¡Colores!; 1102; Vision and Spirit: Raymond Jonson and the Transcendental Painting Group

I'm sorry, sorry dou𝘰𝘩𝘱𝘶𝘵 === This caloric is funded in part by New

Mexico Arts, a division of the Office of Cultural Affairs If you said some time aside, say right now, this minute, to study the riddle of human existence with nothing more than canvas and brush. What would you paint? How would it feel to tap into the infinite universe of the soul? Vision and spirit. Raymond Johnson and the Transcendental Painting Group. Next. Throw

away what you know about art. Challenge yourself to think differently. How far are you going to choose to draw a picture of me? F hire. Rear. In the first part of the twentieth century, a transcendent new vision and spirit came to New Mexico. It was born among those who saw the new century as a new beginning without boundaries, and it changed the history of New Mexico art.

Transcendental painting was conceived in America as the world was seduced by the modernist movement. Where modernism uses form, line, and color to represent any motion, transcendental painting simply begins there. Transcendental painter is a seeker, a surcher, a pioneer of how the human spirit can liberate itself and soar among the clouds. For Raymond Johnson, one of the founders of the transcendental painting group, perhaps this new vision and spirit began in his rootless childhood, nurtured by his father's belief in spiritual individualism. Perhaps too, the wandering life of this Penalist minister's family taught Raymond's sacrifice, self -discipline, dedication to purpose, and built a type of integrity that would enable him to go the whole way alone. He chose to be isolated in the desert because he

wanted a pristine environment that would inspire his own nature which was to go towards the bigger meaning of life. At the turn of the century, American art was pretty complacent. There was something on the horizon there, something that might link the peoples of the world together, that might help us to understand each other better, our traditions, and the common kinds of experiences that have gone into our literature and art, and really the whole of history. Raymond's fascination with light and its ability to illuminate the soul would perhaps play the biggest part of all. New Mexico in some ways is spooky. All you have to do is look at the mountain of the mason and make you feel kind of puny. But at the same time, you can also feel grand about the

spatial sense of it. Transcendental painting is engaging. It's intoxicating. It is a free fall into the subconscious. It defines its responsibility as illuminating the infinite without causing chaos. Transcendental painters would forever redefine art and redefine what it meant to be an artist. Before arriving in New Mexico in the 1930s, the founders of the Transcendental painting group studied the conventional techniques of art,

steeped in realism and brewed in conformity, some returned to teaching, and questioned the true purpose of art. Individually, they would reach toward the abstract in their own work, and reach also for an intangible essence driving their efforts, spirituality. He mailed Bistram, traveled from Hungary to New York, and embraced dynamic symmetry, a system of space division that helped the artists to create order out of chaos, a limitless formula that releases the imaginative power. And Bistram was 41, and well -built fellow, he had been a fighter as a team agent, and was very gracious and very intense. He did a lot of paintings that to him were very spiritual, but they were very physical. Born into privilege, Lauren Harris studied in Europe,

gained an notoriety in his home country, Canada, for paintings that were despairingly beautiful and inhuman, and served as a vital proponent of the expression of idealism through abstract painting. Agnes Pelton studied in New York under the tutelage of Arthur Wesley Dow, who believed that Japanese art, with its emphasis on structure, spirit, imagination, creation, and the non -naturalistic use of color, was the very essence of the painting ideals that modernism was still trying to achieve. Florence Miller Pierce traveled to New Mexico from Washington, D .C. to attend Bistram's Tao School of Art in 1936. Florence's paintings projected the non -objective into a mystical field of beautiful color relationships. You can have a magical time if you're innocent and naive and have a great desire for experience in art and put yourself in a

place like Touse, and we were higher there. The skies at night were much clearer and the stars were much brighter. I came out with a palette and a palette knife and a brush, and I was a young girl with that, and still living in me is that young girl with her brush. Florence met and married another student, Harry's towner Pierce. He became interested in the logarithmic spiral and mathematical proportions, which were believed by many to represent the basis of all cosmic life. 30 airbrushed watercolor studies entitled Spiral Symphony comprise Harry's most famous work. Ed Garman was a creative refugee from the oppressive Pennsylvania coal mines. Educated at the University of New Mexico, Garman credits his wife, Cariva

