EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Importance of Interpretation

People use this site to help develop their ability to interpret works of art and thereby increase their aesthetic satisfaction. To look at art without trying to interpret it leaves you looking at a pretty picture, little more. Certainly the brushwork and craft can be breathtaking but without the potential for interpretation art is just craft. Meaning, on the other hand, once found, empowers you in strange ways. Interpretation is therefore more important than you might imagine…..certainly more than I ever imagined.

As explained elsewhere the Inner Tradition in one form or another has been alive for as long we have records. They pre-date the doctrinal Church in charge of lay people which often branded such groups heretical. They obliterated evidence of their existence in systematic campaigns against them, leaving us only with the one-sided diatribes of the Church authorities. By the 1960’s so little was known of this tradition within Christianity that individuals in the West yearning for a more spiritual life – the Beatles, for instance - were unaware of them and turned to Eastern traditions instead. Today with massive interest in mystical Christianity – some quite misleading - they may have chosen a different path.

That is why the 1945 discovery at Nag Hammadi of other Christian gospels barred from the canonical Bible was so important. Scholars knew of their existence from the campaigns against them but did not know the texts themselves. The Gnostic gospels as they are now called are thought to have been written in the 2^nd century AD before the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In them Jesus is a teacher of wisdom trying to help each individual emancipate their own mind. The Gospel of Thomas is probably the most famous and it is not exactly what you expect from a gospel. There is no story as such, no life of Jesus, no miracles, just one suggestion after another ascribed to the man. It is subtitled The Hidden Sayings of Jesus.

It begins:

“These are the hidden sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Judas Thomas the Twin recorded:

1.            And he said, “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.”¹

Interpretation comes first. It was Jesus’ principal recommendation. Only interpretation can open the path to hidden Wisdom; it is the same in art. Aesthetic satisfaction, I believe, is an endorphin rush inside the brain on discovering pearls of inner Wisdom that open neural pathways to new knowledge.  

 

1. Marvin Meyer (ed. and trans.) The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus (New York: Harper San Francisco) 2005, p. 7