journey of writing a dissertation. For years Executive Vice President and CFO Amy Curtis patiently answered my sometimes anxious questions about the practicalities of the program. Personal expressions of gratitude must be extended to my life partner, Swanzie Isaacson, for her financial assistance, patience, and unfailing expressions of love and support throughout this process. I also extend heartfelt thanks to my friend Steve Reed, who offered financial and emotional support in the early years of the program. Finally, I am deeply grateful to the artist, author, and my longtime spiritual mentor, Adi Da Samraj, who during the final two years of his lifetime unreservedly communicated his blessing regard and encouragement for me to undertake graduate studies leading to a doctorate in the philosophy of art. v ABSTRACT Bob Kalivac Carroll The Numinous Gate: A Philosophico-Phenomenological Study of Wonder and Image Consciousness in the Fabulist Art of Varo and Borges This study investigates the roles of wonder and a sensibility to “the numinous” in the work of Spanish-Mexican painter Remedios Varo and Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, each of whom created fabulist narratives, visual and literary respectively. An investigation of wonder as a distinctly “disruptive” universal phenomenon and its accompanying “not-knowing” and “self-forgetting” qualities serve as an entryway for engaging, contemplating and depicting the infinitely shifting terrain that marks the invisibility of the numinous. Eastern approaches to understanding the variations and fluctuations of aesthetic consciousness might describe this theme as a “gateless gate.” Thus European and Asian thought are combined to support the argument that Varo and Borges’s irrealistic narratives challenge any immutable account of truth and reality in art. The proposal herein is that truth and reality are ultimately indefinable aspects of art. Grounding this study in a philosophico-phenomenological orientation by combining a methodology rooted in Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology with aesthetically oriented philosophical commentary by other thinkers allows the seemingly amorphous and paradoxical roles of subjectivity and spiritual consciousness in modern art and aesthetics to be more directly examined and understood. That the dynamic of the artist-philosopher fuels an impulse to make visible through art the invisibility of what vi Rudolf Otto called “the numinous” reflects how, as Remedios Varo asserted, art is made “as a way of communicating the incommunicable,” thus bringing meaning to what Borges describes as “the overwhelming disorder of the real world.” The seminal roles of subjectivity—the decentering of the subject, Husserlian transcendental subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and intertexual philosophical assessments of subjectivity— are all used to explore Borges’s literary and Varo’s visual storytelling and their respective searches for truth and reality. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS The Numinous Gate: A Philosophico-Phenomenological Study of Wonder and Image Consciousness in the Fabulist Art of Varo and Borges Introduction—Communicating the Incommunicable……………………............. 1 Chapter One—Husserlian Phenomenological Methodology……………………. 23 Chapter Two—Wonder as Disruption: Subjectivity and Not-knowing…………. 72 Chapter Three—The Numinous ………………………………………………… 112 Chapter Four—Seeking the Numinous in Modern Art……………………….......... 153 Chapter Five—Philosophico: An Intertexual Orientation to Aesthetic Thinkers …. 197 Chapter Six—Art as Life: Varo and Borges as Artist-Philosophers……………….. 235 Conclusion—The Numinous Gate…………………………….............................. 318 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………… 325 Endnotes………………………………………………………………………….. 344 viii The Numinous Gate: A Philosophico-Phenomenological Study of Wonder and Image Consciousness in the Fabulist Art of Varo and Borges Introduction—Communicating the Incommunicable This study investigates the interwoven roles of the numinous, wonder, and image consciousness in the work of Spanish-Mexican painter Remedios Varo and Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, both of whom created narratives— visual and literary respectfully—of what is described here as irreal fabulism.1 Explicating Varo and Borges’s irreal fabulist storytelling magnifies the broader thematic focus of the study. Similarly, considering the art of Varo and Borges as being rooted in wonder opens an investigative window for viewing how a sensibility to what Rudolf Otto termed “the numinous” lends itself to an aesthetically inspired nonlinear search of mystery.2 Grounding this investigation in a philosophico- phenomenological3 orientation allows the seemingly amorphous and paradoxical role of spiritual consciousness in art and aesthetics to be more directly examined and understood. However, a necessary interjection here is that because the word “spiritual” is so replete with multiple connotative meanings, the broader definition inherent in “the numinous” is utilized because it enfolds spirituality as well as other topics that are seemingly less spiritual but nonetheless related to mystery or the unknown. These additional meanings of the numinous will be examined ahead. Similarly, employing a methodology inspired by Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, and especially his theories of epochē, image consciousness (Bildbewußtein, also translated as “depicting consciousness”), fantasy or imagination, and memory, yields a more logical and conceptual rendering of the ineffable nature of the proposed theme. Essentially, this study argues that art4 is rooted in an impulse to disclose or make visible the invisibility of numinous presence, or as Remedios Varo put it, art can serve as “a way of communicating the incommunicable” (Elizondo 216), thus bringing meaning to what Borges describes as “the overwhelming disorder of the real world” (Selected Non-Fictions 81).5 Related topics include intertexualities (both conceptually driven discursive and perceptually fueled visual versions), and a consideration of how the root source of wonder in the specific cases of Varo and Borges serves the dynamic of the artist-philosopher. Examining the creative processes of Remedios Varo and Jorge Luis Borges allows the multifarious and interwoven topics of irreal fabulist storytelling, wonder, the numinous, and image consciousness to be elucidated and presented via a consolidated examination, while a philosophico-phenomenological orientation allows plurality to be partnered with congruity. In other words, the manifold topics and subtopics that surface here can be
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