EXPLORING ARTISTS AS SHAMANS: A CRITICAL & HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

DENITA BENYSHEK

SAYBROOK UNIVERSITY SAN FRANCISCO, CA

UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIXWESTERN WASHINGTON

INTERNATIONALSOCIETY FOR

SHAMANISTICRESEARCHERS

2011

ConfluenceArt Career

Master of Fine Arts, Painting.Professional visionary artist.Over 60 juried group exhibits. Work in many collections including the Glass Museum in Denmark.Multi-media performance works including dance.Choreography.Theatre: directing plays, acting, & scenic design.Poet.Art educator.

Shamanism

Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman.

Ruth Inge-Heinze, seminar on

shamanism, Saybrook University.

Studied with Stanley Krippner.

Experiences with traditional shamans, visions, & dreams.

Currently, doctoral candidate in psychology.

Understand how your unique background can contribute to the field of shamanic studies.

Historical Overview of Research Literature

Understand trajectory of thought in studies of shamanism:

• History

• Philosophy

• Dominant voices

• Prejudice

• What is said can indicate what is not said.

EUROPEAN AGE OF EXPLORATION

European contact with Siberian shamans:

• Created conceptual relationship between shamans and artists.

• Described rituals with concepts from fine arts. (Dance, music, theatre.)

• Mixed interpretations

• “diabolic invocations,” Thévet, 1557.

• “mediocre performances by

cheaters,” Gmelin, 1751.

• “tricks of charlatans,” Diderot, 1765.

ROMANTICISM

• European fascination with esoteric religions and superstitious beliefs.

• Johann Gottfried von Herder

(late 18th C):

• Shaman as artist, poet, healer, musician, magician, spiritual specialist.

• Create order out of chaos. Organize societies.

• Imagination:• “…knot of the relationship between

mind and body…”• Would reveal truth about shamans.

ROMANTICISM Continued

• Information drifted West, deeper into Europe.

• Shift:

• From Siberian and Sami shamans as artists.

• To European artists as shamans:• Self-Image of artists.• Subject matter of art.• How fine art functioned

for the audience.

ROMANTICISM Continued

Flaherty (1992), von Goethe’s (1808) Faust:• “hovering forms” and “familiar

phantoms” in dedication.

Williams (1993):• Flaherty confused shamanism with

occult.• Unstable definition of shaman.

Provide validated definition for shaman.

Read primary sources & make an independent, informed interpretations.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

• Ideal:

– Abstract reason would lead to emancipation through total knowledge of humanity, society, and nature.

• Method:

– Experience,– Logic, and– Experiment.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT Continued:

DENIS DIDEROT

• Encyclopaedie (1713-1784)

– Philosophe: “trampling on prejudice, tradition, universal consent, authority, in a word, all that enslaves most minds, dares to think for himself.”

– Shamans: “imposters” who performed “tricks that seemed supernatural to an ignorant and superstitious people.”

• Rameau’s Nephew (1762)

– Philosophe and an unconventional individual.

– Flaherty (1992): represented “things shamanic: acting or illusion, flights of fancy or genius, irrationality, heated enthusiasm, emotional agitation, frivolity, and androgynous childhood.”

Rameau’s Nephew:

“I don't think much of these eccentrics. Some

people turn them into familiar acquaintances, even

friends. Once a year they interest me, when I meet

them, because their character stands in contrast to

others and they break that fastidious uniformity

which our education, our social conventions, and

our habitual proprieties have introduced.”

“If one of them appears in company, he's a grain of

yeast which ferments and gives back to everyone

some part of his natural individuality. He shakes things

up. He agitates us. He makes us praise or blame. He

makes the truth come out, revealing who has value.

He unmasks the scoundrels. So that's the time a man

with sense pays attention and sorts his world out.”

(Diderot, 1762).

Read original source.

AGE OF REASON

THOMAS PAINE (1736-1809)

Rejected supernatural phenomena:

• Prophesies,

• Miracles,

• Divine inspiration,

• Revelation, and

• Most ritual.

AGE OF REASON DEISTS:

• Reason and observation of nature proves existence of supreme creator.

• Religious toleration.

AGE OF REASON: DEISTS continued

• Rational inquiry into all subjects.

• Although suspect, shamanism worthy of investigation.

MYTHOLOGY

James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1900)• Knowledge of prehistoric cultures could be gained by

examining living societies at the same level of technological sophistication.– Method: Cross Cultural Analogy with systadic societies.

• Sympathetic Magic:– Based on “the principle that like produces like” (p. 23) and enacted

through imitation.

• Influenced: Cartailhac and Breuil (1900)compared prehistoric cave art with contemporary stone age societies.

Problems: Paleolithic cave art interpreted as hunting magic utiilized by men.

Despite: Bogoras (1910), Chukchi women were shamanic leaders.

Khagalov (1916), mythical matriarchal shamanic origins.Mongolian goddess created 1st shaman/artist.

Majority of researchers/explorers were male (often not welcomed to rituals conducted by women).

WOMEN AS EARLIEST SHAMANS AND ARTISTS?

An excavation at Dolní Věstonice, Czech Republic, unearthed the oldest known grave of a shaman – a woman (60,000 BCE) (Tedlock, 2005)

Forensic methods used to analyze graphic forms, known as finger fluting, in the Rouffignac cave in France. 5 of 7 patterns made by women (Van Gelder & Sharp, 2009).

