CHAPTER
TWO
"Any sign of them
yet?" Thomas Evans casually inquired of his wife, as she peered out
through the sitting-room's large front windows onto the driveway leading up
from the wooden gateposts, some thirty yards away, to their front door.
"Yes, I didn't think my ears were deceiving me,"
Deirdre Evans replied, automatically turning away from the windows. "They're half-way up the
drive." She hesitated a moment,
looked back over her shoulder, and smiled to herself. "I must say, Gwendolyn appears to have
found herself quite a good-looking boyfriend at last! Neatly dressed and handsome with it! That's not a combination one sees that often
these days."
"You saw it often enough in my day," Mr Evans
declared, putting down his newspaper and casting an exploratory glance through
the front windows - a glance, alas, which was too late to catch the approaching
figures outside. For
they had already reached the front door and disappeared from view. The driveway was once again empty and silent,
its copious gravel no longer responding to the regular
clump of purposeful feet. The afternoon
August sun shone down brightly into the house, illuminating a patch of carpet
and part of the tea table to one side of the seated man. At the sound of the doorbell, his wife had
swiftly passed in front of him, leaving, in her excited wake, a trail of
patchouli perfume which tickled his nostrils and, in conjunction with the
swishing sound of her nylon stockings, aroused him to a momentary
lasciviousness. There was an expectant
pause while the door opened and then, characteristically, a gush of exuberant
greetings, as mother and daughter spontaneously embraced in the watchful
presence of their guest, whom Gwen duly introduced.
"So glad to meet you, Matthew," announced Mrs Evans,
extending to the artist a small graceful hand.
"My daughter has already told me all about you in one of her recent
letters to me, so I wasn't altogether unprepared for you." She let go of his hand and gently smiled into
his face. "How did the journey
go?" she asked, in due course.
"Oh, quite well, thanks," he replied. "The train ran on time anyway."
"Yes, and thanks to the fine weather, it was a pleasure to
gaze at the passing countryside," said Gwen.
"Or such of it as is left between
"Quite."
Glancing from the one to the other, Matthew discovered that
Gwen's face had very little in common with her mother's, other than a slightly retroussé nose. For the eyes and hair of both women were of
different colours and the chins of different shape - Mrs Evans' curved, Gwen's
quite straight. One would hardly have
taken them for mother and daughter at first glance; though a more lingering
comparison might have led to one's discovering similarities here and there, the
most pronounced of which undoubtedly being the type of nose. Yet Deirdre Evans seemed further to elude the
status of Gwen's mother by dint of an appearance at once youthful and
seductively attractive, which suggested not so much motherhood as elder sisterhood. In fact, Matthew was somewhat surprised to
find her so youthful-looking, though he assumed from Gwen, who had just turned
twenty-two, that she must be at least forty.
In point of fact, she was thirty-nine, having conceived her daughter at
the tender age of seventeen, a mere six months into her marriage. But such information wasn't to be imparted to
the artist there and then, as he stood next to his girlfriend and endeavoured
to compare the two women while they talked.
He would have to content himself with guesswork, which, in any case, had
been pretty close.
Turning away from her daughter, Mrs Evans suddenly said:
"Now then, Matthew, come and meet my husband, whom I'm sure will be
delighted to see you."
"Yes, I'd almost forgotten about dad," Gwen murmured,
catching hold of her boyfriend's sleeve and well-nigh dragging him in her
mother's turbulent wake. "He's
evidently in the sitting room."
Which of course he was, and still seated in his favourite
armchair with pipe in mouth and the daily paper on his lap. He rose unsteadily to shake hands with the
visitor, cast his daughter a welcoming nod, and, no sooner than these social
obligations had been perfunctorily dispatched, gratefully relapsed into his
chair again, pipe still in mouth. One
might have supposed from his behaviour that the reception of a stranger into
his house was nothing out-of-the-ordinary, even if that stranger did happen to
be his daughter's latest boyfriend. At
any moment, disdaining ceremony or curiosity, he might have picked up his paper
again and carried on reading as though nothing had happened. But that was only a surface impression. For, in reality, he welcomed the prospect of
finding out what kind of a young man Gwen had got herself involved with this
time.
It wasn't therefore long before, having taken the chair offered
him shortly after entering the room, Matthew found himself drawn into
conversation with Mr Evans on the subject of Gwen, which of course was common
to them both, if from rather different angles.
"She told me you wrote to her a few weeks ago," Mr Evans
stated, by way of an opening gambit, "and invited her to meet you
somewhere in north London, if that was possible."
"That's right," Matthew admitted, blushing slightly in
the presence of the two women. He wondered
whether he hadn't let himself in for some kind of interrogation on the
subject. "Hampstead Heath, to be
precise," he added, for Mr Evans' benefit.
"And you apparently hadn't written to her for well over two
years prior to that?"
"No, quite true. The
previous letter I'd sent to her didn't receive an answer, so I assumed she had
no desire to contact me. I'd also
written one even earlier than that ... about three-and-a-half years ago, but
she didn't respond to that either. I
didn't realize, at the time, that she might have changed address beforehand and
not had the letters forwarded-on to her.
