The Cyprian Call to Arms
by The Florist
Since writing The Seed, an account of the beliefs, legends and rituals of a social club of artists and models called the Cyprians, I have become increasingly aware of the stirring of a regenerative force within the greater art world that is producing works which are loyal to the concepts I outlined in that book. I have named this promising movement Cyprianism. A group of like-minded artists and models, until now mainly working independently of each other, have begun to surface and challenge the aristocracy of the postmodern art world by decrying the “dim and weak” state in which we currently find ourselves (Camille Paglia, Walrus Magazine, July 2009). By affixing themselves to an underlying “Current” and creating art through a life lived artfully, these new Cyprians are in the unique position to disturb the present state of art and alter the possibilities forever.
Make no mistake; this is not zeitgeist. Cyprianism does not rely on the “now” to define it. Nor is it nostalgia. It doesn’t seek a “simpler time”. And it is not the future. It does not seek to do the not-yet-done.
Instead, it draws its influence and energy from a timeless continuum that reaches back into the past, signals the future and requires the relevance that comes only from being fully present. In essence, the truth of it has always been the truth and that truth it will always be.
I feel it falls upon me to unite those that would be united and let this ring as a call to arms for those who seek to overthrow the rule of insipid art in the age of atheism. Let us bring to an end the “dim and weak”. Let us energize life with the same “Current” that has touched masters of the brush and chisl and their prostitute-models for thousands of years. By intentionally applying Cyprian principles to the ritual of practicing art and life, we can affect change that will be written in the history of our future.
This will not resonate with all artists. This will not put an end to all artistic arguments. Indeed, that is not the reason I write. I write to dare and provoke…to ally those who will answer with conviction the principles I pose. I write to orchestrate what is already happening into a full-fledged body of creation, – a complete work of art.
In the past, groups of artists, surfeited with art that had become just a shell of itself, have elected to secede from the art world. The most famous (and Cyprian) of these was the Vienna Secession in 1897. Gustav Klimt, its first president and most famous artist, lead the charge to revitalize the stagnant state of artistic affairs.
We now recognize the need to again unbraid ourselves from a convention which has become, at best, inelegant. We understand that the path of Cyprianism is not navigable by everyone. But that is not only its beauty, but its necessity. Artistic splendor should be uncommon in order to be important. The masters who have come before are known as such for the precise reason that their brilliance was rare.
Cyprianism creates a mystical mise-en-scène to be appreciated as beautiful, even by those incapable of creating it. This doesn’t make the creator better than the appreciator. They are simply roles, wholly dependent on one another. (see Floristian Principle #2)
Thus, we understand that it is acceptable and necessary to disaffiliate with art that the future will have swept away. Then alone can we begin to understand the legacy we’ve been given and that which we will give.
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Cyprian art is defined as
- Bound to the energy and influence of the Current.
The Current is the most important concept in Cyprianism and also the hardest to explain. It is worthy of an in-depth – and future – paper, which I do promise to write. For now, let me try to distill it to the most effective explanation for our purposes.
Imagine for a minute that you are playing first violin in a vast orchestra. As you look at your part on the page you see only the notes that you are to play. At this moment your section is resting but as measure sixty-five approaches you fold seamlessly into the fray. You only play one note at a time but the listener hears many…chords, rhythms…the entire score comprising the pleasurable music resonating from ears to chest. You barely look up from the page – you don’t have to. You feel the souls of the players all around you. You could see the conductor with an easy glance, but it’s more natural just to let the cadence run through you.
The piece of music ebbs and flows. It gets louder – softer. The tempos change drastically; at times even within one measure. And yet, you’re perfectly in sync with every other artist on that stage. Also (and this is where it gets important), you’re in sync with the members of the audience who are along on the journey. The composer, dead long centuries, is there – alive – in this room. His pen is spilling ink at this very moment for the array of notes being massaged out of each instrument. And only those who are ritualistically trained up to create and experience it are that closely connected.
This is the Current.
Some call it the soul. Religions of every stripe have concepts for it. Even many irreligious people have “spiritual” ideas about why the human race is wholly connected on mysterious levels. The difficulty of conceptualizing the Current is the fact that it is the “something else that one cannot know” that Rodin spoke of. Ultimately, it is beyond us. It is creativity. And it is duality. And as such, truly creative people can experience it but never explain it truly.
The Current is that place where history is written in memory and stored alongside the moments we are making right now. It is cadence. It is vast enough to be peaceful, yet personal enough to adapt in a breath. It is always moving, but not always toward the future. It is sexual. It is horrible, primal Nature and it is the beautiful, clever architecture that dares to defy it.
Understand, though, that we need never to codify it. We need mystery. We need ritual. And we need art…truly Cyprian art that is bound to the energy and influence of the Current.
- Created by living as ritual.
Cyprian artists live with a ceremonial flourish. We value ritual above convenience. It is believed that every step we remove from a process has the tendency to pull us from our connection with the underpinning cadence of the Current. The time spent personalizing our moments is where the creative process is best fed. Intentional acts of ritual automatically set us at a different pace than the rest of the world. (see Rodinian Principle #2)
- A total, collaborative work of art.