Snow (2009) analyzed hand stencils in Peche Merle & Gargas caves (France) & El Castillo cave (Spain). Most were hands of women – which Snow then assumed were creators of nearby paintings.

Beware of gender biased research & writing (“he”, “him”).

ICONOGRAPHY

Erwin Panofsky (1939) :

Analysis of motifs in images, stories, and allegories; interpretation of themes through historical, cultural, or social context; revelation of “symbolic values”; iconographic synthesis; and discovery of intrinsic meaning.

ART HISTORY

Rushing, W. J. (1987). Ritual and myth: Native American culture and Abstract Expressionism. In E. Weisberger (Ed.), The spiritual in art: Abstract painting 1890-1985 (pp. 273-296). Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Abbeville Press.

Tucker, M. (1992). Dreaming with open eyes: The shamanic spirit in 20th century art and culture. San Francisco, CA: Aquarian/Harper.

Levy, M. (1993). Technicians of ecstasy: Shamanism and the modern artist. Norfolk, CT: Bramble Books.

Weiss, P. (1995). Kandinsky and old Russia: The artist as ethnographer and shaman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

THE TRAJECTORY OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Plato (360 BCE), The Phaedrus.

• “Divine Madness” referred to spiritual inspiration, often misinterpreted as insanity.

Cesare Lombroso (1891), The Man of Genius.

• Phrenology & physical degeneration identified the insane genius: short, pale, hunchbacked, lame, emaciated, left-handed.

• Also: “Excessive originality,” symbolism, inspiration from dreams, losing sense of time.

THE TRAJECTORY OF ARTISTIC PSYCHOPATHOLOGY continued

Havelock Ellis (1904), A Study of British Genius.

• Population: artists, poets, judges, wrestlers, soldiers, sailors, etc.

• An earl who translated a Spanish work on metallurgy & a countess of “congenial tastes & qualities.”

• “…it cannot be said that we have seen any ground to infer that there is any general connection between genius and insanity, or that genius tends to proceed from families in which insanity is prevalent.”

THE TRAJECTORY OF ARTISTIC PSYCHOPATHOLOGY continued

Plato (misinterpreted), “scientific” studies of Lombroso cited and Ellis (also misinterpreted) by:

Andreasen, N. C. (1987). Creativity and mental illness: Prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives. American Journal of Psychiatry(144), 1288-1292.

Then, Andreasen cited by:

Jamison, K. R. (1993). Touched with fire: Manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament. New York: The Free Press.

Importance of reading original works.

THE TRAJECTORY OF ARTISTIC PSYCHOPATHOLOGY continued

Then, Andreasen (1987) & Jamison (1993) cited by:

Whitley, D. S. (2009). Cave paintings and the human spirit: The origin of creativity and belief. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.

• Major premise: Prehistoric artists were shamans.

• Minor premise: All artists are psychopathological.

• Conclusion: Therefore, all prehistoric shamans were psychopathological artists.

Fallacies: False assumptions in premises; therefore, conclusion is false.

THE TRAJECTORY OF ARTISTIC PSYCHOPATHOLOGY continued

Whitley ignored:

• Research literature that argued against the psychopathology of creative individuals, demonstrating the mental/emotional health of creators.

Whitley misinterpreted:

• Richards, R., Kinney, D. K., Lunde, I., Benet, M., & Merzel, A. P. C. (1997). Creativity in manic-depressives, cyclothymes, their normal relatives, and control subjects. In M. A. Runco & R. Richards (Eds.), Eminent creativity, everyday creativity, and health (pp. 119-136). Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

THE TRAJECTORY OF ARTISTIC PSYCHOPATHOLOGY continued

Richards (2011) stated “It was not the sicker people who were more creative. Better functioning individuals – or people during better functioning mood states – showed the highest creativity.”

Also, the creative “compensatory advantage was also suggested for psychiatrically normal 1st degree relatives of bipolar probands.”

Perhaps Whitley only read the popular, misrepresentative, mini version of the study that was widely publicized:Proving that creators were insane.

In addition, Whitley ignored studies showing that shamans were either more healthy mentally and emotionally or the same as community.

Avoid citing citations. Read the original publication.Read widely. Look for disconfirming evidence.

CREATIVE STUDIES

PERSON

• Biography

• Personality

PRODUCT

• Iconography

• Function

ENVIRONMENTAL PRESS

• History, Family, Socio-Economic Status, etc.

NEGLECTED: PROCESS

How is the Artist’s Creative Process Shamanic?

ARTIST

ART

ART AUDIENCE (SHAMANIC COMMUNITY)

It has been said that art is a tryst,for in the joy of it

maker and beholder meet.

Kojiro Tomita

Previous studies are also weakened by flawed research methods:

• Not designing explicit theoretical research methods;

• Not establishing a validated definition of shaman;

• Using concepts without operationalization as constructs;

• Narrow literature reviews, flawed references, and inadequate expertise;

• Relying on data from secondary resources;

• Incorporating esoteric or spiritual practices that are not shamanism;

• Misapplying cross-disciplinary research findings;

• Excluding counter examples, and

• Offering conclusions without adequate support for arguments.

OPPORTUNITIES

• Applying data from the underutilized field of creative studies;

• Focusing on properties of artists instead of art products;

• Including the art audience experience as a means of validation as well as a way to broaden our understanding of artist-art-audience creative systems;

• Contributing the participant-observer voice of an artist-researcher; and

• Integrating innovative arts-based inquiry research methods.

GOOD LUCK!