Forty thousand years ago, figurative art was the primary designer of the human mind. From the Lion Man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel to the present, the act of creating and consuming art (undoubtedly music and literature also existed but we have no record of their compositions till much later) is the literal catalyst for modern cognition. Art is the only phenomenon that holds the integration of thought, emotion, and perception in a single form.
Throughout history, this immense power remained unclaimed by its creators. Mysticism appropriated the spiritual exaltation generated by the artist’s mastery of light, form, space, and vision, misattributing this human high-ground to divine revelation. Even the giants of the Renaissance, Michelangelo and Da Vinci, functioned as brilliant “hired help” for ecclesiastical and patrons’ propaganda. Their works became the conduit for a compromised genius.
Today, we are occupied by the Era of Eradication. Postmodernism is a systematic eradication of human mental (cognitive) health. It is an acid that dissolves our capacity for integrated consciousness. By replacing the sublime with “toilet art” (1917) it establishes nihilism as the primary world view. To live in the Era of Eradication is to endure a cognitive lobotomy where the tools required to be an integrated whole human are systematically destroyed.
The Humanist Revolution
The Age of Humanism is the direction needed to honor a flourishing humanity and its future. I am happy that this new direction is currently being nudged through my three-year, monumental cycle of twenty-four (sixteen completed so far) 64×48″ canvases. My “Space Series” is entirely self-funded and the result of pure unleashed vision. This series celebrates man and woman as the primary forces within the cosmos, with the technical/spiritual theme that their shadowed selves are transparent and the stuff of the universe, while it is the light that defines them.
They are also the physical manifestation of Eudaemonia. Aristotle identified this state as the primary point of existence, an “end in itself” experience that is the result of a flourishing life. What he didn’t know was that art is the ultimate medium to experience what an “end in itself” is.
The Lineage of the Monumental Cycle
To understand the weight of my series, one must look at the history of the Monumental Cycle—those rarified instances where an artist commits to a unified, large-scale vision that defines their era. The Space Series belongs to this lineage:
- Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel (Commissioned) 9 central panels, fresco. Biblical narratives bracketed by unrelated nudes.
- Peter Paul Rubens: The Marie de’ Medici Cycle (Commissioned) 24 monumental oil canvases. Vanity project celebrating her achievements.
- Francisco Goya: The Black Paintings (Self-directed) 14 murals, painted on the walls of his home, later transferred to canvas. Nightmarish depictions of humanity.
- Claude Monet: The Water Lilies (Nymphéas) (Self-directed) 8 massive oil paintings. Studies of light reflections and refractions of vegetation and water.
- Mark Rothko: The Rothko Chapel (Commissioned) 14 paintings, oil and mixed media on canvas. Abstract color field voids.
- Cy Twombly: The Lepanto Series (Commissioned) 12 paintings, acrylic and crayon on canvas. Abstract scribbles.
The Space Series: Self-directed and self funded, i.e. 100% uncompromised, like the Monet and Goya projects. Though my cycle of 24 monumental 64×48″ canvases mirrors the scale of Rubens, without the stain of being propaganda and matches the grandeur of Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel without obliging church patrons. Creativity is incredibly fragile, and commissioned work acts like a poison on the artist’s independence. Ironically the Twombly and Rothko projects are odes to nihilism and commissioned. Of these monumental projects none of them offer the unleashed celebration of sovereign humanism that the Space Series does.
The Call for a New Medici
While the artistic foundation of this new era is percolating, the transition from a movement to a global Age of Humanism requires a partnership. The history of human advancement proves that visionary art requires a civilizational visionary.
The Renaissance reached its height because of the infrastructure created by Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had the clarity to see great art as the crowning glory to his legacy and his gift to humanity. Today, the Age of Humanism needs the engine of a contemporary Medici—a force with the vision to usher in the greatest reversal in the history of humankind: the transition from the excrement slag of postmodernism to a new era of human sublimity.
I would like to thank my collectors, who have enabled me to paint 24/7 for over five decades.
Michael Newberry, Artist
Idyllwild, California
Michael Newberry 