Holotropic Art

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The Association ”HOLOTROPIC ART” Romania / e-mail: [email protected]



The holotropic art is the art which is the result of transpersonal experiences and which can transpose the beholder into states of overconsciousness. – Edi APOSTU

The holotropic art has to be looked upon through the point of view of creation, approached starting from its connections with the philosophy of mentalities, the science of religions, the transpersonal psychology and the psychology of imagination. The connection between transpersonal and art can be identified in any hystorical period as long as they reproduce ideas that are connected to the sphere of imagination, of some ”realities beyond” on the human level. The artist is, to a smaller or larger extent, inspired, through different modalities, by different creation energies, and following the consumption of natural psychostimulents (coffee, alcohol, tobacco, different halucinogenous mushrooms or herbs, etc.) or synthesis substances, following the practising of religious, magic, chamanic techiques as incantations, prayers, meditations of different types, total fasting, intendded dehydration etc., or by combining the consumption of psychoactive substances with the practising of these different techniques, the artist is capable to create. Also, we consider that all those representations in the art works of the ”notions” that are connected to the religious side, no matter the period or the geographical areas are coming from, no matter the style or artistic trend, can be integrated in the transpersonal dimentions which can affect an artistic creation. In other words, the holotropic art is a type of art which is ”inspired”, realized as following authentic extatic experiences, as well as an art that can induce modified consciousness states to the watcher,or, in ideal cases, it connectes its two characteristics managing by its qualities to ”accumulate” in order to have effects on the psychic of the admirer. As starting points of identification we mention the holotropic art proposes a development and a promotion of the authentic cultural phenomena which have real values, a re-orientation of the watcher and the consummer towards a type of art that take account of the ”aesthetic common sense”, a re-education of the artist – who is equally part as the receptive public, in the degradation or, on the contrary, in the revolutionazing and the re-orientation of art, having an ethic and moral responsibility in the cultural approach which is equal to those who are art passionate or to any member of the society. We also talk about a orientation of all these towards an ideatic perfection of cultural expression, symilar to the notion of the Renaissance homo universalis, an elargement of the creative and artistic vision, an expantion of the boundaries of knowledge to all the levels that the human, as an intelligent creature, is conscious of. Under the conditions of cultural backing up of the present, the holotropic art can look like having utopic and pretentious ideals. Or maybe not. Even if the nowadays society is not a perfect reflection of the ideatic concepts of the big phylosophers, of the great people of the past, their remarkable ideas were assimilated and reflect, to a smaller or larger extent, into the society of the present which is part of the intelectual or physical effort of those brilliant minds that emited ideas of genious. It is the ”duty” of the great thinkers or of the illuminated ones, of those who have an elevated level of consciousness to do everything that stays in their power to raise the degree of perception and receptions of the people surrounding them. For a person that possesses a real level of intelligence it is a proper gesture that takes into account the nobless of the soul to wish to destroy the veil of ignorance from the consciousness of their mates and to raise them to their level, or to push them forward, in order to reach higher, superiour achievements. Being aware of the difficulty of the assumed role in the changing of the mentality of the actual society which confronts serious existential problems, we engage to do our best effort to reach our objective and, even if a total exit from the metality of the epoch seems to be impossible, we will do our best to realize, at least, a fissure into this degenerated mentality. MOTIVATION

The galleries and the collections of the world are full, during this period, of ”works of art” which look very much alike and which express absolutely nothing. The artist, as a producer of beauty, reached the stage into which it expresses in their work a striking ambiguity taking the art to a ”superior” level of mediocrity.

