Art & Humanity in Metamorphosis

by Michael Howard Prelude

Welcome to my space.

It is a little chaotic right now with everything in process and nothing really finished. But if you are interested, I am happy to show you what I am working on.

Some people feel uncomfortable when looking at works of art because they are not sure what they are supposed to think or feel. This discomfort can be compounded by the presence of the artist. I try to be sensitive to this, but perhaps you can imagine the insecurity an artist like myself can feel not knowing what people think and feel about their work. I hope any discomfort we may share can awaken empathic interest in each other’s perspectives and experience.

From my side, I am actively interested in what you think and feel about my artwork. However, to be clear, I am not so interested in whether you like it or not. I hope it puts you at ease to know I am not looking for compliments, nor will I be offended if you tell me you have difficulty connecting to my art. I can easily imagine the challenges my artwork may pose. For that very reason, I want to better understand those difficulties so I can take them into account in my future work.

Artistic freedom does not mean for me that I am at liberty to say and do whatever I like. I do not assume that you the viewer bear the full burden of understanding and appreciating my artwork. I see my art as a service in the way teachers serve their students, and doctors serve their patients. Teachers try to serve their students’ need to learn. And if they have difficulties, a good teacher does not blame them but looks for more effective approaches to their subject. Likewise, doctors try to serve their patients’ health. A good doctor does not take it as a personal affront if a patient does not respond to a certain therapy but instead looks for another therapy that may work better.

It is natural and meaningful for me to ask: What is the human need that I am trying to serve as an artist?

Through the years, one thing has become clear: there are no simple and quick answers to this question; if anything, it only spawns more questions. While any final answer continues to elude me, I am not disheartened. In fact, there is nothing I prefer to ponder and work at.

One thing most people are clear about with works of art, and much else, is what pleases or displeases them. Reacting to a work of art with some degree of sympathy or antipathy comes so naturally to us that we think nothing of it. And yet, when I said earlier that I am not particularly interested in whether you like or dislike my artwork, I had this common reaction in mind. To simply like or dislike a work of art seems to me an inadequate response because it says more about you the viewer than the work of art itself. If we are interested in the artwork and, by extension, all that the artist thought and felt in shaping the artwork, then our personal sympathy or antipathy does not help us, it actually gets in the way. To fully experience and, in that sense, truly know a work of art, we must find another approach.

Most people think that artists make things—drawings, paintings, and sculptures—in order to satisfy a deep need to express themselves. And it is generally assumed that they hope to achieve some degree of recognition, if not fame and fortune, through exhibiting and selling their work. While this view may apply to some artists, it is a caricature that masks the deeper motivations inspiring many artists.

“Call to Courage” 2018, acrylic on wood panel, 24”x72”

“Call to Courage” 2015, acrylic on wood panel, 24”x96”

“Call to Courage” 2015, plaster, 16”x48

“Call to Courage” 2016, acrylic on wood panel, 24”x72”

Most artists draw, paint, and sculpt because of their need to engage in a creative process more than to produce an art object. The art object is the by-product of creative activity. For example, I paint to explore the mystery of color and how it is formed on a two-dimensional surface. And I sculpt to explore the mystery of form and how material substances like clay or wood take on three-dimensional form. I do not paint and sculpt to express myself, but rather to let color and form speak to me. On that basis, I aspire to enter into an inner dialogue with color and form. I share the outer results of my inner activity with color and form—my paintings and sculptures—to give others an opportunity to let color and form speak to them, so they might also enter into an inner dialogue with color and form.

For me, this is the spiritual service of my art.

There is no denying that I draw, paint, and sculpt for my own enrichment. But that in no way contradicts my aspiration to serve others. I know of no better way to help others deepen their experience of color and form than through deepening my own experience. In that sense, I am like a scout simply blazing a trail that others might follow.

My starting point and the foundation of my artistic activity is the cultivation of a way of observing that leads to a deeper experience of color and form. Through teaching art to children and adults, I have come to see the value this way of seeing has, not only for artists creating works of art, but for all human beings in all spheres of life.

