ALAN McKEE & SPIRIT  
Essays by Edward Lucie-Smith,art historian and Alan McKee, artist

ALAN McKEE AND THE OCCULT TRADITION

Alan McKee's work, which combines digitized photography and advanced techniques of image manipulation using the computer with a strong mystical feeling for nature belongs to a distinguished tradition that now stretches back for more than 150 years.

When photography was invented, one of the things that fascinated its original audience was its power of reproducing natural details more accurately than any artist was able to do. It was not by accident that William Henry Foxe Talbot, the inventor of the negative/positive photographic process, titled the publication he issued to publicize his discovery The Pencil of Nature. The implications of the title were spelt out in a newspaper advertisement for the second part: “The Plates of this work are all ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS, and not, as some have supposed Engravings in Imitation. They are formed and impressed upon the paper by the action of light alone; and therefore do not require in the operator any knowledge of the art of drawing.” Many people at this time thought that photography had something sacred about it. It enabled God to speak directly to human sensibilities, without the need for mortal intermediaries, who might distort the message.

The Pencil of Nature was published [1844-5], at a time of strong religious revival in Britain. The Evangelical movement, which had flourished in the country since the late 18th century, was reinforced by the impact made by the newer Tractarians, under the leadership of John Keble. The first of the “tracts” or pamphlets that gave the movement its name was published in 1833. The revival was often linked to strong feelings for nature and the close observation of natural phenomena. John Ruskin, the pre-eminent art critic and theoretician of the Victorian age, placed great emphasis on the direct study of nature, as opposed to the study of the art of the past. In the preface to the first volume of Modern Painters [1843], he warns the young artist to beware of those ?who would give him the power and the knowledge of past time, and then fetter his strength from all advance, and bend his eyes on a beaten path; who would thrust canvas between him and the sky, and tradition between him and God." At the period when this was written, Ruskin was still an Evangelical Christian, though he later lost his faith. He was also a photographic practitioner, making an extensive series of daguerrotypes of Venetian buildings in preparation for his Stones of Venice [1851-3]. Even before this, Ruskin was an enthusiast for the new way of making images. In a letter to his father, written in 1846, he said of photography: “It is certainly the most marvelous invention of the century.” In an earlier letter, he describes it as “a noble invention”. Ruskin did not use such adjectives lightly.

Photography, as it diversified, rapidly lost any specifically Christian connotations, and at the same time it came to be realized that the camera, in trained and skilful hands, was as much a subjective, personal instrument of creation as the painter’s brush, though it took a much longer time before photography was recognized, not as a totally separate means of artistic expression, existing in a little universe of its own, but as simply one of the means whereby artistic images could be created, on the same footing as the application of paint to canvas or watercolor to paper. Essentially, this evolution only completed itself in the 1980s, which is to say about twenty years ago at the most.

The link between mystical feeling and technology was, however, a persistent theme in the story of the Modern Movement in art. This was especially true of those leading artists, chief among them Kandinsky and Mondrian, though there were also numerous others, who were attracted to the doctrines of Theosophy, which aimed to combine aspects of the great oriental religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, with modern scientific thought. Helena P Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Movement, wrote in The Secret Doctrine [1888]: “It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature of matter, and the infinite divisibility of the atom, that the whole science of Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to substance informed by the divine breath of its soul in every possible state of tenuity.”

Alan McKee's work therefore presents itself as a new phase in a long and distinguished development. One perceives in it an intricate interweaving of ideas, as well as the confident use of the latest digital imaging techniques. Essentially what he does is to combine two apparently contradictory strands of development. The actual structure of his compositions is based on the work of artists such as Jozef Albers, Max Bill and Ellsworth Kelly, but this is overlaid with imagery taken directly from nature. In a certain sense, a close parallel to the way they are composed can be found in certain Japanese screens, which also combine a dramatic abstract framework with exquisite details taken directly from nature.

Another parallel is with certain kinds of contemporary stage design. One can imagine some of these images serving as maquettes for scenes in Mozart’s Magic Flute, or for Klingsor’s garden in Wagner’s Parsifal. This suggests that the spectator’s relationship with them is not static, but shifting and dynamic. It also suggests that there will be, for many people who look at them, a synaesthetic element, that is, they are quite likely to suggest sounds, as part of the total experience.

This is a factor that helps to strengthen the link between McKee’s work and the Occultist tradition to which I have already referred. In fact, if one cares to trace it, this did not stop short with the early Modernists, but passed through many variations during the course of the 20th century. One member of this tradition is Jackson Pollock, who, when he was young, attended Theosophical retreats at Ojai in California. His wife Lee Krasner often spoke of the impression these events made on him. It is therefore not surprising to find a new manifestation of the same spirit in Canada.

Edward Lucie-Smith

The Essence of Art

In his famous essay, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Walter Benjamin focuses on reproducibility as the major factor in changing perceptions of art over the centuries. However, I would argue that even more important is the shift from the creation of art for sacred purposes (Benjamin’s cultic art) to creation for decorative purposes.  

    As an artist, I believe, that the spark of the Spirit is the sine qua non of art and that reproducibility is much less important as a determinant of what has happened to the creation and marketing of art in the last one hundred and fifty years.  

    What do I mean by “the spark of the Spirit?” I mean art done for the purpose of connecting the artist and viewer with a sacred force, a force ordinarily beyond the grasp of the viewer. The most obvious form of this in the west is the icon of the Orthodox Church. In the east we have the Yantra and Mandala. These images are created as a result of spiritual exercises and meditations by the artist. And they are intended to produce a similar state in the viewer. They aim at being “sacred doorways” to transcendent experience. They are magical, not ordinary objects. I believe that it is this magic that people seek when they go to museums or galleries. Unfortunately, in today’s made-for-market art, they rarely find it.

    This tradition of artworks as carriers of divine power was pursued right into the modern era by artists like Paul Klee, Vassily Kandinsky, Hans Hofmann, Piet Mondrian and many others. Some of these artists might have objected to describing their work as “magical” but all would agree that they were aiming at a transformative experience for the viewer. This search for transcendence in art, or as Hans Hofmann put it, “the search for the real,”  has mostly been supplanted by a search for celebrity and notoriety. Artists today spend a great deal of time “looking at the market,” defining themselves by what is selling and how their work does or does not compare to it. This is the opposite of being truly creative in the sense of making something new that comes to the artist directly from Spirit. Instead of being inspired, lifted up by a transcendent spirit, artists are working  by comparing and modifying their own work with what is selling. They are working from the outside in, instead of the inside out. Hence, the Icon has been debased to a logo, the artist to a brand of goods.

—Alan McKee