I shall begin by speaking about the word art as it is what we are talking about this morning. The word art, this three letter word, means to do, to build; and I have often wondered at the comparison, the analogy that can be made with the word fire in English (faire – fire.). I think that the essence of Art is a fire, the fire of energy, the fire of Life.
Doctor Wilson has shown us documents, children’s drawings of a horse. We know that in Art the horse is an important symbol, a symbol of emotion. It is not a co-incidence that certain great artistic movements present us with the image of the horse – such as the movement led in 1911 by Kandinsky and his friend Franz Marc with “Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider).
I quote the historic explanation given by Kandinsky in 1930 about the expression “Der Blau Reiter” in Sindelsdorf; -“We found the name Der Blau Reiter as we were having a cup of coffee in Sindelsdorf; we both liked blue, Marc liked horses, I liked riders. The name came by itself. And Mrs Maria Marc’s fantastic coffee seemed even better than usual.”
Horse are symbols of emotion and I would like to start by telling you an anecdote. It’s about a man who sees a rider going by on a horse that’s out of control; the man asks the rider where he is going because he can see that the horse is leading, you see? The rider answers:-“I don’t know, ask the horse!”
Art stems from sensitivity, the body; and the body, the five senses, are going to transform themselves into emotions within the Being. Emotion is like a fire, or like a torrent. One must learn to orchestrate one’s emotions or, like the rider, one is led by the horse to ‘who knows where’.
To begin, let me clarify that when I use the term “hand” in the singular, I am referring to the manual principle and referring to both our hands.
With the hand, let’s not beat about the bush.
The hand doesn’t exist by itself, admittedly the hand is part of the body. The hand doesn’t exist on one side and the body on the other. With certainty, the hand is the body. Moreover, let me say that the separation, the dichotomy, the caesura or BODY and MIND [SPIRIT] censure is a form of nonsense for which we are still paying a heavy price.
The hand, as it is part of the body, would lack Mind because it is located on the bodily manual side and hence separated from the intellectual side.
This linguistic separation of body and Mind is only a procedure for analyzing, cutting up what is not separated in reality. The body is never separate from the Mind. In fact, we can state that the hand is the body and that the body is Mind in the form of an active-body.
In the same way, the Mind reveals itself by his power of consciousness. Finally, we can say that the hand IS consciousness and consciousness prolongs itself by the hand directed towards the world and objects. The hand cannot be reduced to a simple, bodily organ; it implies the circulation between the world and consciousness through the mediation of the sense of touch.
The hand is made to TOUCH, to enter into CONTACT.
The hand represents the body, it is the ambassador of the body and it is through the hand, and not through thought, that the encounter and exchange occurs with the world’s wealth of objects.
What brings us together here and concerns us more specifically is the perspective of the child’s growth and development according to the laws and harmony of life; let me clarify some important points:
First of all,
The child’s intimate PROJECT is his wish to GROW UP in all aspects of his being, i.e., physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual, in a balanced way.
Second,
To GROW, the ‘sine qua non’ condition is to NOURISH ONESELF.
Let me draw your attention to the fact that nourishing oneself is not limited solely to the activity of absorbing food by the mouth. A human being nourishes himself physically, psychologically and intellectually: BODY, HEART AND HEAD.
The main act of nourishing oneself always consists of taking in elements from the outside that will transform themselves within the inner being. By what paths does this passage of energies that transform themselves travel? Solely by the path of the senses, i.e. the body as the required passage.
Although eating concerns the sense of taste and the mouth, let me say that the most fundamental, first sense of a developing being is the sense of TOUCH. And what is the sense of touch? It is the sense that, via the body, eliminates the distance to the world; the sense that places the child in contact, and which, in this way, eliminates the sense of separation or the sense of ego.
Although the hand is for touching, for a child touching is exploring, seeking to know. The child touches because he doesn’t know.
He wants to experience the world, he wants to know the world as he goes along, constructing his memory and progressively incorporating these experiences to develop his inner being.
After these introductory remarks, let me show you several visual examples that reveal what I found, to my great surprise. Mainly in graphic works, found an identically disposed structure, i.e. an eye lodged in the palm of the hand. Let me clarify that these works of art were created at significantly different times and places, by artists who could never have met one another.
List of the slides projected:
1. Engraving by MERIAN - 1624 (17th century)
2. Disk by MOUNDVILLE: Large Goddess with the traits of a double snake, Missippian culture, 13th -16th centuries). Stone. Mound State Monument, Moundville, Alabama, United States.
