The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth

terrain vehicles: in that shrine no one speaks above a whisper, and when you walk through this forest you can hear your own footsteps on the swept gravel stones. My father-in-law and I walked silently through the torii, the tall Japanese gate made of two trees and two cross-beams, along the walkway which leads through the dark forest to the shrine in the center of the park, and I watched as he bowed his head and clasped his hands and stood silent for a few minutes. We said nothing to each other until we were back on the busy streets of Shibuya. From that experience I think I learned the true nature of prayer more deeply than I had learned it in years of going to synagogue and reciting the time-hallowed texts. So why did the notion of “polytheism” occur to me, and why did I find it so disturbing? Of course, the works are disturbing: if they were not disturbing they could not be great art.1 And the central work, Ecstasy, is in fact outrageously and emphatically polytheistic. It depicts a Bird, but this is no Bird that Jehovah could ever have imagined when He created the flying things on the 5th day. It is too enormous to be a bird, and its heart is made of steel, an engine—and there is fire in the center of it. And it is at the same time a giant female sexual organ. It hovers over a script, the risshukyô, the sutra recited daily, with great solemnity, in esoteric Buddhist services in thousands of temples across Japan2 which reads, “Sexual ecstasy, clean and pure, this too is the realm of the boddhisatva”: and the notion of sexual ecstasy being “clean” and “pure,” and the idea of reciting such a proposition daily in church, is about as far away from the Judaeo-Christian tradition as it gets. Although this Bird derives from the slaughtered chicken, it shows more the aspect of Tyrannosaurus Rex and the fierce predatory dinosaurs from whom it is descended. It is an epiphany of the Bird Junko had painted in her 1991 Requiem series, but this bird is not about to be executed. No, quite the opposite: it feels as if it might leap off the gallery wall and devour the viewer. But it could not leap: it is too heavy. Its mode of locomotion is mysterious. It might waddle, or it might move simply by willing itself from one place to another; or if it could fly, it would not fly toward heaven but would flap its leafy wings p. 290 Centripetal Art / matrix of growth

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth

PREFACE

-Definition of Centripetal Art -Its Place In Art History: After the Postmodern Period -Introducing the Subject Matter: One Centripetal Artist's Journey -The Relationship With Multiculturalism -After the Death of God and of Art

FOREWORD

-How the Author's Connection With His Wife's Art Grew More Intimate Over the Years -Learning In Marriage -"Why Does God Need To Paint?" [Section One] Individual Visitants -Dead Flowers and Root -Lungs and Rib Cage

CHAPTER FOUR - A Vital Spirituality

-Why This Art Could Not Have Been Created Earlier -Echoes of the Spiritual Arts of the Early 20th Century -The Impact of the Atomic Bomb; Ecological Concerns -Markers for Spirituality -Centripetal Art Overflows the Studio: Therapy

CHAPTER SIX - A Complex Spirituality

-Spirituality of the 21st Century

AFTERWORD - THE FURNACE

-Polytheism and Monotheism in Art -Goethe’s Aphorism -Marriage and the Alchemist’s Furnace Themes In Series

PREFACE

(Page I) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth - -Definition of Centripetal Art (Page II) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth - -The Relationship With Multiculturalism (Page III) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth - -After the Death of God and of Art (Page IV) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth -

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