Since they weren't returned to me, I had no way of knowing. Indeed, it didn't even occur to me to use the
second address she had given me that day we first met, namely yours - not, at
any rate, until quite recently, when I began to consider the possibility of
writing to her again. I must have been
too pessimistic about the fate of the earlier letters."
"Which, presumably, had simply gone to an address she was
no longer resident at?"
"Yes, precisely! But
I didn't discover that until we got into correspondence quite recently, I
having decided, after all, to send a letter to her care of you, a letter which
I must thank you for having forwarded-on to her London address."
Mr Evans vaguely waved a hand in the direction of the women, who
were seated together on a nearby couch, before saying: "Don't thank me,
dear boy, thank my wife. It was she who
re-addressed it."
Matthew deferred to Mrs Evans with a polite smile. He was still feeling embarrassed by the turn
of conversation, but did his best not to show it.
"I hear you first met my daughter outside Kenwood House in
Highgate, north London," she remarked, taking advantage of the artist's
attention.
"Yes, a Sunday afternoon about four years ago," he
obliged. It was so hateful to be
reminded of the fact. Obviously Gwen had
spoken to her mother on the subject!
"And that was the last you saw of her until a couple of
weeks ago, when she met you in London in response to your letter?" It could have been Mr Evans again but,
curiously, it wasn't.
"Unfortunately so," Matthew confessed, feeling more
than a shade disgruntled by this further example of parental curiosity
concerning his relations with their daughter.
"Had she not changed address, a few months after we met, I might
have received a reply sooner. But she
decided against notifying me, so I continued to send futile letters to her old
one instead. Since I didn't get around
to writing to her until some five months after our brief acquaintance, she
imagined, in the meantime, that I'd lost interest in her and that it therefore
wasn't desirable or necessary for her to notify me of any change of
address. However, by the time I finally
got round to writing - and writing letters, alas, has never been my forte -
she had already moved house over a month previously, which is why I didn't
receive a reply."
"You ought to have written to her care of us after
that," Mr Evans commented, pipe in hand.
"Yes, so I realize," the artist admitted, feeling
still more disgruntled with himself. But
he hadn't and that was that! He had
ignored their address and preferred to concentrate on the Norwich one
instead. It hadn't been a matter of
life-and-death for him to contact her, in any case. He had simply written out of curiosity, with
a vague hope of furthering their relationship in due course.
"Well, at least he wrote to me care of you
eventually," said Gwen, offering her admirer some moral support.
"Better late than never, I suppose," Mr Evans
conceded. "Though you could well
have been deeply attached to someone else at the time and therefore not in a
position to answer it in quite the way Mr Pearce would have hoped."
This was hardly the kind of suggestion to win the latter's
approval. Yet he retained a discreet
silence, in spite of its essentially baleful effect on him. He was beginning to regret that he had ever
written the damn letter at all and wasn't still in London, miles away from this
rather cantankerous individual who sat opposite him with an evil-smelling pipe
in his mouth and an even more evil-looking newspaper on his lap. Better, perhaps, to have forgotten about Gwen
than to have dragged her into his life again after so long. Yet, deep down, he knew that his recent
letter to her was virtually inevitable, insofar as he had no other woman to
write to and was still desperately searching for love. Gwen had not been his first and truest
love. As yet, she was scarcely even his
second. But she possessed the dubious
distinction of being the only woman he had met, during the past four years, who
bore a strong physical resemblance to his first love, and it was primarily for
this reason that he had written to her in the hope of establishing some degree
of intimate contact. His judgement had
told him that if he couldn't find his first love again - and he had no way of
contacting her since she disappeared from his life one sad August afternoon
several years before - he would be well-advised to find someone like her, someone
with whom it would be possible to form a deep and lasting relationship. Hence Gwen, being the nearest thing to her,
had gradually acquired a special significance in this respect, despite the
relative brevity of his prior meeting with her and the subsequent time-lag in
their correspondence. Had someone else
come along in the meantime, to fill the void in his love-life, he would never
have dreamt of contacting her. Unfortunately
for him, however, no-one else had, so the void had remained unfilled.
Even now that he had established close contact with Gwen and
made her his girlfriend, he was far from convinced it was being filled. For, as already noted, he hadn't yet
succeeded in falling in love with her and was privately disappointed by the
fact that, in a number of respects, she existed on a completely different
wavelength from himself, not, by any means, as spiritually close to him as he
had imagined, on the dubious basis of their first meeting, that she would
be.
That day, outside Kenwood House, they had talked for ages about
art and travel and religion and other substantial subjects of mutual interest,
and Matthew had come away with the impression that he had at last met a kindred
spirit - a person with whom intimate conversation was possible. Yet now, all these years later, it seemed to
him that he may have been mistaken in his initial impression or, alternatively,
inclined to modify it in his imagination in the meantime, since his recent
relations with Gwen had exposed numerous disparities between them and
accordingly caused him to cast suspicion upon his previous assumptions.