3. Bodhisattvas: Avalokitesvara: KANNON with a thousand hands - Japan
4. Large HAND - by Farid BELKAHIA. Contemporary Marocan artist - 1980 - Henna on hide, 152 x 124.5 cm
5. Cover of the magazine, La Recherche (Research), “The Birth of Art”, 2000.
TO TOUCH - TO SEE
Having chosen the first slide, here is a historic document I consider remarkable for several reasons. In fact, the unusual aspect of this reproduction of an engraving by MERIAN, and published in 1624 by Théodore de Bry, presents us with a most unsuspecting hybridization. This image seems to be similar to one of the most successful collages made in the manner of the surrealist Max ERNST.
Our habitual perceptive logic is troubled and perturbed here. In fact, how can an open eye exist as though it were perfectly integrated into the palm of a hand. Either we refuse the functional incoherence of these two distant realities within the same body or we ask ourselves the reason for this controlled juxtaposition of the hand and eye. This unified assembly is certainly not solely a description. The tension that can result from the enigma of this juxtaposition can be reduced when we question the specific function of each part of the body."
What is the purpose of the eye? What is the purpose of the hand?
The significance of the eye is clear, its function is to enable sight and even vision. The fact that the eye exists enables the visual sense to become a consciousness of SEEING. Sight is certainly limited, however seeing is infinitive, infinition, a beautiful formula that I am borrowing from George BRAQUE. SEEING doesn’t ever wear out. It is always possible to see, to see what? Everything that presents itself to our avid, curious, questioning and participating gazes. A gaze of presence towards life which is unwinding at each moment.
What could be more beautiful than to pay tribute to this act which is so grandiose and so simple as seeing. Seeing Life. And the hand, what does it become? What is its essence? We have known for a longtime but we forget. The hand eliminates distance, duality, the hand is contact and tact.
The hand becomes knowledge and “manner of seeing” by the consciousness. In Asian thought, quite remarkably, thought is never separated from a sense functioning with consciousness. The tactile sense is not referred to, it is associated with consciousness, thereby signifying that consciousness is tactile.
As a consequence, touch is a consciousness or one of the modalities of consciousness.
The same holds true for the other senses: hearing, seeing.
An identical consciousness circulates by means of a sense. What could the engraving by MERIAN signify by reuniting the eye in the palm of the hand?
I offer the following two hypotheses:
The first hypothesis: touch is not limited to itself. Touch is vision, synonymous with consciousness.
The second hypothesis: The eye, seeing is a specific activity of touching.
Most specialists agree to the following order of the senses: the sense of touch, the sense of taste, the sense of smell, the sense of hearing, and the sense of sight.
The tacile sense is the first, the fundamental or foundational sense, the base. I call it TOUCH-CONTACT. The four other senses are TOUCH AT A DISTANCE.
Actually what would explain the simultaneous presence of the eye and the hand is that they share the fact that they are senses which touch whatever they come into contact with either closely or from afar.
Let’s summarize in an outline.
1. TOUCH is VISION
2. SEEING is TOUCHING
The hand touches, the hand sees and becomes conscious by palpating and touching.
Equally the hand is the organ of grasping, seizing. Through the act of seizing or taking an object of the world there also takes place a seizing, a seizing of consciousness.
AMBIANCE
In revisiting Maria Montessori’s thought, we observe the very great importance given to the notion of the AMBIANCE, knowing that the ambiance or, even better, the qualities of the ambiance in which the child lives is A DETERMINING FACTOR for his balanced, harmonious and structured development. We can NEVER BE ATTENTIVE ENOUGH to the beneficial CONTENTS and QUALITIES of this ambiance which should be carefully and consciously prepared.
What shall we offer to the child’s hands?
Actually, some ambiance have deficiencies, due either to certain lacks, excesses or confusion.
"It is up to us as adults to create family and school environments where the child can enrich himself with multiple, varied, ordered, and balanced qualities.
Today children often live within increasingly artificial, ordinary, conventional milieu which leave less room for the wealth present in what the natural world has to offer: rocks, earth, sand, a bird’s feather, leaves, plants, a butterfly, a flower, water, wind and space.
