Date: April 5, 2011 EI Presenter: Nicki Maxwell Zen and Morris Graves Introduction in 1987, the Works and Images of Morris
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Date: April 5, 2011 EI Presenter: Nicki Maxwell Zen and Morris Graves Introduction In 1987, the works and images of Morris Graves, were described as a “bridge” between the UOMOA’s two main collections: the Asian and the Pacific Northwest Modern works. As Virginia Haseltine wrote in 1966, “this Oregon-born artist represents the spirit of the Orient in Northwest art today.” In 2011, the “bridge” is there in a literal sense with the small room between the Huh Wing and the Jin Joo Gallery (Korea) and the Schnitzer Gallery is currently devoted to Morris Graves. In a Eugene Register Guard article, “Graves Helped Define Northwest Art” (05/13/2001) Graves is credited as coming close to shaping the aesthetic character of the Northwest. Take him out of Northwest art history and it loses its mid-20th century zing; its unruly and passionate striving for new beauty and ancient bliss. Like the abstract expressionists who were to dominate the New York art scene in the 1940s, Graves moved in the 1930s into surrealism, but it was a surrealism influenced by Zen: French art inspired by the unconscious meets Japanese art inspired by meditation. The JSMA houses the world’s largest collection of Graves’ work: about 100 finished paintings and 400 sketches, studies and ephemera spanning the period from the late 1930s to the late 60s. The information I am sharing comes from an article written by George Michael Cohen in the Collector’s Art Journal, Fall 1958 entitled “The Bird Painting of Morris Graves”. At the time WWII was developing in Europe, Graves was introduced to the Bahai faith by Mark Tobey and to Buddhism by Dorothy Schumacher. From Buddhism he became involved in the Vedanta Society in Seattle. Central to his beliefs was that the sacred resides in all things and that man and the universe are one. Zen and Vedanta Zen asserts the universal nature of transcendent wisdom and emphasizes that Buddhist nature is nothing other than the essential nature of the mind itself. The Zen tradition holds that meditation practice involves a process of rediscovery which may be referred to as “introspection”, “a backward step”, “turning about” or “turning the eye inward”. Vedanta is the most ancient scriptures of India. Its basic teaching is that our real nature is divine. God, or Brahman as it is called, exists in every living being. Religion is therefore a search for self-knowledge, a search for the divine within ourselves. We should not think of ourselves as needing to be "saved." We are never lost. At worst, we are living in ignorance of our true nature. Sri Ramakrishna used to tell a story to the listeners to make them understand about Vedanta. The story runs like this: Once in a tree there were two birds, one at the upper branch, serene, majestic and divine, and the other at a lower branch, restlessly pecking fruits, sometimes sweet sometimes bitter. Every time, when the restless bird ate a bitter fruit, it looked at the upper bird and climbed a branch up. This occurred a number of times and eventually the bird reached the topmost branch. There it was not able to differentiate itself from the divine bird, and then it learnt that every time there was only one bird in the tree, the upper bird, which is described as divine, the real form of the other restless bird. This is the thought of Vedanta. The fruits in the story are Karma, the restless bird denotes a human soul, and the majestic bird denotes the Absolute. Graves’ Birds The bird is a timeless religious symbol of ascendance; the bird is one of Graves’ central images. Ancient emissary between heaven and earth, the bird often appears as messenger. As an artist, Graves aspired to guide our journey from partial consciousness to full consciousness. What he spent immeasurable time visualizing in meditation he then represented symbolically on paper. In the case of bird forms, he imagined the fate of man through the fate of birds. His birds were often seen as self-portraits Title of Work Zen Perspective Graves’ Comments Bird in the Moonlight A tiny pictographic image with raised head “The Tobey-like writing and geometric forms in (1939) and open beak, gazing forlornly through a which the bird is submerged was a conscious attempt hollow, ghostly eye. The bird appears to to poetically help materialize a molecular content of screech in vain for help and spiritual moonlight, to bring it into touchable proximity ... a response. It is a symbol of human striving- an image which attempts, perhaps vainly, moonlight impregnated with messages. The bird was to unite the inner and outer eye of the given two heads because of its divided emotion- beholder in the quest for Enlightenment ecstatic song, or humility and silence in the presence and Release of moonlight; a linking of joy and despair” Wounded Gull The image of a dying bird Monochromatic brush strokes are used to arranged in a conceptual format suggest the gull’s broken frame, white feather with broad, vigorous brush plumage and also the quality of the tortured strokes across the thin rice paper movement as the birds sinks into primordial blackness Owl of the Inner Eye The owl has had a long heritage of Graves attempts to delve into hidden caverns of symbolizing and personifying evil in the psyche, recording a thought image as it may both Eastern and Western art. This be seen in the mind’s eye. inner owl, or spirit of man, glares out from its white writing environment. Vainly, it attempts, through its outer calm and inner intensity to unite itself with the void *Dying Pigeons Graves seems obsessed with the These pigeons are a good beginning because 1937 delineation of dying and dead birds. of the simplicity of the pencil line. I did These are morbid subjects revealing these when living at Father Divine’s in New the strain torment, and unrest of an York. artist haunted by ideas of suffering, destruction, deterioration and doom *In their tragic death the Dying Pigeons can be compared to Marsden Hartley’s “Black Duck”. As Hartley felt the impending doom for sea birds who could not outwing the tempests on the Maine coast, so Graves sensed an inner- directed, sentimental sympathy for the city-dwelling pigeon. This Portrait of A Sea Dove, Dead By Marsden Hartley Sea dove in a shroud of sand, all shiny with thick dips of sun- Sea dove in a shroud of sand, and the last word spoken-alone. I did not carry messages for love or war to end their ways, I only bore flicked wave caresses and took them to a timely place. I gave them to my brood to drink- A draft of silence on the brink of death I gave, telling them also to be brave, have grace to face the loneness of their days’ I closed my eyes on a kiss of sun- and this I give to everyone. Bibliography: Graves, Morris The Drawings of Morris Graves: with comments by the artist, New York Graphic Society: Boston 1974 (AA&A NC 139 G69 C33) Herzogenrath, Wulf (ed) Sounds of the Inner Eye Museum of Glass: Tacoma, WA 2002 (AA&A N 6537 C29 A4 2002) Kass, Ray Morris Graves: Vision of the Inner Eye Phillips Collection: Washington DC, 1983 (A&AA N 6537 G688 A4 1983) Wolff, Theodore Morris Graves Flower Paintings U Washington Press: Seattle 1994 (JSMA NAM Artists Gra) .