The Transcendent Life of Forms or the Forms of the Sacred

An Update on Sacred Art in the Spanish Tradition of Mystical Realism. A Concept Expanded by the Appearance of Photography

Abstract

The truth is that I am a bit out of my way. I am an artist and I handle well with the forms, but I am not used to giving lectures. Therefore, what I will try to do is a reflection on a series of my intuitions. Creative work is usually done on a plane that is not purely conceptual, although later we try to conceptualize it. And I will make that effort to try to concretize and conceptualize a series of intuitions in relation to iconography, and specifically, with religious iconography. I am going to expose a process - to put it in some way - inconclusive; a process, a way of dealing with the iconography that I am currently considering and which, in fact, has not yet ended. It is something that I am experiencing, and you will be able to see some images of the results that we are getting in the study.

The other day I was shown a representation of the Virgin and Child in her arms, in her breast, that I had done when I was studying fifth career. And it caught my attention to see that image again, because it was framed within a speech that was related to the projects of Jorge Oteiza. At that time I was very interested in the proposals of religious imagery that Oteiza had made. And those forms, which were tremendously subtle, almost specialists, were skimming abstraction. To get an idea, it was an image emptied, sculpted in negative and then positive. In such a way that what you found was a kind of niche but that had nothing to do with a niche. It was a hole, a kind of grotto in which a large body was imbedded that was a representation of the Mother and integrated into that body was the Child, finally at the feet of the Mother a saint prostrates and kisses them. This speech, to me, has sometimes raised a question that I put here on the table: the subject of communication.