What matters in using the hand is to be able to offer the child an environment which allows him to experiment with the SENSITIVE VARIATIONS of Realtiy. If, through using his will and exercise, the child actually develops dexterity, skillfulness, flexibility enabling him to move from clumsiness to deftness, it would be inexact to see this solely as an aspect of physical development. Even when the hand becomes skillful, it cannot be reduced to this physical performance alone.
(Text missing)
These aspects correspond to:
EARTH as a symbol of all things SOLID,
WATER, FIRE, WIND, symbols of all things FLUID,
THE SKY, symbol of the presence of TRANSPARENCY: an undetermined “space” of total liberty.
The child must be able to TOUCH, BE IN CONTACT with these five EXISTENTIAL qualities.
To give the child the opportunity TO TOUCH the earth, water, fire, air, and the sky is to offer him the great experience of the process whereby energy is transformed through the objects found in Reality.
GRASPING AND LETTING GO
This is why it matters to show the child that although the hand is made for GRASPING, it is also made for LETTING GO. Being able to move from one object to another requires shifting from grasping or seizing to letting go and thus making an opening and a welcoming.
Only a hand that is available, open can find itself within a possibility of multiple contacts.
TO SEE AND HAVE* TACT
The experience of brutal or subtle, refined contacts lead the child to develop a sense, which is actually disappearing: THE SENSE OF TACT.
To have tact, to see and have tact* in two words, is to learn the art, so delicate and so hard, of having a just Relation with oneself and others in the world.
All senses, through the sensorial process, end up as permanent recorded impressions in the form of memory engraved within a person’s indestructible grooves. Whatever is engraved is determined by the flux and influx of the specific objects in the surroundings or the environment.
THE ART OF PRESENTING
The art of presenting is an art to cultivate PRESENCE. All real presence is accompanied by the perfume of a calmed, complete consciousness. The ART OF INSTALLING and giving a presence of an object to a child should be done with great care. The environment should not be a grab-bag, a “filling in”, a congestion as in a big supermarket, it should be the exact opposite. The quality of the environment generates the quality of impressions received and certain principles should be understood and respected in order to have an optimal presentation.
Here are two essential principles:
THE FIRST PRINCIPLE: The principle of the making APPARENT - READABLE which consists in placing and disposing an object as a work of art, exposed alone on an empty, silent background which does not offer any distraction or visual nuisance.
THE SECOND PRINCIPLE: The principle of establishing a DIFFERENTIAL PARALLEL which consists in placing on the same plain background two very different objects which share the same common nature.
As, for example:
A mountain rock and a bird’s feather.
Through the contact, the child will have the opportunity to experience very different qualities and thus have a CLEAR CONSCIOUSNESS. The rock’s weight and gravity are not the same as the feather’s lightness and fragility.
Shortly after that time, other principles should be specified and transmitted.
IMPRESSION-EXPRESSION
In reality, for breath and breathing, each EXHALE is followed by an indivisible inspiration;
the same is true of the binome IMPRESSION-EXPRESSION.
With the same functional structure, the relationships INHALING-EXHALING: IMPRESSION-EXPRESSION are linked together.
In fact, every inhaling leads to an impression, equally every exhaling leads to an expression. In the same way, the art of touching is not simply contact. It involves inhaling which is transformed into impression and memory.
In the same way, the art of modeling corresponds to exhaling and expression.
TOUCHING-MODELING
Touching without modeling is the same as inhaling without exhaling.
It is extremely important to create within the child’s school program and place where the art of modeling, a major, fundamental art could be practiced.
To shape something is to be in REAL CONTACT with the earth. It is shaping and discovering the power to act and to express oneself with a noble material. It also is an opportunity to discover the principle and the feeling of plasticity, to experiment with the principle of flexible transformation of life and to know the essence of creation."
Modeling is the reuniting of earth and water.
Here are several slides:
1. - A closed hand: the fist or the closed hand is associated with a destructive hand.
2. - A wounded hand: The Pieta: an oeuvre by Giovanni Bellini (1429-1516).
3. - An open hand: a radiant, luminous hand.
4. - A peaceful hand: the hand of benediction, the hand of just and beneficial words.
To conclude, by going towards an opening.
Let us note in passing that language, with its meaningful resonance, provides some clarity to us. In fact, hand rhymes with human** which is itself composed of humus and hand. Humidity, humility, in other words the living water, metaphor of the Spirit of LIFE.
* The author divides (in French) the word avoir into a-voir; avoir means ‘to have’ and voir means ‘to see’.
