What is your perspective on modern art?

Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT MODERN ART? Asang, the first thing is, it is not art. For the first time something exists in the name of art which is not art at all. It is more a therapy than an art. Look at the modern paintings and you will be convinced of what I am saying. The painters must be insane; they have poured their insanity on the canvas. It helps them because it releases some tensions inside their being. It is a catharsis, but it is not art. It is therapy through art, but not art itself. If Picasso is prevented from painting, he will go mad. Vincent van Gogh went mad before he committed suicide. And I have been looking into his life deeply and my feeling is he went mad because he could not paint as much as he wanted.

Question: OSHO, WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT MODERN ART? I don't know much about modern art, and I don't want to know much about it either. It is not much of an art. In the past art had a totally different quality: it was beautiful. Modern art is ugly. It is very rare to find something beautiful in modern art, and I can see the reason. The modern mind is boiling with repressed sexuality, anger, hatred, violence. Centuries of repressions have become accumulated; it has come to a crescendo and it is erupting. The volcano is erupting! Modern art is more like a catharsis, more like vomiting. It is not art. One just wants to get rid of all kinds of poisons that have become accumulated. The same is true about all dimensions of art; music, poetry, painting, sculpture -- they all have become ugly.

Beloved Osho, since you first spoke about subjective and objective art, the artist and the mystic, a deep reflection has been triggered in me. I'm confused concerning meditation and doing. I have always felt my art to be my meditation, but is it still not a doing? I notice the difference when sitting in vipassana. Must art and sculpture even, fade away into non-doing? Can creativity on the material plane be truly meditative? Will my art remain solely subjective until the ego agrees to commit suicide?

Deva Darpana, the distinction between the subjective and the objective art is basically based on meditation. Anything that comes out of the mind will remain subjective art, and anything that comes out of no-mind, out of silence, out of meditation, will be objective art. This definition is simple and will destroy your confusion. Whether you are creating something -- you may be a sculptor, you may be a carpenter, you may be a painter, a poet, a singer, a musician -- all that has to be remembered is that it is coming out of a silence within you, that it has a spontaneity. It is not prearranged, preprogrammed, pre-thought. As you are creating something you go on being surprised yourself -- you have left yourself in the hands of existence. Now your hands are not your own hands. They are simply following what the existence longs for. You are not…

Beloved master, please share with us your vision of the benefits of the arts for our process of growing towards ourselves, in therapy, meditation, worship.

The arts can be immensely helpful in therapy, in spiritual growth, in your meditations. But it is taking a hard and long way unnecessarily. The shortcut is: first, meditation, and then out of meditation comes creativity of its own accord. Otherwise, it is a long journey; even one life may not be enough. For example, the paintings of Picasso are nothing but his nightmares, as if somebody is not painting but vomiting. It has helped him to relieve himself of his tensions, schizophrenia, paranoia and all kinds of mental repressions. But it is not of much use to you. In fact, if you go on looking at a Picasso painting for a long time, you will feel sick, because it is vomiting. You will start feeling nauseous. This is not real art. The people who created the Taj Mahal -- that is real art. They were Sufi mystics who knew…

He said, "In fact, he would have stolen and he would have left, but I was awake, and you know, I am a poet. So I told him, 'Sit down and listen to my poetry, otherwise I will give you to the police.' So out of fear he sat down. He returned everything; he said, 'You take everything, but please don't tell me your poetry, I am a poor thief and I don't understand poetry.'" The poet said, "It does not matter, whether you understand or not. I am enjoying telling it. And if you are going to create trouble, I am going to phone the police. The whole night this poor man has been listening to my poetry; he has suffered enough. And then he was caught by the police. Just release him. And I hope that once in a while he should come and visit me.