Art as a Summons to Awareness

I've been leading a Lent course over the last few weeks using paintings to stimulate reflection. I chose images from the 15th, 17th and 19th centuries (I don't like even numbers, it would seem) and deliberately chose some that would not be immediately 'comprehensible' in a straightforwardly representational or narrative way. I was keen each time for people to notice their immediate reactions and to see how they related to more sustained reflection after getting a bit of background, context and comparison. At the end of the series, there were reflections from the group on how it had been for them and one woman said (I paraphrase) that the benefit for her in the sessions was simple - I put up a picture on the screen and that makes them look at it.

I didn't want to let people stay at the level of 'liking' or 'not liking' a particular painting and that didn't take too much persuasion. Most members of the group were well able to set aside personal aesthetic presence. It didn't matter whether or not they wanted some strange piece of Flemish religious art on their wall at home; what mattered was to look.

The comment from the woman in the group delighted me because she captured so directly what I wanted to achieve. The point was not so much 'understanding' as 'awareness'. We are so used to short-circuiting our looking because we are surrounded by such a familiar range of images all the time. We do not see what is there because we are bludgeoned by the advertisers' images into our default mode of consumption. I look only to 'inform my choice' as a consumer. What kind of choice is that? What kind of freedom?

Thomas Merton made a series of simple 'calligraphies' partly based on his understanding of Japanese calligraphy. He used brush and black ink to make simple, abstract marks which he described as 'summonses to awareness'. These marks were not there to be interpreted but to be seen. He used photography in much the same way.

And I think the same principle can be extended to many forms of art - poetry, jazz, dance. The point is simply to learn how to see, to be awakened, to hear as if for the first time, to learn the simple but demanding art of freedom, to cease our unending inward chatter, our proclivity to comment on everything, to set aside our filters, expectations and prejudices. Art is a school for mindful living.