”Great artists” of the world are producers of kitsch works of bad tastes, visible in all the galleries of the planet no matter how prestigious they are. You can even find them in famous auctions houses as those like Christie`s or Sotheby`s. The present period of our existence darkens our spirit with a multitude of ”cultural productions” which, in essence, represent the nothingness to the smallest detalis and have a serious role of reducing the intellectual level of the art consumer. This fact is no wonder as long as the level of global intelligence is registering a serious falling down and the post modern artists are insipired by nothing, becoming an insignifiant copy of the past artists. Either we talk about fine arts (paintings), poetry or phylosophy or any other cultural goods of ”large consumption”, we confront with huge amounts of miserable productions, emptied of substance which seem to be be created on purpose in order to induce the knowledgeable watcher a serious psycological discommode. The global intelectual laziness and the fallen down spiritual level are producers of ”cultural” aberrations. In this respect it is important to mention that religion was one of the importatnt factors in the development of any great civilisation of the world. The high spiritual level of humankind marked in history memorable cultural phenomena. In change, the spiritual mediocrity of the moment is a normal factor that generates corresponding elements that influence the culture in a negative way. The lack of importance shown to religion and the fierce atheism took to a breakage from the divine inspirational source and the human started to have the false belief that he is his own master. Art, as a trasposion of religion in concrete representations of transpersonal concepts, has the part of giving the world aspects (imaginary or not) of some transhuman ”realities”, ”beyond” the perceptions that the human can have because of normal senses, which are connected also to some extrasenzorial perception of some subjects who have superior abilities and, through this they can ”see” the reality in its assembly. Ones of these ”hypersensitve” manage to ”see” the reality without using ”helpers”, they are considered ”destiny’s favourites” to whom the divinity reveals to naturally. They are atributted with special, miraculous powers and are considered saints, prophets, illuminated ones, etc. Others, though, make use in their actions of different auxiliary methods like practising one or more ”spiritual techniques” as: total fasting, intended dehydration, self flagellation or flagellation, prayers, meditations, incantations, consumption of halucinogene substances etc., all having as a common goal the reaching of extatic states, of trance, through which the adept is able to realize the union of its own consciousness with the divine, cosmic one, union which, once it is realized gives the possibility to discover the truth and make it known to the whole humankind. Apparently a part over the arts is also played by the psychoactive substances over the human psychic – analysis which is made thorough the medicine and psychiatry, without making any apology or encouraging the consumption of such substances –, only by the observation of some artists during the creation act and their connection to different modalities of artistic ”inspiration”. Referring to narcotics, the human, in its cultural and civilization evolution, ever since the homo sapiens times, no matter the geographical area in which it lived its life, discovered the effects of some natural substances that provoke changes into the psychological state of mind and which were considered, during time, connectives between the human and divinity, between the eartly-ephmeral and the eternal-celestial ones. As concerning the psychoactive substances, we clearly mention that we do not agree with their consumption without a medical recommandation, on the contrary, we totally disapprove the abusive consumption of this type of substances, that can cause serious mental damages, states of partial of total clinical insanity and, in some cases, the death of the consumer. On the other hand, the desacralization of the art has at its basis also the negative effect which the religions of the world, through the atrocities carried in the name of some divinity, had over the humankind. Because of this, during the post-modern period art is no more a product of the sacred or an act of the revelation of misteries, but an object of large consupmtion whose attributes are limited to the name of a commercial product. The artists have given up long ago the search and the unrevealing of misteries, and, as a bad consequence, the quality of the artistic product fell into the execution of serial art ending into an artistic inflation which led to the loss of quality of culture on the mondial level and to a large spreading of kitsch art. The products of the fine arts are often limited to some chaotic scriblings of bad taste, equal or even worse, artistically speaking and as techincal productions, to those of the drawings of children who could be, at this time, considered authentic artists if it would be taken into account the fact that the ”artistic reactions” of these children are a result of a sincere and random feeling, while the so-called artists are striving their best to create fade works of art of insignificant value and which pretend to be the product of some ”powerful researches and inner turmoil”. The caricaturization of art is, also, a form of kitsch: ”a strategic advantage of great importance was the tendency of kitsch to take the shape of irony. The rebelious avangarde made use of a multitude of elements direcltly borrowed from the kitsch to reach their ironic and denigrating objectives”. Rarely and in isolated cases you can still meet authentic artistic elements, but the mixture of the artistic products of bad taste dominate the ”cultural market” and suffocates any attempt of original and really valuable cultural product. The thing which is absolutely apolling, though, is not the fact that some ”nobody” pretends to be an artist and presents its works which are the effect of just throwing some painting from a container over a canvas and over which he migh have a ”subtle” intervention through stepping on the fresh painting with his feet full of mud or other filthy materials a ”masterpiece” that he produces as following the consumption of some ”inspiring” psychoactive substances, but the fact that, in some cases, such a
