Salvador Dali Profile

Salvador Dali Profile

Jun 19, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Profiles

Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of Spanish artist Salvador Dali, who is one of the most recognized surrealist artists in the world.

Salvador Dali was born in 1904 in Figueres, a town close to the French border of Spain. His father was an attorney, who had a strict disciplinary approach to parenting, which was tempered by Dali’s mother, who encouraged her son’s artistic endeavors.

Dali was named after his older brother, who died before he was born, and he was haunted by the thought of his dead brother throughout his life. Dali often referred to him in his writings and art, such as in his painting Portrait of My Dead Brother. When Dali was five years old, he was once standing over the grave of his brother with his parents, and they told him that he was the reincarnation of his brother, and this had a strong psychological impact on him. Dali also had a younger sister, who published a book about him in 1949 called Dali as Seen by His Sister.

In 1916, Dali discovered modern painting while on a vacation with his family and another family, who had an artist among them. Dali began doing charcoal drawings, and he attended the Municipal Drawing School in Figueres. In 1917 Dali’s father organized an exhibition of his art at their home.

In 1918, Dali had his first public exhibition of his drawings at the Municipal Theatre in Figueres. In 1921 Dali was introduced to the art styles of Futurism and Cubism by acquaintances, which had an influence on his work. Futurism aimed to capture the dynamism of the modern world, and Cubism brought multiple perspectives into a single image.

In 1922 Dali moved to Madrid. He studied at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he drew attention with his eccentric dress and long hair. At the school, Dali became involved with the Madrid avant-garde art group known as Ultra. He was expelled from the school twice, once in 1923 for inciting a student protest, and again in 1926, when he told a panel assessing him that none of them were competent to judge him.

Around this time, Dali made frequent trips to the Prado Museum, which he said was “incontestably the best museum of old paintings in the world.” Every Sunday Dali went to the Prado Museum to study the works of the great masters. Of this period in his life Dali said, “’This was the start of a monk-like period for me, devoted entirely to solitary work: visits to the Prado, where, pencil in hand, I analyzed all of the great masterpieces, studio work, models, research.” Dali began painting during this time, and his work was influenced by Futurist and Cubist styles.

In 1925 Dali had an exhibition of his work in Madrid, along with other artists. Seven of his paintings were done in the Cubist style and four were done in a more realist style. His work was praised by several leading critics, and that same year he also had his first solo exhibition, which met with critical and commercial success. In 1926 Dali traveled to Paris, where he met with Pablo Picasso, whose work he admired and had influenced him.

In 1927 Dali’s work began to become influenced by Surrealism, and this is where he found his calling. Surrealism was a movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind. Dali began creating paintings with dreamlike imagery and hallucinatory juxtapositions. After being influenced by his readings of Sigmund Freud, Dali began incorporating sexual imagery and symbolism into his work, which caused controversy and some rejection of his work at the time.

Around this time, Dali grew a neatly trimmed mustache, which became more flamboyant in the years that followed, and this became part of his trademark style and iconic image. Dali become known for his impeccably waxed mustache, which he styled into two thin, upward-pointing curves.

In 1929 Dali collaborated on a short surrealist film called An Andalusian Dog, and he continued with his paintings that explored themes of sexual anxiety and unconscious desires. In 1929 Dali had an exhibition of his work that was described as “the most hallucinatory that has been produced up to now,” and this exhibition was a commercial success.

Dali was deeply in touch with his subconscious and unconscious mind, and he used a variety of methods to induce altered states of consciousness. He was an avid lucid dreamer and practiced techniques to help with becoming awake in his dreams. Dali also experimented with different psychoactive substances, such as cannabis and hashish, and in the 1930s he used the psychedelic drug mescaline, which he believed gave him greater access to his subconscious mind. In response to an interviewer’s question about drugs, Dali famously said, “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs,” and “Take me, I am the drug, take me, I am hallucinogenic.”

In 1931 Dali painted one of his most famous paintings, The Persistence of Memory, which depicts a surrealistic landscape with melting pocket watches. Dali had numerous exhibitions of his work that were met with more commercial and critical success, as his fame as a surrealist painter grew.

In 1934, Dali took his first visit to the United States, where he had exhibitions and he received widespread press coverage. He delivered lectures on surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art and other venues, where he said, “The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!”

