Helquin Artifacts

J.C. Leyendecker

2008-12-02T20:10:00.002-05:00

Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951)

"Leyendecker did what few artists ever do: he gave an entire era a way of thinking about itself. It would be nice, in light of that achievement, if more than just the cognoscenti knew his name."
~ Steve Donoghue, "Semi-Obvious," a review of J.C. Leyendecker: American Imagist for the December 2008 issue of Open Letters Monthly

See also:

J.C. Leyendecker: Wikipedia entry
"Leyendecker: Finding Poetry in Realism" at the Illustration Art blog (13 June 2007): "...concrete examples of painting that I believe does go beyond mere realism to display design and grace and charm."
A traveling Leyendecker exhibition (currently in Augusta, GA, and scheduled for Yonkers, NY, and Stony Brook, NY, before ending in Abingdon, VA, September - November 2009)

Confusations

2008-06-24T08:04:00.001-04:00

Confusations: Seven Photographs and a Commentary

"After photographing one reflection, I showed it to a friend, who found it 'confusing.' Thus, I decided to gather photographs as 'Confusations' -- a neologism I parsed into: 'confiscation' ('taking a picture'), 'sensation,' (as in Debord's spectacle), and 'fuse' (how the brain fuses memories to mediate a world)."
~ Joel Weishaus (Summer 2007)

Archibald MacLeish

2008-06-20T01:57:00.003-04:00

American poet, writer, lawyer, professor, statesman.
(7 May 1892 - 20 April 1982)

"A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for and can carry off."
~ Archibald MacLeish, A Continuing Journey (1968)

The Snowflake Which Is Now and Hence Forever
by Archibald MacLeish

Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?

Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish,
What would he make of the sole, clean, clear
Leap of the salmon that has disappeared?

To be, yes! -- whether they like it or not!
But not to last when leap and water are forgotten,
A plank of standard pinkness in the dish.

They also live
Who swerve and vanish in the river.

Parrhesia

2008-06-16T10:43:00.003-04:00

Parrhesia
In the classic discipline of rhetoric, parrhesia is a figure of speech described as: to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. The term is borrowed from the Greek παρρησία (παν = all + ρησις / ρημα = utterance / speech) meaning literally "to speak everything" and by extension "to speak freely," "to speak boldly," or "boldness." It implies not only freedom of speech, but the obligation to speak the truth for the common good, even at personal risk.

"More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy."
~ Michel Foucault, "Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia" (1983)

"Informant helpfully places Kucinich's Impeachment resolution next to other parrhesic moments."
~ Tom Matrullo, at IMproPRieTies (14 June 2008)

Class, Shame & Aspiration

2008-06-14T12:59:00.001-04:00

So I set out to "learn how to behave," to acquire what Marx called "cultural capital," or what's more simply called learning to "pass." This aspiration, celebrated in the phrase "upward mobility" is rooted in shame and, in its undermining of authentic selfhood, creates the vulnerability required by all manner of predators from child molesters to military recruiters to advertisers and financial institutions. After all, aspiration is not an identity but the rejection of one's identity.

* * *

Everyone in my family called themselves middle-class, all my aunts and uncles, each and every household, whether anyone had a job or not, regardless of what kind of work they did when there was work, regardless of whether or not they had "a pot to piss in."

We never used the term "working class." My father called us working people....

~ Richard Hoffman, at Mnemosyne's Memes

[via wood s lot]

Birds Say

2008-06-11T09:57:00.002-04:00

Stan Brakhage:
"I always liked best what Hollis Frampton said (a great filmmaker, Hollis Frampton, a teacher and an aesthetician as both of us hoped to be). He said the whole history of Hollywood movies, any movies, was comparable to birdsong. He discovered after years of listening to the birds that there are only five things that birds say, and he discovered that there are only five things that movies do. They say 'Good morning!' 'I found a worm.' 'Love me.' 'Get out!' 'Good night.'"

