THE TEN MOST WANTED LIST

What Would Be Your Ten Most Wanted Artists in Your Corporate Culture?

It is a fact that ART uplifts people into a greater feeling of happiness and joy. Happy people are more productive people, and Corporate Cultures need to take this into account when it comes to their bottom lines. The investment made in peoples’ happiness always gives a good return on dollars spent. ART is a sure fire way of increasing the happiness quotient of ALL the people in ANY Corporate Culture.

What would be the TEN MOST WANTED LIST OF ART AND ARTISTS that would most effectively uplift the soul of any Corporate Culture, including the Founders, Directors, Managers, Workers, Clients, Customers and Affiliates? A strong ART LOOK is the subject here, of TEN that would produce the happiness that would in turn increase the bottom line.

1. I would  certainly start with a huge picture of the Taj Mahal. I am thinking at least 300 CM’s x 900 CM’s here. A photo or a painting of the thing…..hung on the wall of the lobby or entrance to the main Corporate headquarters.

Even though this is a “tomb” built by Shah Jahan for his wife, it is one of the most electric and alive pieces of architecture ever created in the world. It represent the “pointing up” of man’s aspiration to the heavens for immortal life. WOW! is the word when it comes to the Taj Mahal.

2. Then of course, you all know from former posts…..a life sized photo of the Winged Victory of Samothrace would be my next choice in the TEN MOST WANTED LIST.

She is the Divine Mother in full angelic action. She is the Goddess of the West before Christianity imposed a patriarchal model of suffering and sadness as the plight of the most holy Feminine One. She is our door to the most uplifting qualities of being female….Nobel, Stalwart, Holy, Certain, Worldly and Heavenly, Sexual and Chaste all at the same time.

3. I would then pick the most transcendental sculpture that came out of India, the Head of Lord Shiva from the Elephanta Island cave temple in the bay of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). This piece, in person (and I have seen most of these Ten Most Wanted List works in person), is about 4 meters high. It depicts the Stillness of Silence (Center Head:The Void Out of which All Creation flows), the Action of the Mother Sustainer (Right Head:Energy to Maintain Life), and the Action of the Father Destroyer (Left Head:Catalyst for Change and Transformation).

One is taken to a COSMIC SPACE in the Presence of this great work. A real moment of seeing this will make a person certain of the JOY for just being. Om Namah Shivay! is the mantra that comes forth from this monumental work. It can mean, “I Bow to the part of God that destroys my ignorance.” or…. “I bow to the aspect of Divine Intelligence that is my Source.”

4. The next Artist in my Pantheon would be Leonardo Da Vinci. Not necessarily for his most famous work, the Mona Lisa, but for some that depict his immaculate sensitivity  and his universal view of human anatomy and proportion. These three works I would have in a most unforgettable line up: The Woman with Ermine; Study of Hands; and the Man as Divine Proportion.

It is no doubt that Leonardo was one of the most sensitive drawing masters who ever lived….so often his drawings and studies pack as much of a whallop as his more involved paintings.

5. I would jump next to Kandinsky. He liberated painting from the mere illustration of “things”….into the realm of Spiritual Creation. The point of departure between the physical world of form….and the spiritual world beyond form…was the place he inhabited much of the time. The paintings provide this palpable bridge:

You can see how the whole movement of Kandinsky’s world proceeded….from the particular of visual depiction of worldly scenes to the transcendental place of pure painting, color, line, points, shapes and harmonizing composition. Painting was liberated in Kandinsky to call to the spirit of new life beyond old form.

6. Barnett Newman, the modern Abstract Expressionist of the New York school would be in my list. He said some things that impressed me about WHY artists do what they do. He said, “An artist paints so he will have something to look at.” Then, “Sometimes he writes so he will have something to read.” These statements sound very simple, even overly simplistic, but the more profound meaning is this: The artist is his first audience. He must have the feeling and the insight first, and be able to tell whether his creation is actually communicating this feeling and insight. If he does not LOOK and READ his own work correctly, see what it is actually doing to the viewer and reader, then how on earth is the greater audience going to see and feel what he sees and feels? Here are a couple examples of Mr. Newman’s greatest gifts, the Vertical “Zip” Paintings:

7. From other previous posts you must know my liking for Grunewald’s the Risen Christ from the Isenheim Altarpiece. Here it is again in all its glorious resurrection:

Tell me this does not uplift you? You do not have to even be “Christian” to get it. In fact you could be atheist and still see the incredible JOY in His face, and in His gesture of total “overcoming”.

8. Moving on to Mary Cassatt, one of the most unsung heroes of the Impressionist movement, she painted in Europe but was from America. Maybe that is one reason she is sometime overlooked as a big player….a “woman” from “America”….what could she know? But her depictions of Mothers and Children are unsurpassed in ALL OF ART. She did it the BEST in all time and in all space.

9. In the 9th position of my TEN MOST WANTED LIST I would include the Islamic tile artists of the highest order. Because Islam forbids the depiction of Mohammed, their artists developed calligraphy and geometry to a high art that comes out in their architecture, and none the least in their tile work. Here are a few examples:

I could see a whole room covered in a repeat pattern of one of these images….a kind of Tile Sanctuary where people can go to just be quiet.

10. Last but not least, I would include my own work….even more recently my Portraits of Holy Beings: BABAJI, JESUS & AMMACHI for starters:

The Holy Grail :

and smaller works on paper like Popsicle and Life Savers:

….And this one called Carnival # 2:

So this is my lineup:

1. TAJ MAHAL
2. WINGED VICTORY
3. SHIVA’S HEAD at ELEPHANTA
4. LEONARDO DA VINCI’S PAINTING & DRAWING
5. KANDINSKY
6. BARNETT NEWMAN
7. RISEN CHRIST BY GRUNEWALD
8. MARY CASSATT
9. ISLAMIC TILE WORK
10. MARKUS RAY

This TEN MOST WANTED LIST would lift any Corporate Culture up beyond its wildest dreams, and give its people something to come to work for. Can you imagine, rather being at work for your spiritual uplifting than being at home? What if people actually could not wait to go to work? NO more “got to go to the grind” energy. Life and work is meant to be totally enlightening. I encourage all people in the Corporate world, at all levels, to consider this: ART  FOR CORPORATE CULTURES in the form of their own TEN MOST WANTED LIST.

All my best, MARKUS RAY