Dali was theatrical and flamboyant in his presentation to the world. In 1936, while at an exhibition of his work in London, he gave a lecture wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet. He arrived carrying a billiard cue and was leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds. Dali said that he just wanted to show that he “was plunging deeply into the human mind.”

In 1938 Dali met Sigmund Freud and he did a sketch of him. As Dali was sketching him, Freud whispered, “That boy looks like a fanatic.” This comment delighted Dali.

In 1939, during the German invasion of France during World War II, Dali fled with his wife Gala to Portugal, and then to New York in 1940, where they stayed for eight years.

In 1941, at a gallery in New York, Dali announced the death of the Surrealist movement and the return of classicism at his exhibition, however, critics didn’t think that there was actually any major change in Dali’s work.

In 1942, Dali’s autobiography The Secret Life of Dali was published, and it was reviewed widely in the New York and London press. In 1948, Dali and his wife moved back to their house in Port Lligat in Spain, where they spent much of their time over the next three decades, although they spent their winters in Paris and New York.

In the late 1940s Dali became introduced to Christian mysticism, and this influenced his artwork— such as his 1949 painting The Madonna of Port Lligat, which shows a surreal Virgin Mary with a floating baby Jesus in her lap. Dali then sought to integrate Christian mysticism with Einsteinian physics in his work. In paintings such as The Christ of Saint John on the Cross and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory Dalí synthesized Christian iconography with images of material disintegration, that was inspired by nuclear physics.

In 1968, Dali bought a castle in Púbol, Spain for his wife Gala, who would retreat there for weeks at a time, and Dali agreed not to visit her there without written permission. This led to estrangement from his wife, who was his artistic muse and caused Dali to become depressed. Dali’s health began to fail around this time.

In 1980, Dali’s health deteriorated, and he was treated for a number of medical ailments. In 1983, Dali’s last painting, The Swallow’s Tail, was revealed. After this, Dali lost his ability to paint, due to a motor disorder. In 1984 Dali’s depression worsened and he refused food, leading to severe undernourishment. In 1989 Dali died at the age of 84.

Two major museums are devoted to Dalí’s work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Dalí’s life and work have had an important influence on pop art, other Surrealists, and many contemporary artists.

In 2003, a previously unreleased animated film that Dali created with Walt Disney in 1945 was released, about a love story between the mythic god of time Chronos and a woman named Dahlia. Dali was portrayed in a film by Robert Pattinson called Little Ashes in 2008, and by Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris in 2011. The Salvador Dalí Desert in Bolivia and the Dalí Crater on the planet Mercury are named after him.

Some of the quotes that Salvador Dali is known for include:

Have no fear of perfection— you’ll never reach it.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy— the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?

A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.

What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.

One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.

It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

Everything alters me, but nothing changes me.

by David Jay Brown

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Robinson Jeffers Profile

Robinson Jeffers Profile

Jun 12, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Poets, Profiles

Carolyn and I admire and appreciate the work of poet and environmentalist Robinson Jeffers, who is known for his poetry about our beloved Central California Coast.

John Robinson Jeffers was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1887. His father was a Presbyterian minister, his mother a Biblical scholar, and his brother became a well-known astronomer. As a child, Jeffers studied the Bible and classical languages. During his youth, he traveled through Europe and attended school in France, Germany, and Switzerland. By the time he was 12, Jeffers was fluent in French, German, and English, and he had a good knowledge of Latin and Greek.

When he was 18, Jeffers earned his degree from Occidental College in California and then studied literature at the University of Southern California as a graduate student. Jeffers then studied medicine at USC for three years, although he dropped out of medical school, and then enrolled as a forestry student at the University of Washington in Seattle, a course of study that he also abandoned after just one semester.

Jeffers returned to Los Angeles. In 1906, he met Una Kuster, a fellow graduate student, who was married at the time to a well-known attorney, and they had a passionate love affair— that became a huge scandal, reaching the front page of the Los Angeles Times. In 1912, Jeffers published his first book of poetry, Flagons and Apples, although it didn’t receive much attention. When Una got divorced in 1913, she married Jeffers the next day, and they moved to Carmel, California together.