What Hollis Frampton actually said:
"One fine morning, I awoke to discover that, during the night, I had learned to understand the language of birds. I have listened to them ever since. They say: 'Look at me!' or: 'Get out of here!' or: 'Let's fuck!' or: 'Help!' or: 'Hurrah!' or: 'I found a worm!' and that's all they say. And that, when you boil it down, is about all we say. (Which of those things am I saying now?)"
~ from Circles of Confusion: Film, Photography, Video: Texts 1968-1980

Analecta Dump

2008-06-09T15:35:00.003-04:00

Hal Higdon, "Cultural Capital"; acrylic on canvas, 48" x 36"

"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing."
~ Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

"Art is not what we see; it is in the spaces between."
~ Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

"Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist."
~ René Magritte (1898-1967)

"Imagination is the landscape in which the artist goes for a walk."
~ Méret Oppenheim (1913-1985)

"The paintings are the shadows of my adventures."
~ Francis Picabia (1879-1953)

Click on image to see larger version (and other works) at Hal Higdon's website. All other links in this post are to Wikipedia articles.

Fill with Feelings

2008-05-31T12:46:00.001-04:00

William Degouve de Nuncques, "The Black Swan" (1896)
Click on image to see gallery at ArtMagick.

"To make a painting, all you need to do is to take some paints, draw some lines, and fill the rest up with feelings."
~ attributed to William Degouve de Nuncques (1867-1935)

More images at History of Art.

The Darkness

2008-05-29T10:11:00.005-04:00

Edward Burtynsky, "Oxford Tire Pile No. 1" (Westley, California 1999)

"Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
~ Carl G. Jung, "The Philosophical Tree" (1945), in Collected Works 13: Alchemical Studies

"These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire -- a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."
~ Edward Burtynsky, "Exploring the Residual Landscape" (artist statement)

"The Realities of Life"

2008-05-28T10:49:00.001-04:00

"Who is the artist? Is he not a human being like ourselves, with the added gifts of finer understanding and perception of the realities of life, and the ability to arouse emotions through the creation of forms and images? Surely. And this being so, those who give their lives, their knowledge and their time to social struggle have the right to expect great help from the artist. And I cannot imagine a more inspiring role than that which the artist is asked to play for the defence and advancement of civilization."
~ Paraskeva Clark, "Come Out From Behind the Pre-Cambrian Shield," New Frontier, Vol. 1, no. 12 (April 1937)

See also this excerpt (criticizing "precious, esoteric, abstract art" for being "as useful today as a top hat to a tatterdemalion beggar in the midst of winter") at the Mirabile Dictu blog.

Masks

2008-05-25T09:20:00.005-04:00

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, "Here-in-after, here-in-before"
(1963); gelatin silver print, approx. 6.5" x 7.25"
(Click on image to see more of Meatyard's work at George Eastman House)

"If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie."
~ Banksy, Existencilism (2002)

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
~ Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist" (1891)

Big Questions

2008-05-16T05:08:00.002-04:00

Should philosophy have something to say to non-philosophers? Should philosophy be pursued only by those trained in philosophy? Should academic teachers of philosophy consider themselves philosophers in virtue of the fact that they teach philosophy? And should analytic philosophers deny that continental philosophers are philosophers at all, or acknowledge that they represent different modes of philosophizing? Cogito poses some big questions to four prominent British and US philosophers.

(via wood s lot)

Which got me to wondering...
Should art have something to say to non-artists? Should art be pursued only by those trained in art? Should academic teachers of art consider themselves artists in virtue of the fact that they teach art? And should formalist artists deny that conceptual artists are artists at all, or acknowledge that they represent different modes of art-making?

Or, since some painters resist the label "artist":
Should painting have something to say to non-painters? Should painting be pursued only by those trained in painting?

Or, in a literary vein:
Should poetry have something to say to non-poets? Should poetry be pursued only by those trained in poetry?

Seed Bombs

2008-05-11T00:55:00.002-04:00

Another great idea from the folks at Just Seeds.

Seed bombs are described as "basically a simple way of sowing indigenous plants by making small balls consisting of dried clay powder, compost, seeds, and water."

There are many recipes out there, and here is one of them:
Combine 2 parts indigenous seeds with 3 parts compost.
Stir in 5 parts powdered red or brown clay.
Moisten with water until mixture is damp enough to mold into balls.
Pinch off a penny-sized piece of the clay mixture and roll it between the palms of your hands until it forms a tight ball (1 inch in diameter).
Set the balls on newspaper and allow to dry for 24 - 48 hours. Store in a cool, dry place until ready to sow.

I am reminded of a story my grandmother has told me, of a local schoolbus driver who sowed wildflowers along his route by tossing seeds from the window of his bus back in the 1960s and '70s. Many patches of those flowers survive to this day.

