Classics & Comparative Studies in Art & Religion

The paper I presented at the 2009 conference discussed the historical background, the rationale and the problems inherent in the restoration of two early Classical Athenian cups put together from a common pile of more than a hundred tiny pottery shards.  These two cups, portions of which (around the base of each cup) had been hastily put together at the excavation site in order to make the scene of the central medallion readable, had been donated to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as study pieces. They had both been through a reducing atmosphere caused by fire, probably a funeral pyre, which had chemically reduced the red color of the red figure scene into gray. Two of the pottery shards had been re - fired in the Museum at an unknown date so that  the red color, which was achieved in antiquity when the vase was fired for a second time in an oxidizing atmosphere, could be reproduced. After examining the medallion scene of one of the cups, the importance of the object became apparent. It presents an artist at work in his studio. The artist is seated, holding a head which he is in the process of painting. Around him are his art tools. Behind him, on a bench, another painted head is left to dry. Such scenes are rare and present useful information about the ancient artists at work. Due to the importance of the piece and the request for its restoration in order to be included in an upcoming exhibit in Berlin, the process of restoration began. Because the pottery fragments belonging to this piece were mixed with the ones belonging to the other cup, both cups were of similar size, the shards were of similar thickness and both of them exhibited the same color due to the reducing atmosphere of the funeral pyre they had been through, the restoration process had to include both cups and the assembling of the pieces had to be done simultaneously. The whole task became more challenging due to the fact that the cups had been broken when thrown into the fire and the initial shape of the pottery shards had been distorted. The process of cleaning, putting the pottery shards together and the compromises which had to be made so that the initial shape of the cups could be recreated, were presented and discussed, as well as the rationale behind the choices made. The importance of ancient Greek pottery as an art form beyond its utilitarian and informative function was discussed.

This paper was submitted at the 2010 Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities. It deals with various approaches to the method of restoring and reconstructing the past, the rationale behind these approaches and the degree to which personal and cultural evaluations of what is perceived as beautiful and “acceptable” within the context of the time - period the art object represents, can influence the way we reconstruct the beauty of the past. As point of reference for this study as well as an example of how cultural, personal and intellectual judgments can influence the restoration of an art object to the point of producing a result different from the intent of the ancient artist and closer to the taste of the time period and culture within which the reconstruction takes place,  a marble head with the title: “Diomedes” from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has been selected. A Roman work of an unknown artist from the Imperial Period, about A.D. 100-150, based on a Greek original of mid- 5th century B.C. - probably a work by Kresilas - , this head is compared to the heads of two marble statues with the same title: “Diomedes”. They are both Roman copies probably of the same original work, or the Roman artists must have been familiar with the same Greek original given the similarities in the anatomical characteristics observed in all three heads. The first statue is exhibited at the Louvre Museum, Paris France, and it is a Roman copy from the second or third century A.D. The other is at the Glyptothek in Munich, Germany and there is no information as to the day of its production. The head from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is discussed in terms of provenance, original condition when acquired, history of  old restorations as well as the reasons for the present analysis, conservation and restoration undertaken and brought to completion by the author of this paper. The various steps of this most recent restoration are discussed in detail, with special emphasis on the philosophy behind the final decision making as to the reconstruction of the missing areas of the face, the compromises that had to be made as a result of decisions aiming at treating the object in part as a study piece versus an art object representative of its time and culture, and the information that can be obtained from comparisons of the facial characteristics of the MFA object to those of the two Roman Copies in Munich and Paris. This information is used so that conclusions can be drawn as to the original appearance of the three Roman copies (the MFA head had been heavily restored – a restoration which has been removed during the most recent project and the missing areas have been reconstructed – and the one in Paris seems to have had its nose restored – a major restoration (as indicated by the color variation starting at the bridge of the nose) as well as the appearance of the Greek original which has served as their inspiration. Old and new approaches to reconstructing the past are being evaluated.

This paper is the seventh in a series of reports presenting the study, conservation and restoration of ancient Greek works of art from the permanent collection of  the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as the greater implications of such reconstructions within the field of Archaeology, Art History and culture. The political agendas involved in certain of these reconstructions as well as the general conclusions that can be drawn with regard to the factors involved in our interpretation of ancient works of art as well as our inability or refusal to relate to the original intent of the ancient artist, are being discussed.
It traces attempts to reconstruct certain facial characteristics (the human chin in this case) basing guidelines on cultural preconceived ideas and disregarding the original intent of the artist.

