Crop circles function not only in two or three dimensions, as images and experience, but also a fourth (time), for pundits like nothing more than to situate them in a utopian past. Twenty years ago, Dr Terence Meaden argued that crop circles inspired Neolithic megalith builders to construct stone circles. Now, in her preface, Lucy Pringle reiterates a connection with prehistoric stone markings, Australian aboriginal rock paintings and an alleged tradition of crop circles in southern Africa. Cerealogy is as much a social study as the study of crop circles. Consider, for example, how easily simple graphic elements are accommodated into established mystical frameworks, and then reflected back into contemporary culture in a feedback loop. Is this the gods demonstrating their ability to interact with us through symbolism, or a conversation we are having with ourselves? Alas, the living memory of a Zulu shaman is unsupported by a photographic record of anything resembling the patterns to be found in the English southern counties. Some would argue that this disparity represents an evolution in circles design, culminating on “this ancient Isle of Albion”, as Pringle puts it. Shifting sands of de- and resacralisation? The Great Spirit coming home? It sounds horridly colonialist, so let’s not go there… The cleverest circle-makers can’t help being English.
The power of crop circles lies in their status as objects thought to be of divine or mysterious origin. To Pringle and her kin, the notion that human artists are responsible for the geometric patterns featured in her book “defies rational explanation”, which is a bit of a bind for an art critic, especially one who compares crop circles to the work of artists such as MC Escher or Bridget Riley. Like art critics, New Agers often demonstrate confused rationalist hankerings. Where else can the notion that geometric precision, ‘proper’ proportion and other æsthetic conventions equate to the ‘non-human’ spring from, if not misplaced Enlightenment tendencies? Thankfully, Pringle turns to the Greek philosopher Epictetus to unravel the secret of the power of artifice: “Men are disturbed not by things that happen but by their opinion of the things that happen.” How true.
The circles are a phenomenologist’s dream and a Rationalist’s nightmare; they exist to provoke fictive imagination, not to quash it. Top marks, then, for the ultimate triumph of artistry over sophistry.
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