VISIONARY TRANSFIGURATIONS: AESTHETIC METAMORPHOSES IN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND ALEX GRAY
Transfiguration; Contemporary Philosophy; Visionary Art.
This thesis analyses the concept of transfiguration in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and in the art of Alex Grey. The introduction presents the most important conceptual movements that will be realized along the text. The initial chapter presents an approach to the aesthetic, phenomenological, psychological, ethical and metaphysical aspects of transfiguration in the Nietzsche’s immanentist though: the subsequent parts and sections describe the genesis of the aesthetic act, the ecstatic rythms and the oneiric forms, the human art and the divine creation; the correspondence between art and life, the existence as a creative phenomenon and as the art imposes on becoming the character of being; the contemplative and the creative states, the doors of dreams and the keys of ecstaty, the oneiric artists and the ecstatic artists; the theme of overcoming nihilism through art, the degeneration of diseased souls, the crossing from the desert of death to the oasis of life; the metaphysical elements of nature, the creations of the God-artist and the artist-God, the divinization of existential reality; and define how transfiguration takes place in the philosopher’s view. The intermediate chapter presents an understanding of the aesthetic, phenomenological, psychological, ethical and metaphysical aspects of transfiguration in the Grey’s transcendentalist art: the subsequent parts and sections describe the movements of the creative process, the foundations of the visionary’s journey, the artist’s planetary mission; the expansive states of mind, the possibilities of the aesthetic experience, the evolution of creative consciousness; the relevance of visionary art to the health of humanity, the prognosis of a collapse of civilization, the reversal of a terminal disaster for mankind; the overcoming of existential nihilism through the aesthetic act, the labyrinth of pathological nightmares, the supraversive power of metamorphosis; the constellation of metaphysical thinkers in art, the group of pioners of experimental mysticism, the correlation between perennial philosophy and contemporary though; and define how transfiguration happens from the artist’s perspective. The final chapter presents the proximities and distances between the Nietzsche’s though and the Grey’s work: the subsequent parts highlight the movement of transfiguration in nature and in the universe; from the perspective of aesthetic activity; in the artist’s phenomenological circumscription; in the psychodinamic experience of creation; on the horizon of visionary metaphysics; and the result of intersection of the worlds. All in all and in short: the conclusion of the thesis pretends to highlight the connection between the concept of transfiguration, contemporary philosophy and visionary art.