The Official Human (Hardcover, Special Boxed Edition)

''There are three major concepts that define humanity. The first is the problem of wholeness-inability to integrate, the second is death, and the third is creation. These are interconnected. Death constitutes the complete antipode of integration. Humanity's fundamental need is to integrate. But as a mortal being, it cannot eliminate death, meaning it cannot integrate in the real world. Humans are those who achieve their integration in the irreal-ideal realm. Humanity's somatic-biological aspect makes it a slave to nature, while its spiritual aspect makes it its master. The mechanism, the apparatus for this, is the activation of the potential for creation. Humans can only achieve immortality by creating, by leaving new meanings, values, and works on Earth. In such a defined living being, in situations where the integrity of existence is threatened or disturbed, self-consciousness and creative potentials are activated through the effectiveness of spiritual defenses, alongside physiological and psychological defenses, in the context of establishing a new homeostatic balance; the activation of creative potential aims to establish a harmonious unity of multiplicity. Thus, the act of creation occurs. In the act of creation, all realms of being, from inorganic being to spiritual being, from the 'Microcosmic Sphere' to the 'Macrocosmic Sphere,' collaborate for a common purpose. The inorganic and the spiritual, the real and the irreal, the moral and the emotional, the conscious and the unconscious, the Microcosmic and the Macrocosmic, the archaic and the contemporary, the local and the universal, the individual and the social can only achieve harmonious unity and wholeness in the act of creation. The expression of the supra-individual through individuality is creation. Every human being has creative potential. But some people cannot use this potential; they are unaware of it. In this, the oversight of the concept of creation in all intellectual, philosophical, and faith-based approaches for 2500 years, and the treatment of creativity as a semi-divine quality, have played a major role. Yet, what is truly human is creativity. Any living being that comes to Earth with the potential for creation is called human. No explanation or definition of human existence that does not include the concept of creation can adequately define humanity, just as no intellectual system or scientific discipline that does not grasp humanity in all its dimensions can reach sufficient maturity.''

Dr. Süleyman Velioğlu Interview, 1990.

It was only after I founded the Psychopathological Art Laboratory that I realized that psychiatry and art, that is, science and art, are not separate disciplines as commonly thought. This created in me a passion to understand human existence. On one side, psychiatry, on the other, neurophysiology, and alongside them, art… When all of these came together, I began to ask the question of who man is. Interpreting what I understood from this, I turned to evaluating contemporary human existence. The most helpful resource for me in understanding healthy human existence has been the Schizophrenic Process. Without understanding the Schizophrenic Process, human existence cannot be understood. This process, a special pathological condition of human existence, is one of the greatest guiding sources in understanding humanity. In my opinion, human existence is a process of integration. Schizophrenia is the most special and pathological condition of human disintegration. For this reason, my areas of interest are psychiatry, aesthetics, philosophy, and the Schizophrenic process. The resources I have utilized concerning human existence are dynamic psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, neurophysiology in psychiatry, ontology and contemporary philosophical disciplines in philosophy, and plastic arts in aesthetics. With the data from all of these, I am concerned with creating art by defining human existence in my own unique way and developing an aesthetic based on it. My philosophy of art is based on the effort to explain unsupported, abandoned man, lonely-man, and to establish harmony on an aesthetic level from the contradiction between man's archaic values and contemporary universal values. Hereditary, structural, functional defects, disorders, inadequacies, insensitivity, and disharmonies related to categories of being, as well as the fact that life is limited by the biological clock, cause man to succumb to an inability to integrate, to death, and to nothingness. But, among living beings, it is only human existence that resists this fate. It does not surrender to defeat in the real realm. It stands against death and nothingness through the act of creation. The perceptible world in the background of the plastic language in my paintings is the adventure of human existence within the universe.

Prof. Dr. Süleyman Velioğlu, Istanbul 1999.

Süleyman Velioğlu (1927-2001) developed his original "Theory of Human Existence" as a result of his integrated studies in the fields of thought, psychiatry, and art. His theory, which is very different from the theories about humanity that have been developed for 2500 years, was published as a book in 2000 under the title "Human and the Act of Creation". Süleyman Velioğlu's understanding of painting and art also completely illustrates his theory. Süleyman Velioğlu's works are in the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture, Anadolu University Contemporary Arts Museum, and in collections in cities such as New York, Boston, New Jersey, Paris, Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. This book was created to introduce Süleyman Velioğlu's "Theory of Human Existence" and the visual language he developed to the reader.