Kevin Gontkovic - Kami

For this post, I’d like to talk about the painting that can be found at the following link: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/god-gayle-etcheverry.html. This is a painting is entitled God, which is the rough translation of the Japanese characters in the upper-right-hand corner of the painting. The Japanese word for this is Kami, which is usually translated as god. Kami are hard to pin down and define in terms that we can understand, which is why I find this painting to be a good rendition of what Kami are. In the painting one should be able to make out different shapes and forms, but there is no way to tell what is the true form of the object being painted. This is true of Kami because each one has many different forms that it can appear in. Kami can appear in essentially any form they choose. When communicating with people that visit their shrine, Kami will usually take the form of an object like a mirror that is housed in the shrine.

The abstract nature of the painting really shows how formless the Kami are. One can see some shapes when looking at the painting but one cannot make really make out what exactly those forms are. One can try to describe the objects in the painting by comparing them to shapes and concepts that one has seen in one’s own experiences with the world. This does not completely describe what is going on in the painting because the painting, just like actual Kami, cannot be fully explained using human means. Kami are apart of the “other world” that one cannot connect to without first giving oneself up to a higher power. This artist must have done just that in order to recreate the world of the Kami. The painter must given herself completely to the Kami in order to participate in the “world making” that we discussed in class. She created a world that is outside of our own.

The Japanese people believe that Kami are essentially everywhere in the world. Anything could house a Kami, from inanimate objects like a stone to animals and even humans. The world of the Kami would be said to be “wholly other”, which would make it very much unknown to humans. Many people would see the unknown as very chaotic. Chaotic is a good way to describe this painting. Humans live in the cosmos, which is ordered civilization; so, it would make sense that humans would not be able to understand a world of chaos. The world of the Kami would be considered a world of chaos by humans, which is why the painting appears to be chaotic. People cannot describe a world of chaos, which is why people cannot describe the world created in this painting.