For instance, that afternoon at the Tate, a few days ago, he had
become gravely disillusioned by her manifest admiration for and enjoyment of
the Pre-Raphaelites, which seriously conflicted with his own attitude, based on
radically post-Raphaelite taste. She had
only come to cultural life, it seemed to him, when they entered the
Pre-Raphaelite section of Room 16. Her
responses to Turner, on the other hand, had been decidedly cool, especially
where the more abstract-looking works were concerned. It was as though she didn't comprehend the
creative significance of what Turner had done and was consequently
all-too-inclined to undervalue his work, to see in the gradual reduction of
concrete representation a mess and incompetence rather than a radical
breakthrough to a higher level of spiritual awareness. Only with the more conventional early works
did she appear to have any spontaneous interest, to stand in front of them with
any degree of pleasure and occasionally make some eulogistic comment. With the later and less conventional ones, on
the other hand, it didn't take Matthew long to realize that she wasn't really
there, didn't really appreciate what they signified in the development of
modern art. She appeared to withdraw
into herself and clam-up, to respond but weakly to his enthusiasm. Even The Angel Standing in the Sun didn't appear
to make any great impression on her, no matter what he said on its behalf.
Yes, it was evident that Gwen wasn't quite as kindred a spirit
as Matthew had initially imagined, or that if, by any chance, she had once been
closer to him, she had evolved in a different way during the course of the past
four years. Of the two possibilities, he
wasn't quite sure which one to attribute more importance to, though he had a
growing suspicion that the first was probably nearer the truth. For time could only be subordinate to
essence, since people who were essentially alike in their spiritual predilections
remained so, no matter how long separated by time. Still, it was perhaps too early, as yet, for
Matthew to dismiss Gwen as a mistake on his part, and he was grateful, in spite
of the cultural differences which existed between them, for the friendship she
had granted him. At least that was
something to be pleased about!
Meanwhile, the conversation had switched, much to Matthew's
relief, to the subject of art, and specifically to his art, which Mr Evans
seemed anxious to investigate after a rather cynical fashion. "I mean, you're not one of these
abstract artists, are you?" he fairly snorted, momentarily removing pipe
from mouth. "One who throws or
flicks paint over the canvas and calls the deplorable result a work of
art?"
"Not quite; though I do indulge in a form of Post-Painterly
Abstraction on occasion," the artist confessed in a slightly defensive
tone-of-voice.
"What-on-earth's that?" Mr Evans asked
condescendingly.
"Well, it's a kind of simple, geometrical abstraction
employing only a few colours to create a predominantly classical as opposed to,
say, romantic type of modern art," Matthew informed him. "One might argue that it generally looks
neater than Abstract Expressionism, since primarily a matter of form rather
than feeling. Essentially an American
phenomenon of the 'forties, it's now somewhat out-of-date, which is why I don't
indulge in it very often.... Art styles change very rapidly these days, you
know."
"Perhaps that's just as well," Mr Evans averred
sarcastically. "So what do
you generally indulge in, if that's not too sweeping a question?"
"Well, I work in a variety of styles actually, sometimes
veering in the direction of Op Art, with the use of closely knit wavy or
angular strips of paint to create an illusion of movement, like one finds in
Bridget Riley. Sometimes veering in the
direction of still life influenced by Pop Art, with the use of simple outlines
painted in bright or matt tones of pure paint, like one finds in Patrick Caulfield. Sometimes even veering in the direction of
Computer Art, with the use of more complex geometrical shapes which reflect the
influence of technology, like one finds in Eduardo Paolozzi. And sometimes making use of minimalist
techniques, in which only a few lines or dots or other simple forms are painted
onto the canvas, and the result is extremely simplistic, suggestive of a
greater degree of abstraction than had been achieved by most of the earlier
abstract artists ... with the notable exceptions of the Italian, Fontana, and
the Frenchman, Klein, who preferred to leave the canvas blank or to paint it
white."
"And you call all that art?" Mr Evans exclaimed,
almost choking on his pipe. "A
blank or monochromatic canvas - art?"
"Certainly modern art," Matthew admitted as calmly as possible. He had anticipated some such outburst on his
interlocutor's part. "The general
tendency being towards increased abstraction in one form or another, the most
radical modern art completely breaking away from the traditional
three-dimensional, representational concept of art."
"But why-on-earth does it have to do that?" Mr Evans
objected obdurately.
"Because it does," the artist matter-of-factly stated,
instinctively shying away from the immense abyss of dissimilar awareness which
had suddenly opened up, hell-like, between them. He didn't have the nerve, at present, to
attempt bridging it, nor much confidence that such an attempt would meet with
any success. It was obvious that the
reactionary philistine in front of him had no real desire to find out why
modern art had to be modern. If he had,
he would have found out long ago! No, it
was perfectly clear that he was more interested in discrediting it than in
seeking to justify its radicalism in the light of industrial and environmental
change.
"But surely an artist should put something recognizably
artistic onto a canvas," Gwen's father protested, before Matthew could add
anything to his initial reply. "I
mean, what's the point of a monochromatic canvas or, alternatively, of a canvas
covered in geometrical patterns, zigzag lines, or whatever? How can that have any relationship to genuine
art?" He stared sternly, almost
offensively so, at his guest, as though wholly confident of the fact that he
represented the voice of sanity and the artist, if not insanity, then certainly
folly.
