Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
”We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest
Visionary Art attracts the attention of both creators and viewers all around the world. ts popularity is so broad that this style can rightly be considered a new worldwide phenomenon. Despite the modern-sounding name, it reflects the artist’s original interest in the inner world, where fantasy, not reality, becomes the source of creativity. Art is always an attempt to look inside yourself, to know yourself, your place, in a sense «draw a soul».
Visionary Art is a path of feelings, not of reason. Spontaneous, not controlled by the will or a certain plan an image of the author’s inner world, fantastic worlds and creatures. The development of this style goes in parallel with the spread of eastern spiritual practices (for example, yoga), a technique of penetrating into the depths of the subconscious, an interest in the pagan and pre-literate past of peoples.
According to the French artist L. Caruana (Laurence Caruana), Visionary Art is what merge art, myth and dreams. Like the ancient writings, it is a lost language, to be deciphered by everyone alone. The artist-visionary uses all means available to him to show what is beyond the boundaries of vision. In fact, he draws something that is invisible. The source of experience for the artist – dreams, a state of trance, madness, meditation. Part of the artists-visionaries consciously resorts to the use of entheogens (substances to achieve an altered state of consciousness), realizing their danger to themselves. But at the moment this practice is not generally accepted.
Can not be failed to note masterly craftsmanship and technical perfection of the masters. Visionary art, true Visionary art is the highest level of professionalism, possession of pictorial techniques and tradition.
The general idea of artists Visionary Art – attitude to painting as an instrument through which the “inner landscape” (Martin Hoffman) is reflected, thus, art becomes not a goal, but a means on the way to self-knowledge, self-improvement. Pictures are some kind of portals, “which will open up infinite possibilities for existence and self-expression. Thanks to him, we will remember and rediscover our past, who we are, where our life began and where we are going “(Amanda Sage).
Artists preach the unity of mankind, the desire to feel his family, which means to realize his shared responsibility for his future.
The brightest representatives of Visionary art:
The brightest representatives of Visionary art:
Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Andrew Gonzalez, Brigid Marlin, Olga Shpiegel, Kuba Ambrose, Oleg Korolev, Amanda Sage, Martina Hoffmann, Daniel Mirante, Aloria Weaver, David Heskin, Philip Rubinov Jacobson, Viktor Safonkin, Agostino Arrivabene, who is considered the founding father of Visionary art.
In Russian art, the precursors of VA were the works of Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910), Nikolay Roerich (1874-1947), Nikolay Kolmakov (1873-1955).