I am an artist, but I am not shy in acknowledging that I do not fully understand what it means to be an artist. I regard this not as a shortcoming but as a positive quality. It seems to me essential for an artist today to wrestle on a daily basis with the question: what am I trying to serve through my art? Compared to doing what I feel like doing, I find it more meaningful to strive to serve my contemporaries. Above and beyond our physical needs, each of us has inner or spiritual needs. I see my task as an artist is to discover ways that art—color and form—are able to serve the spiritual needs of humankind today.

Likewise, I am a human being, but I do not know what it means to be fully human. But it is meaningful, and I believe essential that I wrestle each day with the question: what does it mean to be fully human?

It is clear that art is always evolving, but when I enter my studio each day, I do not know exactly what I will do, or where my work will take me in a week, a month, or a year. I do not know what it means to be an artist because my art, and art in general, are in metamorphosis.

We all know that humankind and human society have changed continually throughout history. But when we wake up each morning we do not know what will happen to us today, and how that will change us in a week, a year, or in decades. We do not know what it means to be fully human because our humanity is in metamorphosis.

Art and humanity are in metamorphosis. My question is: what is the relationship between the metamorphosis of art and the metamorphosis of our humanity? If these questions are as compelling for you as they are for me, then it would seem we have begun a journey of inquiry.

Enlivening the School for Spiritual Science

The Portland anthroposophical community is to be commended for its intention to enliven the work of the School for Spiritual Science and its Sections. I am honored to be part of this effort.

In my preparations, I have found myself approaching this task from two directions. On the one hand, I am revisiting and reflecting upon statements made by Rudolf Steiner about the School and Sections. On the other hand, I am reflecting on my own experience as a member of the School and the Visual Art Section. The first approach offers objective insight, but can seem abstract and remote to actual experience. Focusing on my personal experience is meaningful to myself, but may lack universal resonance. I am hoping that some combination of both will strike the right balance between objective knowledge and enlivening experience. The following is meant only to indicate some of the directions I hope to take up with you in person.

As a founding member of the Visual Art Section in North America, I gave much time and effort to organizing Art Section meetings and conferences so that artists could gather to deepen their understanding and experience of the creative process. Over the years, our work took many forms but at the heart of everything we did was the question: What does it mean as an artist to work with and out of spiritual science in serving the cultural needs of our time? It is always meaningful to spend a few days with artist colleagues working with such questions through conversation and practical artistic activity.

But there is another dimension to my relationship to the Art Section that has little to do with working with fellow artists in meetings and conferences. As much as I value working with colleagues, I feel most deeply and intimately active as a member of the Visual Art Section when I am working alone in my studio. In spite of the outer aloneness, when I am painting and sculpting in my studio I do not inwardly feel alone, I feel integrated within a community. This feeling of community is certainly based in part on the connections I have with artists around the globe, whose work may be outwardly different from my own, but with whom I share a mutual striving to serve the spiritual needs of the 21st century through art. When I enter my studio I am grateful for the outer space I have to work in. However, when I enter the physical space of my studio, but also when I find myself in other physical spaces where I might be teaching for a few days, I am aware of entering an inner space as I begin to work. This space is a soul-spiritual space, but it is no less real than a physical space, because it surrounds my artistic efforts in meaning and purpose. I think of this inner space as the Visual Art Section of the School precisely because it is a soul-spiritual space. It is in this space that I feel myself within a community that includes my fellow artists, but is more than these earthly colleagues.

