Watch a video of Adi Da Samraj — at work in His studio during the period from 2006 to 2007 and speaking about His art process.
Visit the DaPlastique.com website for an in-depth exploration of Adi Da as artist.
"True art heals. True art restores equanimity. Art must regenerate the sense of well-being. That is its true purpose."
— Adi Da Samraj
You are also invited to subscribe to a new educational website about Adi Da's art. You'll find articles about His art, His instruction on true art, views of many of His images, retrospectives, and more:
The image-art I make and do ...represents the fulfillment, in fullest technical terms, of what I have always intended to accomplish by means of image-art — to create Self-Portraits of Reality Itself, which is to create the art of Transcendental Realism in the purest sense.
— Adi Da Samraj "The Final Resolution of Geome, Linead, and Orphic Font" Transcendental Realism
It is a rare and unique gift to view works of art created by a true Realizer — much less to hear the Realizer's instruction regarding his or her own art. This book marks just such an unprecedented opportunity.
Transcendental Realism: The Image-Art of egoless Coincidence With Reality Itself is a unique treasure, gathering together Adi Da's key instruction on the methods, meaning, and purposes of His own work, as well as His penetrating insight into the present-day culture and purpose of art.
Adi Da's Image-Making Process
A unique feature of this new collection of essays is an explicit description by Adi Da of His process of creating what He calls "aperspectival" and "aniconic" art " a process that came to final resolution in His Geome and Linead forms and in the development of His Orphic Font alphabet. (Each of these unique elements is described in the book.)
Beginning especially with the Spectra suites, I have been progressively developing an entirely new form of technical approach to image-making.
In each succeeding suite, there has been a further advance in the development of an image-making process that intrinsically transcends the human body as a "point-of-view"-based perceptual mechanism, and (thus, and thereby) liberates the image-process into the free-domain of egoless coincidence with Reality Itself.
— Adi Da Samraj "The Final Resolution of Geome, Linead, and Orphic Font" Transcendental Realism, Page 53
Assistance in Participating in Adi Da's Art
In the introduction, Erik van Erp writes, "Art speaks for itself, in silence. Yet, some words can be spoken to assist its reception." Adi Da's writings in Transcendental Realism do just this.
In fact, Adi Da offers guidance in how to participate ecstatically in His art — including specific instruction from Him in the essays "The Self-Discipline of Ecstatic Participation In The Image-Art I Make and Do" and "The Secret of How To Know (and Be Known By) My Participatory Image-Art"
Adi Da also intensively considers the error of presuming oneself to be separate from a work of art — and He invites every individual to be drawn beyond this illusion of separateness into the ecstatic, living process of participating in His image-art.
The introduction, included here in its entirety (see pages 2 through 4), helps establish a context for both understanding and participating in Adi Da's art.
This body of words, much like Adi Da's art itself, is a "transformational environment". If you have seen Adi Da's art, and wonder what or who it was that moved you, a careful consideration of this text will serve to integrate the immediacy of the aesthetic experience into a transformed understanding — of Adi Da's art, of art altogether, and of the most profound dimensions of human experience.
— from the introduction
Expanded Second Edition
This second edition of the book includes all the essays from the first edition (published in 2007), the entire contents of two small books published since (Perfect Abstraction and Aesthetic Ecstasy), as well as ten previously unpublished essays written by Adi Da in the last year of His life.
Also included is a series of black-and-white photographs of Adi Da working in His studio and a greatly expanded color-insert — with 24 pages of high-quality stunning replications of His image-art, highlighting images from The Spectra Suites (2006) through His final Suite, Struwwelpeter (2008).
Adi Da's exhibition will run from September 9 to October 9, 2010.
Achille Bonito Oliva, Italian art critic, historian, and past director of the Venice Biennale, is curator and catalog essayist for the exhibition.
Praise for Adi Da Samraj's Art:
I believe that art should always be a surprise. It must create, even in the critic, not emotion, but a sense of insecurity.
When one views Adi Da's art, it is easy to see 'pop art', 'op art', all the possible linguistic, ethnological, and iconographic references — but, in the end, the final work is always a surprise.
With Adi Da's work, I did not simply find myself in front of a new personal iconographic universe but rather in front of images that returned me to an experience of "epiphany".
Transcendental Realism The New, Expanded Second Edition The Image-Art of egoless Coincidence with Reality Itself by Adi Da Samraj
The new edition of Transcendental Realism contains many never-before-published writings by Adi Da, including a remarkable, detailed explanation of how His own final image-making process evolved.
Transcendental Realism
Transcendental Realism