Is there a lack of supernaturalism in contemporary art? Or is it just the opposite?

Contemporary art defines supernaturalism differently from the original medieval meaning put forth by St. Thomas Aquinas, who differentiated the natural and the supernatural as two planes of reality. The Surrealists understood the supernatural as a phenomenon related to parapsychology — which requires a receptivity that opposed the merchandising of contemporary art. Contemporary art uses supernaturalism to manipulate the viewer — it creates an extraordinary effect that elicits a feeling of awe through indefinite spaces (the liquor bottle floating in the sky, à la Magritte) or by using surrealistic devices such as grotesquely animating inert human body parts, as in the contemporary American artist Tony Oursler’s disembodied heads and eyes (created through digital projections). Other artists use theatrical or atmospheric effects to create ambiguity through which images become disconnected from their context, and thereby accumulate fetishistic meaning.

In order to draw us into a commodity fetishism that drives consumers, contemporary advertising makes the most of Surrealism’s techniques of surprise, reversal, irreverence, and isolation of the object. Art directors have created an applied surrealism that focuses the viewer on the transcendent or erotic experience encapsulated by the consumer object. Brand names shamelessly make fetishes out of ordinary objects, whetting the consumerist appetite for the status they confer.

In order to draw us into a commodity fetishism that drives consumers, contemporary advertising makes the most of Surrealism’s techniques of surprise, reversal, irreverence, and isolation of the object.

We live in a materialistic culture, and artists love to go against the grain. The seemingly supernatural effects of contemporary art owe more to the side-show theatrics of 19th century spiritualism than to a naïve apprehension of the supernatural. Ironically, supernaturalism becomes post-modernist when it is used to critique materialism while still employing the sensationalism of a materialistic culture. For the Love of God, Damian Hirst’s diamond studded skull, exploits this supernatural effect. Intrinsically, diamonds have a transparent, electric energy. The skull recalls death, but death made beautiful, desirable. The excessive diamond in the skull’s forehead appeals to the contemporary appetite for luxury. The artist entitled his work using his mother’s astonished exclamation, when he told her of his creation, suggesting the cynicism of his approach. Numbers line up to see this excessive work, reinforcing the shallow celebrity culture in which we live, rather than any authentic experience of the supernatural. For that we must look to archaic art for a sense of mystery. The archaic world gave form to mythic energies that post-modernists are either incapable of seeing, or too cleverly cynical to acknowledge.

In this direction, I find much of contemporary literature’s interest in the supernatural contrived. Supernatural imagery has become de rigueur; it provides the “magic” in magic realism, where such phenomena intrude into ordinary events. In contemporary Latin American fiction, supernaturalism has become systematized into a certain genre — taking away its “extraordinary” effect. For that sense of the extraordinary I look to Jorge Luis Borges, who takes the paradoxical intertwining of the metaphysical and the actual into a complex mental state of reflection and loss.

How would you explain the “sacred” in modern art?

The experience of the sacred is elusive, and eclipses religions. It arises from the imagination opening to visionary experience. Human spirituality is independent of religion, and escapes its forms through individual experiences in nature, love, and creativity. Religion is a construct of the imagination, like art. The human imagination gives form to sacred power, altering it in religions. Religions create rituals around relationships (between people, and with the environment and the elements) by creating a community of believers. Religions are systems.