MEDIEVAL RECONSTRUCTIVISM 
A N C I E N T   T E C H N I Q U E ,   C O N T E M P O R A R Y   V I S I O N

Today, we all have an immense opportunity to change our world. We have the ability to stop the destruction of the Earth and transform our world. It is imperative that we artists, like everyone else, become responsible for the welfare of our broken world. By drawing on the rich legacy of recipes from ancient and medieval art techniques, the Medieval Reconstructivism art movement is making art a truly viable vehicle for restoring and healing humanity and our Earth. By making and using these art materials, artists reclaim the immense potential healing powers in the energetic nature of matter revealed by quantum physics and medieval alchemists. 

Just as alchemists set the paradigms for the medieval period, quantum physicists are setting the paradigms of today. Quantum physics teaches us that the solid nature of matter is an illusion. Every material object is at its core energy, just atoms and sub-atomic particles surrounded by empty space. These particles blink in and out of existence resonating together. Quantum physics has discovered that simply by observing sub-atomic particles, we change them.[1] Thus it is scientifically proven that people have the ability to affect matter, and, that they do so in unseen but profound ways. Medieval artists and alchemists also knew that people could influence matter by their actions. They, however, described it in very different terms from the quantum physicists.  

Alchemy and art were married during the medieval period. Artist treatises more often than not contained alchemical recipes and knowledge. Many of the most important historical artist’s pigments were developed by alchemists or with alchemical processes. These pigments include vermillion, verdigris, and white lead. The roots of influencing and healing matter lie in the processes of making artist’s materials such as these pigments. Guided by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic conception that the material world is a corrupt shadow of the perfect Divine world, alchemists looked for ways to change and transform matter. They sought to heal the imperfect nature of matter and bring this world closer to Divine perfection. In doing so, they discovered that by altering the material world, they fundamentally altered themselves. The alchemist’s journey is most well known as the quest to transform base metals (such as lead) into gold (perceived to be the purest of all metals). This transformative journey, however, was only a symbol for purification and healing. Ultimately, alchemists came to believe that by transforming and purifying external, physical matter, they also purified and healed their own spirit.

How Do We Influence Matter?
Now that we know how alchemists and quantum physicists talk about influencing matter, how is it actually, practically speaking, done? We will probably all agree that a truly successful work of art has the power to change the way people view themselves and their world. This is usually a product of the presentation of the image or the ‘idea’ of the piece. Reconstructivism is suggesting a much deeper change is possible. In many ways, contemporary art has lost its power to affect widespread change because it has become overly focused on the ‘ideas’ in a work of art to the exclusion of all else. When ideas are divorced from physicality there is a disconnect which robs them of their power.

This emphasis of ideas over physical art work is a symptom of a general trend in our culture and is not just limited to the arts. It represents the emphasis of thought and mind over the physicality and the body rather than an integrative approach that values both.  Perhaps this stems from the mind body duality postulated by the Judeo-Christian tradition.  This tradition, by seeing the physical world as corrupt and sinful, has firmly stressed the superiority of the intellect. But, whatever the reason, it has lead a devaluation of the true nature of all physical things from the doctoring and botoxing of our bodies to the destruction of ecological systems. Our increasing inability to connect with life itself is reflected in our fascination with the illusion of the internet over the true experiences of life.  

One way to reconnect with our own physical natures and the Earth is by making art materials. By crushing stone, boiling plants or washing earth, the sensual pleasures of living are reawakened within us. We are stimulated by rich vibrant fuchsia of cochineal bugs, the strong warming scent of saffron, and the melodic choir of stones as they knock against each other in the grinding mortar.[2] The pleasure of being alive, of being one with the physical world, begins to course through our veins. Our connection to the Earth is deepened as we reawaken to its rhythms. Oak galls are collected in fall for ink, in winter we paint, in spring we sow the seeds for the plants to color our palettes, and in summer we harvest and make paints. 

Once reconnected to the earth and our physical natures by making pigments and paint from scratch, we can reclaim the power to influence and mark matter with our own energy. Take the example of grinding ink. Any artist who has worked with hand-made materials knows that ink ground for a long period of time in a meditative state writes better than ink ground for the same period of ink with inattention. Even though the substances appear identical, their energetic natures give them different working properties. These properties affect the way the ink writes, and also the way it affects the viewer of the finished work of art. Ink that was ground in a peaceful meditative state is infused with that peaceful energy. That energy continues to resonate even after the ink has dried.

Contemporary Paints vs. Handmade Paints
By making art materials in a peaceful meditative state artists can create works of art that literally resonate with healing energies. Viewers can be impacted and healed regardless of the imagery, style or look of a piece. This is in sharp contrast to the healing potential of store bought paints. Today when an artist walks into an art supply store, he or she is purchasing materials which have been homogenized to achieve similar working properties. This becomes clear when the extremely gritty cobalt blue has the exact same smoothness and flow as a naturally smooth dye like alizarin crimson. These paints are rife with fillers and extenders that both dull the richness of color and decrease the longevity of the art work.  They are also industrially manufactured and thus resonate with the energies of mass production, with the stress of meeting production deadlines (ask anyone who has ever worked at a paint factory!). This energy is transmitted into the painting.