I have always been confident that I am able to look at a work of art with the loving respect of the artist and classicist who is sensitive to the object’s inherent beauty but at the same time perceives the object with the objectiveness of the examiner art conservator/restorer. In the final analysis, it is the art conservator/restorer who will combine the evaluation and experience of the classicist/art historian with the hands - on practical experience of the artist/restorer. It is the artist/restorer, who, setting his/her own aesthetic preferences aside, will reconstruct the object according to the intent of the artist who originally produced it. This is a painstaking process, involving a great amount of research, examination and comparison of the object in question to other existing copies or originals by the same artist, study of the time period of the production of the object – if it is an original- and/ or those periods when copies were produced. This process also includes technical, aesthetic and moral considerations with regard to the reconstructions of missing pieces - especially if these reconstructions include facial characteristics – and the ability and willingness to determine the feasibility of such reconstructions, making certain that one remains honest with regard to the original intent of the artist.
Having worked on a great variety of works of art from various cultures and time periods, I cannot say that I have found myself in a difficult position with regard to the objectives described above. That is until after my recent work on four marble pieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Those included two Roman copies, one classical Greek original and one early Christian/Byzantine. It was after I had completed the research and restoration work and had presented papers on the conservation and reconstruction of their facial characteristics that I began to really question the validity of the reconstructions. Being an artist, I always held the opinion that one should try to reconstruct the missing areas of an art object in order to present it as the work of art that it was intended to be. Presenting an art object broken and disfigured does not do justice to it, the artist who produced it and the period it represents. The reconstruction of the missing pieces, however, has to be within the spirit of the culture and the original intent of the artist who produced the work of art under consideration. If there is any doubt as to the truthfulness of the reconstruction, it should, by all means, be avoided. Given the restrictions, however, cultural, intellectual, political et c., involved in such reconstructions, I reached the conclusion that a reconstruction which only partially satisfies all the considerations mentioned above should be avoided altogether, since it can dramatically change the character itself of the work of art.
This paper traced the various steps leading to this conclusion. It also presented, in conjunction with and comparison to various works of art and their reconstructions/restorations through various time periods, one of the possible sources of our current aesthetic values as they have been formed since the Italian Renaissance. These aesthetic values, different than those governing classical Greek artistic expression, guide our evaluations of what is the accepted and ideal in beauty, art and art restoration.

Mystery Initiations express the basic spiritual concept that the divine resides inside or within each one of us and can be accessed by the initiated devotees who have prepared themselves appropriately by inner and outer purification under the guidance of a charismatic teacher. At certain points within this spiritual journey the divine and the human become one, inseparable, as they have always been, but only forgotten and realized again through divine communion or re-cognition. According to these Mystery Initiations there is no difference between the Cosmos and the individual. The whole creative energy of the universe can be contained within the human experience. Indications of such experiences, which transcend the so-called “normal state of consciousness” abound from depictions of shamanic journeys in prehistoric cave paintings to accounts of ancient sacred initiations of the pagan world, Christianity, the Yoga discipline, the Jewish tradition and other spiritual paths.

The basic teaching of Mystery Initiations for the acquisition of such transcending experiences is Introspection.
Introspection as the tool for the ultimate experience of divinity can be found throughout the course of human history all over the world. The basic concept is: look within and you will experience the whole universe. The whole universe abides within you.

The teachings, however, of such spiritual practices have been traditionally hidden from the many and reserved for the select few. The term: “Mystery  Initiations” is an obvious indication of such secrecy. Even Jesus openly comments on this secrecy with his use of parables in his address to the many and on occasion even to his own disciples who, in his words “are not able to uphold his teachings as yet”. One could, therefore, say that a “parable” or myth –if one were to use a more general term- is the symbolic outer garment pointing toward inner  spirituality, similarly to the body being the house or the “temple” of the soul, the interpretation of the name “temple” being dependent on the spiritual evolution of each individual “inhabitant” of such a a “temple”. And the key to experiencing the essence behind the symbol is directly proportional to the amount of self knowledge each individual has aquired.

In this paper I point to the similarity in the symbolic language of ancient Greek pagan and Christian traditions used as post marks on the path of spiritual awakening. The path is hidden and only revealed to the worthy and the experience defies the human intellect.

