"Blue Buddha" (Polyptych) by Bettina WitteVeen
Bettina WitteVeen’s “Blue Buddha” Polyptych participating in the Exhibition blue. at the Nassau County Museum of Art (NY, USA) from March 14 - November 2, 2020.
“How far can blue go? Transcending borders of space and time, it is the never-ending story of color in culture. Bettina WitteVeen is a Mannheim-born artist educated at Wellesley College who is a devout Buddhist. Her epic humanitarian project Heart of Darkness has led her to hunt for haunting blues in such "extraterritorial" sites as a meadow of blue flowers on the site of a former Russian gulag, a Native American reservation, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. Her travels permit WitteVeen to catch blue on the fly, gathering glimpses of its sacred quality. The blue of this Buddha who presides over our gallery was never really there, though. The print is actually the "color reversal" of the original gold image, as si the serene blue lake at dawn. She contrasts the symbolic solar gold of the rational, "Day Mind" with the blue "Night Mind," lunar and female:
In emphasizing dualism by the use of the colors this series intends to guide the viewer to the realization that the perceived dualistic nature of our world is illusory. The Buddhist belief that the structure of the universe is inherently unstable and unpredictable coincides with quantum physics and finds its expression in the highly individualistic combinable nature of these photographs. Were we to understand that all phenomena are ultimately empty and non-existent (Pragaparamita) much suffering could be avoided and we would be liberated from the curse of Samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth.
As Stevens wrote,
The thinking of god si smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar
Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.”
-Charles A. Riley II, PhD