In 1919 Jeffers built a granite house in Carmel with his own hands, named Tor House, later, he added a large four-story stone tower on the site called Hawk Tower. This became Jeffers’ family home until the end of his life. It was a magnificent and impressive accomplishment. Stewart Brand, the founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, described the Tor House as “a poem-like masterpiece” with “more direct intelligence per square inch than any other house in America.”

Around this time Jeffers began to exclusively write poetry, and he wrote his epic poem Tamar, which is a controversial tale about a ranch family, involving incest and violence. Tamar first appeared in Jeffers’ poetry collection Tamar and Other Poems, which was published in 1924. This collection brought attention to Jeffers’ work and his fame grew over the following years.

According to one account, “With the publication of Tamar and Other Poems… Jeffers’ fame sprung into being virtually overnight. One decade and multiple collections of poetry later, he had become arguably the most famous poet in the United States.” In 1932 Jeffers appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In 1946 his version of the Greek drama Medea was performed on Broadway.

In 1948 Jeffers published a poetry collection titled The Double Axe and Other Poems, which included some poems that were critical of U.S. involvement in the Second World War. The publisher censored eleven poems in the collection and included a warning that Jeffers’ views “were not those of the publishing company,” and that the book contained some potentially “unpatriotic” poems. It wasn’t until 1977 that the full collection of poems was finally published.

During the 1950s and later, as the environmental movement gained momentum, Jeffers became an important voice for protecting the natural world. He also developed a unique philosophy. Jeffers coined the term “inhumanism,” which means “the belief that humankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the astonishing beauty of things.” Jeffers refers to this philosophy in some of his poems. For example, in his poem Carmel Point Jeffers encourages people to “uncenter” themselves.

In his poem The Double Axe, Jeffers describes “inhumanism” as “a shifting of emphasis from man to not man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence. … It offers a reasonable detachment as a rule of conduct, instead of love, hate, and envy… it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty.” Jeffers believed that humanity had been rejected by an uncaring divine being, and that everyone should transcend emotion, and embrace an indifferent God.

Nature serves as a backdrop for much of Jeffers’ poetry. Animals and aspects of the natural world are often compared to humans, with humans being shown as inferior. Jeffers preferred nature to people, as he felt that our species failed to recognize the significance of other creatures and the natural world. His work celebrates the beauty of seas and skies, and the freedom of wild animals, and it strives to create a vision of the world in which human experience is questioned and decentered.

Although Jeffers was known to be rather reclusive, he corresponded and interacted with other notable writers and poets during his life, such as Benjamin De Casseres and D.H. Lawrence.

Jeffers died in 1962. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and published worldwide. Jeffers’ poetry has also influenced many writers, such as Gary Snyder and Charles Bukowski, who said that Jeffers was his favorite poet. In 1973 Jeffers was honored on a U.S. postage stamp.

Some of the quotes that Jeffers is known for include:

The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.

I have heard the summer dust crying to be born. 

Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain. 

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me, Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.

The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heartbreaking beauty will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

One existence, one music, one organism, one life, one God: star-fire and rock-strength, the sea’s cold flow—And man’s dark soul.

As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. But we are what we are, and we might remember not to hate any person, for all are vicious; And not to be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; And not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed. 

A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.

by David Jay Brown

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Joseph Campbell Profile

Joseph Campbell Profile

Jun 5, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Writers

Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of literature professor, author, and mythologist Joseph Campbell, who is recognized today as being one of the most influential experts on mythology.

Joseph John Campbell was born in White Plains, New York in 1904. His father was a hosiery importer and wholesaler, and he was raised in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family, with a younger brother.

When Campbell was seven years old, his father took him and his brother to see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which made a great impression on him. Campbell “became fascinated, seized, obsessed, by the figure of a naked American Indian with his ear to the ground, a bow and arrow in his hand, and a look of special knowledge in his eyes.”

As a result of this experience, Campbell became extremely interested in Native American culture. By the time he was ten years old, Campbell had read every book on American Indians in the children’s section at his local library and began devouring the books on the subject in the adult section.

In 1921, Campbell graduated from the Canterbury School in Connecticut and initially studied biology and mathematics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, although he later switched to the humanities, and transferred to Columbia University in New York, where he excelled.

