“Confronting the Unknown Within.” In Robert Hobbs and Joanne Kuebler. Richard Pousette-Dart. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1990; pp. 80-153. Text © 1990 Indianapolis Museum of Art. Used with permission. Confronting the Richard Pousette-Dart's art testifies to the fecundity to enter a preformulative realm full of possibilities of the unconscious mind. A founding member of but without a predictable outcome. In 1937-38 Unknown Within the New York School that came into being in the he defined painting as "that which cannot be 1940s and was generally known as Abstract Expres­ preconceived,"• and in subsequent notes and sionism in the 1950s, Pousette-Dart has evolved a lectures he referred to the potential of chaos as a Robert Hobbs complex imagery of unicellular life, religious sym­ necessary route to creation. Early in his career he bols, and overlapping skeins of color to suggest the marveled that "out of the rich enmesh of chaos un­ dense interconnected web of forms and ideas that lie folds great order and beauty, suggesting utter beyond the threshold of consciousness. While he simplicity is this labyrinth of all possible truths."5 shares with his fellow Abstract Expressionists He repeatedly questioned the wisdom of bracketing an interest in human values and spiritual truths, aspects of life by imprisoning them in static artistic he goes far beyond most other painters of his forms. "The frames are all futile," he wrote, "to generation in emphasizing creation as a primal act close any life away from the inevitable change and of self-definition. For over half a century he has dissolve of going ceaselessly on in new birth."6 His worked to "express the spiritual nature of the subject is the potential to change, and change is universe"' by getting people "onto the thread of communicated in his art by overlapping and frag­ their own creative being."2 mented forms. "Come disarrange things," he wrote, "so things may more properly rearrange, let nothing For Pousette-Dart creation is being; it is an active be fixed ... for all insists upon movement and process of acknowledging the power of preformu­ change even death yes even death to the living and lative thought, the seemingly chaotic images living to the dead."7 Although this reference to life appearing in dreams, and the shadows lurking in and death might seem at first melodramatic, it the recesses of the mind. His idea of creation actually refers to the symbolic death and rebirth of differs from the standard Western definition, creation: one must die to old forms and cast off the which has received its most cogent treatment in constraints of ego in order to be immersed in the Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, part of the chaos that leads to new discoveries. In a talk at The Old Testament cycle decorating the Sistine Ceiling. School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in In this work Michelangelo painted the creation of 1951, Pousette-Dart described this process of the human soul as the divine spark of inspiration discovery in ecstatic terms: given to an existing Adam. This Renaissance conception develops out of Michelangelo's early Art for me is the heavens forever opening up, like association with Florentine neoplatonists. His asymmetrical, unpredictable spontaneous characterization of Adam, consequently, indicates kaleidoscopes. It is magic, it is joy, it is gardens of a belief in a timeless realm of universal ideas that surprise and miracle. It is energy, impulse. It is antedates even the God of the Old Testament, as is question and answer. It is transcendental reason. It evidenced by Adam's heroic, classically-inspired is total in its spirit. It is a doorway to libera­ anatomy, which pre-exists the gift of the soul. tion. It is a spark from an invisible central fire . ... Michelangelo's view of creation has been highly Painting must have form but not necessarily in any regarded in Western culture for its clarity and for preconceived or set known way. 8 the significant role given to his monumental, idealized image of the first man; however, it does Recently he confirmed the importance that a com­ not concern itself with the aspect of creativity pletely open-ended attitude still has for his art when important to Pousette-Dart, who wishes people to he said, "the highest knowing is unknowing."9 confront the unknown within. Only the scene in Michelangelo's ceiling depicting the separation of Pousette-Dart's understanding of creation, although light from darkness approaches Pousette-Dart's compatible with Genesis, relies on Eastern and interest in exploring darkness and fmding in it the tribal concepts of creation, which the newly relationship that unites all elements making up the developed fields of psychology and comparative life forces. In his art, then, the ideal state is to "go mythology began to examine early in this century. far enough to come into the universe of everything According to the comparative mythologist Mircea where nothing is separable."3 Eliade, who describes this concept in both