Art Heaven-Bound

The Impressionists released art from its sentimental fix on the literal, material world.

With great courage, they explored what was formless and energetic behind the perfect depictions of flesh and bone.

Next in art’s heaven-bound progression came the exploration of the abstract and surreal dimensions.

These artists trusted the approach to heaven by dabbling in the area of malleable spirits.

Theirs was the disembodied human experience of the dreamscape.

They blended open, fluid forms with solid, physical reality, inching their way a little closer toward heaven’s gates.

Marcel Duchamp? He fits in somewhere and everywhere. He is a Bodhisattva who knows no bounds.

He was probably the first hungry shaman to invoke an antelope by ceremonially painting it on the cave wall.

With great precision, he mischievously juggled art and magic, from the beginning of time no doubt.

I am certain that, as an artist, he incarnates eternally, showing us how it is really done!

Jackson Pollock danced with the powerful energies of his raw, naked experience of art.

He imploded—splattering and flying right over the wall, setting art down in an unexpected proximity to heaven.

Bones dripping, he danced to the music of the universe.

He trusted wildly, doubted, and died of exposure.

Mark Rothko, too—D.O.A., bleeding ever so softly into the canvas.

Then, the wanderings of the conceptual artists.

Impressively, they drove with no hands on the wheel, but they went more wide than deep. Nonetheless, their outrageous courage delivered art a little closer to a vast and formless heaven.

Pop artists abandoned the direct pursuit of heaven altogether; instead they indulged in the things that distract us from heaven, while simultaneously pointing them out as obstacles.

Andy Warhol was the undisputed, flagrant King of Pop.

No one will ever again get away with what he did.

His preeminent position as the royal child of art assured complete forgiveness.

Unhindered, with dominion over the material world, he took the best seat in the house, brought in all his friends, and then ravaged the place!

His was truly a creative act of power, and America fixed on more of everything hardly even noticed his mischievous smile.