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2- The task of the Mythorealist artist is to invoke this reality, incarnating it within the waking world.
Li Ho was an unusual figure in the history of Chinese poetry- often referred to as the "ghostly" or "demonic" genius, he devoted himself to the otherworld, painting vivid word-pictures of the Yin realm. William Blake was an English poet and painter who created an entire mythology of his own, illustrating it in his Prophetic Books. Beksinski was a modern Polish artist, who created seemingly photorealistic portrayals of a fantastic world, of crucifixes topped by monstrous spiders and empty, gigantic cathedrals made of blood and flesh. Three artists with almost nothing in common in terms of cultural heritage or artistic technique, but all of them shared a common mission: the incarnation of another world within the mundane realm.
This is the first aspect of the Mythorealist aesthetic- the notion that some art can actually bring the realm of myth into the waking world, manifesting it for all to access. Some novelists of contemporary fantasy take this process still further, creating fictional portrayals of the interaction of the mythic realm and prosaic reality- stories in which a London office-worker discovers a fairyland beneath the subway tunnels, as in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, or a puzzle box opens a doorway to a race of sadistic immortals, as in Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart.
Wallace Stevens said that poets were the "priests of the invisible," a phrase that could be applied to any Mythorealist artist. Art understood in this way is a shamanistic practice, not in the pseudo-psychological New Age sense, but much more explicitly. The artist of this sort, as a priest of the invisible, travels up in spirit to the land of his visions, his own kingdom in the realm of myth. He captures a glimpse of gnosis there and brings it back when he returns, incarnating it within his artistic creations. When his painting is viewed or his poem is read, the gnosis encoded within it is invoked and released, taking the viewer or reader on a spiritual journey. Insofar as he is receptive to this journey, to its horror and wonder, he soars upward to the realm of myth to see what the artist saw there.
This is the exoteric or outer sense of the Mythorealist aesthetic, applying only to a certain type of art, a certain range of moods and genres. In the esoteric or inner sense it has a broader application, to all art of any kind, in fact. To everything there is a magic, an essence or inner life, a poetic truth. The common goal of all art is to manifest this truth, to capture and evoke its essence. (Technically speaking- and this is an important distinction- the magic and the inner truth are here the truth of a particular relationship rather than of the "thing in itself".)
The failure to evoke this essence creates a sense of cliche, of tedium and stereotype. To succeed in evoking it is to be original and brilliant, even if what is said has been said before. The reason for this is that the purpose of true art is not originality but insight- the kind of spiritual insight the Buddhists call mindfulness, or "fully awake participation" as I refer to it.
The insight contained within a piece of art encodes the gnosis of that artistic work, the truth that can only be experienced, not intellectually known. A haiku about a frog in a pond contains the gnosis of that experience, as simple and un-mythical as it might appear to be. The feeling of haunting honesty, of almost frightening truth- these things are what art aspires to, even if there is no overtly magical theme. The Mythorealist aesthetic, then, speaks of a certain category of art, but also of a way to understand art in general- and both aspects involve a touch of magic.
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