In 1924, after traveling to Europe with his family on a steamship, on the return voyage, he met philosopher and spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti aboard the ship, and they discussed Indian philosophy. This began a friendship between the two; they stayed in touch for five years, and this had a profound influence on Campbell, sparking his interest in Eastern philosophy and Hindu thought.

In 1925 Campbell graduated with a degree in English literature from Columbia University, and then in 1927, he earned a master’s degree in medieval literature from the school. Later that year Campbell received a fellowship from Columbia University to study in Europe, where he studied Old French Provencal and Sanskrit at the University of Paris and the University of Munich.

From 1929 to 1934 Campbell lived in a cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he engaged in an intensive and rigorous independent study. During these years he generally read for nine hours a day, although he traveled to California for a year, between 1931 and 1932, where he became close friends with writer John Steinbeck.

In 1934, Campbell accepted a position as professor of Literature at Sara Lawrence College in New York. Then, in 1938, Campbell married one of his former students, dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman, and they lived together in a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City for 49 years. In the 1980s they purchased a second apartment in Honolulu, and they divided their time between Hawaii and New York.

In 1943 Campbell coauthored the book Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial. This book takes its title from the symbolic creation legend of the Navaho people, which they incorporated into their blessing ceremony for tribe members headed to battle, and the book explores how this rite influenced Native Americans during World War II when they were for the first time drafted into the U.S. military.

In 1949 Campbell’s best-known book was published, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The book was published to wide acclaim and brought him numerous awards and honors. In this study of the myth of the hero, Campbell proposes the existence of a “monomyth” (a word coined by James Joyce), or “a universal pattern that is the essence of, and common to, heroic tales in every culture.” This book has had a major influence on generations of creative artists, from abstract expressionists in the 1950s to contemporary filmmakers today.

Between 1955 and 1956, Campbell traveled to Asia for the first time and spent months in India and Japan. This had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and it inspired him to want to teach comparative mythology to a larger audience.

Campbell authored numerous books on mythology, including The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology in 1959, Oriental Mythology in 1962, Occidental Mythology in 1964, and Creative Mythology in 1968. In 1972 he published Myths to Live By, and in 1986 his book The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion was released. Campbell was also a prolific editor. Some of the many books he edited included Alan Watts’ Myth and Ritual in Christianity and The Portable Jung, with work by psychologist Carl Jung.

Campbell also widely lectured, and starting in 1965, he led workshops at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur for many years. In 1972, Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years.

In 1985, Campbell was awarded the National Arts Club Gold Medal of Honor in Literature. At the award ceremony, James Hillman said, “No one in our century— not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Lévi-Strauss— has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness.”

In 1987 Campbell died at his home in Hawaii and is buried in Honolulu.

Before his death, Campbell completed filming a series of interviews with Bill Moyers that aired on PBS in 1988 as The Power of Myth, and much interest in his work followed the airing of this popular series. The series discusses mythological, religious, and psychological archetypes, and a book, The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly after the original broadcast. Millions of viewers were introduced to Campbell’s ideas by the broadcast, which was composed of six hours of conversation that the two men had videotaped over the course of several years.

In 1991, Campbell’s widow Jean Erdman worked with others to create the Joseph Campbell Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving, protecting, and perpetuating Campbell’s mythological work.

Hollywood filmmaker George Lucas has also credited Campbell’s influence. Following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977, he stated that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell’s. Many other filmmakers have acknowledged the influence of Campbell’s work on their films, including Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood screenwriter, who created a company memo based on Campbell’s work, A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which led to the development of Disney’s 1994 film The Lion King.

Some of the quotes that Joseph Campbell is known for include:

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.

All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.

Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths.

by David Jay Brown

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Fyodor Dostoevsky Profile

Fyodor Dostoevsky Profile

May 30, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Writers

Carolyn and I have long enjoyed the writings of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who wrote many great novels, short stories, and essays during his lifetime. His powerful works explore the human condition in 19th-century Russia, and they engage with a variety of timeless philosophical and spiritual themes.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1821. He had an older brother, his father was a doctor, and he was raised in his family’s home, which was on the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. This hospital was in a lower-class district on the edges of Moscow, and when playing in the hospital gardens as a child Dostoevsky encountered patients who were at the bottom of the Russian social scale.

