Readers and writers blog

This weblog is barely four months old and I’m already breaking a second rule, this time not about maintaining the diversity of our blogroll but about staying within the universe of blogs itself.

Art-spirit, a website of aesthetics and spirituality maintained by New York artist Ted Knerr, isn’t a weblog in the strictest sense. (On the other hand, what is strict about blogging, anyway?) The entries are mostly visual — art by Knerr and more than two dozen of his associates ranging from realism to abstractionism — and they change more slowly than do words in a blog.

But there are words, and what words they are. What caught my eye was Knerr’s description of abstract art, a more articulate and succinct description you will not find:

Avoiding pictures of people, things and their stories, abstraction allows spirit to be directly embodied in the art, not added to what is at least partly a narrative.

As examples, Knerr cites Wassily Kandinski, the Russian-born artist considered the father of modern abstract art, and Piet Mondrian, a Dutch artist whose work ranged through a variety of genres but was particularly noted for abstraction built on rectangular forms and lines:

(They) were drawn to abstraction to express their spirit more fully than traditional art encourages . . . Instead of illustrating spiritual ideas, their abstract paintings were direct manifestations of spiritual energy; sharply clear, splendid and joyous.

If you are puzzled by abstract art, or even if you hate it, or especially if you love it (put me in the first category), check out Knerr’s works — certainly the ones in acrylics and watercolors but particularly the digital art that he has generated on a computer.

It’s this last group of works, the digital art, that I find fascinating, not because I’m especially knowledgeable about art but because I’m drawn to their translucent, metallic quality and brilliant, kaleidoscopic colors. (Yes, I’m sure I could be hypnotized by a shiny object.)

I’m also impressed by Knerr’s apparent facility with a computer and the fact that his site has been up for eight years, a lifetime in the cyberworld.

Art-spirit also features Knerr’s photographs, which are as stunning to me as his digital art. But in the end, for me, it’s his words.

Knerr talks about art that “can gradually change your life and bring you a sense of the mystery, joy and profundity of life.” He quotes the 13th century Persian poet Rumi: “Do you think I know what I am doing? … As much as a pen knows what it is writing.” And the late writer Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk: “The true symbol does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself.”

Knerr saw something of Merton in a friend, Sam Avierett, a Columbia-trained journalist who over the years descended into homelessness and in February 2006 died in the streets:

(H)e was very much like one of the holy men in India or a monk in Burma or Tibet. Except that Sam made his spiritual contribution without being given the public recognition of holiness. He wore no robes and didn’t approach people for donations or even carry a beggar’s bowl or coffee cup . . . I think Sam’s homelessness and poverty had become the vehicle of his deep purpose in life, to nudge us all a small step toward enlightenment.

Now in his 70s, Knerr was trained as a mechanical engineer and industrial designer following in the footsteps of his father, a pioneer metallurgist and industrial innovator who must have been a nice man to know. Such as when he was told his company was required to have an additional fire reservoir:

My father loved swimming and created a free-form concrete pool and bathhouse in a corner of (the company’s) recreation field . . . This was a great favorite with employees, friends and family.

When was the last time your boss did something like that?

– Sid Leavitt