Hanford, for his introduction into Plato's world of abstract thought. Plato wrote, by beauty of shape I am not thinking of certain pictures, but of a straight line or a circle. In my view, these things are not, as other things are, beautiful in a relative way, but are always beautiful in themselves and yielded their own special pleasures. For more names would round out the transcendental painting group. Stuart Walker, who described his work as a portrayal of abstract rhythms and life forms. Robert Grific, who's paintings were startling in their exactness and precision. William Lumpkins, the only New Mexican -born artist whose beliefs in Zen Buddhism would foster a quality of ease and spontaneity in his work. One doesn't understand the inner self, Lumpkins wrote. One allows the inner self to live, create its own image. And a

lot of us at that time felt that music was the most abstract of all the art forms and I still feel that way. Composure Dane Rudyard would inspire the group with his musical talent, his philosophical intellect, and the stirring manifesto. This group is not a mere courtier or an accidental association of friends. It helps to become a focal point for the development of a type of art vitally rooted in the spiritual need of these times, and expressing the most truly creative, fundamental, and permanent impulses emerging from its creators. The deepest springs of vitality and consciousness, and which aims to stimulate in others through deep and spontaneous emotionally experiences of form and color, a more intensive participation in the life of the spirit. If you were to delve into the unknown,

the intangible world apart from intellect, you would probably begin by studying the canvas itself. Raymond Johnson would embrace the freedom of abstraction after his association with his instructor, B .J .O. Northfeld, and Johnson's own work in the Chicago Little Theater. When Raymond Johnson was a student in Chicago, he was exposed very powerfully to the lessons of symbolism, which was a style and a mood that came out of late 19th century Europe. But what it did was to try to bring forth elements of mood and tonality and a kind of inner response on the part of the artist or the poet or the musician who was working in this way. So it's very much about the connection between inside and outside. Miscarried over eventually into his stage work with the Chicago Little Theater in the 19 teens where it was very

important to apply these simplifying design principles to make strong, simple statements in set design and in lighting which he became a specialist at doing with the Chicago Little Theater, learning how to cast something in a particular light so as to bring out certain qualities of form or expression to the audience. Raymond's paintings began to demand of him certainty of execution with his new boldness, Johnson painted light after a brief visit to the west. Although representational, it is far from realistic and beckons of the viewer to transcend and enter the spiritual. He knew what he was and who he was and what he was going to do about

it and he did it. Then he had a wife that he loved and loved him. It was a red -haired beauty when he married her and painted her. Raymond had seen the works of Kandinsky at the controversial arm ratio in 1912. For many younger American artists it was an absolute revelation. It was an eye -opening experience when young Raymond Johnson saw the arm ratio in Chicago he could hardly express what he felt about it, what he knew was that the old traces had been kicked aside. It was as if these artists had been put down at the starting line of an entirely new race or a new marathon and said, hey, go ahead, do whatever you want. This is what the art said to them. Perhaps it was Kandinsky's words in the artist's spiritual harmony which impressed him most. The strife of colors, the sense of balance we've lost,

tottering principles, unexpected assaults, great questions, apparently useless striving, storm and tempest, broken chains, antithesis and contradictions, these make up our harmony. The composition arising from this harmony is a mingling of color and form each with its separate existence but each blended into a common life which is called a picture by the force of the inner need. Kandinsky. Some people have said that they never could quite understand or anticipate what Raymond was going to do next with a palette, you know, a range of color. There is a confused rhythm of forms running through my head and most amazing they tend to heart abstraction. The spirit of the thing in its most salient elements is not rhythm of the whole just about the first to consider. So if by chance I have managed to keep this thing pure, the rhythms as such should

ring true. They mean nothing by themselves. They should mean everything as a whole. Raymond Johnson. In 1924 Raymond took a crucial step for the first and only time in his life he sold all of his paintings to fund a move to New Mexico, a sanctuary of light and spirit. In 1938 something remarkable happened in New Mexico.

