Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Visual arts, music, poetry and other forms of art.
obnoxion
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by obnoxion »

Krepusculum wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:10 pm I'm quite mystified how the act at Golgotha echoes through our times and still affects us, even those adverse to it.
Yeah, prominent examples would be Pablo Picasson and Francis Bacon.
Krepusculum wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 5:25 pm I saw an exhibition by him once and part of it was also his collection of outsider art. Work made by psychiatric patients that went from utter maddening chaotic impulsive excrescence to some of the most beautiful sensitive and precise works I have ever seen. Some of the works displayed were made with such precise skill that it was jaw dropping.
As it happens, creative work made by psychiatric patients holds little aura of otherness for me. But I am sure that an established artist could present them in a qualified manner. I once heard from an artist with a severe mental illness that there is no point showing therepeutic works. I think this is because this work tends to be overly self-absorbed and unpolished. On the other hand, rawness tends to fascinate.

Anyway, I am more interested in fine art that is created dispite severe mental illness than art that is interesting because of mental illness. A good example would be the Japanes artist Yayoi Kusama. She lives permanently in a psychiatric hospital, but is one of the most important contemporary artist from Japan.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
Krepusculum
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by Krepusculum »

obnoxion wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:50 pm
Krepusculum wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:10 pm I'm quite mystified how the act at Golgotha echoes through our times and still affects us, even those adverse to it.
Yeah, prominent examples would be Pablo Picasson and Francis Bacon.
That's an interesting conclusion, could you elaborate?
obnoxion wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:50 pm As it happens, creative work made by psychiatric patients holds little aura of otherness for me.
I'm not sure if I understand the context of your statement here.
obnoxion wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:50 pm Anyway, I am more interested in fine art that is created dispite severe mental illness than art that is interesting because of mental illness. A good example would be the Japanes artist Yayoi Kusama. She lives permanently in a psychiatric hospital, but is one of the most important contemporary artist from Japan.
If it is valued purely because of the artists personal mental condition it wouldn't have a lot of merit on its own. What I do find interesting and of value is to get a glimpse in such an individuals mind. As if they tampered with things beyond their control. Some cases are comparable to the activities of a child where there is no apparent justification or need to explain as to why things are done. From this perspective the intent is quite pure, devoid of all the pretentious hogwash that contaminates a lot of contemporary conceptual art. I once saw a biography of a guy who was on the other side of the spectrum. His works displayed the process of his detachemnet to the outside world as a consequence of his schizophrenia. This was a conscious process. The imagery went from figurative to symbolic and eventually commiting suicide whilst working on his most abstract work.
That Yayoi Kusama lives in a psychiatric hospital was unkown to me. I especially like her installations.
obnoxion
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by obnoxion »

Krepusculum wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:55 pm obnoxion kirjoitti: ↑
Krepusculum kirjoitti: ↑I'm quite mystified how the act at Golgotha echoes through our times and still affects us, even those adverse to it.
Yeah, prominent examples would be Pablo Picasson and Francis Bacon.
That's an interesting conclusion, could you elaborate?
I mean that both artists were, I believe, adverse to Christianity, but were affected to paint religious themes and crucifixions.
Krepusculum wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:55 pm obnoxion kirjoitti: ↑As it happens, creative work made by psychiatric patients holds little aura of otherness for me.
I'm not sure if I understand the context of your statement here.
Just that my day job is with psychiatric patients, and I have the privilige to relatively often view their texts, drawings and paintings. So I tend to be quite oblivious if a work is done by someone with a mental illness, as it has become sort of everydayish for me.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
Krepusculum
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by Krepusculum »

obnoxion wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 11:10 pm I mean that both artists were, I believe, adverse to Christianity, but were affected to paint religious themes and crucifixions.
To be honest I didn't know that it had such a prominent influence on them. It surely gives their work more perspective. Seems that Picasso had a great fear of death and probably directly linked to him being so prolific.
obnoxion wrote: Sat Oct 12, 2019 11:10 pm Just that my day job is with psychiatric patients, and I have the privilige to relatively often view their texts, drawings and paintings. So I tend to be quite oblivious if a work is done by someone with a mental illness, as it has become sort of everydayish for me.
Well in that case it makes perfect sense. I'm sure that not all patients have something exciting to share.
obnoxion
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by obnoxion »

Krepusculum wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2019 3:18 pm obnoxion kirjoitti: ↑Just that my day job is with psychiatric patients, and I have the privilige to relatively often view their texts, drawings and paintings. So I tend to be quite oblivious if a work is done by someone with a mental illness, as it has become sort of everydayish for me.
Well in that case it makes perfect sense. I'm sure that not all patients have something exciting to share
These are mostly sketches and drafts. I feel that many show promise, but the critical step from a promising idea to a polished work of art is too much to ask from most of us, and much more from those who are very ill. And as schizophrenic psychosis tends to have effect on the cognitive faculties, there are often trouble with motivation, execution and such. So I suppose it is very demanding to finish an actual work of art while acutely psychotic, though a therapeutic sketching my later lead into something more. But at least from my experience this happens usually with people who have previous artistic training or ambition.

