A
concept of 'Objective Art' was platformed in 1916 by the
Greco-Armenian spiritual teacher George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. Offering our attention to the items below, we have all
caught hints, behind the outer form, of a reality more profound.
Octave
(Click
on the images to enlarge)
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Ancient
of Days |
Centred
in a fiery corona, though swept by Time's tempest, Blake's
'Ancient of Days' marks out the lower worlds with
refined attention.
Octave
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"Yellowish-grey
sand. Deep blue sky. In the distance the triangle of the Pyramid of
Kephren, and just before me this strange, great face with its gaze
directed into the distance...I felt that...if I could stay under its
gaze from birth to death, the whole of my life would flash by so
swiftly for it that it could not notice me. The glance was fixed on
something else. It was the glance of a being who thinks in centuries
and milleniums. I did not and could not exist for it. And I could
not answer my own question - do I exist for myself."
P.D.
Ouspensky.
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The
Sphinx |
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Chartres
Cathedral |
"Immediately I am aware that this is art
of a different order. Its purpose is spiritual; it gives me
a direct experience of the vertical axis which connects the human
with what is above. Through contemplation or even study the
symbolism can emerge, but it is the change of state expressed by
the figures, and called to in the one who sees them, that opens the
door to the inner meaning."
Octave
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"Aristotle, depicted in
this statue, seems to divide his attention between the activity in which
he is engaged and himself. I look at it and I begin to sense my own
'self'.
As I write this, using a medium very different
from his, or the masons of Chartres, I am helped - across the
centuries - to remember myself."
Octave
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Chartres
Cathedral
(photograph courtesy of
Valoire-Estel - Blois) |
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"For
me this sketch, generally considered to be a self-portrait by
Leonardo, conveys the intensity of a man who has glimpsed
truth. Some words from a Kipling poem come to mind: 'Tell
him, I too have known.'"
Octave |
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