Handmade materials, on the other hand, resonate with the energy brought to them by each individual artist. Materials made in a peaceful meditative state emanate this energy. However, making materials in a peaceful meditative state is a more complex task than it seems. Each handmade material has its own personality and working properties. To effectively work with them, we must accept these traits, rather than trying to control, manipulate, or change them. This struggle to accept and remain present to what is really happening is transformational. It represents a surrender of our will or ego to the natural flow of life. It is a withdrawal from the struggle to make the world conform to our own desires and illusions. This struggle ultimately blocks those desires from being achieved.  Rather it is the process of joining our visions with the never ceasing creative rhythm of life to empower and fulfill them. This process allows all our energies, now greater than our small self to be harnessed in the material we are making or the technique we are performing. To the contemporary mind, this may sound like defeat. But this is not so. It is one profound way to connect to the fundamentally generative source of all life, the fecund spring of all creativity. 

The Nature of Matter
Matter approached in this meditative, desireless state is akin to the alchemist’s prime matter.  This is matter in it undifferentiated pure state. A state in which the artist can lend it an energetic and a physical imprint that is greater and more profound that when matter is approached in a careless and casual way. To reach the state in which we can truly impact the nature of matter, often requires an internal transformation. This transformation is often precipitated and aided by a conflict with our art material and techniques.

Our Relationship to our Materials
Materials simply exist in a certain state and it is the artist who brings an expectation of behavior or outcome to them. By engaging with the true quirky and individualistic nature of handmade materials, we are confronted with ourselves. When things don’t go as planned it is often a reflection of some internal blockage. When trying to create perfection or even just a stunning and powerful work of art, every block we have to the natural flow of life, the cosmic rhythm will be thrown in their way.  This is because the only true perfection that exists is that natural flow of life, the constantly creative universal source of life. When we set our eyes on excellence whether it be in creating a work of art or artist materials, we must attempt to join with that flow. Thus, whether gilding, painting or making ink, our internal blockages must be released.

By recognizing that there is a block, we are acknowledging the imperfection of our own desires and the possibility that something greater than we can even conceive may be possible. This possibility can be accessed by turning to the nature of a material or technique and surrendering to its guidance. By allowing the materials to lead, not struggling to have our own way, that which blocks us is released. By surrendering wants and preconceived notions, in essence we are surrendering to the fecund source of life, the Universal mind. We are transformed and as we are transformed that energy is captured in the art we are making. In this way the material world, as represented in Reconstructivist art work, can be caused to resonate with the Universal Mind. The resonance is fundamentally generative and healing.

Surrendering to the lead of materials coupled with being present to life, is a state of mind that may be described as perfect intent.  By the act of creating art with perfect intent, we emanate new forms, in the shape of works of art, which reach deep within the structure of matter itself to connect with the traces of our Source (some might link this to the particles of energy just beginning to be defined by quantum physics). The capacity to create is a byproduct, a direct result of our decision to release ourselves into a state free of our own small will, a state at one with the natural flow of life and the greater Universal Will.  This creates unity out of a shattered self.  The internal movement to release language, desire and selfish constructs is fundamentally a generative state. In accepting the Universal Mind, Divine Reason,[3] we grow.  This is the creation of form calls that matter into being.

How the History of Art Has Prepared the Ground for Medieval Reconstructivism
Reconstructivism represents the next step in artistic development after Post-Modern. To see this evolution clearly, one needs to understand the deep divide in western art between the material and the spiritual worlds. We begin with the Middle Ages. 

The key to understanding the art of the medieval period is knowing that the focus is on the spiritual world.  There is a deep underlying mistrust of the physical world which plays out not only in the themes of physical mortification, i.e. saints lives, crucifixions, etc, but in the absence of perspective.  Paintings in the linear fashion of the Middle Ages were designed to draw the mind away from the material world of three dimensions and into the spiritual non-material one.  

With the arrival of the 15^th century renaissance the physical world became valued again. The desire to know and explore the physical world gave rise to more naturalistic representation, including perspective, in paintings, modern medicine with experiments on cadavers, and modern sciences.  As time moved forward in the 15^th century renaissance, the advent of humanism in many ways became a complete rejection of the medieval perspective on life, emphasizing the desire to discover an objective external reality. 

From the 15^th century renaissance on, the art of portraying an ‘objective’ external reality is increasingly perfected through artist Michelangelo, Velasquez, Vermeer, Poussin, David and etc. until we reach the Impressionists.  Impressionists also strove for this end but in a different way, they attempted to capture what the physical eye actually sees in an instant of vision.  The impressionists introduced the idea that the naturalistic and realist paintings that preceded them were not actually as real as they seemed, that a painted tree did not actually resemble what the eye saw when viewing a real tree.  This is the first indication in art of the concept of external ‘objective’ reality breaking down by questioning what that reality actually constitutes. 

