Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

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Organized religion was one of the many institutions that came under question in the 1960s. For many artists, the search for alternatives led to the exploration of expansive forms of spirituality, influenced by cultural roots, ancestral knowledge, and the occult. Many practitioners of historic Surrealism promoted esotericism and the magical sciences as tools for unlocking the subconscious mind and critiquing the dominant institutions—family, church, and state—of the period. The artists gathered here follow that line of thinking to various critical ends. Some, such as Jordan Belson and Ching Ho Cheng, sought spiritual knowledge by using meditation, psychedelic drugs, and divination as tools for elevating consciousness. Others, including Claes Oldenburg and Eduardo Carrillo, looked outward, questioning the dominance of religious institutions and reappropriating conventional iconography for new ends. Still others, such as Oscar Howe and Carlos Villa, evoked ritual practice in their work to assert claims to cultural identity and counter the destabilizing effects of colonization and Christianity upon Indigenous systems of belief.

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Abstract artwork with swirling patterns and textured, feather-like elements on a blue and beige background.

As he moved away from h is previous minimal and depersonalized practice, Carlos Villa conceived of a cross-culture art history, one based not on the Western canon but on his own Filipino ancesty, the functional and ceremonial objects of pan-Oceanic cultures, and contemporary art objects. This process served a ritualistic, healing purpose for Villa, as he would explain: "I felt I was connecting with art, not just the painting dialogue, not just the sculpture dialogue, not just the modernist dialogue. But a dialogue with my own universe, or, what I saw the universe to be."

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Mojo Secrets

10

Carlos Villa, My Roots, 1970–71

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