When Dostoyevsky was four years old his mother used the Bible to teach him how to read and write, and he was introduced to books at an early age. His nanny read him fairy tales, legends, and heroic sagas, and his parents introduced him to a wide range of literature. Although his father’s approach to education has been described as “strict and harsh,” Dostoevsky reported that his “imagination” was “brought alive” by his parent’s nightly readings.

In 1837 Dostoyevsky left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute, and after graduating he worked as a lieutenant engineer and book translator, from French into Russian. In 1839 signs of Dostoevsky’s epilepsy first appeared, and his seizures plagued him throughout his life. During his 20s, Dostoyevsky recorded several journal descriptions of his seizures, and there are also descriptions in his novels. There have been numerous medical hypotheses about the type of epilepsy with which Dostoevsky suffered, the most notorious feature of his type of epilepsy being the so-called “ecstatic aura.” While these seizures were debilitating, they also appear to have contributed to mystical experiences that enhanced the creativity of his writing.

Dostoyevsky had this to say about his epileptic seizures, “I felt that heaven descended to earth and swallowed me. I attained God and was imbued with him… all the joys life can give I would not take in exchange for it… for a few moments before the fit, I experience a feeling of happiness such [that] it is impossible to imagine in a normal state and which other people have no idea of. I feel entirely in harmony with myself and the world, and this feeling is so strong and so delightful that for a few seconds of such bliss, one would gladly give up ten years of one’s life if not one’s whole life.”

Between 1844 and 1845 Dostoyevsky wrote his first novel, Poor Folk. His motivation for writing this novel was said to be largely financial. Dostoyevsky was having financial difficulties, due to an extravagant lifestyle and a gambling addiction, so he decided to write a novel to try and raise funds. The novel is written in the form of letters between the two main characters, who are poor relatives, and it describes the lives of poor people, their relationship with rich people, and poverty in general. This novel became a commercial success, and it gained Dostoyevsky’s entry into Saint Petersburg’s literary circles.

In 1846 Dostoyevsky’s second novel, The Double: A Petersburg Poem, about a bureaucrat struggling to succeed, was published in a journal and it received negative reviews. Around this time Dostoyevsky also published several short stories in a magazine, which also received negative reviews, and this caused him stress and greater financial difficulty. After this his health declined, his seizures increased in frequency, and Dostoyevsky’s life took a dark turn.

In 1847 Dostoyevsky was arrested for belonging to a particular literary group called the Petrashevsky Circle, which discussed banned books that were critical of Tsarist Russia. Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death, but at the last moment, his sentence was commuted. He later described this experience, of what he believed to be the last moments of his life, in his novel The Idiot. Dostoyevsky spent the next four years doing hard labor in a Siberian prison camp, where he had frequent seizures, and then after surviving that, he had to do six more years of compulsory military service.

In the years that followed Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, editing several magazines, and he traveled around Western Europe. For a time, he experienced such serious financial hardship that he had to beg for money. In 1866, when he owed large sums of money to creditors, his widely acclaimed novel Crime and Punishment was first published in a literary journal, in twelve monthly installments. It was a “literary sensation” of 1866 and is now one of the most widely read books of all time.

The novel is about the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of an impoverished young man who plans to kill an unscrupulous old woman, who stores money and valuable objects in her apartment. What’s so remarkable about this story is how Dostoyevsky portrays the psychological process of his self-tormented main character.

Between 1868 and 1869 Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot was first published serially in a journal. The title of the book is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, a young, Christ-like, epileptic prince whose “goodness, open-hearted simplicity, and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight.”

In 1880 Dostoyevsky published his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, a passionate and philosophical story about rival love affairs, that explores questions of God, free will, and morality. Dostoevsky’s body of work consists of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, 221 Diary articles, and numerous other works.

Dostoyevsky died in 1881. Since his death, he has become one of the most widely-read and highly-regarded Russian writers. Dostoyevsky’s books have been translated into more than 170 languages, they’ve served as the inspiration for numerous films, and his work has influenced many other writers.