Having lived for a time in Florida, I feel compelled to emphasize the word indigenous in the above recipe. Non-native plants may be invasive! See kudzu for one alarming example of a non-native species introduced with disastrous environmental consequences.

Crime Scene

2008-05-07T13:06:00.006-04:00

~ Walter Benjamin, from "A Small History of Photography" (1931):

The camera is getting smaller and smaller, ever readier to capture fleeting and secret moments whose images paralyze the associative mechanisms in the beholder. This is where the caption comes in, whereby photography turns all life's relationships into literature; and without which all constructivist photography must remain arrested in the approximate. Not for nothing have [Eugène] Atget's photographs been likened to the scene of a crime. But is not every square inch of our cities the scene of a crime? Every passerby a culprit? Is it not the task of the photographer -- descendant of the augurs and haruspices -- to reveal guilt and to point out the guilty in his pictures? "The illiteracy of the future," someone* has said, "will be ignorance not of reading or writing, but of photography." But must not a photographer who cannot read his own pictures be no less counted as illiterate?

----------
* László Moholy-Nagy:
"The famous phrase, 'The illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the pen and the camera alike' is Moholy's. It has gained its considerable currency mainly by way of its paraphrasing -- without attribution -- in Walter Benjamin's celebrated 'Kunswerk' essay of 1936. Moholy's observation, originally in English, was written in 1932 and first published in 'A New Instrument of Vision,' (Feb. 28, 1936)."

The layering of dates (1931, '32, '36), editions, translations, and revisions creates an almost impenetrable confusion. But if, as Benjamin writes, "someone has said," then that "someone" seems to have been Moholy-Nagy.

"All Plots Are Arbitrary"

2008-05-03T01:04:00.001-04:00

"When I find the novel on the bookshelf, I want the sense from it that all plots are arbitrary, and what matters is to begin, to set out. To begin writing and then to follow through this beginning, being loyal to it, letting the narrative reverberate with the Origin it cannot reach. I want to know that it is no plot that matters, but another kind of intrigue, in which Writing has been caught by Writing; in which the Origin is allowed to speak in what is only the beginning of a story, an arbitrary story."
~ Spurious, "A Secret Collision"

Leaves

2008-04-30T13:20:00.001-04:00

"Hints of red are often found in green leaves. The color of a lilac leaf, held so that the sun glances from the surface, is full of sparkles of red. The under sides of leaves, as in the case of maple and elm and poplar leaves, often show a play of colors different from those of the upper surfaces."
~ Walter Sargent (1868-1927), The Enjoyment and Use of Color, Chapter 4: "Composite Colors"

Monstrous

2008-04-26T18:32:00.000-04:00

"But once greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits. It has no place for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It will do anything. It is monstrous by definition."
~ Wendell Berry, "Faustian Economics," Harper's Magazine, May 2008

Post-Modern Dilemma

2008-04-14T13:14:00.009-04:00

The issue isn't whether or not we should strive for ________, but rather what constitutes ________.

a. a work of art
b. national security
c. accuracy in journalism
d. academic excellence
e. victory in Iraq

Click on comments below for (one) correct answer.

Better and Happier

2008-04-11T14:14:00.001-04:00

"Men, like dogs and cats, fawn upon you while you leave them on the ground: if you lift them up they bite and scratch; and if you shew them their own features in the glass, they would fly at your throat and tear your eyes out. This between ourselves: for we must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind. By doing so, we make bad men believe that they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain. Philosophers have taken this side of the question to shew their ingenuity: but sound philosophers are not ingenious. If philosophy can render us no better and no happier, away with it! there are things that can; and let us take them."
~ Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1829), "Barrow and Newton"

The Untutored Eye

2008-03-22T09:08:00.000-04:00

"How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color."
~ Stan Brakhage, Metaphors on Vision (1963)

Spring

2008-03-20T00:24:00.000-04:00

Kees van Dongen, "Spring" (1908); oil on canvas, 32" x 40"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Happy Equinox: 20 March 2008.

Critique

2008-03-14T16:50:00.000-04:00

"A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning."
~ Paul Valéry (1871-1945)

Oscar Wilde: "Study in Green"

2008-03-13T12:37:00.004-04:00

"In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other."
~ Oscar Wilde, from "Pen, Pencil and Poison: A Study in Green" (originally in Fortnightly Review, January 1889)

This magazine article recounting the life of the murderous artist and writer Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1847) is also the source of at least two other bons mots from the famously quotable Oscar Wilde:

"A mask tells us more than a face."
"All beautiful things belong to the same age."