“Evolutionary Metamorphosis”, 2018, acrylic on wood panel, 12”x60”

“Rhapsody”, 2014, plaster, 16”x32”

“Rhapsody”, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 18”x36”

The other feature of my artistic activity that brings me into this inner space of the Art Section is the spirit of inquiry that underlies most of what I do as an artist. It has always been evident to me that Rudolf Steiner’s art impulse—the anthroposophical or spiritual-scientific stream of art—has little if anything to do with painting spiritual content, in a particular outer style received from Steiner or anyone else. It is a fair question to ask: what is anthroposophical art? But any simple or quick response cannot lead to any real answer. A true and fruitful answer comes through learning to live with, carry, and work at one’s question for weeks, months, years, and perhaps a lifetime. For example, my whole being is identified with questions such as the following:

How might the spiritual needs of contemporary human beings be better served through art?

How might engaging with the arts, both as artist and viewer of art, awaken new ways of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and willing?

How might art awaken new faculties and capacities that allow human beings to better meet the earthly needs of human life, and at the same time spiritualize human consciousness towards a living relationship with the spiritual worlds?

Such questions are the foundation of my life’s work. That means a spirit of inquiry permeates my way of life, my way of working. In the workshop in May, I look forward to sharing how this spirit of inquiry led me to see my artistic work as a form of spiritual-scientific research. To avoid speaking about spiritual-scientific research in the abstract, I will spend some time describing a few areas that I have explored and, in that sense, researched as an artist. For example, I will share an excerpt from a lecture Steiner gave to eurythmists where he describes how the human form arises through the formative gesture of the sounds of speech as we know them through eurythmy. This awoke in me the thought that if the human form arises through the interweaving of all the vowels and consonants, what other forms arise through one or two-orthree sounds of speech? Little did I know as I read these thoughts in my mid-twenties that I was beginning an artistic journey that has become part of my life’s work that I continue to this day. What does an ‘M’ look like compared to a ‘K’? Such simple questions opened a lifetime of creative activity that then led me to other artistic but human questions such as:

What is metamorphosis?

How can an artistic experience of metamorphosis awaken new insight and practical capacities for working with the living laws of metamorphosis, not only for artists, but also for all human beings in all spheres of human life?

Bringing you into my artistic questions and how I approached them may be of interest in itself for some. But my main reason for sharing my artistic research efforts is to help others discover their potential for soul-spiritual inquiry. It is understandable and appropriate that we feel a certain reservation about speaking about spiritualscientific research being applicable to anyone but Rudolf Steiner. However, there is reason to believe that Rudolf Steiner himself had the highest expectations that students of spiritual science would follow in his footsteps by striving to become spiritual scientific researchers themselves. This expectation is most succinctly articulated in the ninth of the founding statutes or principles for the Anthroposophical Society:

Article 9: The purpose of the Anthroposophical Society will be the furtherance of spiritual research; that of the School of Spiritual Science will be this research itself. A dogmatic stand in any field whatsoever is to be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society. — Statutes/Principles of the Anthroposophical Society, Christmas Conference 1924

Without watering down the highest level of spiritual-scientific research as modeled by Rudolf Steiner, it is possible to see a spectrum of research activity that begins the moment we are moved to work at our inner questions whether related to our station in life or simply being a human being at this time in human evolution. There is no end to studying the results of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual-scientific research, but our own development, and more significantly, the development of spiritual science as a cultural force for metamorphosing a dying civilization—depends on more individuals becoming spiritual researchers. In this respect, it is crucial that spiritual science becomes more than our personal worldview that enriches and gives meaning to our lives. The future of human evolution depends on human beings becoming spiritual scientists and researchers in the same way that our present civilization is built on our becoming natural scientists and researchers.

This is what the Ninth Statute is pointing to when it says the purpose of the School of Spiritual Science is the actual practice of spiritual research. That suggests that the full meaning of becoming a member of the School for Spiritual Science is to develop the capacity to be a spiritual-scientific researcher. The special or vocational sections of the School are clearly intended as the outer and inner spaces where individuals can collaborate with colleagues to support each other in developing the faculties and methods for doing spiritual scientific research in their particular field. The same applies no less for the General Section, however in this case, there is much less research activity because its tasks are less well understood. The General Section is where the lessons of the First Class have their place within the spiritual architecture of the School. In addition to the Class lessons, the General Section is where all subjects of a universally human nature— karma and reincarnation, meditation, Christology and similar subjects—can be taken up, not simply for study, but as spheres of research.

