Stephen Newton: Artistic creation & transcendental feeling

I'm currently reading 'The Spiritual Unconscious: Stephen Newton - Paintings and Drawings 1975-96'. Newton argues that there is an abstract ‘core’ of creativity which generates the spirituality of both the icon and the abstract.

He quotes Wilhelm Worringer from 'Abstraction and Empathy':

‘To transcendentalism of religion there always corresponds a transcendentalism of art, for which we lack the organ of understanding only because we obstinately insist upon appraising the vast mass of factual material in the whole field of art from the narrow angle of vision of our European-Classical conception. We perceive transcendental feeling in the content, to be sure; but we overlook it in the real core of the process of artistic creation, the activity of the form-determining will’.

'It is this abstract ‘core’ of creativity which generates the spirituality of both the icon and the abstract. It is this access through the materiality of form to a communion with the supernatural and an ek-stasis which invoked the wrath of the iconoclasts, and not, as is usually assumed, because the image of the deity is figuratively symbolised.'

'The original genesis of such a spirituality is in creative structure and experience, which arguably underpins art, religion and also psychoanalysis. Put simply, this creative experience might generally be described as involving some sort of transcendental, therapeutic, transformative and ecstatic process, which can involve actual ek-stasis , an ‘out of body’ experience ...

This spiritual, creative structure turns up in various guises throughout human history; in mysticism; in ancient oracles; in African tribal dance and ritual; in all religious and spiritual experience; and throughout mythology. I think its most recent genuine or ‘authentic’ manifestation is in the advent of modern abstract art, as practised in its purest sense by artists such as Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko, De Kooning, Guston and others.'

Newton's work is included in the Priseman Seabrook Collection which was established by British artist Robert Priseman and his wife Ally Seabrook in 2014. The collection is formed into three categories – 21st Century British Painting, 20th and 21st Century British Works on Paper and Contemporary Chinese Works on Paper. The focus of each collection is on painting and drawing made by hand. Priseman also founded ‘Contemporary British Painting’, an artist led organisation which exhibits in the crypt of St Marylebone  Parish Church exploring and promoting current trends in British painting through group exhibitions, talks, publications and the donation of paintings to art museums. 

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Enya - Echoes In Rain.

St Marylebone Parish Church: Contemporary British Painting

Robert Priseman, Exhibition Curator at St Marylebone Parish Church writes:

"We are launching a new platform for exciting new painting in the UK under the title Contemporary British Painting. Each month we will be showcasing the work of a painter who we both admire and are intrigued by through a series of intimate exhibitions at the crypt in St. Marylebone Parish Church, London. We will explore and document key concerns and themes from the perspective of practicing painters, where successive artist to artist interviews will generate text which will be published first on-line and then as a book of the same name.

In drawing together this group of artists we are discovering a new cohort of painters who believe in and live by painting and for whom their practice is less a matter of choice and more a matter of necessity. In recent years painting has seemed, if not entirely off the institutional radar then at least subsumed into a definition of art practice where it is only one choice among many. Yet there seems to be emerging from these artists a new painting that has a particular 21st century resonance; a painting pursued as a singular activity experienced uniquely by each artist yet within the context of their own social networks and interactions.

And it is this unique 21st century practice which is now being explored in this new series of exhibitions; a series of shows which simultaneously demonstrate a marked diversity of approach amongst artists who are united by their commitment to the simple act of painting, where paint becomes a metaphor for experience, a philosophical meditation on the nature of our very being in the world. Here, everything, every thought, every action and every observation is mediated through paint, reflecting more broadly the movement of art away from a defining progress by ‘isms’ and towards a concentration on media where the only new ‘ism’ is an assertion of individualism. It is within this context that we begin to find a tendency in painting towards the modest, the humane and the philosophical, where painting itself is an expression of the individual experience within a complex world.

The artists, developing critical texts, new series of ‘Painter to Painter’ interviews and programme can be seen at http://www.contemporarybritishpainting.com/."

Contemporary British Painting are also showing 'Notes from China', a series of delicate works on paper by 17 living artists from China, at The Minories, Colchester until Saturday 16 April 2016 at then, from 3 – 31 October 2016, at The Crypt, St Marylebone, London.

 

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China Crisis - King In A Catholic Style (Wake Up).