In the case of a professional artist curating, assembling and framing these works, he or she could take that extra step for the promise to come to full fruition. In a way that would make it as much the work of that assembling artist, but it must be very therapeutic for the the patients, too, to see their private tragedy having an aspect that is admired in public. Because the burden on shame in these situations is often very, very heavy.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
obnoxion
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by obnoxion »

Odilon Redon has painted many fallen angels. One of my favourites is "The Winged Man Or Fallen Angel". There a fallen angel seems to have descended on a mountain top. He has what seems to me an attitude of childlike curiosity. The surrounding shapes are steaming and amorphous, perhaps suggesting both thr primavel epoch of the fall and stressing the role of imaginative powers in the shaping of the world. It also brings to mind the Theosophichal myth of the fall of angels.

It seems to me that the man in the painting has only one wing, which first brings to mind the symbolism of the injury of the fall. Then, on closer inspection, this black wing begins to look like a strangely two-dimensional door or a gateway punctured into the blue sky, from which the wingless man emerges. The blacks and whites are repeated in the landscape, in the man and in the wing (or the gateway), forming a signifying three-part composition. By signifying I mean that the energy of blacks and whites seem to form a pattern of emergence from darkness into a light. The bright blue of the sky brings the colours also into a trinity.

All in all, I think it is one of the more relateable paintings of the Fallen Angel - hence, perhaps, the double title: "The Winged Man Or Fallen Angel"
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
obnoxion
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by obnoxion »

There has been some common ground in the forum in experiencing Satan as the wind in the trees. Now, I am an avid reader of the Hindu Puranas, and I recently found a touching passage from the 18th chapter of the Linga Mahapurana, where Vishnu praises Shiva in these words (translated by Shanti Lal Nagar):

Salutations to the wind or the one who has the force of the wind and the one who pervades the wind.

Such association gives a new dimendion of depth, I feel, to the unique Impressionist depictions of windy scenes with trees and foliage, such as Renoir's "Trail in the Woods"
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
obnoxion
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by obnoxion »

In Gustave Moreaus late masterpiece "Jupiter and Semele", thera are many dark entities to be found, especially in the bottom third of the painting, which depicts the underworld. For example, there are particularily demonic Hecate, almost invisible goddess Nyx, and the three-headed demon of lust that is apparently modeled after the demon Asmodeus, as illustrated in Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal (this illustration is likely familiar to most of us from editions of Lemegeton)

The Fallen Angel is, however, not found from the underworld, but in the middle third of the painting. I am under the impression that Moreau was much inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. But in my amateurish art-lover's opinion, the Fallen Angel seems rather like he'd been freshly fallen from some epic Michelangelo's work.

I am reading Laurence Caruna's interpretation of this incredibly richly detailed painting, "Moreau's Labyrinth - A Visual Journey Through Jupiter and Semele, Its Narrative, Composition & Philosophy" (Recluse, 2018), and I want to quote straight from the book about this Fallen Angel (pages 4 - 5):
Just below Semele - his dark wing contrasting sharply with her light drapery - appears a small winged figure: the 'cloven-hoofed angel' who falls, blinded, from the sight of Jupiter's glory. The multiple sketches in the Musee Gustave Moreau attest to the fact that the artist laboured hard ovar this figure for many hours, if not days. In his first sketches, the cherub appears as a fallen angel, but in later sketches Moreau added hooves, making it an angel transforming into a satyr as it falls to the middle realm of generation.

Through these details, we are led to understand that, in the eternal cycle of metempsychosis, the fallen angels became those spirits that animate all of Nature, such as the 'dryads, satyrs and fauns', mentioned by the artist in his description of the painting. As 'denizens of the water and the woods... all are overcome by ecstacy, love and joy.' This fallen angel, now a satyr like Pan, symbolizes the 'the Spirit of Earthly Love', and descends, like the vegetation around the left pillar, into the realm of generation.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Smaragd
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by Smaragd »

obnoxion wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2020 3:02 pm I am reading Laurence Caruna's interpretation of this incredibly richly detailed painting, "Moreau's Labyrinth - A Visual Journey Through Jupiter and Semele, Its Narrative, Composition & Philosophy" (Recluse, 2018), and I want to quote straight from the book about this Fallen Angel (pages 4 - 5):
Just below Semele - his dark wing contrasting sharply with her light drapery - appears a small winged figure: the 'cloven-hoofed angel' who falls, blinded, from the sight of Jupiter's glory. The multiple sketches in the Musee Gustave Moreau attest to the fact that the artist laboured hard ovar this figure for many hours, if not days. In his first sketches, the cherub appears as a fallen angel, but in later sketches Moreau added hooves, making it an angel transforming into a satyr as it falls to the middle realm of generation.