”work of art” attracts the admiration of a large public wich is either fed up with its existence or just suffers from a high level of snobism or has nothing else to compare with and admire. Some would consider that the one that calls himself a ”creator of art” is not responsible in any way, ethically or morally, of the effects of his ”masterpiece” over the consumer of art and that it is possible that his ”product” is not meant to generate any effect over the above mentioned ”consumer”. In reality, the ”object of art” influences to a smaller or greater extent ”the receptor”. We believe that both the art producer and the cultural sellers have a moral duty by spreading the ”work of art”. Unfortunaltely, the latest are mostly interested in making immediate and important amounts of money. On the other hand, the role of the art is to educate the human towards the beautiful, the sublime, towards universal valuable truths and not the role of pushing the sense of artstic value towards ”darkness”. The post-modernist visual artist, when becoming incapable because of a total lack of inspiration and talent (we cannot even talk about the notion of ”genious”) to produce real art, choose the ”conceptualization”, reducing something that could be a visible artistic creation on the physical plan, to simply false and empty theories, thus raising the number of ”phylosophers” and ”writers”. Also, the radio and TV channels from the whole world are innundated with confusing information for the human psychic, with devilish images which can generate states of demonic paroxism; the Internet, which captivated not only the young generation but most of the adult one too, constantly influences the human psychic into a negative way. We could state that the ”artistic” productions realized in a mean way as ”the need of the male to conquer the woman” through any means, even the ”artistic” ones are a result of kitsch and has nothing to do with the fact of art. Under these conditions it necessary to imposed a change in mentality, an internal detoxifiation, a way of returning to normal in a superior sense, a way of knowing how to make the difference beween what is mean interest and what is superior interest. Only this way the human will be able to free himself of the daily stress that depicts the contemporaneity and will be able to come back to a healthy mentality in which a real hierarchy of values dominates. The so-called ”artists” from post-modernity ignore the fact that some artistic manifestations appeared many years ago and were especially conceived as some social, political, economical or cultural protests and are performing failed re-makes after something that once had sense and cultural significance. The fact that many of them believe themseves as being ”artists” producing objects of pseudo-art has as a result, as mentioned above, the degradation of the artistic production and, inevitably, a loss of the cultural values. The aesthetic sense of the public is continuously degrading due to, on one side, to the consumption of artistic productions of reduced quality, but also to the lack of discerning and acceptance of such bad taste products. On the other hand, the public lacks the qualitative bench-marks of comparison because it lacks veritable and valuable artistic ”products” whose realt artistic value is null. The post-modern artists consider that they have the obligation to adapt to the requests of the public, ignoring the fact that the veritable artist has the duty of educating the public and influence it (as much as possible in a positive way), to raise the receptive public to its level of exprimation and in no case to lower their value to the level of the uninnitiated level of the public. We can easily draw the conclusion that due to the rush for monely, celebrity and ”power” we witness a terrific spiritual decadence which has as a direct effect over the culture a worrying devaluation. Marcel Duchamp shocked the world of art in 1917 by exhibiting at the Independent Society of Artists from New York a urinal, dated and signed under the nickname R. Mutt, as being a work of art, but probably the message was clear and it was sending to the following generations that the art, beginning with that moment was only an insidious ”element” on which anyone can take a pee. And probably, Duchamp did not go wrong as long as a huge amount of non-valuable things crowd the exhibitions asking for being noticed first and be considered elements of culture. The total lack of common sense (and especially of the aesthetic sense) makes possible the cultural degradation that we witness and, by not caring or ignoring, we support a continuous descent of the ”evolution”. On the hand, the messing of art led to an aesthetic confusion, to a lowering of the quality of the artistic product, to a loss of the production technique, to a rendering and degradation of the ”products” of fine arts, facilitating the apparition on the market of some works made by amateurs calling themselves professionals. Basically, the artist gave up any technical privilege which he had over the novice. The profession as an artist was emptied of any kind of professionalism and if the access to it is not reduced to such a barrier – institutional, social, financial, moral – anyone who wants can consider himself an artist. The artistic anarchy, combined with the lack of aesthetic common sense, started the degradation of the production techique because the artist is no more convicted to the qualitative work and can exhibit to the public as being a ”work of genious” any kind of aberrant scribbling (as such or figuratively speaking). ”Everything is connected to the concept presented to the public and the work in itself does not present any importance anymore”, became the rule that the nowadays artists follow and which, because of the lack of a consistent content, worthy to appreciate, appeal to the presentation of the insigifiant artistic object in a sparkling form, attractive and nicely wrapped. We are surprised sometimes by the fervour with which some of the fine arts artists and critics admire and support works of art that they consider to be ”good” or even ”extraordinary”. But, according to the opinion of some specialists, these ”works of art” are just some embarassing elements on non-culture if we can only refer, for example, to some gestual paintings where the authors should not recognize any type of special techniques of drawing, parataxis of colours or rules of plastic composition, eveything being done according to the ”inspiration of the moment”. In fact, the artist randomly trowing paints out of boxes or tubes on a support, a canvas, a piece of wood, is having the impression that the respective work is a ”fabulous moment in the history of the human culture”. This way, trough immitation, superficiality, lack of artistic common sense, they reach the artistic inflation called kitsch. This analysis reveals one of the ”terrible” faces of the contemporary art: that the main aesthetic dimension of this period is, beyond doubt, the kitsch. This fact, probably due to the exhibation of the individual ego, to the lack of faith and rejection of divinity, makes almost impossible a recognition, even an axiological one, of the cultural values, both preceding and actual, even of the genious itself, whereas the characteristic of an artist of genoius is originality and in no way the plain immitation. In the production of the work of art, as well as in the contemplation of an artistic product, the exaggeration of the egotic feeling is an impediment which stays in the way of a good performing and receptation of the artistic phenomenon. As a conclustion, the socio-cultural-artistic phenomena is of an inferior quality when produced sine Deo, as folloing some purely egotic desideratum out of the mean desire of reaching celebrity or raising money in one way or another, and it can have a superior quality when produced under non-egotic ”inspiration” with real ”giving” as an impulse of the aesthetic feeling. The forms of authentic extasy