"I don't know whether it has any relationship to
conventional art as such," Matthew replied, endeavouring not to show his
impatience. "But it definitely has
one to modern art. So far as Western art
is concerned, there are essentially three kinds, viz. the pre-Christian, the
Christian, and the post-Christian, each of which follows its own rules within
carefully prescribed boundaries."
"That may well be," the pipe-smoker countered with an
air of exasperation. "But the way I
see it, a lot of modern art simply isn't art."
"It isn't Christian art, so it can't be judged by exactly
the same standards as an art which was largely representational," Matthew
averred. "You have to judge it from
a post-Christian viewpoint - from the viewpoint, namely, of twentieth-century
transcendentalism. Then it will make
some sense to you. But if you think that
there's only one kind of art, viz. Christian, and that all art should
correspond to it and be judged by it, then I'm afraid you're very much
mistaken."
Mr Evans appeared to be taken-aback, much as though he hadn't
expected Matthew to rebut his criticism so confidently. And he appeared baffled moreover, evidently
uncertain of what the artist meant by 'Christian art'. On the face of it the term seemed to imply
crucifixions, visitations, resurrections, and the like, with strictly Christian
associations. Was this so? He put the question to his guest.
"No, by 'Christian' I don't just mean religious art,"
Matthew declared, "but any art, no matter how secular its subject-matter,
which was painted from approximately the 12-18th centuries, during the period,
one might say, of strong Christian influence.
In other words, an art which is dualistic, reflecting Western man's
compromise position between the subconscious and the superconscious, rather
than an art reflecting one or other of the psychic extremes, like one finds in
the pre- and post-Christian periods.
Therefore Christian art is balanced between illusion and truth, the
sensual and the spiritual, Hell and Heaven, etc., through whichever dualities
you care to name. It's largely a
consequence of the environmental position of Western man during the time he
lived in a more-or-less balanced condition between nature and civilization in his
towns. As soon as the balance began to
tip in favour of civilization and the superconscious, however, Christian art
started to decline and continued to decline the more tipped the balance, so
that only a post-Christian, non-representational art was possible or, at any
rate, truly representative of the age."
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you," Mr Evans
confessed, not bothering to disguise his bewilderment. "I mean, what-on-earth is the
superconscious? I haven't heard of such
a term before."
No, he hadn't. And it was
almost as though one should congratulate him for it, congratulate him for his
ignorance and average middle-class mediocrity!
Matthew was fairly annoyed for having allowed himself to get drawn into
an explication of art in relation to environmental transformations, for having
given way to his penchant for high-flown didacticism in this patently
philistine sitting-room. Yet, protest as
he might, it had been forced upon him by the necessity of justifying modern art
and, through that, his own work in the face of unenlightened opinion. He had no option but to continue, to respond
to Mr Evans' ignorance.
"Well, to put it as simply as possible, the superconscious
is the highest part of the psyche, the intellectually- and spiritually-biased part
of the mind as opposed to its emotionally- and sensuously-biased part," he
obliged. "It's that part signifying
moral light as opposed to moral darkness, good as opposed to evil, positivity
as opposed to negativity - in short, love as opposed to hate. It is spirit at its lowest and highest, the
spirit of intellectuality and the spirit, more importantly, of pure awareness,
of timeless bliss. The former on the
lower level, the latter higher up ... at the apex, one might say, of mystical
beatitude. Indeed, it has been contended
- and not without justification - that its topmost level is capable of
identification with the Infinite; that, through it, man can come to a direct if
partial knowledge of the Godhead; that the inner light is indeed commensurate with
the essence of spirit per se, and thus equivalent to the truth beyond all
appearances. For one can experience an
intimation of ultimate reality through the superconscious mind if one so
desires or, to put it more accurately, if one is in a position to, that's to
say, if one has the time, patience, inclination, and determination to dedicate
oneself to the cultivation of pure awareness.
It won't come to one who hasn't properly prepared himself in advance,
who hasn't dedicated his life to regular and sustained bouts of mystical
concentration. It has to be
earned."
"Presumably as the fruit of Transcendental
Meditation," Mr Evans observed in an impatient tone-of-voice. "Frankly, I'm afraid I can't accept what
you say about the superconscious being capable of identification, partial or
otherwise, with God. It has never
convinced me, this mystical theory of God as a state-of-mind, 'a being
withdrawn', or whatever the quotation is, with which one can get into direct contact. It all sounds too arbitrary. The fact of a superconscious mind may be
true, but I don't see that one should be led to infer the existence of God from
it. After all, there have been other
concepts of God as well, so what is there about this one that should single it
out for special commendation?"
"Simply the fact that it's true and corresponds to ultimate
reality," Matthew insisted.
"Oh, come now!" Mr Evans protested. "Just because some people - mystics or
whatever they're called - believe it to be true, that doesn't mean to say it really
is so! Some people believe Jesus Christ
to be God, but so what? Does that mean
that, ultimately, Christ really is God?
I've never thought so, anyway, and I'm nominally a Christian, not a Jew,
a Moslem, a Hindu, or whatever. To me,
Christ is simply a man who happened to get himself taken for God in some parts
of the world while the legitimacy of an anthropomorphic viewpoint
prevailed."
