The different art forms have produced many great images and visions, often expressed by remarkable individuals or groups and genius-creators.
In Architecture, there are the beautiful conceptions of Frank Lloyd Wright, America’s greatest architect as expressed in Fallingwater or the first Usonian houses.
In Painting, there are the intense canvases of van Gogh and the brilliant representations of Canadian landscape by the Group of 7.
In Sculpture, there is, of course, the outstanding brilliance of Michelangelo.
In Dance, there is the Vienna ballet dancers and many other fine global troupes.
In Literature, there is the Drama of Shakespeare, the Poetry of Wordsworth, and the Novels of Tolstoy. All large fashioners of splendid verbal envisionings.
In Music, there are the imagistic Song Lyrics of Bob Dylan and the Pure Music of the Strauss “On the Beautiful Danube”, the latter to lift the spirits of the multitudes.
In Film, there are the large canvases of Welles in Citizen Kane and Lean in Lawrence of Arabia. These days, many still turn to film for its theatre-screen-sized images and visions of enhanced understanding and consciousness.
So the Arts are vitally necessary for whatever inspiring, uplifting images and visions of possible human life experience and spiritual nourishment, quite frankly.
But looking beyond the Arts, there are other areas and aspects that provide Images and Visions. Nature is obviously one with its sublime scenery such as the Rockies or via animal life (our relationship with dogs, cats, and birds, for instance) and plant life (represented best perhaps by beautiful flowers and gardens).
A particularly uplifting time of year is Christmas during which everyone seems to be on their best behavior through January with the beauty of human kindness and charity work mixed in with all the amazing decorations and color.
Then there are beautiful people ranging from ordinary people to the greats who continue to inspire like Terry Fox to the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King, Jr. Usually the heroes and Great Men and Women (Disney and Rachel Carson) are visionaries who make significant contributions to humankind all.
So here then are at least three other notable examples of images and visions beyond or allied with the Arts. Some thoughts now on images and visions.
Images are most obvious in visual form, but it does well to remind ourselves that we have 5 senses and that the imagery that positively affects us also includes sound, smell, taste, touch, and movement. Thus, we may be invigorated and enlivened by the smell and taste of good wine and food. Or spiritually moved by music like classical music, East Indian music, or jazz. Or physically, emotionally, and spiritual released and freed by touch as in therapeutic massage.
The visions that the Arts and other area give us affect our awareness, expand our consciousness and reveal the multitudes and creative possibilities of human beings. We ‘see’ and ‘feel’ more, moving beyond our self-encapsulated egos to empathize with, sympathize with, and connect with others. society, and the larger, global world, even so far as with those people long dead and gone or yet to born (as Whitman envisioned in his Brooklyn Ferry crossing poem).
I will just add one more element to the picture and that is of Voice. Each of these creators or great people and groups have a unique, eloquent Voice that speaks to us whether it be the voice of the sea crashing on a beach, the dark anguished voice of O’Neill in A Long Day’s Journey into Night, or the voice of the Butcharts who planned and designed their world-famous famous gardens in B.C.
So, behind whatever images and visions, there is also a voice that speak of its creative processes and expressions. I believe that human beings cannot survive without Beauty, the Arts, Nature, and the Great People and geniuses of history and culture. Without these, we are massively impoverished beyond belief and have far less to live for (with the exception of Family).