the East and the South Pacific in his essay "The Symbolism In his largely abstract paintings Pousette-Dart presents an image of creative growth that involves relinquishing a secure and static identity in order 80 Pousene-Dart seeds his paintings and brasses with cultural symbols from ancient art, tribal culture, and religion to connote a universal realm. Whorl or swirl Radiance, 1973-74 Spiral Composition Number 1, 1943 Letters Untitled (Ricardo), 1946-48 Hieroglyphs The Magnificent, 1950-51 Abstract calligraphy Figure, 1944--45 81 of Shadows in Archaic Religions," the initiation negative, entering the primordial broth of chaos into the unformed world of chaos or shadows is can be an intimidating and perhaps even harrowing recognized as a necessary prelude to growth: experience for someone who is not prepared to sacrifice ego in the interests of growth. Shadows symbolize the Cosmic Night, the undifferen­ tiated totality, the unformed, the secret. From one In his art Pousette-Dart presents a realm of shadows, perspective, shadows are homologi=ble with Chaos, heavily seeded with cultural and biological frag­ since no form is discernible, no structure is disengag­ ments, to encourage viewers to begin their own ed; this is the modality of the pre-formed. Shadows initiations, to confront the "psychic chaos," and symbolize at the same time that which is before finally to understand its special beauties. "Every­ manifestation offorms and after their disappear­ man," this artist has observed, "finds himself, in ance, when the forms are reintegrated into the parts composes his real self, in little symbols, over primordial mass. This is why the cosmological sym­ the period of his allotted time, he is the sum of bolism of shadmvs approximates that of the Waters. these bright absolutes."" Writing in May 1940, The Waters also express the undifferentiated, the pre­ Pousette-Dart proclaims the need for observers to formed, the unmanifested. The act of manifestation complete the work of art by using it as a route to is signified by the emergence from the Waters, the personal discoveries: exemplary image of Creation is the island or the lotus which rises about the waves. 10 Great art leaves half of the Creation to the onlooker-Gives Although Eliade accepts the image of "the the key to a creative experience emergence of Light out of Shadows" as symbolic Draws the spectator inlo infinite mysteries. 15 of "the creation of the Universe as well as the beginnings of History," he also emphasizes the That same year he substantiated this idea when he positive value of Shadows, the potential latent in proposed that "painting is not what the eye sees but "the totality, the fusion of all forms."" Initiations what the second and inner light of feeling knows." 16 may be viewed as a symbolic death, a descent into And a decade later he concluded that " to see paint­ Hell, a merging with the cosmic night, and ings we must recreate them."17 enclosure in the proverbial monster's belly. The release from this frightening, albeit fecund, situation While viewers must recreate Pousette-Dart's works signals a "passage from 'chaos' to 'creation.' " 12 by making them relevant to their own lives, this Eliade concludes his summary of this mythological artist must continually reenact the initial steps of descent into the unformed by reminding readers of creation. He must constantly challenge himself by its pervasiveness: pushing his art and symbolically himself to the brink of unrecognizability, and he must never allow But we know that, for archaic and traditional painting to become static, because stasis ruts off the cultures, the symbolic return to Chaos is indis­ challenges of creation and becomes mere artistic pensable to all new creation, whatever the level of production: the replication and manufacturing of manifestation, every new sowing, or every new art. Pousette-Dart imposed on himself this heroic harvest is preceded by a collective orgy which sym­ and difficult goal when he announced early in his bolizes the reintegration of "precosmogonic Night," career: " Let me flow, affect things, and dissolve, to of total "confusion"; every New Year is comprised be, and be no more, and be forever. For such is to of a series of ceremonies which signify the reiteration be one, in accord, with nature. For nature, is that of the primordial Chaos and of the cosmogony. But which I am, I shall be." 18 He has continued to the same symbolism can be deciphered in the subscribe to this understanding of the creative "madness" offuture shamans, in their "psychic process, which in a notebook of the 1970s he chaos," in shadows where they have strayed: this is viewed as "forever growing/forever being reborn/ the sign that profane man is in the process of no one can ever truly tell about this concept except "dissolution" and that a new personality is being by being it."19 born." According to Eliade, creation goes far beyond art­ istic spheres to embrace the everyday lives of in­ dividuals coping with new seasons, years, stages of life, and spiritual attitudes.