"In a sense, He's that for me too," Matthew confessed,
blushing deeply in spite of himself. For
he was aware of the relativity of the term under discussion and felt that,
while Christ wasn't exactly ultimate divinity, He was still divine to the
degree of signifying a compromise between one level of divinity and another,
the Father and the Holy Ghost, and thus had as much right, within relative
terms, to be regarded as God as the other and more extreme parts of the
Trinity. "Yet I don't see why one
should therefore disbelieve in a spiritually achieved intimation of God as the
mystics conceive of Him," he went on.
"I don't see why a lower concept of God, founded as much on
illusion as on truth, should prevent one from taking a higher concept of
divinity seriously. After all, there are
plenty of people, these days, who are too enlightened to believe in God when
conceived, say, as either Jesus Christ or some white-bearded Creator lording it
over the Universe. In other words, when
conceived in traditional anthropomorphic terms, and who therefore consider
themselves atheist."
"I, for one!" Mr Evans declared.
"Yes, well, such people often imagine they're above belief
in God simply because what has hitherto been taken for divinity fails to
convince them," Matthew continued.
"They come to a halt two-thirds of the way up the ladder of
religious evolution under the delusion that they've actually reached the top
or, rather, gone beyond it, transcended religion altogether, and then flatter
themselves that they're too intelligent to believe in God. For it's a taken-for-granted tenet of their
philosophy that God, of whatever conception, is an illusion, a figment of the
imagination which a less-enlightened ancestry were inclined to take too
seriously. To them, religion is a system
of illusions or superstitions, beneath the dignity of an atheistic mind."
"Well, isn't that what it essentially is?" Mr Evans
countered, his face turning red with consternation.
"No, no more than art is or must inevitably be,"
Matthew confidently retorted. "Like
art, religion can be divided into roughly three stages, corresponding to the
nature of the environment and the degree of evolution manifested in it at any
given time. There's a religious sense
largely founded on the subconscious, which is dark and fearsome, involving
propitiatory sacrifice to a cruelly vengeful deity. It's the equivalent of Creator-worship and is
totally illusory, having no basis in reality whatsoever. It isn't necessary to slay animals or people
to win the favours of this Creator-God for the simple reason that such a deity,
conceived in anthropomorphic terms, is largely if not purely a figment of the
imagination. Yet those who exist in this
pre-Christian context can't be expected to realize that, since they're victims
of the subconscious, unable to transcend its dominion to any appreciable extent
- least of all to an extent which would enable them to see through their
illusions. They're too primitive, too
much under nature's sway, and consequently too sensual to have any qualms about
worshipping or, rather, fearing and propitiating a deity who corresponds to
their subconscious enslavement. Being
predominantly sensual, they project their sensuality on to their deity, and
accordingly endeavour to appease him in an appropriately sensual manner,
usually through blood sacrifices though also, as in the case of the ancient
Greeks - a slightly less fearful and generally more egocentric people on the
whole - through sexual orgies ..."
A titter of laughter erupted from the direction of the couch to
Matthew's right, though Mrs Evans, less amused than her daughter, merely smiled
her tacit acknowledgement of ancient Greek religiosity or, at any rate, to such
of it as their guest had alluded.
"Well, if these pre-Christian or pagan peoples are more
under the sway of the subconscious than of the superconscious," Matthew
continued, ignoring as best he could Gwen's non-verbal interruption, "then
Christians represent an evolutionary development which signifies a balance
between the two parts of the psyche, between the sensuous illusion-forming part
and the spiritual truth-forming part, and are consequently more dualistic. They aren't a people under the dominion of
nature, but a people, on the contrary, who have evolved, thanks in large
measure to the gradual expansion of their villages into towns, towards a
position midway between nature and civilization. To them, Heaven is as much a fact of life or
religion as Hell. For they're no longer
under the dominion of evil, but balanced between evil and good in what I like
to regard as the ego in its prime, that's to say, the twilight fusion-point of
the two main parts of the psyche.
Christianity, you see, is really a twilight religion between the
darkness of Creator-worship and the light of Holy Ghost experience, between the
sensual and the spiritual. Thus it's a
religion half-illusion and half-truth - Jesus Christ, the actual deity of the
Christians, having actually lived and been a man, religious requirement having
endowed Him with supernatural significance, attributed all manner of miracles
to Him which, though valid from a theological viewpoint, appear less than
plausible from a rational one, and accordingly fail to impress us or, at any
rate, those of us who are rational."
"Here, here!" exclaimed Mr Evans, banging the hand
holding his pipe down on the arm of his armchair so violently ... that some of
its still-smouldering contents spilled out onto the carpet. "I've never been able to accept the
divinity of Christ. To me, the idea of
God as man or of man as God seems intrinsically suspect."
