What is meditative art?

“Meditative art” easily brings associations to poetic images of nature: vast deserts, majestic mountains, flowers, oceans, horizons etc. But what if meditative art is simply art produced by someone who meditates?

I thought of this after participating in Acem’s international retreat this summer. A German artist, Henrik Nolte, was among the participants. I went to his web page henriknolte.com and looked through a lot of his pictures. He also presented some of them at the retreat.

Adding colour
I am not sure exactly when he learned Acem Meditation, but I don’t think he meditated yet in 2007, when he started his art blog. Many of his drawings from then are quite nice, but to my mind they also tend to be a little “hard”, and they are undeniably black-and-white.

A year later, he produces quite a few pictures that almost resemble our cliché of what meditative art is, mountains in what to me looks like a semi-Japanese style. Also quite nice. Often the same motif exists in a number of different versions, which adds to the interest.

Then comes colour. First in a few experiments that, to my mind, are not yet awfully exciting. At the beginning, he goes a little back and forth between colour and black-and-white, as if he didn’t yet know what to do.

Airiness
But then his medium changes. By June 2009 he’s using water colour. The transparency and airiness of this medium gives him a new touch, which gives full room to his sensitivity. Some might charge that the girl to the right is overly sensitive, but I like her.

He retains some of his edge and humour, as in this image of the German prime minister Angela Merkel with a far too big cleft and her Norwegian colleague Jens Stoltenberg. Her cleft was apparently much discussed in Germany at the time.

From May 2010 he begins to add texts to his pictures, like when he turns Mona Lisa into a call girl saying “Rufen Sie an!” (Call me!), or like the moose entitled “Coca Cola am Himmel” (Coca Cola on the sky).

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that right after this summer’s retreat he made two paintings, one with the text “Bei den Eltern leben” (Living with one’s parents – doesn’t look nice), the other “Einmal richtig durchatmen” (For once breathe thoroughly – looks much nicer).

Sensitivity, humour, edge
So what is meditative art? Our clichés seem alienating, as they split off the meditative from the rest of the world. I like much more what I see in Henrik Nolte: an increasing sensitivity, coupled with humour and a certain edge (he still from time to time paints quite brutal people with weapons), most of all an increasing richness of expression. Though I’m sure he’ll disagree…