In 1971, Dostoevsky’s former apartment in Saint Petersburg was opened as a museum, known as the F.M. Dostoevsky Memorial Museum. The apartment was Dostoevsky’s home during the composition of some of his most notable works, including The Double: A Petersburg Poem and The Brothers Karamazov. The museum library holds around 24,000 volumes and a small collection of manuscripts.

Some quotes that Fyodor Dostoyevsky is remembered for include:

To love someone means to see them as God intended them.

Beauty will save the world.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

by David Jay Brown

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Claude Monet Profile

Claude Monet Profile

May 22, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Profiles

Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of the French painter Claude Monet, who was a key figure in the Impressionist movement that transformed European painting in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Oscar-Claude Monet was born in 1840 in Paris. His father was a wholesale merchant, and his mother was a singer. In 1845 Monet’s family moved to Normandy, and his father wanted him to go into the family business of providing supplies to ships. However, Monet wanted to become an artist, and his mother supported his desire to be involved in the creative arts.

In 1851 Monet entered a secondary school of the arts. Although he had demonstrated skill in art from an early age, he was described as an “apathetic student.” At the age of 15 Monet began doing charcoal caricature drawings and portraits to earn money, and he started taking drawing lessons around this time as well. In 1858 Monet met another artist named Eugene Boudin, who taught him painting techniques and encouraged him with his art. At the time painting outside was relatively uncommon and Boudin taught Monet to paint outdoors and to pay attention to changing weather and light. Monet later said that Boudin was his “master,” and with regard to his later success that he “owed everything to him.”

From 1858 to 1860, Monet continued his studies at an academy in Paris, and then the following year he was called into the military service, where he served in Algeria from 1861 to 1862. The time that Monet spent in North Africa had a profound effect on him, and he said that the “light and vivid colors” there “contained the gem” of his future inspirations.

In 1862 Illness forced Monet to return to Paris, and it was during this time that he began his painting career. Monet often painted along the Seine River, alongside other painters, such as Renoir and Alfred Sisley. Monet and the other artists that he painted with sought to “articulate new standards of beauty in conventional subjects.”

It was during that time that Monet painted his first successful large-scale painting, known as Women in Garden, and in 1865 his paintings debuted at the Salon in Paris. This was the official annual art exhibition in France, where the best artists of the time would exhibit their work. After this exhibition, Monet submitted his paintings annually to the Salon until 1870, but they were only accepted by juries twice during this time, in 1866 and 1868.

In 1868, facing financial difficulties and severe depression, Monet jumped off a bridge into the Seine River, attempting to kill himself. Although he survived this suicide attempt, Monet struggled with depression for many years of his life.

For ten years Monet submitted no further paintings to the Salon, as his works were considered “radical,” and were “discouraged at all official levels.” During this time Monet’s father stopped financially supporting him because he disapproved of the woman that he was having a relationship with. Monet moved in with his aunt and immersed himself in his artwork, although he developed a problem with his eyesight that prevented him from working in the sunlight.

Monet painted numerous paintings of his family, and it was during this time that he began developing the style that was to become associated with his most well-known Impressionistic work. Impressionism is a style of painting characterized by small, visible brushstrokes that express a bare impression of form and unblended color, with an emphasis on the vivid depiction of natural light.

In 1874 Monet exhibited his paintings with an independent group called the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, whose title was chosen to avoid association with any particular style or movement. This was a group that Monet helped to form, and they were unified in their independence from the Salon and their rejection of the prevailing influence of the European academies of art. Monet had the reputation of being the foremost landscape painter of this group, which also included Renoir, Pissarro, and Cézanne.

Although the first exhibition with this new group received some unfavorable reviews, one art critic used the term “impressionism,” in a derogatory manner, to describe the artwork. This term was taken from Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise, which conservative critics described as “unfinished.” More progressive critics praised the style as a “revolution in painting,” although Monet failed to sell this painting at the exhibit. Nonetheless, it was the title of this painting that served as the inspiration for the name of the artistic movement for which he is so well known.

In 1875, Monet returned to figure painting, and in 1880 he submitted two paintings to the Salon, one of which was accepted. Monet’s painting style began to shift around this time; he used less Impressionist techniques, utilized darker colors, and displayed natural environments, such as the Seine River, in harsh weather. For the rest of this decade, Monet focused on elemental aspects of nature, and he began to prosper financially with the success of his art, especially when his painting began to sell well in America.