"Yes, well that doesn't mean to say that the idea of God as
spirit should also be so," Matthew calmly responded. "For it's from Christianity, with its
illusion/truth dichotomy, that we progress to the post-Christian context,
largely brought about by the expansion of towns into cities and our growing
independence from the sensuous influence of nature, in which the balance
between the two parts of the psyche no longer holds sway and we find ourselves
becoming progressively biased on the side of the superconscious, on the side of
truth, goodness, peace, spirituality - all those attributes of life, in short,
which stand at the opposite pole to those worshipped by the pre-Christians, or
pagans. No longer can God be conceived
in terms of a dualistic compromise between illusion and truth, still less in
terms of illusion alone, but only as truth, as God per se, which
corresponds, in traditional terminology, to the Holy Ghost, the third and
highest part of the so-called Blessed Trinity.
"Here, at last, is the spiritual as opposed to
anthropomorphic awareness of God," Matthew went on, warming to his thesis,
"the religious sense commensurate with ultimate divinity. No longer is it necessary to fear as well as
love God, but simply to experience and understand God as love, light, bliss,
peace, etc. Nor need one conceive of
this God in terms of 'He', as an anthropomorphic projection of the ego, for the
simple reason that one has transcended the balance between the subconscious and
superconscious parts of the psyche, and thus evolved beyond egocentric
projections. No longer 'He' but 'it', no
longer Jesus Christ but the Holy Spirit of Universal Consciousness or whatever
else you prefer to term this manifestation of true divinity, which is one with
the superconscious mind.
"Thus religion, becoming at last a question of truth,
evolves to its third and final stage," Matthew continued, by now
considerably fired-up, "beyond which it cannot change. For once one has arrived at a true conception
of God, one cannot return to an earlier illusory or part-illusory concept. It's no good, once one has seen through the
nature of prayer - that mental activity founded on egocentric projection -
pretending that one can return to a religious framework endorsing it in due
course. One can't! A society growing increasingly under the sway
of the superconscious can only respond to that influence in an appropriately
transpersonal way - by transcending egocentric selfhood. For God, conceived in any ultimate sense,
isn't there to be petitioned or thanked, praised or cursed, but simply
experienced, as the heavenly side of Last Judgement paintings has generally
shown. Bliss, peace, love - this is
compatible with ultimate divinity, not action!
Only an illusory or partly illusory concept of God leads one to believe
that He is a being capable of exerting Himself on one's behalf, or even against
one. And to assume it isn't possible to
believe in God because there's so much evil in the world ... is simply to
betray the fact that one would have a rather simplistic and outmoded concept of
God in mind to equate Him with such evil.
For this higher divinity is certainly not responsible for all the evil
in the world. How can it be when it has
nothing to do with evil, since a state-of-mind, a peace which 'surpasses all
understanding'? No, it's highly unlikely
that bliss can be held responsible for agony.
Only a dualist might think so, a man, in other words, who signifies but
a phase of human evolution, when evil and good seem to be balanced in the world
and it's possible to assume that the one must necessarily be dependent on the
other. Yet just as human evolution is a
journey from the subconscious to the superconscious, from sensuality to
spirituality, illusion to truth, so it's a journey from evil to good - from Hell
to Heaven. It's only a combination of
Hell and Heaven, so to speak, during the Christian twilight era of human
evolution, when the darkness seems to be balanced by the light."
Thomas Evans wasn't particularly impressed by this line of
argument, since he had suffered a great deal in life from poor health (he
currently had a smoke-fuelled weak heart), financial and business worries,
personal anxieties of one kind or another, etc., and was therefore unconvinced
that life, however one conceived of it, was becoming progressively more
heavenly. To him, it was pretty evident
that dualistic considerations still had to be borne in mind, and he wasted no
time in saying so.
"Oh, I quite agree," said Matthew by way of a
deferential response. "There is
still a large amount of evil in life. For
we haven't yet transcended the egocentric balance to any appreciable extent,
and accordingly still have a fair way to go before we get completely beyond
dualism, since the subconscious hasn't been completely triumphed over at
present. It may take decades or even
centuries before we evolve to a context where Heaven becomes more of a reality
than at present. But there's no way that
you or anyone else can disprove the fact that we're evolving in the right
direction for spiritual transformation, and it seems quite probable that if we
persist long enough we'll eventually attain to our goal - attain, in other
words, to what I am wont to call a post-human millennium, which, as the terms
suggests, is more than merely post-humanist, being properly divine."
"No, I can't believe that for one moment, any more than I
can believe most of what you say!" Mr Evans obdurately retorted. "I expect you'll be telling us, before
long, that we're destined to turn into angels or supermen or something equally
preposterous at this post-human millennium of your fanciful imagination."
"Thomas!" interposed Mrs Evans, somewhat annoyed by
her husband's impertinence. "It
isn't necessarily as preposterous as you, in your bourgeois short-sightedness,
would seem to think."
Mr Evans glared ferociously at his wife, as though she had just
committed a sacrilege in his house. What
right had she to interfere, least of
all in a way which drew attention to the limitations of his ideological
views? But he didn't say anything to
her. Instead, he turned his attention
back to Matthew Pearce and glared at him awhile. The atmosphere in the room was by no means
pleasant. "And I don't quite
see," he confessed, picking up the thread of his retort again,
"exactly what all this has to do with modern art, which I recall we were
discussing prior to religion. Am I to
take it that such art generally signifies a superconscious bias, too?"