When the General Section is seen to be a place like all the Sections, where colleagues engage in spiritual research, new light is shed on the lessons and mantras of the First Class. They belong to the path of developing the faculties and capacities of spiritual-scientific researchers. The lessons and mantras would be worked with in a different manner and spirit when taken up by a community of striving spiritual researchers.

As the spirit of inquiry and research permeates all the Sections, including the General Section and the Class lessons, the School for Spiritual Science, as well as the Anthroposophical Society, will find new purpose and creative life as it fulfills its task of bringing the spiritual and cultural renewal so desperately needed in our time.

The Story of CoQuest

“The human being only plays when fully human, and he is fully human only when he plays.” Friedrich Schiller

In the spring of 1979, I was playing chess with a friend when I found myself becoming uncomfortable with the fact that only one of us could win and the other must necessarily lose. Ever since, I have lived with the questions: Is competition essential to a good game? Why can’t a good game require collaboration? For almost 40 years, I have been exploring how to create just such a game where collaboration, rather than competition, is the primary dynamic.

All the great games played for centuries depend on some form of competition to make them challenging and exciting to play. The primary motivation for playing is the prospect of winning. In team sports—as well as in business, politics and warfare—there is an odd mix of collaboration and competitiveness where each team exercises a high level of collaboration among themselves in order to be more effective in defeating the other team. This begs the question: Why do we compete with some people and co-operate with others? Is there a reason why we don’t co-operate with all people, all the time? Competing is not easy, but collaborating is far more challenging because it means finding strategies that serve the progress of all the players, not just one’s own.

The fact that self-interest is so dominant and destructive in today’s world is no reason to accept it as unavoidable. This is the very reason we must intensify our efforts to foster collaboration as an essential social capacity. We cannot eradicate self-interest entirely, but we can strive to balance and harmonize our self-interest with the legitimate self-interest of others by fostering empathy and compassion.

If all competitive games are, in effect, “conquest” games, I have coined the name “CoQuest” to describe games based on the challenges of collaboration. In most “conquest” games, like chess and Go, players find themselves in the polarizing context of “black versus white.” In CoQuest, the Dark and Light Demons are the common adversaries of all players. Can the players work together to outsmart the Dark and Light Demons so that all 12 Questors reach a Seat at the Round Table where they will be crowned with a StarStone? CoQuest is more than a game. The high art of CoQuest is the way we battle our demons together.

While it can be played simply for the fun of it, playing CoQuest can support individuals and groups interested in developing the capacity to balance individual self-interest with social harmony and unity.

CoQuest is usually played by two or four players, but it can be played by one person. Solitaire CoQuest is especially suited for individuals looking for a contemplative practice that fosters inner focus and creative renewal. Visit coquest.org to learn more.

"Turning Point" 2014, plaster, 20"x30"

"Turning Point" 2015, acrylic on wood panel, 36"x48"

“Untitled” 2018, 16”x20”, acrylic on wood panel

Michael Howard (livingformstudio@gmail.com) was born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1946. He began sculpting at the age of fifteen, studied sculpture at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and received a BFA from Eastern Michigan University, and a MA in Fine Arts from Columbia Pacific University in CA. He met the work of Rudolf Steiner in 1969 attending Emerson College in England. “Since then Rudolf Steiner’s worldview has informed my striving as an artist, a teacher and an evolving human being. For forty-five years I have explored the qualitative relationship between the sounds of speech and sculptural form. For the last ten years I have expanded my exploration to creating visible music as well. I have also developed the medium of rice drawing as a way to school social artistic capacities.” He edited and introduced a collection of lectures on art by Rudolf Steiner entitled Art as Spiritual Activity: Rudolf Steiner’s Contribution to the Visual Arts, and wrote a book on the role of art in education called Educating the Will. He lives and works in Amherst, MA. His website is: livingformstudio.org