A piece of Cyprian art is just that – a piece. It is not the whole. Your work informs and influences the work of others. An ancient work stands alive – immortal – because of something you are creating now. Connecting to the Current has the ability to energize and animate all art.
- A rejection of conservatism.
Conservatism is defined as “an opposition to change”, but often as we get new information and formulate new thoughts based on it, our central theses bear the strain and must be shaped again. Yes, there are truths that never fully change, but we must be careful not to become so arrogantly stubborn as to think that we own all of them outright. Where most conservatives go beyond their usefulness is in their nostalgic adherence to “values” that don’t truly exist. (see Rodinian Principle #1)
Certainly, the reality in most things lies in duality, not in opposing, binary “rights” and ‘wrongs” – what Cyprians call “both things being true”. However, Cyprianism is not Subjectivism. It is not an excuse to “do as thou wilt”. There is quite a fine point to understanding “values” and it boils down to lack of arrogance (conservatism), undistorted and humble honesty and the “watchful eye” (a willingness to change)
- A rejection of “progress for its own sake”.
I spoke earlier of seeking to “do the not-yet-done”, saying that this was not an aim of Cyprianism. So much of modern thought is predicated on the belief that creativity and creation are the same thing. We tend to give higher praise to the person who seemed to create something ex-nihilo than we do to the person who perfects it. This has run rampant in our culture since the British, in the fourteenth century, invented the concept of having a claim of ownership over a thought.
Liberal thought is immensely distracted by the concept of “progress”, but this is basically just a binary reaction to the singular arrogance of conservatism. Everything moves anyway – it is all always moving. We don’t have to live constantly on the leading edge to be relevant.
Cyprian art need not invent to lay claim to creativity. Sure, being the first to develop a technique or some-such is an extraordinary thing – and Cyprianism is as capable, if not more-so, than other artistic -isms – but it is not our chief aspiration. We seek to learn as much from our history as we do by creating its future.
- An acceptance of duality instead of balance.
Central to Cyprianism is the fact that all the universe oscillates in a vibrant duality. Binary concepts of beauty versus ugliness, right versus wrong, gay versus straight, and every other seeming opposite is pure folly of the imagination. They are an immature understanding of the nature of things.
And because one of the chief aims of Cyprianism is the pursuit of Beauty (see Ingresian Principle #2), it demands an acceptance of the wild darkness and unpredictability beneath that Beauty. Cyprianism does not shy away from darkness, even death. It embraces both knowing that they are not opposites of light and life, but aspects of the same, wholly dependent on the other.
- A rejection of the “easy”, or the “needlessly crude”.
This goes back, in many ways, to ritual. There is an arc to life and to creativity. There is an arc to art. Without it, all is immaturity and scribbles. Shortcuts have the tendency to remove the artistic from a work. There is a dynamic worship in the Cyprian method that constantly declines the “easy”.
That is not to say that Cyprian art is only created by doing things the “hard way”. To an adept of Cyprianism, the ritual often comes naturally. As John Ruskin said, “A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.” But there is a difference between “easy” and “without effort”. This is especially true of art that is charged with true sexuality as is always the case in works of Cyprianism.
- An acceptance of the confrontational nature of Beautiful sexuality.
In that place where the arc of sexuality is written in short hand, or worse, lost all together, art is at its most uninteresting. True sexuality is confrontational. Cyprianism begs the breadth and depth of that arousal. It requires the mind to be connected and the senses heightened. Cyprian sexuality can be animal and raw, clever and haughty, and/or redolent with a deeply moving narrative. But it cannot be immature, flavorless and easy. Convenient, one dimensional slaps of sexuality – no matter how technically perfect and well composed – are at odds with Cyprianism.
- Profuse with the “knowing wink” – the special relationship between artist and subject (often, historically, a prostitute) which contains all the dualities of the sexual experience.
Without that lustful, sexual element there is no art (see The Picassoan Principle). Music, sculpture, painting, flower arranging, dance, drama…if it is devoid of sexuality, it is useless. As I wrote in Art in the Age of Atheism, “All great art admits lust”. I’m not necessarily talking about “erotic” art per se, but it can be. What I am saying is that all Cyprian art has a sexual narrative that underpins the energy of the piece. Cyprianism wishes to give (a sometimes unconscious) shape and voice to the intangible (and often subtle) erotic force. (see The Aretinoan and Bayrosian Principles)
“For him who has eyes to see, nudity offers the richest meaning.” (Rodin, Art – Conversations with Paul Gsell)
Much Cyprian art contains nudity. Much of it is even erotically explicit, but whether the piece itself contains nudity or is explicit doesn’t matter. In fact, it is possibly more difficult to create truly Cyprian works with explicit content since the tendency is to halt the journey at the mere exposing of flesh instead of revealing the pulse beneath. It is easy to get a sexual reaction out of a viewer simply by being explicit. Gynecological exposure is short hand and therefore not Cyprian.
