Levels of Art
Ken Wilber, The Marriage Of Sense And Soul, p192-5

The four levels we are using, in this simplified account, are the sensorimotor, the mental, the subtle soul, and the causal spirit. Each level, as always, transcends and includes its predecessors, so there is nothing mutually exclusive about any of these levels. It is simply that each senior level possesses emergent qualities not found in its juniors, and the art of each level often takes these new, emergent, and defining characteristics as the topic for aesthetic appreciation, thus giving each level of art a very distinctive stamp …

The art of the sensorimotor world takes as its content or referent the sensory world itself, as perceived with the eye of flesh, from realistic impressions to landscapes to portraiture. This is "objective" art or representational art…

The art of the mental domain takes as its referent the actual contents of the psyche itself, as interiorly perceived with the eye of mind. The Surrealists are the most obvious, but conceptual art, abstract art, and abstract expressionism are also typical examples (…) But this is not "mental abstraction" in the dry sense. The inward empiricism of the eye of mind - from mathematics to mental art - is actually experienced in some of its deepest richest, most intense textures. As Constantin Brancusi almost screamed out, "They are imbeciles who call my work abstract; that which they call abstract is the most realist, because what is real is not the exterior form but the idea, the essence of things." Mental art attempts to give visual expression to just those ideas and essences.

The art of the subtle level takes as its content or referent various illuminations, visions, and archetypal forms, as inwardly and directly perceived with the beginning eye of contemplation (or transpersonal awareness by whatever name). It is, we might say, soul art, as Frantisek Kupka stated, "yes, [this] painting means clothing the processes of the human soul in plastic forms." This means, of course, that the artists themselves must have evolved or developed into the subtle domain, as Wassily Kandinsky knew: "only with higher development does the circle of experience of different beings and objects grow wider. Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow business. The artist must train not only his mind but also his soul" (my italics).

The point is that soul art, of any variety, is not metaphoric or allegorical; it is a direct depiction of the direct experience of the subtle level. It is not a painting of sensory objects seen with the eye of flesh, and it is not a painting of conceptual objects seen with the eye of mind; it is a painting of subtle objects seen with the eye of contemplation.

That means that artist and critic and viewer alike must be alive to that higher domain in order to participate in this art. As Brancusi reminded us, "look at my works until you see them. Those who are closer to God have seen them." As Kandinsky put it, the aim is to "proclaim the reign of Spirit (…) to proclaim light from light, the flowing light of the Godhead," all seen, not with the eye of flesh or the eye of mind, but with the eye of contemplation, and then rendered into artistic material form as a reminder of, and a call to, that extraordinary vision.

The art of pure spirit takes no particular referent at all, because it is bound to no realm whatsoever. It might therefore take its referent from any or all levels - from sensorimotor/body level (such as in a Zen landscape) to the causal and subtle levels (such as in the Tibetan Thangkas). What characterizes this art is not its content, but the utter absence of self-contraction in the artist who paints it, an absence that, in the greatest of this art, can at least temporarily evoke a similar freedom in the viewer (which was Schopenhauer's profound insight about the power of great art: it brings transcendence). . .

Art, then, is one of the important dimensions of every level in the Great Holarchy of Being. Art is the Beauty of Spirit as it expresses itself on each and every level of its own manifestation. Art is in the eye of the beholder, in the I of the beholder: Art is the I of Spirit.