Following on the heels of Impressionism, we begin to see a division in the direction of art movements as portrayed by Cezanne, leading to the Cubists and beyond, and Gauguin leading to the expressionists and symbolists and beyond.  Cezanne and his heirs began to breakdown objective reality, to show a mountain’s “mountainess” perhaps.  His paintings no longer looked like the paintings of the proceeding naturalist movements; however, these paintings still focus on nature, on physical forms.  Pitted against these modern movements was expressionist/symbolist art.  In 1911, Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, rails against the art establishment for its attachment to representing the real world, which he saw as materialistic.  He calls for a rejection of this materialism and an embracing of the spiritual by rejecting natural form. Kandinsky and his heirs give us abstract art, unattached to form.  But really symbolist and naturalist art represent two sides of one coin. Both these movements focus on form: naturalism on exploring the forms of the external world and symbolism on exploring the inner, so-called spiritual world, but its desire to break from external naturalist forms make its focus on form perhaps even greater.  Through these movements, the concept of an objective external reality increasingly loses it viability.

The culmination of these years, briefly summarized here, of questioning objective external reality is of course, Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism believes that there is no objective standpoint.  It shows us a world in which meaning and hierarchy are radically fractured creating an equality among all believes and structures.  It is a world in which absolute “Truth” and “History” do not exist. In art, Post-Modernism has increasingly negated the importance of the viewer of a work of art. Instead, it has raised the mantra ‘art for art’s sake’.  This stance, has led to a self-reflexive morass where artist’s commentary on other artists and the history of art has become the overriding ethic. Contemporary art has become meaningless to all but an elite class of educated viewers. This is a world in which the ‘Idea’ of an artwork is so important that often the actual piece of artwork, is so poorly crafted that its longevity is severely threatened. 

 The Medieval Reconstructivist’s Place in the Post Modern World
The Medieval Reconstructivist embraces the lessons of Post Modernism, and applauds the downfall of objective external reality and its “Truths” and “History”.  But, although Post Modernism tries to show us the end of “History” and “Truth”, it still leaves us trapped in history because it leaves us in words and linguistic interpretations, upon interpretations ad infinitum.  This emphasis on words and interpretations has helped to put the art world on its current path of self-reflexive commentary and helped to disconnect artists from the processes of making art. Medieval Reconstructivism does not embrace history or language.  It embraces process and action in present time. Medieval Reconstructivism whole-heartedly accepts Post Modernism’s teaching that there is no external objective standpoint, but we believe that this is only half of the answer.  The very radical discontinuity that Post Modernism posits breaks us open to find an internal continuity.  Shattering of meaning must ultimately come to its end in the release of the Inner Mind, the Inner Truth, that each of us holds separately beneath the layers of external meanings that have been laid upon us.  It allows us to join with the Universal Mind and the flow of life.

Medieval Reconstructivism joins the questioning of the objective world begun in the 15th century renaissance with the spirituality portrayed during the Middle Ages.  In doing so, it has merged the perceived opposites of the physical and spiritual worlds.  The physical is also the spiritual. Medieval Reconstructivism has traced its own origins back through physical form to the fundamental generative principal of life.  But it is not interested in specific art forms as would be and expressionist or cubist.  Medieval Reconstructivism differs dramatically from any proceeding art movement because it does not care about the finished look of an art work, or even content, although it agrees that these are tremendously powerful and important aspects of any work of art.  The hallmark of Medieval Reconstructivist art is process and technique.  The diversity of visions and styles among Medieval Reconstructivists is something to be embraced and encouraged. 

Through relationship to their materials and the struggles there in, through presence to the process of art-making, the Medieval Reconstructivist is transformed and those transformational energies become infused into the materials themselves.  Our internal transformation mirrors the metamorphosis of their materials:  flowers to paint, glue to gold and dead skin- parchment, to living image. Thus we cause the material world, their paintings, matter itself, to resonate with the Divine mind. This resonance can not help but affect the viewers of an art work and they become included in the healing process too.  Our own healing causes a ripple effect first to the viewer and then beyond.

Each of us alive today is the land.  Our physical bodies cannot be separated from the land we live on, Earth, they are extensions and embodiments of it.  When we damage the Earth, we damage ourselves.  When we honor the Earth we honor ourselves.  The Medieval Reconstructivist honors and reveres their materials for what they are: the Earth. Through relationship and process, we heal ourselves. By healing ourselves, we become more loving and more linked with the Divine mind, the fundamental generative principle, the flow of life. The whole of the material world is a mirror which reflects the light of the Divine. By transforming ourselves and our materials, we polish that mirror.  Thus as we heal ourselves, we heal our world, our precious Earth.

-Sybil Archibald
Sybil's Blog
(c) 2007