Unlocking the creative potential
Three sections concerned with the artistic creative process are working together on a project entitled Creative Aspects of the Artistic Process and Their Significance for Human Beings and Society.
Today’s culture, which is dominated by digital and technological processes, mechanizes us and deprives us of our life forces and ultimately of our humanity, leading to our destruction and to that of culture and nature. When he famously said that ‘every person is an artist’, Joseph Beuys formulated the transformative motif of our time and the central task for the future. As we exercise our artistic faculties, we can become aware of our creative potential and sensitized to the living processes within us, in others and in nature. Our research project aims to describe the levels where creative life and etheric forces become effective and uses exercises from painting, sculpture, architecture, music, eurythmy and art contemplation to make them tangible.
Freedom, autonomy and sociality
Artistic activities are no longer optional extras or a dispensable luxury but the basis of a free, autonomous life in a technologized world. Freedom is intrinsic to the arts. When we do creative exercises or produce art we can discover and foster our inner freedom and counterbalance the technical structures and processes unconsciously guiding our thoughts and actions. Artistic activity is therefore existential rather than the prerogative of professional artists.
As a first step, the project theoretically examines the effect of art in relation to the questions outlined above. We already have foundational results for this from art therapy and art teaching. In a next step, we plan to develop seminars and simple ways of integrating artistic activities usable by everyone in everyday life. The project is a joint venture of the Sections for Visual Arts, Performing Arts and Humanities. Questions from a research project of the Humanities Section concerning digitalization and mechanization will be integrated. A meeting for everyone interested in the topic will be held at the Goetheanum on 21 and 22 June 2024 to plan and develop modes of working and details regarding the procedure.
Donations Visual Art Section
100 Years’ School of Spiritual Science and its current research project
With the Christmas Conference of 1923/1924 the School of Spiritual Science was also inaugurated. In preparation for the centenary the Goetheanum Leadership documented the School’s current research plans in a brochure entitled ‘Insights’. Some of the projects are introduced in Anthroposophy Worldwide.
Sebastian Jüngel