The creative forces of Raymond Johnson, Emil Pistrum, Agnes Belton and the rest came together to find a new vision. They formed the Transcendental Paving Group. Working with the tenets of modernism, of line, texture and color they sought to change the language of art by exploring the spiritual. This was set up to organize, to get a focus on abstract painting, to get a presence and this in theory was going to enable us to put our foot in the doors to get into museums or other art galleries as a muscle giving us muscle. Most of the Transcendental Paving Group had already gained a vocabulary in the Asafi, a philosophical movement founded in 1875 by Helena Petrovina Blavatsky. This movement synthesized the world's religious tenets and

mystical investigations into a general theory and not religion. The goal of this theory was to achieve spirituality on individual, yet universal terms. The world, however, was more interested in conservative art, safe art, like the works of Walter Uffrey at the time. Even George O 'Keefe was thought of as a dangerous radical. Along come Raymond and his cohorts, a Transcendental Paving Group, and these people are just wacko revolutionaries when it comes to getting their work shown at the big public institutions or for that matter, having galleries represent their work in Santa Fe or Taos or Albuquerque. It would take Raymond Johnson's persistent vision of a gallery built years later on the University of New Mexico campus for this work to finally have a permanent venue. Albuquerque

was the writer who was representing the group who would write these long articles. Dane Rudyard gave talks as well as Raymond Johnson giving talks about the meaning of a Transcendental painting and talking about the highest quality possible and the integrity that came behind the works. So a lot of work was put in to try to educate the public to a greater acceptance. It seems to me that when a painter has accomplished quality through purity of inner vision, fulfilment and pleasure can result both on the part of the painter and the audience. Because of the experience of quality, a sensation beyond the ordinary can take us into the realm of new emotions. And we can thereby reach a level of ecstasy on which we are able to rise above the purely physical into the field of this spiritual Raymond Johnson. Like a creative scientist, Raymond Johnson

refined his pursuit of his goal of visual harmony throughout his life. He believed that the artist begins with feeling, trusting instinct and intuition, then superimposes what he had learned, seen and felt. The forces of painting, the emotional, intellectual and physical experiences and skills of the artist combine to create the unifying principle our design. I see that we have a world that has moved so far towards greed, commercialism, and that the inner world is an neglected place and that we are psychically, emotionally, spiritually suffering. To paraphrase it at Garmin, he said, if we neglect spirituality that we do violence to humankind, we still have a need for our paintings and other ways of life. Calling attention to the needs of our society to bring them back to a better balanced center of our harmonious reality.

World War II marked the end of the Transcendental Painting Group. Most of its members continue their individual work throughout their lives in the Transcendental Style. There exists over 2 ,000 of Raymond Johnson's works alone. Raymond painted for nearly 70 years. His life is an important chronicle of an artist with thousands of personal leaders and paintings available to the public. In the Raymond Johnson Gallery, he tirelessly championed modernism in the West and promoted new, challenging artists. His gallery is his legacy to us, a reminder to strive for creative excellence. Raymond followed his own star when it came to painting. You can see a movement through his life on up till the time that he died, that he was continuously working toward finding his own inner self in his painting. And there's a perfect

record of a painter's life in Raymond's collection of Raymond's work. Raymond taught painting for most of his life and influenced generations of artists and art educators. His dress was always, always, eccentric. He would put on sometimes the most outlandish crossings, contrasting things. I soon found out that he was sort of like some of his paintings, you know, as a man. And then, of course, he had some sort of little physical gestures with his eyes and his eyebrows. And he just gave you this immediate sense of high intensity. And if you were talking to him, he talked to you. Raymond Chonston was a great prophet. Raymond Chonston was a great

propagandist for modern art. He had this wonderful face and absolute self -conviction that art was one of the noblest callings available to any human being and that abstract art was the noblest form of art. I think that Raymond Chonston was a totally magnanimous human being, with an incredibly generous spirit and willingness to serve and to give and to share all of the information that he had. He served us all very, very greatly. America Today faces the possibility of greatness and decline. The world, generally, is on the decline as we are sadly witnessing. Your generation has the terrific problem of keeping calm, loving, and working out the program for living

as brothers and not savages. Always during murder, hate, chaos, disorder, it is necessary that a few humans keep calm and work constructively. And I believe it best to work in an entirely different medium to that used by the haters. Right now, we need works done that present a high state of order. They will not be seen by many. But that does not matter. For the act of doing releases that power, that sincerity and feeling that must have effect. I realize this places a new aspect and foundation on the creative arts. I intended to. Raymond Chonston. When all of it is done, what you had from Raymond was this tremendous sort of after

image of a real person who just had one of the greatest spirits. No matter the art of anyone that I've known. Throw away what you know about art. Challenge yourself to think differently. Feel. Are you ready to change the world?

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