Ours is a time of interesting scientific experiments. In a South Korean laboratory hundreds of deceased pets of rich and famous people are being duplicated and the question is seriously raised about the possibility of cloning the deceased children of those who can afford the procedure. Here in Massachusetts a team from Harvard University is developing a gene-editing technology for modifying pig DNA in order to use their organs for transplants in humans. The possibility of gene-editing in humans could be the next available step for those who can afford to grow their descendants according to their own specifications and to lengthen their life span indefinitely. Scientific technology is an amazing tool when used wisely, but have we forgotten the intimate connection of the physical to the so-called meta physical part of our being, or is the meta physical just a hallucination or wishful thinking?
Putting aside the ecological ramifications of our involvement in the natural selection process of the world as we know it, what will the motivating energy of the bodies we are cloning or editing or preserving indefinitely be like? To put it simply, here is the question science has for the most part avoided since the Italian Renaissance and especially in the past 100 years: what is that which we call consciousness? Is it generated by physical factors alone, are we just complicated biological machines with consciousness being the result of a mind generated by the brain- with its condition dependent on that of the brain-, or can the mind be independent of the brain and human consciousness be boundless?
This is an age long question dealt with by the mystics, philosophers and teachers throughout the centuries, but it seems that  right along with the rapid evolution of scientific technology, there is a strong revival or what we could call “spiritual technology” with serious scholarly research on the subject of investigation of experiences which cannot be explained in classical physical terms and can be classified within the realm of what could be called “mystical” with guidelines within the “spiritual” realm and technologies which defy intellectual description and comprehension. But then, again, a lot of recent discoveries in modern physics are grouped, at least for now, within similar parameters of the unexplained.
For the time being, it is disconcerting to attempt to prolong or duplicate a physical existence devoid of the exuberant vitality of an accompanying benevolent consciousness which provides the natural reason for healthy existence. Or to put it in the terms that Plato used 2500 years ago, what is the reason of prolonging a life that lives in the reality of “the shadows of the cave”? Our most recent obsessive entanglement with the internet is an example of a “soulless” state of existence within a consciousness the potentiality of which mystics have described as blissful and boundless.
This paper explores some of the guidelines of what could be called “spiritual technology” of various ancient and contemporary philosophical, religious and spiritual paths with examples of instances where the technology of science and spirituality coincide and where both science and spirituality reach the common level of the unexplained realm of universal technology or universal consciousness which is beyond the realm of human intellect.

In the spirit of the latest discoveries in quantum physics, the boundaries of what has been considered real or not up to now are starting to become blurry. As a consequence, a vast amount of implications begin to emerge in various areas of research which were considered in the past not interconnected. We are beginning to seriously entertain the possibility that behavioural patterns of the “physical” universe may be governed by laws traditionally accepted as operating in psychology and spirituality. In recent years there appears to be an undeniable rise of interest in spirituality in our institutions of higher learning. The idea of a “Universal Mind” - a basic Platonic and Neo-Platonic concept in Western Philosophy as well as in most spiritual paths - begins to emerge as a real possibility expressed by some of the most prominent representatives of scientific research in our times. This paper touches upon the relation of some of these new concepts in the fields of psychology and spirituality and their application in observing states of consciousness during the process of dying, near death experiences and ecstatic spiritual experiences.

Plato in his Republic is speaking of the necessity to draw the soul to things above, to raise its power to the contemplation of truth. According to Plato-as expressed through Socrates in the 7th book of the “Republic”- for the accomplishment of this endeavor the soul possesses “a certain organ….better worth saving than ten thousand eyes, since truth is perceived by this alone.”  This organ has been traditionally referred to as the “eye of the soul” .The same idea is expressed in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke where the eye is referred to as the light of the body and there is an interesting reference in Luke to a single eye, the term “single” being also translatable from the Greek as “simple”. The suggestion in both afore mentioned Gospel references is that when this “eye” becomes “single” or “simple”  one’s  body becomes full of light.
In Yoga the symbolism is quite obvious: the Single eye, third eye or the eye of the soul can be accessed at the level of the 6th chakra and is associated with the Pineal gland.
Fairly recent psychoanalytical experiments involving the study of the pineal gland and the effects of its essential secretion when the latter is clinically administered to volunteer subjects in the form of Dimethyltryptamine (commonly known as DMT) suggests the inducement of altered states of consciousness similar in some cases to those experienced in meditation and near death experiences.
This paper starting with basic Greek ideas relating to the discipline of reaching esoteric “noetic” experiences of the workings of the Universe, presents examples also from other traditions, as they relate to the idea of spiritual illumination. The Yoga discipline is discussed in reference to its detailed descriptions  of what it considers as the workings of the basic energy fields that have traditionally been associated with the ascent of  matter to spirit.