What's Important

2008-03-12T01:07:00.001-04:00

Giacomo Balla, "Abstract Speed: The Car Has Passed" (1913); oil on canvas

"In a way, art is a theory about the way the world looks to human beings. It's abundantly obvious that one doesn't know the world around us in detail. What artists have accomplished is realizing that there's only a small amount of stuff that's important, and then seeing what it was."
~ mathematical physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum, as quoted by James Gleick in Chaos: Making a New Science (1988)

Patterns

2008-03-11T01:13:00.002-04:00

"According to Fertility Hollis, there is no chaos. There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. What we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish.”
~ Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

Photo by Helquin.

Crisis of Modernism

2008-03-10T00:43:00.001-04:00

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about Vitaly Komar, here's a little something from his former Sots Art collaborator Alex Melamid:

"This is the crisis of modernism. Modern art used to reflect a radical way of thinking. It did this until World War II and then it gradually became more and more established. Eventually, the radical thinking was totally removed from this. People adapted to this, said O.K. let there be, say, triangles. But in the beginning painting triangles was a huge statement, a daredevil act -- for good or for worse that's a different story, but that's how it was. But now it's totally changed its meaning because it's just a bourgeois business. You produce pictures and you sell them. You keep the form -- you can play with triangles endlessly -- but the meaning is lost, so it's a perversion of the intention of modernism. And nobody cares. The same thing happened with academic painting and ancient history. Nobody believed in it anymore, nobody cared, but still they went on depicting these beautiful women, these mythological figures. But it was totally obsolete. It lost the common sense; it lost touch with the people. Modernism was the idea to get back to some sense. Now it is senseless, so we have to revise again."
~ Alex Melamid, from an interview in The Nation, 14 March 1994

Bonus Link:
Holy Hip-Hop! New Paintings by Alex Melamid
[at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit]

Entertainment + Questions

2008-03-09T01:53:00.005-05:00

Vitaly Komar, "Big Red Moustache," from Three-Day Weekend
(2004-05); mixed media on paper, 40" x 30"

"Of course some art is entertaining, looks like entertainment, but the most important thing is to bring the questions in people's minds. If art is entertainment which raises new questions, I'm for that. But if art just answers questions, it's nothing but propaganda."
~ Vitaly Komar (b. 1943)

Links:

Three-Day Weekend
Three-Day Weekend reviewed by Donald Goddard
Three-Day Weekend at Idlehacker
Sots Art (Soviet Pop)
Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid
Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's scientific guide to art
Komar & Melamid: The Most Wanted Paintings (a hoot: bring on the blue landscapes!)

Connecting

2008-03-08T02:20:00.002-05:00

"I'm interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven."
~ Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945)

Anselm Kiefer, "Abendland (Twilight of the West)" (1989);
synthetic polymer paint, ash, plaster, cement, earth, varnish
on canvas and wood, approx. 13' 2" x 12' 6"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Anselm Kiefer at White Cube
Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth
Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper 1969-1993

Plan B

2008-03-07T01:54:00.004-05:00

Brainstorm
"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author -- in other words, anyone producing works of art -- needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living."
~ Kevin Kelly, "1,000 True Fans"

Bypass
BugMeNot: break through the online password-protection barrier.

Bad Words
[from Douglas Harper's Online Etymology Dictionary]

Part One:
"Probably the most common American vulgarity from about the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth" [Rawson]. Abbreviated form SOB from 1918. Mencken, complaining of the tepidity of the American vocabulary of profanity, writes that the toned-down form son-of-a-gun "is so lacking in punch that the Italians among us have borrowed it as a satirical name for an American: la sanemagogna is what they call him, and by it they indicate their contempt for his backwardness in the art that is one of their great glories." [The American Language, 4th ed., p.317-8]

Part Two:
"The T-word occupies a special niche in literary history, however, thanks to a horrible mistake by Robert Browning, who included it in 'Pippa Passes' (1841) without knowing its true meaning. 'The owls and bats,/Cowls and twats,/Monks and nuns,/In a cloister's moods.' Poor Robert! He had been misled into thinking the word meant 'hat' by its appearance in 'Vanity of Vanities,' a poem of 1660, containing the treacherous lines: 'They'd talk't of his having a Cardinalls Hat,/They'd send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat.' (There is a lesson here about not using words unless one is very sure of their meaning.)" [Hugh Rawson, Wicked Words, 1989]

Further details of Browning's error at Language Log.

