After the Scream

Last week, I listened to the CBC radio program Tapestry which was discussing an exposition of The Spiritual Impulse in art, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/mystical-landscapes-1.3842067/the-spiritual-impulse-in-art-from-van-gogh-to-monet-1.3842081.  It gave wonderful examples what could be described as mystical art by artists such as Van Gogh and Edvard Munch.

One example that engaged me on a deep level was the painting by Munch that directly followed his most famous work – the Scream which has that iconic image of a man in agony; a portrait of existential dread.  Munch was, not surprisingly, challenged by mental instability and spent some time in an asylum.  When he was released, he produced a work that expressed absolute radiance and joy – the absolute opposite of the anguish and despair of the Scream.  From his depths came the explosion of another kind – one is absolutely opposite in feeling and effect.  Rather than agony what was brought into being was  “The Sun”.  From the depths of darkest despair depicted in The Scream we travel to the heights of brilliant bliss of The Sun.

 

     
                                                    Edvard Munch. The Scream 1893
 

                                                   Edvard Munch. The Sun. 1910-13.

These two pictures are a wonderful exposition of the mystical journey or The Mystic Way as it was called by Evelyn Underhill.  As noted in the Tapestry program:
The Mystic Way (was) described by Evelyn Underhill as a five-part journey in which light periods alternate with dark.  It begins with an awakening, followed by a period of purgation, which can be seen as dealing with the shadow side of the psyche.  Then you come to a period known as illumination, where you start to see things in a new and perhaps original way.  For some this can be followed by the dark night of the Soul where there seems to be the absence of the divine.  The final stage is unity in which you understand that you are one with the divine.  Underhill understood this to be analogous to the artistic creative process.

For me, The Sun is an illustration of the beginning and the end of that journey – the alpha and the omega.  The image captures the essence of the journey which is the return to the beginning as described by T.S. Eliot, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

The image in the Sun is the explosion at the moment after creation - the Big Bang, when the universe was brought into beginning by the Word and began that Mystic Way.  It is also a final return to what Teilhard De Chardin called the Omega Point.  When all is joined in the ultimate unity. 

My you be blessed on your Mystic Way.