obtained through meditation, deep interiorization, breathing techniques, total fasting, frees the human psychic and give a supradimentioned energy which is transfigurated by the artist in the creative act, energy which will push him to the realization of some cultural-artistic phenomena; lacking this transhuman energy, the artist, no matter how talented or how strong his desire is in performing the act of creation, would not be capable to produce impressive artistic phenomena, he will only create some objects lacking the message and the magic of the genuine art. Even if the concept of divinity, as supported by some modern theories, nihilistic, atheistic, etc., would be just an invention of the human mind –which, out of the necessity of creating a ”supporting point”, of a ”referrence point”, to which he would report – inexistent in reality, against all these the ”unreal” concept of divinity is a source of inspiration of all the earthly culture and civilization. Using as a support the philosophic and religious ideas concerning the divinity and its manifestation plans, the artist managed, during centuries, to generate a new, fascinating world where these ideas were brought to an interpreted, developed or exaggerated concrete plan. The last decades, in which there could be felt a removal of the human, implicitely of the artist, from the infinite divinity, generator of uncountable ideas, provokes great damages to the art and culture in general, the artist is deposessed of ”knowledge” and reports to ”nothingness” managing to de-nobilize art, reducing the significations, the message and representations through the producing of some works which represent the nothing: ex nihilo nihil fit. If, for milleniums, the art evolved and was raised on inimmaginable heights, during just a few decades the degenerated artists managed to lower the art to absolutely abominable levels, in modern art being exhibited under the title ”work of art” the artist’s excrements – in The Modern Art Museum from New York (MoMA), are exhibited under the title of ”art”, the excrements of the conceptual artist Pierro Manzoni who, probably, appealed to these degenerated manifestations also as a protest against the consumism and scraps which the contemporary art generates. The human stupidity and snobism know no boundaries and go so far that make possible the commercialization by famous auction houses of some boxes in which there are wrapped Manzoni’s excrements, sold with exorbitant prices. Some of these pathological and patogene manifestations go even further: artists get undressed in public, introduce in their anal orifice hoses with paint from which they afterwards spit paint by farthing on a random support, on another person or on a canvas which they afterwards exhibit in different galleries under the comment: the respective art comes from the inner parts of the artist. This types of degenerated shows which cultivate the ugliness and the hideousness above the limits of the suportable is called anal art. As a conclusion, we point out to the fact that if the divinity either being a concrete fact or an abstract notion invented by the human, the concept itself generated for milleniums real art, the lack or the denial of such a concept only generated misery, merdology and degeneration on all the plans of human existence. These being mentioned we can define the transpersonal dimensions that characterize the artistic creation as a transposion of a ”something” beyond the teluric space which finds its correspondent in the artistic work created in time. Either the artist is directly ”inspired” by unseen forces or he is endowed by birth with some special perceptions, either he gets to resonate with entities from parallel existential plans, using auxiliary means as the specific religious or philosophic techniques – total fasting, intended dehydration, prolonged time of non-sleeping, prayers, incantations, mediatations, special techniques of breathing control, sexual techniques etc. – or using natural psychotropic substances or of sythesis (alcohol, different herbs etc.) it is obvious that all these – and even many other external factors, as an abstract idea or notion, an unfulfilled love or not, a sound or a tune –, can determine the artist, depending on his abilities corellated with the socio-cultural moment of his existence, to realize remarkable cultural phenomena or some less important to the society. And, even if the Divinity is a being that we should give up to totally understand, which stays always beyond any representation that our imagination could conceive, does not mean that it does not exist and that we should abandon the main source of inspiration that generated the most important cultural and civilizatory phenomena of the whole humankind – and which, in the moments of giving away the divinity decayed lamentably knowing visible periods of crisis –, the humankind which, paradoxically, in the moment of the crisis, still turns its face to God. CONCLUSIONS
Under these conditions it is absolutely necessary to take an attitude to rehabilitate the concept of art, attitude which has to be taken into accout by all the art lovers, no matter they are art creators, critics, collectioners or admirers. We should stop ”swallowing” without a previous analysis the pertinence of the message which is being transmitted to us, either the auditively or visually. We should stop to let us led by diletant and bad-intended art critics who do not make anything else than to influence in bad the artistic taste of the confused masses. We should stop to accept the bad taste artistic products, the imbecile cultural works, the degenerated ones, that endanger the mentality of the humankind and the accentuation of degradation of the actual socio-cultural civilisation. We should stop producing kitsch, stop realizing reproductions and immitations, even if this thing is easy and brings substantial money. We have to be aware of the negative effects of the exaggerated consumism and to avoid the phenomenon of anti-culture named kitsch. We have to give up the intellectual laziness and get rid of the actual cultural nothingness. All these ca be realized, first of all, through a sincere self-analysis and a self-assessment, through the establishing of normal marks, critical, healthy, through the realization of an illuminating introspection that can make us do the ”right choice”. Even if we are confused by nihilism, atheism, disappointed by the failure of religions, we have to do all the necessary effort to find inside us, and nowhere else, the saving spark of divinity. The solution is to give up the exacerbated individual ego which characterizes the hypermaterialistic actual society led to self-destruction. An awakening of our conscience is necessary. Only this way the degenerated mentality of the actual society can be changed, by changing ourselves. The holotropism suggests as self-discovery methods techniques such as black fasting and deep interiorization through meditation. The holotropic art proposes the achievement of its objectives by trying to re-educate and re-orientate the veritable lovers of art, through the change of mentality of the actual society and through leading its way towards what is beautiful, good, universally valid. INVITATION

