The Vital Image Interview with Michael Evans and David Parker

Abstract

This interview with British artists David Parker and Michael Evans explores their opinions about the role of the aesthetic in life and the modern antagonism toward the spiritual in art. Jung's contemporary standing in the academic world is considered. Is it problematic because of that community's difficulty with the spiritual? Both Parker and Evans refer to historical views of the sublime and ponder whether it's possible to create paintings today that evoke the ineffable. Perhaps the Unconscious could be seen as a secular map or locus for transcendent experience, but not in the reductionist sense of neo-Freudian academic criticism and interpretation of art. They discuss the erosion of language to express spiritual experience, the historical reasons for this decline, and its effects on artists. They track the trajectory of Romanticism, and Evans speculates that Postmodern uncertainty, that engagement with the unknown and unfamiliar, could be vitalizing. Both artists consider contemporary views of the Unconscious and the role of the body in this regard. They ask whether, in our age of accelerating culture, we have lost respect for wisdom. They suggest that artwork is really an affirmation and painting a celebration of matter.