Bizarre
Truck Spills: "The website of odd, strange, interesting, and unbelievable things spilled on the road by trucks." Don't miss the exploding whale.

The Blank Page Is Not Blank

2008-03-06T03:36:00.001-05:00

PALIMPSEST:

But it is not true that "nothing is given": Language comes not only with an infinite potential for new combinations, but with a long history contained in it.

The blank page is not blank. No text has one single author. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we always write on top of a palimpsest (cf. Duncan's "grand collage").

This is not a question of linear "influence," but of writing as dialog with a whole net of previous and concurrent texts, tradition, with the culture and language we breathe and move in, which conditions us even while we help to construct it.

Many of us have foregrounded this awareness as technique: using, collaging, transforming, "translating" parts of other works.

~ Rosmarie Waldrop, "Palimpsest," from "Thinking of Follows," in Onward: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

Link:
Rosmarie Waldrop at the Electronic Poetry Center

Photos by Helquin.

Business is Business

2008-03-05T00:55:00.000-05:00

George Grosz, "Eclipse of Sun" (1926); oil on canvas, approx. 82.5" x 72.5"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the 'genius' of the personage, the greater the profit."
~ George Grosz (1893-1959)

Link:
George Grosz at MoMA

Wards and Cells

2008-03-04T00:22:00.001-05:00

Robert Smithson, "A Heap of Language" (1966); pencil on paper, 6.5" x 22"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. Museums, like asylums and jails, have wards and cells -- in other words, neutral rooms called 'galleries.' A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world."
~ Robert Smithson (1938-1973), from "Cultural Confinement"

Link:
Robert Smithson website

The Memory of Time

2008-03-03T01:04:00.001-05:00

Daido Moriyama, "Fly, Suwa City, Nagano" (1982); gelatin silver print, 14" x 17"

"A photograph is the result of a momentary thought, with the result that you are always experimenting and interpreting the streets and buildings of a city by using the reproduction equipment -- the camera -- in order to get beyond known languages and to develop another reality running counter to the incessant flow of time. If this is achieved, the image captured in the photograph transcends the limited imagination or the ego of the photographer and becomes a symbol that signifies a world and includes the memory of time."
~ Daido Moriyama (b. 1938)

Link:
Daido Moriyama at Tepper Takayama Fine Arts

Questions

2008-03-02T01:08:00.002-05:00

Robin Hill, "place sawhorses on paper. expose to light. wait."
(1997); cyanotype on paper, 60" x 60"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"I think the way artists talk about their work says a lot about how they think as artists. It doesn't really matter whether or not they're good public speakers. That's not the issue. What's interesting is whether they talk only about their most recent work. Do they talk about it chronologically? Do they talk about their work thematically? Do they separate the drawings from the painting and the sculpture? How an artist goes about structuring a presentation tells you so much about the work itself. I think it's important to give your public an opportunity to see what you're struggling with and what you're trying to define for yourself, what questions you are asking yourself."
~ Robin Hill, in an interview with Ron Janowich, published in Other Voices (May 2007)

Link:
Robin Hill website

Penetrate the Mystery

2008-03-01T06:41:00.003-05:00

"Any serious exploration of occult, surrealistic, phantasmagoric gifts and phenomena presupposes a dialectical intertwinement to which a romantic turn of mind is impervious. For histrionic or fanatical stress on the mysterious side of the mysterious takes us no further; we penetrate the mystery only to the degree that we recognize it in the everyday world, by virtue of a dialectical optic that perceives the everyday as impenetrable, the impenetrable as everyday. The most passionate investigation of telepathic phenomena, for example, will not teach us half as much about reading (which is an eminently telepathic process), as the profane illumination of reading about telepathic phenomena. And the most passionate investigation of the hashish trance will not teach us half as much about thinking (which is eminently narcotic), as the profane illumination of thinking about the hashish trance. The reader, the thinker, the loiterer, the flâneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. [And more profane. Not to mention that most terrible drug --ourselves -- which we take in solitude.]"
~ Walter Benjamin, from "Surrealism" (1927), in Selected Writings, vol. 2
[First encountered (in part) in "Draft 85: Hard Copy by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, via wood s lot.]

