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Laurence Caruana (born February 16, 1962) is a Maltese artist, writer, and lecturer noted for his contribution to the contemporary visionary art movement, particularly through his Manifesto of Visionary Art. [1]
Laurence Caruana was born the third son of Maltese parents who met and married in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. After completing his studies in German and ancient Greek Philosophy (B.A. from the University of Toronto 1985), he learned classical painting techniques at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna ( Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 1990). [2]
Caruana then began an itinerant existence, living variously in Toronto, Malta, Vienna, Munich, Monaco, and Paris. In that period, he actively pursued visionary experience (dreams, entheogens) as a source for his painting and writing. [3] After meeting his French fiançée in Munich, L. Caruana settled in Paris. In the year 2000 he met Ernst Fuchs of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism and subsequently apprenticed under him for a year, working in his studios in Monaco and Castillon, as well as at the St. Egid chapel in Klagenfurt. [2]
In 2008 he held the first Visions in the Mischtechnik painting seminar in the eco-village of Torri Superiore Italy, which eventually led to the creation of The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art, where Caruana has served as Director and Principal Lecturer since 2013. [4] While still maintaining a studio in the Bastille area of Paris, the artist currently lives in the Josefstadt district of Vienna - frequently traveling abroad to exhibit, teach or lecture on visionary art. [5]
After apprenticing with Ernst Fuchs, Caruana began using the Mischtechnik , a painting technique which alternates between glazes of oil color (mixed in an oleo-resinous medium) and water-based whites (mixed in egg tempera or casein).
His art is highly mythological. Through fine lines, strong colors and precise rendering, Caruana's work manifests the imagery typical of visionary experience. More uniquely, his work combines symbols and styles from different cultural mythologies.
He has exhibited his works in London, Paris, Vienna, Munich, Monaco, and other cities, both individually (Le Pouvoir des Mythes in Galerie d'Art Visionnaire de Paris) and as part of various groups (Chimeria in France, Society for Art of Imagination in England). [4] [6] Giclée reproductions of his work have frequently appeared at transformational festivals such as The Boom Festival in Portugal and the O.Z.O.R.A. festival in Hungary. [7] [8]
The artist's images have also been reproduced on album covers, [9] [10] in magazines, [11] as tattoos, trading cards, [12] and in posters for transformational festivals.
L. Caruana's creative and critical writing are extensions of his interest in mythology and visionary art.
In a novel such as The Hidden Passion (Recluse 2007 ISBN 978-0-9782637-0-6), the author has retold the tale of Christ from the Gnostic perspective. Though condemned by the early church as a heresy, Gnosticism expands Christian myth by incorporating motifs from other cultures, such as ancient Greece (Platonism) and Egypt (Hermeticism). Throughout the novel, Christ utters the actual sayings (logia) of the Gnostic gospels found at Nag Hammadi Egypt. L. Caruana's interest in Gnosticism forms part of a much broader fascination with crossing myths from different cultural mythologies. [13]
Due to his deep involvement with the Visionary art movement, L. Caruana has also become one of its spokesmen. Through his on-line Visionary Revue, he has documented the history and evolution of this international movement. His First Manifesto of Visionary Art (Recluse 2010 ISBN 978-0-97826373-7, English, French and Portuguese editions) was published on-line and in print to an enthusiastic response. [14] The creative essays Myrette and A Mirror Delirious, which appear in issue 4, bring up to date all the author’s thoughts and insights into Visionary art since the publication of the Manifesto. [15]
Caruana's lifelong pursuit of 'the ancient image-language' reached fruition in a book entitled Enter Through the Image: The Ancient Image-Language of Myth, Art and Dreams (Recluse 2008 ISBN 978-0-9782637-2-0). Drawing upon examples from sacred and visionary art, the book demonstrates how we may 'think through images' and eventually enter through the image to the mystical experience of henosis. In its elaboration of the image-language, the book delineates how various myths may cross one another and how different cultural symbols may be combined. [16]
Since 2008, Caruana has held The Visions in the Mischtechnik painting seminar in the eco-village of Torri Superiore Italy, co-teaching with Amanda Sage, A. Andrew Gonzalez and others. He has also taught painting at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York. In 2013 he co-founded The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art which "revives classical techniques of painting while pursuing art as the expression of beauty, spirit and vision." [17]
From his studio in The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art, L. Caruana often travels abroad to deliver lectures on visionary art. He has spoken at such venues as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, [18] the Metageum conference in Malta, [19] and Alex Grey's The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York. [20]
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge is an artisan-like figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The Gnostics adopted the term demiurge. Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not necessarily the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because the demiurge itself and the material from which the demiurge fashions the universe are both considered consequences of something else. Depending on the system, they may be considered either uncreated and eternal or the product of some other entity.
Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions.
Fractal art is a form of algorithmic art created by calculating fractal objects and representing the calculation results as still digital images, animations, and media. Fractal art developed from the mid-1980s onwards. It is a genre of computer art and digital art which are part of new media art. The mathematical beauty of fractals lies at the intersection of generative art and computer art. They combine to produce a type of abstract art.
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expressionist movement.
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.
Ernst Fuchs was an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet, and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In 1972, he acquired the derelict Otto Wagner Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed. The villa was inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum in 1988.
The Gospel of Mary is an early Christian text discovered in 1896 in a fifth-century papyrus codex written in Sahidic Coptic. This Berlin Codex was purchased in Cairo by German diplomat Carl Reinhardt.
The Apocryphon of John, also called the Secret Book of John or the Secret Revelation of John, is a 2nd-century Sethian Gnostic Christian pseudepigraphical text attributed to John the Apostle. It is one of the texts addressed by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies, placing its composition before 180 AD. It is presented as describing Jesus appearing and giving secret knowledge (gnosis) to his disciple John. The author describes it as having occurred after Jesus had "gone back to the place from which he came".
Russian cosmism, also cosmism, is a later term for philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in Russia at the turn of the 19th century, and again, at the beginning of the 20th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a burst of scientific investigation into interplanetary travel, largely driven by fiction writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells as well as philosophical movements like the Russian cosmism.
The Sethians were one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd and 3rd century AD, along with Valentinianism and Basilideanism. According to John D. Turner, it originated in the 2nd century AD as a fusion of two distinct Hellenistic Judaic philosophies and was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism. However, the exact origin of Sethianism is not properly understood.
The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, also known as the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter and Revelation of Peter, is the third tractate in Codex VII of the Nag Hammadi library. The work is part of Gnosticism, a sect of early Christianity, and is considered part of the New Testament apocrypha. It was likely originally written in the Koine Greek language and composed around 200 CE. The surviving manuscript from Nag Hammadi is a poor-quality translation of the Greek into Coptic, and likely dates from the 4th century.
Abdul Mati Klarwein was a German painter best known for his works used on the covers of music albums.
Gnosticism refers to a collection of religious groups originating in Jewish religiosity in Alexandria in the first few centuries AD. Neoplatonism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century, based on the teachings of Plato and some of his early followers. While Gnosticism was influenced by Middle Platonism, neoplatonists from the third century onward rejected Gnosticism. Nevertheless, Alexander J. Mazur argues that many neoplatonic concepts and ideas are ultimately derived from Sethian Gnosticism during the third century in Lower Egypt, and that Plotinus himself may have been a Gnostic before nominally distancing himself from the movement.
Gnosticism in modern times includes a variety of contemporary religious movements, stemming from Gnostic ideas and systems from ancient Roman society. Gnosticism is an ancient name for a variety of religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish-Christian milieux in the first and second century CE.
Brigid Marlin is an American artist based in Hertfordshire, UK. She studied in Dublin, Montreal, New York, Paris and Vienna where, under the guidance of the Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs, she learned the oil and egg tempera technique (Mischtechnik) of the Flemish and Italian Renaissance painters Jan van Eyck and Giovanni Bellini. In 1961 she founded the ins-cape group, which subsequently became the Society for Art of Imagination.
Robert Venosa was an American Fantastic Realistic, Visionary painter who resided in Cadaques, Spain and Boulder, Colorado, US. He studied with what are termed the New Masters. His artworks reside in collections around the world.
Amanda Sage is an American painter who has studied and worked in Vienna, Austria and Los Angeles, California. She trained and worked with Ernst and Michael Fuchs, a classical artist who taught her Mischtechnik. Through Fuchs she came to know other Visionary artists with whom she has worked, exhibited and co-founded the Academy of Visionary Art in Vienna and the Colorado Alliance for Visionary Art. Sage is a lecturer, teacher, and live artist with works in international galleries and museums.
The Hypostasis of the Archons, also called The Reality of the Rulers or The Nature of the Rulers, is a Gnostic writing. The only known surviving manuscript is in Coptic as the fourth tractate in Codex II of the Nag Hammadi library. It has some similarities with On the Origin of the World, which immediately follows it in the codex. The Coptic version is a translation of a Greek original, possibly written in Egypt in the third century AD. The text begins as an exegesis on Genesis 1–6 and concludes as a discourse explaining the nature of the world's evil authorities. It applies Christian Gnostic beliefs to the Jewish origin story, and translator Bentley Layton believes the intent is anti-Jewish.
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity Within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East is a 1970 book about the linguistics of early Christianity and fertility cults in the Ancient Near East. It was written by John Marco Allegro (1923–1988).