"Yes, that would be helpful," said Matthew. "For I was saying that Christian art was
essentially a matter of dualism, not just religious subjects, and that
post-Christian art couldn't be judged by the same standards, but had to be
viewed in its own context of lopsided spirituality, had to be seen from the
viewpoint of superconsciousness instead
of mere egocentricity. For, compared
with traditional art, modern art is largely a transpersonal phenomenon,
transpersonal in its abstraction and transpersonal in what often appears as
scrappiness or simplicity - a refusal to appear figuratively great, profound,
overly objective, technically brilliant, or whatever else may be associated
with an art form centred on the ego, which is to say, the dualistic
fusion-point between subconscious and superconscious minds. Thus when it really is modern, and accordingly
reflects the most advanced creative tendencies of the day, art is essentially
an abstract rather than a representational phenomenon, a product of the city
environment.
"Most of Salvador Dali's art, on the other hand, isn't
truly modern at all," he went on, "because too egocentric to signify
a more transpersonal or transcendental approach to painting. It's technically closer to Christian art....
Now when one remembers that Dali was the son of a notary, and thus hailed from
a conservative upper-middle-class background, it needn't surprise one if much
of his work should reflect a representational standpoint in an age of mounting
abstraction. Yet not all of his art can
be so described, especially that part of it which focuses on Christian
mysticism and utilizes a nuclear technique - a particle technique symptomatic
of the nuclear disintegration of matter.
"However that may be, it's still fair to say that modern
art is better characterized by transcendental abstraction than by surrealistic
representation," Matthew continued, "that a painting intimating of
the Holy Ghost is more relevant to and indicative of the age than one with
Christian associations, even if those associations happen to be radicalized by
a nuclear or mystical technique."
"I'm afraid I know very little about Salvador Dali,"
remarked Mr Evans complacently.
"Though I've seen one or two of his canvases, which were quite
intriguing if somewhat perversely obscure.
Yet at least they could be recognized as works of art, even if not as
convincingly so as those of old masters like Raphael, Rembrandt, and
Rubens."
If anything was guaranteed to make Matthew lose patience with
the man, it was this kind of attitude.
For it was evident that Mr Evans couldn't think of art in other than
traditionally objective terms, and therefore automatically referred the present
back to the past, regarding modern works as art only if they could be compared,
to some extent, with those of the old masters, and considering all the rest,
that is to say the bulk of twentieth-century art, as anti-art or even as no art
at all. A typically philistine
viewpoint, but scarcely one to be wondered at, in the circumstances! After all, Thomas Evans was the manager of an
insurance company in Northampton and, as such, one couldn't very well expect
him to be particularly aware of what was happening in the world of modern art,
or why it had to happen. In a sense, it
didn't matter what he thought, his views were of scant consequence, since those
of a businessman, not an artist.
It was therefore important for Matthew to keep this in mind and
thus make a determined effort not to be impressed by the reactionary opposition
Mr Evans chose to offer, on the contentious subject of modern art. No, instead of losing patience with him on
account of his virtually inevitable unenlightened viewpoint, Matthew resolved
to keep Mr Evans in perspective as a perfectly ordinary middle-class citizen
whom it was unwise to expect to behave or talk like an artist, least of all a
radical one. If his viewpoint was
somewhat limited, then so be it! There
could be no real reason, given his critical temperament and occupational
habits, why it should be otherwise.
Yet to some extent it was nonetheless necessary for the artist
to continue his defence and explication of modern art, if only because his own
reputation and self-respect were personally at stake, and this he proceeded to
do, albeit without any conviction that what he had to say would be appreciated.
The fact that art had once primarily served the emotions was
perfectly true. Just as it had also
served, albeit at a later and more evolved epoch, both the will and intellect
combined, and was now primarily serving the spirit. It had passed, like religion, from the realm
of illusion to the realm of truth, and would continue to evolve in accordance
with the contemporary imbalance on the side of truth. To claim, therefore, that art should only
serve illusion would be as ridiculous, in Matthew's view, as to claim that
religion was only a matter of illusion and would cease to exist as religion if
it wasn't. No, art hadn't ceased to
exist simply because the old criterion of dualistic balance had been
superseded. On the contrary, what now
existed was simply a different kind of art - more truthful and rational than
hitherto. If, from a traditional
viewpoint, it appeared to be a lesser art than that relative to an egocentric
age, it nonetheless existed on a higher level of evolution and had to be
respected on its own terms. This much,
at any rate, the artist endeavoured to assure his sceptical host.
"Yes, but I still don't see the artistic significance of
either a monochromatic or nearly blank canvas," Mr Evans objected,
unwilling to accept Matthew's attempted vindication at face-value. "You call it minimalism, or some such
term, and regard the result as an advanced or extreme form of abstraction. But, really, it doesn't make any sense to
me. I mean, is that the ultimate truth
in modern art?"
Matthew had to smile, in spite of his seriousness. "I don't know whether it's the ultimate
truth," he replied, "but it can certainly be equated with spirit,
light, and thus the truth of the superconscious mind. Indeed, I incline to view abstraction as a
mode of religious art, the religious art of transcendental man. It signifies the victory of the spiritual
over the material, the transpersonal over the impersonal, subjectivity over
objectivity. A thing which also applies,
I believe, to most light art, especially where neon tubing is involved. And, of course, to a large quantity of modern
sculpture, or sculpture emphasizing light and space as opposed to the secular,
to whatever reflects materialism, technology, urbanization, scientific
progress, and so on, in the world at large.
