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MANIFESTO OF VISIONARY ART
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grammar, and allow for shared meaning.
Understanding the history of visionary art means reading the hidden signs and recovering their lost meanings. We begin to understand why Bosch made plants as if from metal, why Klarwein saw the world as if in Kabbalistic script, or why De Es' made his stonemen suddenly transparent to light.
The visual language is a lost language, like cyphers undecyphered. But it underlies all that we dream each night. It invisibly appears whenever the images of vision flow in a meaningful way. It emerges from madness. And the images drawn from these visions or dreams and then rendered into art - these begin to make the private image-language of each person a shared understanding and a communal experience.
From the trackless ways in the invisible dessert, the solitary wanderers are slowly emerging. Their many paths are crossing and combining. And, with child-like wonderment, they find themselves sharing the same horizon. The landscape they stand upon, though invisible, is seen by all - for it is the ancient image-language that allows them, together, to speak, communicate, and comprehend. Even song is added to their speech, as their artworks become ancient image-poems offering visions of the beginning, middle, and end of all things. This ancient image-language, otherwise forgotten is now being spoken once more.
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APPENDIX:
THE QUESTION OF TECHNIQUE
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From the technical point of view, Visionary artists are surprisingly united in their tastes, temperment, and preferences. Though their methods may differ - some preferring classical techniques of oil and varnish, others the airbrush, and others still the new graphic capacities of computers - all agree that as precise a rendering as possible is absolutely necessary for vision-inducing works. Fine lines, gradual transitions, infinite details - there is no limit to the pains endured nor the patience required to successfully render a vision into image form.
Why this emphasis on accuracy? Speaking for the Fantastic Realists, Fuchs relates that "From the beginning we wanted to re-animate the craftsmanship of the Old Masters. But, more than that, we wanted to depict the fantastic image in such a way as if it were painted, not by hand, but by the dream itself, leaving no trace of the craftsmanship behind." (101)
And De Es expands on this idea: "In these early works, I avoided anything which could look like a brushstroke. The onlookers always wondered how it was done. They were really quite mystified. That sort of response made me feel very good about my work, because that is how I perceived existence. There are no brushstrokes in life, and only the creator knows how it is done. I am left mystified." (102)
Just as the vision arrives spontaneously with little indication of its origin, so does the artist leave his work behind with little trace of his role as its author. For, he is transcribing as faithfully as possible what he saw uprising unbidden from within - like a prophet or seer visited by uncommanded
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