It is possible to have two seemingly identical works that possess most of the same elements – subject and story, composition and color, technique, etc – and yet one is clearly Cyprian and the other is clearly a shell. The accelerated spread of technology and the formulizing of artistic thought in the last century has made it simpler to create. Just think of the decline of the use of the word “artist” as a profession as it has been replaced with “graphic designer”. This has happened to such a degree that the amount of knowledge required to create via these new tools has lessened exponentially creating a glut of “art” with all the “right” elements, but which truly has choked the creative process within an inch of its life.
Here’s an exercise. Type the words “courbet” and “monde” into the Google image search. Now try just “pussy”. The images collected by the search engine are somewhat similar except that Courbet’s work is masterful Cyprian art beyond the pale and the vulvar photos (though several are quite beautiful) are just greedy sexual short hand. Both have the power to provoke and arouse. But one will stand the test of time while the last thirty seconds of history will sweep away the other.
However, the example I just used is a fairly effortless illustration of this concept because Courbet’s L’Origine du monde is an explicitly erotic work. Take Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Les hasards heureux de l’escarpolette (The Happy Accidents of the Swing). There is not an exposed bit of naughty flesh in the work. In fact, there are yards and yards of voluptuous fabric covering each player in the scene. But Fragonard and the patron he painted it for considered it a sexually provocative piece, as did guests of the patrons unveiling party who were flush with sexual excitement. There are many erotic elements at work in this piece even though it is not explicit. That, and the fact that Fragonard worked closely with Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV of France, makes him a Saint of Cyprianism.
- An acceptance of the constant relevance of our history.
Time does not move in one direction. It exists in a largeness of directions which includes moving in more than one simultaneously. One need only to remember in order for time to exist in the past and present at once. Thus, there are more ways that art can move than new and old. Keeping Cyprian Saints and the legacy they created just under our fingertips is essential to creating art that looks forward, and out, from right now.
Human nature is to desire significance – to matter. We search constantly for the immortality that being significant will bring. Cyprianism animates the long dead masters that came before, keeping them immortal and ever teaching. And it creates immortals by developing artists of consequence and substance. (see Ingresian Principle #1)
- A rejection of the preeminence of “concept”.
I believe that if you sat in François Boucher’s atelier in the eighteenth century you would have not often heard him describe the “concept” of his work. That doesn’t mean they were without concept, just that the concept of “concept” wasn’t the preeminent force in the art world like it is today. I often I see gallery work that relies so heavily on concept that Beauty is lost. Concept needs to be an important element in the creation of art, but it cannot sacrifice Beauty on its altar. (see Floristian Principle #1)
- An acceptance of the Beauty of skill.
Concept is also too easily used as an excuse for a lack of skill. There is nothing wrong with technical proficiency. It is essential to prioritize skill, artistry, ability, talent and ritual exercise above concept.
- Prioritizing “designing to experience” above “designing from experience”.
There is a certain quest for fantasy present in Cyprianism. Artists of this method often use as their subjects narratives they wish for rather than those that they’ve already experienced. This is closely tied to the practice of ritual in the movement. Those pursuing ritual are intentionally seeking to experience, which is to say constantly running after fantasy. One beauty of Cyprianism and its rituals is that these fantasies often begin to be folded into one’s actual life experience, creating folds upon the Current and proving that time is not linear.
- Representing Cyprian principles, themes and legends.
Actual content and subject matter for works of Cyprianism often belong directly to sagas and traditions passed to us from the actual social order of Cyprians. This assemblage of artists and their prostitute/model companions (known as “those living artfully”) left a rich legacy of stories such as “The Birth of Venus” and “The Origin of Shame”, rituals like “The Affair of Breasts and Wine” and “Anthis’ Dance”, Cyprian Virtues and Vices, and Principles such as “The Liberty of Privilege” and “Knowledge Over Superstition” – all common threads in works of this method. For a more detailed account of these themes, see The Seed.
- Regenerative.
Cyprian art animates and gives life. It is the breath beneath the breath. If the Butterfly Effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions of chaos theory, then Cyprianism is the butterflies in your stomach. As lust stirs the spirit, Cyprianism stirs within that place in the throat, the abdomen, the loins and the mind. It is the thick connective tissue of electricity and air that resonates in mystical places, placing a pleasurable memory upon the Current and giving immortality to art and artist.
Let us stand on Cyprianism as at once ancient and revolutionary. Let us decline to digest the affront to Beauty that is the current state of art. We cannot be too drastic. Beauty will be our violence and we shall create our art by the sheer force of it. ”Let us outrage this false society all we can. Let us invert its hypocritical precepts. Let us be as indecent as we can.” (The Modern Eveline – 1904)
Let this be a call to arms…and hips…legs…lips…
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Floristian Principles
1. Be more in love with your subject than your process.
2. If every voice was heard, we would hear no voices.
Ingresian Principles
1. Maintain the cult of the true.
2. Perpetuate the tradition of the beautiful.
Rodinian Principles
1. In art, immorality is impossible.
2. Art is always sacred.
Picassoan Principle
Art can only be erotic.
Aretinoan Principle
Reject the filthy custom that forbids the eye what delights it most.
Bayrosian Principle
Always seek out beauty, and attempt to find it in situations that cannot be mentioned in prudish circles.