It's the difference, if you like, between that which emphasizes the
influence of the Holy Ghost and that, by contrast, which emphasizes the
influence of contemporary science and industry.
Both kinds of art, now as previously, are equally justified, but they
aren't on the same level. The religious,
now as before, signifies a superior tendency, one dealing with the
more-than-human, dealing, in short, with the principal concern of human
evolution - namely, the attainment to salvation in the millennial Beyond, the
transformation of man into the superhuman being which lies transpersonally
beyond him."
"Bah! I cannot accept that interpretation of human
evolution," Mr Evans confessed, glowering defiantly.
"No? Well, maybe
that's because you're essentially a materialist and therefore have no use for
spiritual salvation," Matthew retorted.
"Yet, to me, a person who is indisposed to reconcile himself to the
notion that science and technology are ends in themselves, it seems
indisputably evident that evolution must be conceived primarily in terms of
man's changing relationships to divinity and only secondarily in terms of how
he sustains himself during the course of those changes. To see technological and industrial progress
as ends in themselves would seem to me a kind of insanity. Yet neither would it be entirely sane if one
were to dismiss the secular and materialistic side of evolution altogether, as
though it were of small account. For
it's only through our ever-changing environments that we come to attain to a
better and more truthful relationship with divinity. Only with the aid of our materialistic
progress in respect of new technologies."
"So that is presumably why you sometimes work in a genre or
format in which complex geometrical shapes, suggestive of the influence of
contemporary technology, play an important role, is it?" Mr Evans deduced,
recalling to mind an earlier facet of their conversation.
Matthew nodded affirmatively.
"Yes, though not very often, least of all these days," he
admitted. "For I like to think of
myself as a predominantly religious painter, in the service of the Holy
Ghost. In point of fact, I abandoned the
impersonality of geometrical concerns some time ago for a kind of
transcendental, symbolic art which sometimes makes use of a dove and at other
times of an intensely luminous globe of light-suggesting paint."
"How d'you mean?" asked Mr Evans, looking slightly
puzzled, as well he might.
"Well, as you doubtless know, the dove is symbolic of the
Holy Ghost, so I use it to signify our age's growing allegiance, via the
superconscious mind, to transcendentalism, and thus to the spirit. Painted in white on a silver background, or
occasionally on a pale-blue one, the dove becomes for me a symbol of
contemporary religion, equivalent to Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point. Now as the Omega Point is also a symbol, a
concept for Ultimate Godhead in pure spirit, I make use of that as well, and so
paint canvases in which an intensely pure light, turned-in upon itself in
blissful self-contemplation, exists at the centre of a silver ground. But more recently, within the past couple of
months, I've begun to paint, in very minimalist outlines reminiscent of
Matisse's graphics and Caulfield's still-lives, figures meditating, seated
cross-legged in upright postures on a flat plane with a kind of seraphic glow
about them."
"Oh, really?" Mr Evans responded in a mockingly
indifferent tone-of-voice. He had never
meditated in his life, nor did he know anyone who had. "And are they supposed to represent the
Buddha, or what?" he almost sarcastically inquired.
"No, nothing of the kind," Matthew maintained,
ignoring, as best he could, the air of flippancy attending his host's sarcastic
curiosity. "The figures used in the
compositions in question are perfectly Western, designed to reflect the
mounting relevance of meditation to a post-Christian society. They're not so much emissaries of Eastern
religion or traitors to their cultural heritage ... as intelligent Westerners
for whom the 'Third Person' of the Trinity has come to have more significance
than the 'Second'. They pertain to
spirituality in a modern industrialized and urbanized society, to a
spirituality which reflects our severance from nature and consequent
post-dualistic bias. To them, sin and
fear of God are alike irrelevant. For
they are too ascetic to be unduly exposed to sin, and can only conceive of God
in terms of grace. They're not Buddhists
but transcendentalists. And when they
meditate, it's effectively with a view to fulfilling Christian prophecy and
bringing the Christian aspiration towards salvation closer to fruition. In other words, to entering the 'Kingdom of
Heaven' wherein only peace, bliss, love, and light reign. Being post-dualistic, they have no use for
Hell."
Thomas Evans inflicted a short, sharp snort on the artist in supercilious
response. "I wish I could say the
same," he caustically declared.
"But, as it happens, I have to live in this world, which, to the
best of my knowledge, is decidedly dualistic.
Your meditating figures seem far too complacent for me, too much a
figment of your self-serving imagination.
They suggest a greater degree of optimism concerning this life than ever
I would wish to entertain. They seem to
me to have turned their backs on reality and to be living in a kind of dream
world."
"I'm afraid I can't agree with you," said Matthew.
"No, I don't suppose you can," Mr Evans retorted
sarcastically, after which, to Matthew's relief, he relapsed into a silence
disturbed only by the lighting and puffing of his pipe.
