Adi Da Samraj (1939-2008)[1] is an American-born spiritual teacher, writer and artist,[2] in his later years focused on creating works of art intended to enable viewers to enter into a "space" beyond limited "points of view". He was invited to the 2007 Venice Biennale to participate through an official collateral exhibition, and was later invited to exhibit his work in Florence, Italy, in the 15th century Cenacolo di Ognissanti and the Bargello museum.[3][4] His work was also shown in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Miami, and London. The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements wrote that "[o]n his passing Adi Da Samraj's personal charisma was collapsed into the charisma of the sacred books, and the art and the theatrical works he left behind".[5]
Background
editAdi Da graduated from Stanford University in 1963.[6][7]: 86–88 [8]: 80 [9] His master's thesis, "a study of core issues in modernism, focused on Gertrude Stein and the leading painters of the same period", demonstrated his interest in art.[10] In the last decade of his life, Adi Da focused on creating works of art intended to enable viewers to enter into a "space" beyond limited "points of view". He described the purpose of his art as doing "precisely the opposite of the ego-based and ego-idealizing rootpresumption associated with perspectival image-art", leading the viewer away from "the ego's construction of the world".[11]
He labeled his art "Transcendental Realism". His works were primarily photographic and digitally produced large works of pigmented inks on paper or canvas, and monumentally sized works of paint on aluminum. In 2007 Adi Da's works were included in an official collateral exhibition to the Venice Biennale in Italy. The exhibition was curated by Italian art historian Achille Bonito Oliva.[3][4][12] His work has also been shown in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Miami, and London.
Later in life, Adi Da became interested in the work of early 20th-century Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist Kazimir Malevich.[12] For example, Adi Da's painting Midnight Sun, a white circle on a black background, contrasts Malevich's Black Square.[12] This interest "arose partly from a desire to clarify and articulate in his own writing and artistic creation the relationship between his creative process as the 'new avant-garde' and that of the project of modernism as part of the development of twentieth century art as a whole".[12]
Adi Da's death at his home in Fiji occurred in his studio, while working on his art.[1][13]
Exhibitions
editIn 2007 Adi Da's works were included in an official collateral exhibition to the Venice Biennale in Italy. The exhibition was curated by Italian art historian Achille Bonito Oliva.[3][4][12] The exhibit then moved to Florence. This solo exhibition in Florence was the first to show contemporary art with Renaissance art, juxtaposing Domenico Ghirlandaio's perspectival Last Supper with Adi Da's aperspectival monumental fabrications.[11] Writing in Corriere della Sera Magazine, Francesca Pini called the exhibition at the Palazzo Bollani "not to be missed." The following year he displayed at the Cenacolo di Ognissanti at the exhibit Transcendental Realism: The Art of Adi Da Samraj. He also held solo exhibitions in New York in 2010 and Beverly Hills in 2011. The exhibitions, called Orpheus and Linead, were curated by Italian art critic Achille Bonito Oliva. He also held the exhibit Quandra Loka at Gallery Pien Rademakers in 2013 and 2014.
Adi Da is credited with being the first in 150 years to have a solo exhibition at the Bargello National Museum. Titled The Ascent of Orpheus: Between and Beyond Representation and Abstraction, the exhibition opened in July 2015 and included works from both Orpheus One and Linead One.
Reception
editThe Spectra Suites, a book of Adi Da's art, has an introduction by American art historian and critic Donald Kuspit.[14] Kuspit reviewed the work of Adi Da on several occasions, writing:
It is a rare artist who can convey, convincingly, the sense of being face to face with the source of being. Adi Da can clearly live in the depths without succumbing to their pressure, bringing back pearls of art to prove it.[15]
What is perhaps most striking about Adi Da's photographs is their gnostic quality—the intricate movement of light and shadow that gives them their expressive depth and profound intimacy. It is more than a matter of standard chiaroscuro. Adi Da is not simply employing the evocative power of light and shadow, but bringing out their emblematic character. Interweaving them—and in numerous works skeins of light ("the fire of the sun") play over and within shadowy if transparent water ("the water of life")—Adi Da suggests the union of opposites that is the core of mystical experience. Ecstatic experience of their unity brings with it a sense of the immeasurable.[16]
In other examinations of Adi Da's art, Joseph Troncale found that "In his radically non-dual art, Adi Da invites his viewer to drop the blinders of material perception in order to taste an aesthetic ecstasy not dependent on an egoic point of view but liberated from it".[12] Italian art critic Achille Bonito Oliva is noted to have concluded that "the images of Adi Da Samraj restore viewers, wearied by the insensitivity and rationality of a callous technocratic world, to the open disposition of reception and participation in a reality beyond the imagination".[12] Art critic Donald Kuspit said, "It is a rare artist that can convey, convincingly, being face to face with the source of Being." And, art curator Peter Weibel has said, "[Adi Da's] pursuit of the spiritual paths found in early abstraction, from Kandinsky to Mondrian, and [his] translation of that pursuit into the digital age, restore a transcendental spirituality to the materialism of the machine aesthetic."
References
edit- ^ a b "Spiritual leader passes on". www.fijitimes.com. November 28, 2008. Archived from the original on February 26, 2009.
- ^ "An Introduction to Avatar Adi Da". www.adidam.org.
- ^ a b c "Venice Biennale Collateral Exhibition: Adi Da Samraj". www.huma3.com. July 11, 2007.
- ^ a b c Storr, Robert (2007). La Biennale di Venezia: 52. Esposizione internazionale d'arte, Volume 2. Rizzoli. pp. 312, 337. ISBN 978-0-8478-3001-5.
- ^ Eugene V. Gallagher, "New Religious Movements and Scripture", in James R. Lewis and Inga B. Tollefsen, eds., The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, Volume II (Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 377.
- ^ "North Coast Journal, Humboldt County, CA – Cover story Jan. 14, 1999". Northcoastjournal.com.
- ^ Gallagher, Eugene V.; Ashcraft, W. Michael (2006). Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America [Five Volumes]. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-275-98712-4.
- ^ Feuerstein, Georg, "Holy Madness", 1st ed., Arkana (1992).
- ^ "Obituaries". Columbia College Today. June 2009.
- ^ Adi Da Samraj, Eleutherios (The Only Truth That Sets The Heart Free (May 14, 2006), p. 87.
- ^ a b Gary Coates, The Rebirth of Sacred Art: Reflections on the Aperspectival (2013), p. 8.
- ^ a b c d e f g Troncale, Joseph. "From Kazimir Malevich's Black Square to the Midnight Sun of Adi Da Samraj". Transcendental Realism.
- ^ "Lake County News | California - Followers mourn death of spiritual leader". Archived from the original on 2009-06-27.
- ^ The Spectra Suites (Welcome Books, 2007), pp 1–11.
- ^ Donald Kuspit in The World As Light: An Introduction to the Art of Adi Da Samraj, by Mei-Ling Israel, Dawn Horse Press, 2007.
- ^ Donald Kuspit, "The Female Nude in the Art of Adi Da", in Louis Stern Fine Arts gallery, The Quandra Loka Suite: 52 Views by Adi Da Samraj.
External links
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