The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth

thoughts, our actions, and our social interactions. This is the project of the centripetal artist, and it is what distinguishes her from other kinds of artists. In order to achieve this kind of integration, the rigid categories into which we are educated have to be transcended and we must be transformed. To use the example I started with: I would not say that Junko and I learned how to compromise and live with each other, I as a monotheist and she as a polytheist; I as a western Jew, she as a Japanese Christian-Shinto-Buddhist; I as a lawyer, she as an artist. Instead, we both became transformed so that I am no longer the kind of Jew, monotheist, or lawyer that I was before, and she is no longer the kind of Japanese, Shinto, Buddhist, Christian, polytheist that she was before. Our identities have become fluid—not fixed. The intermixing of cultures, backgrounds, and identities goes far, far beyond “cohabitation” or “accommodation”: in the quest for integrity, the coarse matter with which we began has been refined and purified and sublimated and recombined, and something brand new has come out. It is as if we have leaped into a furnace—the kind of furnace the alchemists used in their unceasing efforts to turn lead into gold: the furnace called the “athanor”—an Arabic word, cognate to “tanur” in Hebrew, meaning “furnace.” Things are put into this furnace and left there for a prescribed time, and then pulled out—and they are changed.6 What is marriage after all, but such a furnace? Of course it is many things. It is an apotheosis of erotic love, and of friendship. It is the locus of intimacy made possible by the process of separation and individuation: “therefore shall man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” It is the union of opposites when it is between man and woman, and it is the formation of the matrix in which children can be raised. It is a contract and an exchange of vows, and a commitment so deep that it can be called a sacrament. And it is a fertility rite which gives joy to the community which it helps to perpetuate. It is of course all these things. But I see it also as the athanor, the furnace into which we leap every day and from which we emerge always changed and ennobled. p. 294 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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