Through these details, we are led to understand that, in the eternal cycle of metempsychosis, the fallen angels became those spirits that animate all of Nature, such as the 'dryads, satyrs and fauns', mentioned by the artist in his description of the painting. As 'denizens of the water and the woods... all are overcome by ecstacy, love and joy.' This fallen angel, now a satyr like Pan, symbolizes the 'the Spirit of Earthly Love', and descends, like the vegetation around the left pillar, into the realm of generation.
Does these passages hint towards what you meant by the fallen angels connection to the faery-faith in this topic?

This connection between Jupiters immense powers, that is deadly for the mortals, and Pan seems to be noted also in Arthur Machens 'The Great God Pan' (spoiler alert). The idea could be also connected solely to Pan, as it is often noted that we experience Pan when we are lost in the woods and start to panic, which ofcourse easily leads to life threatening choices. But in Machens book we could easily see these three section you referred the painting incorporating in its composition. In the book there is the higher current, which by black magic is drawn in to a body of a woman (the middle section of the painting) and the celestial overpowers her completely leaving her consciousness unreachable and her body impregnated. She dies after giving birth.

The impregnation already leaps towards the bottom third through the falling angel and the vegetation in the pillars. And we come to the kingdom of Pan. There the people end up lost in the labyrinth of wilderness, that has been revealed from themselves by sights of satyrs with the girl/woman who was conceived by the forementioned pregnancy. These scenes also have some subtle sexual motives hinted towards. The wilderness of these powers only seem wild to the mortals, I think, and the unfortunate who have to face them, hurry to take their own lives by various methods. Here I'm eager to see connection to the book in the Pantokrator iconography, as a note how by knowledge, an order can be reached granting us immortality in the face of the occult powers that makes us vulnerable to madness and untimely death. Where ever the girl in the book has stayed long, there seem to follow an aura of death, which makes the unfortunate and the nosey sick by the air they come to breathe. This aura of death is depicted in the bottom of the painting, I presume.

Coming in contact with the celestial in inproper ways holds a lot vaster scale of interpretation than loosing ones marbles, to which I focused on above. It could be also thought to be present, for example, when someone preaches his religion to others in ways that leads to loosing the beauty of the religion. The erotic tension has been lost, thus Pan seems quite under the weather. And coming back to the vaster spectrum of interpretation loosing the erotic tension is loosing the connection to meaning and the Word of god (coming back to the Pantrokrator iconography) in this realm we inhabit.
Wikipedia wrote:Of this work, Moreau himself wrote, "Semele, penetrated by the divine effluence, regenerated and purified by this consecration, dies struck by lightning and with her dies the genius of terrestrial love, the genius with the goat hooves".
EDIT: Added one sentence.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
obnoxion
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Re: Artistic representations of Satan & other LHP deities

Post by obnoxion »

Smaragd wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 12:25 am Does these passages hint towards what you meant by the fallen angels connection to the faery-faith in this topic?
Yes, this painting is a great example of exactly what I meant. I almost hyperlinked the duscussions myself, but I decided against it. I feel I am endlessly going on about art and poetry, and when I finally got into a discussion about something else. I was reluctant to bring art into it. But that being said, I am happy the relevant connection was linked by someone else. I can be less worried about coming across as a monomaniac...

I am actually reading Machen's "Great God Pan". I've only just begun, but already I've been so excited that I almost quoted from it. What stopped me was that I rememberef fra Nefastos quoting from almost the same page on the forum some time ago, so I decided to let it pass.

Anyway, I am happy you share my enthusiasm for the painting. It is just very hard to see all the details from small pictures. Apparently many character's eyes look subtly in different directions from each other, and this is really hard to make out from reproductions unless one knows to look for it. There seems to be s dynamicof gazes that in a way narrates the painting.

I am at the moment so deeply into above mentioned book, "Moreau's Labyrinth", that I need some time to digest it before I can have something original to say about the painting. But I will say this: I adore the Artemis of Ephesus, royaly placed on top of Jupiter's halo. And this is not the first time I've recently encountered this Artemis in a great piece of art, so it was a moving synchronicity to find her there. Before now, I've been too suffocated by the super-abundance of the painting in small reproductions to realize most of its details, including this one.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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