Monet began to prefer working alone, and he thought that he did better work this way, after having “longed for solitude.” In 1883, Monet and his family rented a house and gardens in Giverny, which provided him with domestic stability. There was a barn on the property that doubled as a painting studio, as well as orchards and a small garden, and the surrounding landscape, provided many natural areas for Monet to paint.

In 1890 Monet purchased the house in Giverny, and his family worked to improve the property. They built up the gardens, as Monet had increasing success in selling his paintings. These gardens were Monet’s greatest source of inspiration for forty years. He imported plants from all over the world and diverted water from a nearby river to create a water garden. Monet wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precise designs and layouts for plantings, and as Monet’s wealth grew, his garden evolved.

Monet remained the architect of this magnificent garden, even after he hired seven gardeners, and he purchased additional land with a water meadow. The pond was enlarged in 1901 and 1910, with easels installed all around to allow different perspectives to be painted. At his house, Monet met with artists, writers, intellectuals, and politicians from around the world.

However, Monet’s neighbors weren’t exactly thrilled with his gardens; they were mostly cattle farmers who were afraid that his new aquatic plants would poison the water and kill their animals. Local authorities even told Monet to remove the plants, but he ignored them, and the water lilies became one of his greatest sources of inspiration. Over a period of thirty years, Monet created 250 paintings of water lilies.

During this time Monet began to develop cataracts, and his output decreased as he became withdrawn. This change in his vision affected his artwork, as the colors that he saw were no longer as bright, and his paintings began to feature more yellow and purple tones. However, he continued to paint, and he produced several panel paintings for the French Government from 1914 to 1918, and he completed work on a cycle of paintings between 1916 to 1921.

In 1923 Monet had surgery on his right eye, and the lens of his eye was removed, which let more light into the eye. Because the lens is part of the eye that filters out ultraviolet light, it is thought that Monet might have begun seeing ultraviolet wavelengths, which humans typically cannot see. After the surgery, Monet used more blues in his water lily paintings, which may indicate that he was seeing ultraviolet light.

Monet died in 1926 at the age of 86. He is buried at the Giverny church cemetery in France. Today Monet is recognized as the most well-known of the Impressionist painters, as a result of his numerous contributions to the movement, and the huge influence that he had on 19th-century art.

Monet was one of the most prolific French artists of all time, with over 2,500 oil paintings created to his name. Many of his paintings are in Parisian museums. The largest collection of Monet’s art can be seen at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, where 130 of his pieces are on display. The Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris also hold significant collections. In 1978, Monet’s garden in Giverny was restored and opened to the public, where it can be visited today.

Although Monet destroyed around 500 of his own paintings when he was angry or dissatisfied with his work, his paintings have sold for fortunes. In 2008 his painting Le Pont du Chemin de fer à Argenteuil, an 1873 painting of a railway bridge spanning the Seine River, was bought for $41.4 million, and Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, from his water lilies series, sold for $80.4 million, which represented one of the top 20 highest prices paid for a painting at the time. 

Some of the quotes that Claude Monet is known for include:

I must have flowers, always, and always.

Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.

Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.

I can only draw what I see.

When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape.

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.

by David Jay Brown

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Michael Murphy Profile

Michael Murphy Profile

May 15, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Psychologists

Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of author Michael Murphy, who has been a key figure in the human potential movement and is co-founder of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

Michael Murphy was born in 1930 in Salinas, California. His father was Irish and his mother was Basque. In 1950 Murphy began studying at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where he was enrolled in a pre-med program. One day Murphy accidentally wandered into a class on comparative religions, that was to change the course of his life. This accidentally attended lecture so inspired Murphy’s interest in Eastern and Western philosophy and spirituality that he enrolled in the class, and soon began practicing meditation.

In 1951, during a meditation experience by Lake Lagunita in Palo Alto, Murphy experienced a transformative vision that caused him to drop out of the pre-med program at Stanford with “a new purpose life.” Murphy switched his major to psychology, graduating from Stanford with a psychology degree in 1952.

After graduating from Stanford, Murphy spent two years in the U.S. Army, stationed in Puerto Rico as a psychologist. Then Murphy returned to Stanford, where he spent two quarters studying philosophy in graduate school, before embarking on a trip to India in 1956.

