What Makes a Work of Art Spiritual?

There are works of art in all the artistic disciplines that take us into the profound purposes behind their creation. They open us to deep meanings that involve a metaphysical dimension. And I give thanks to their creators.

This is not about ‘spiritual art’, a description that's not really informative. There’s religious art, yes, and art that conveys an artist's ideas about spirit. More germane to the artists' expression is the spirit in which they work.

Of course intention and dedication, skill and discipline in the chosen art form are necessary foundations for creating genuine art. Yet how artists have approached the elusive imaginative, inspirational and intuitive realm beyond ordinary sense consciousness is a key if the work is to become art that takes both creator and receiver into a deep layer of self.

Someone with artistic consciousness, whether innate or learned, attunes to what others miss in the world around – the fascinating shadow dances in a building or the story in its interweaving forms; the shape of a partly overheard conversation, its intriguingly arrhythmic pauses and interruptions; the way sun on leaves creates light shows, or how the clarion music of distant birdsong interweaves with traffic’s thrumming bass and percussive jolts.

Such things fuel the work, and in its creation the artist’s imaginative thinking transcends the temporal and lifts vision beyond the short-lived and perishable. For example, when a visual artist takes a moment in life, and freezes it, so to speak, it becomes an eternal moment accessible to others. Even in art that ostensibly depicts something ordinary like a vase of flowers, the content is less important than the inner life revealed. This is what led visionary painter and theorist Paul Klee to say that ‘Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible.’

Music, the most non-representational of art forms, has the same potential to ‘make visible’. So Claude Debussy, in his musical compositions depicting natural phenomena such as the sea, clouds, or a moonlit night, sought not to imitate but to unveil in sound the transcendent essence. This unveiling is why listeners are so deeply moved by some singing, say of the late Australian singer/composer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu whose voice still brings us into a realm beyond the everyday world.

Likewise, when we enter a building, it has the potential to enrich us when we connect with the living essence within the form. Or in the movement of a dance, although temporary and ephemeral, we can in that transience discover eternity.

Art critic Alexander Eliot wrote that if great art is deeply understood, then we no longer gather on the surface of beautiful things (I would add humorous and dramatic things). Instead, what we experience is a ‘succession of gateways’.

If we encounter a work of art in a living way, our experience enables us to move through those gateways and to follow new inner paths as they open up. Whether we are making or receiving art, our perception will become clearer, our insight more profound. The ultimate experience will be to perceive the spirit underlying the outer realm of the senses, to enter it through feeling and to know it for what it is. Genuine art honours that commitment to the portrayal of truth, whatever the form or method.

Artists as role models

In all of this artists can be our role models. Their creative activity can show us how to work with the elusive spiritual within the soul. But there’s a proviso. Without drawing on the higher dimensions of self, there is only the subconscious to draw on. The resulting 'art' is all too common today.

A society that does not value the arts is an impoverished society. Overpowering materialsim diminishes the true value of art. And we see around us the devastating impact of the few socio-political systems that inhibit expression through the arts (or try to).

Yet because of the arts’ distinctive nature, I agree with countless practising artists who believe that artistic expression can play a redemptive role, helping in lifting us out of the mire of our deeply troubled world, where even the suffering earth is crying out for us to seek transformation.

We all can find value in the artistic way that plays such a vital part in the transformative shift towards the greater awakening we need. Without such a shift our world will continue its fall into total materialism and alienation, a dystopian world in which a human being is seen as no more than a cipher, as soulless as something computed by AI, where each fragmented and isolated person is bound down without joy.

Art has the power to help us step aside from such disaster because it is a unifier. On the highest level the redemptive beauty of art draws human beings together into the most profound communication.

That’s why the arts are for everyone. They are not only for those rare and gifted people who are the creative prophets of the future. The creative process involved in making and experiencing genuine art comes from a wholehearted creativity we can all apply in every aspect of our lives.

We can be true artists of life – with an attitude of open expectancy that looks with clear vision upon the world, uncluttered by prejudice or preconception, that explores possibilities with love and empathy, that embraces life and reaches towards the wholeness which is its deepest essence. That is the way of spiritual creativity. It brings the joy of being into the world.

In this post I wanted to include some thoughts from my book Prodigal Daughters - a New Vision of Spirituality and the Inner Histories of the Arts, because this distinctive means of expression is a mighty gift to human beings and human consciousness. We need to understand and embrace the rich and diverse meaning of this gift.