In order to create a connection between the holotropic art, artists, art collectors and admirers it was founded THE INTERNATIONAL HOLOTROPIC ART ASSOCIATION (I.H.A.A.) from each there are part of:

L’association ”HOLOTROPIC ART” France
L’Associazione ”HOLOTROPIC ART” Italia
The Association ”HOLOTROPIC ART” Romania

E.H.A.O. has as purpose the promotion of the holotropic art and is responsible with the organization of The International Annual Symposium of Holotropic Art, in which artists from different parts of the world, belonging to different cultures, are the subjects of a series of cultural-artistic experiments, symposium which is a reflection of the concept holotropic art, defined and introduced in art in 2006 by Edi APOSTU. The objective of The International Annual Symposium of Holotropic Art is to stimulate and start the imagination and the inspiration of the artist thorough differenent external stimuli which act on the psychic and that can stress upon the artistic and creative potential. In order to realize the symposiums, in which there is required the creation of works of art under the influence of the audition of some musical pieces, especially chosen or under the influence of other stimuli which are supposed to act as stimulents for emotions, creative energies. We invite all the lovers of authentic art and those who have ”common sense” to take part together with us into the achievement of the poposed objectives. All those who want to be part of those who share our ideas and implicitely, the holotropic art, are invited to become members of the existing organizations ”Holotropic Art” from the closest country in which the organization develops its activity. Obtaining the quality of being a member of any of the existing organizations ”Holotropic Art” can get the right to be recognized by all the other member organizations E.H.A.O. no matter the location where they develop their activity and to take part in the manifestations that the organizations develop. Please, ask through e-mail The Adhesion of being a member of INTERNATIONAL HOLOTROPIC ART ASSOCIATION (I.H.A.A.):

Association ”HOLOTROPIC ART” Romania

e-mail: [email protected]



L’association ”HOLOTROPIC ART” France

e-mail: [email protected]



L’Associazione ”HOLOTROPIC ART” Italia

e-mail: [email protected]



The name Holotropic means literally "moving toward wholeness" (from the Greek holos = whole and trepein = moving in the direction of something)