Between 1956 and 1957 Murphy practiced meditation at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry, India, where there was an established spiritual community. After this, he returned to California, and in 1960, while in residence at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Fellowship in San Francisco, Murphy met Dick Price, who was also a Stanford University graduate, and they shared a common interest in psychology.

In 1962, Murphy and Price founded the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California on 127 acres of property that was owned by Murphy’s family. The grounds of the institute were originally home to a Native American tribe known as the Esselen, and carbon dating of artifacts found in this location has indicated a human presence there as early as 2600 BCE. The property was first homesteaded in 1882, and the hot springs there became a tourist attraction that was frequented by people seeking relief from physical ailments. In 1910 Murphy’s grandfather, a physician named Henry Murphy, purchased the property, and continued the hot springs business there.

The Esalen Institute became a retreat center that focuses on humanistic alternative education, and which many people consider to be the birthplace of the human potential movement. The organization has concentrated on teaching classes and workshops that explore personal growth, meditation, massage, ecology, yoga, psychology, the mind-body connection, and spirituality.

Some of the many incredible people who have taught at the Esalen Institute over the years include Abraham Maslow, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Fritz Perls, Nick Herbert, Robert Anton Wilson, Joseph Campbell, John Lilly, and Stanislav Grof. On average, more than 15,000 people a year from all over the world attend Esalen classes and seminars.

Esalen is a magnificent and magical place, with extraordinary views of the Big Sur mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The natural hot springs, or “baths” as they are called, remain an integral part of the Esalen experience. During the 1960s, Joan Baez was living in the area and Esalen hosted five of her famous folk festivals. “In addition to drawing thousands of local people to Esalen, these festivals, over the years, attracted people like George Harrison and Ringo Starr, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Lily Tomlin, Mama Cass, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, the Chambers Brothers, and others,” Murphy said.

Carolyn and I have both spent a lot of time taking workshops at Esalen. We took numerous workshops with Terence McKenna there together during the early 1990s, as well as with Colin Wilson and others. I have met many incredible people at Esalen over the years. In fact, it was at a workshop there that I attended in 1982 by Timothy Leary that I first met Carolyn’s daughter, and this is how I became friends with Carolyn.

In 1972 Murphy retired from actively running Esalen to do more writing. He has written a number of popular books, including In the Zone, The Psychic Side of Sports, The Kingdom of Shivas, and God and the Evolving Universe. Murphy’s 785-page book The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature, which was published in 1992, is a “historical and cross-cultural collection of documentation of various occurrences of extraordinary human functioning such as healing, hypnosis, martial arts, yogic techniques, telepathy, clairvoyance, and feats of superhuman strength.”

Murphy is also a passionate golfer, and he has written two fictional books about the relationship between golf and human potential. He describes golf, with its mixture of solitude and intense focus, as creating in some people a sensory deprivation that is conducive to mystical epiphanies. Murphy’s 1971 novel, Golf in the Kingdom, is one of the bestselling golf books of all time.

In 1992 Golf in the Kingdom inspired The Shivas Irons Society, an organization that “explores the transformational potential of sport,” of which Murphy is the co-chairman of the advisory board. In 2010 film producer Mindy Affrime produced a feature film adaptation of Golf in The Kingdom, which was directed by Susan Streitfeld, and stars David O’Hara, Mason Gamble, Malcolm McDowell, and Frances Fisher.

Murphy currently resides in Mill Valley, California. At 92 years old, he remains on the board at the Esalen Institute, and he continues to be a key contributor to research projects at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research.

Some of the quotes that Michael Murphy is known for include:

Life is tough, then you die. The sooner you accept that and move on with your life, the better off you’ll be.

Then he began to speak. “Golf recapitulates evolution,” he said in a melodious voice, “it is a microcosm of the world, a projection of all our hopes and fears.

Just the thought of it hurts, but I truly believe that sometimes you have to be willing to break your own heart to save your soul.

A round of golf partakes of the journey, and the journey is one of the central myths and signs of Western Man. It is also a round: it always leads back to the place you started from.

The more I study [golf], the more I come to deeply love and admire athletic excellence and beauty. It is one of the great manifestations of the divine.

by David Jay Brown

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