Art is the master

We asked: What is the significance of relationships between people, thoughts and contexts? Read Bodo’s answer.

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Late summer day. London. Tate Gallery of Modern Art (Tate Modern).

A whole day of 20th century art.

A whole day of seeing an inconceivable search and skill in countless disciplines, creative power, commitment, imagination, originality, as many languages as works.

An inconceivable rich experience of sensual and non-sensual phenomena, natural, human or social; fantastic, cruel, happy, mythical, representational, enchanting, critical, scientific, spiritual and so on, issues that are the starting point of a work. Nothing exists that could not become the starting point of an artwork, no quality that could not be inherent in a work of art.

Each of these works is a glimpse into a world that emerged from a world of dealing with the world. Three worlds - the world of the artwork, the world of the artist and the world which was the starting point of the work.

The first world, the work, is what I encounter. But what do I encounter and how and what does it trigger? Who am I, the one who encounters? This is the question that every work, more or less urgently, calls up in me.

The middle world, the artist, is the only world I don't see, because there was no vernissage where he or she is present. There was an ever-increasing mystery building up - who is this? Who sees, feels, understands, creates like this?

The third world, the starting point for the work, is sometimes quite clear and sometimes not decipherable at all, and all the intermediate levels exist. What is this world, inner or outer, man-made or natural, that was the starting point here?

Three worlds call up three questions about three worlds.The question about myself, the question about the other person who speaks in this way, and the question about the motif, which then acquires a context of meaning that confronts me again with myself, for it is I who want to learn to read what I encounter.

First of all, there is uncertainty, consternation in the encounter with what is called art. Often more than in the encounter with all other worlds. Even if it doesn't want to be particularly provocative. Art evokes our own questions, indeed questioning in general, and it often arises from a feeling of the questionable, the uncertain, an insecurity that prompts activity. It creates something of which we cannot immediately know what we need it for, what we can do with it. Uncertainty that causes uncertainty. Unlike insecurities that have come about by other means, the insecurities caused by art have a power in them that evoke a deeper trust in the world. Rarely immediate or instantaneous, but in the further course of life. Trust in three worlds - one's own, someone else's and the world as such. A discovering trust.

In this sense, Anthroposophy, as a growing awareness of the human in the world and the world in the human, is perhaps most akin to art, to the uncertainty it engenders and to a discovering trust.

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