What Must Be Said, and What Need Not Be Said

I am looking at an image. I do not know whether it is a photograph or a drawing, but I soon realise that it does not matter.

The surface breathes slowly, rhythmically, sighing as though voicing some timid complaint, then suddenly it shrieks, shatters into splinters, plunges into a dense, night-black rumbling, and from there cautiously rounds itself into being once again, tearfully offering itself up to all manner of straining, rending chords that begin savagely to tear at its skin, piercing it, prodding it, until, driven by painful ecstasy and breathless with exhaustion, it collapses helplessly, waiting to come back to life.

The artist does not lie. Even if he wanted to, he could not, because art can only be true. Art is lived experience, containing within itself the modes of existence as a seed contains the possibility of fruit. The viewer’s trust and courage are the fertile soil that receives the seed, protects it and nurtures it. From parched soil grows a stunted, diseased plant.

The proper way of carrying out life is given. The finest achievements in the cultural history of humankind bear witness to this. This way is accessible to anyone capable of taking their fate into their own hands, examining it, shaping it and taking delight in it, whatever it may be. Art provides the guidance. True art is that which goes before us, leading by example, so that we may become fearless explorers of ourselves and, at the same time, of the entire world we experience; independent observers of our joys, our sufferings and our struggles. True art helps us shed light on the way things are.

In this sense, every form of human knowledge capable of seeing the world as a unity—whether we call it religion or science—is art.

Ferenc Csurgai is an ascetic. Not, of course, in the physical sense of the word, but rather an ascetic of the spirit: a man who observes himself, his own impulses and reactions as though from outside, as an independent observer, and for whom every phenomenon of his life—from its complex web of social relations, through his immediate human relationships, to the unsparing examination of his own physical characteristics—appears as a kind of arena, a realm of continual spiritual adventures and challenges. This way of understanding the world, and within it our own psychophysical reality, directs attention towards states of consciousness that have formed the backbone of ancient cultures for millennia, enabling those capable of it both to practise detached self-examination and to experience the utmost intensity of presence in the world. Let it be clear that the examination of myself here does not refer merely to my own physical being or emotional world, but to the totality of all that I experience and know, in the ontological sense of the word, since the only adequate way of experiencing the world is to recognise that everything I experience, within and without—that is, everything that exists—is myself. Self-inquiry is the most difficult, the simplest and the noblest act of the spirit. The renunciation of the ascetic is necessary if I am to free myself from false and misleading identifications, from my status and my ambitions, and face the responsibility that arises when one regards every existing thing as oneself.

In essence, there are two fundamental attitudes of the spirit: doubt and acceptance. The true artist is an explorer capable of practising both simultaneously. To use an alchemical analogy, this is nothing other than solve et coagula, the operations of dissolution and conjunction, in which the elements of the experienced world must be separated, dissolved and purified so that, transmuted and refined by the spirit, they may be reunited in the form of a perfect crystal.

Ferenc Csurgai is an alchemist. The alchemist knows that, if he is consistent and honest, he may find the trace of something essential. He does nothing more than take whatever arises within him—as thought, sensation, a dim or vivid image of memory—and use it as material that can be moulded, shaped, cast and polished, striving towards the accomplishment of the Great Work, the opus magnum, which is in truth his own self, refined until it has become diamond-hard and transparent. The work of art, cast, carved, polished, coloured, drawn into its material form, or captured in a photograph, is the physical document of this inner operation. It bears witness to the determination of the intention, the clarity of thought, the concentration of attention, the depth of feeling, and the strength and precision of the gesture. A true work of art is a milestone for those who travel this path.

And Ferenc Csurgai is a true artist—but that need not be said.