About the flâneur:

"There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city."
~ Cornelia Otis Skinner, Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals

Wikipedia article
Flâneur.org's Flanifesto
Walter Benjamin's descriptions

Limits

2008-02-28T02:16:00.001-05:00

"Life is not only stranger than we imagine; life is stranger than we can imagine."
~ J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964)

As quoted in Robert Sapolsky's "Emperor Has No Clothes Award" acceptance speech, at the 25th annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (23 November 2003)

More J.B.S. Haldane online.

Breakthroughs

2008-02-27T07:05:00.000-05:00

Helen Frankenthaler, "The Bay" (1963); acrylic on canvas

"There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about."
~ Helen Frankenthaler

Bonus Link:
The Wrigley School of Art Criticism
Twelve-year-old boy ignores rules; no art born.

Show and Tell

2008-02-26T10:34:00.003-05:00

by Tom Gauld

Tom Gauld's illustrations the Guardian Saturday Review letters page. "Each image relates to a letter sent to the newspaper about literature or the arts."

~ via Making Light, where I also found these intriguing recipes for Cold Weather Drinks and a sidebar of Commonplaces with these gems:

"The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature." (Arthur D. Hlavaty)
"But isn't all of human history simultaneously a disaster novel and a celebrity gossip column?" (Anonymous LJ commenter)
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." (Gustav Mahler)

The Struggle

2008-02-25T08:05:00.004-05:00

"The painters and sculptors of today cannot remain indifferent in the struggle to free humanity and art from oppression."
~ David Alfaro Siqueiros (1933)

David Alfaro Siqueiros, "Después De La Grand Tormenta [After the Great Storm]"
(1966); pyroxolin on masonite, 12" x 18"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Links:

The Artist as Activist: David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896 - 1974)
David Alfaro Siqueiros at Humanities Web
David Alfaro Siqueiros at MoMA
Philip Stein's biography, Siqueiros: His Life and Works
David Alfaro Siqueiros at Wikipedia

It is interesting to note that 75 years after his statement about freeing art from oppression (and 34 years after his death), many images of Siqueiros' work have been removed from the web at the request of a "copyright collective" which presents itself as "an artists [sic] rights organization." Siqueiros may have been on to something when, in 1922, he wrote "We repudiate so-called easel painting and every kind of art favored by the ultra-intellectual circles, because it is aristocratic and we praise monumental art in all its forms, because it is public property."

Being More Human

2008-02-24T12:34:00.003-05:00

David C. Driskell, "Movement, The Mountain"
(1980), egg tempera on canvas, 31.20" x 22.70"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"I've always felt that art was a special or particular calling. I've even described it as being priestly in function... I do think that [as an artist] I am being more human and extending my humanity to others."
~ David C. Driskell (b. 1931), from "A Conversation between David Driskell and Richard Klank," as quoted in David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar, by Julie L. McGee (2006)

Charles Demuth

2008-02-23T19:12:00.005-05:00

Charles Demuth, "Buildings, Lancaster" (1930);
oil and graphite on composition board, 24" x 20"
Click on image to see larger version at Artdaily site.

Charles Demuth exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, today through 27 April 2008. [Artdaily]

Charles Demuth (1883-1935): "The History of Lancaster [Pennsylvania]'s Most Famous Artist." [Demuth Foundation / Charles Demuth Museum]

"Precisionism was an artistic movement that emerged in the United States after World War I and was at its height during the inter-War period. The term itself was first coined in the early 1920s. Influenced strongly by Cubism and Futurism, its main themes included industrialization and the modernization of the American landscape, which were depicted in precise, sharply defined, geometrical forms." [Wikipedia]

Charles Demuth, "The Figure 5 in Gold" (1928); oil on cardboard; 35.5" x 30"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

The Great Figure
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

[from Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems (1921)]

Audacious

2008-02-22T10:01:00.006-05:00

Passing this along...

Call for work: The Audacity of Desperation

Deadline: March 10, 2008
Exhibition dates:
April 4- May 11, Indy Media Center (Urbana, IL)
Fall 2008, Sea and Space (Los Angeles, CA)

The Audacity of Desperation is an art exhibition, political action, and on-going dialogue. We are currently seeking distributable artworks addressing the topic of "desperation." Works should exist in multiples with the intention to be freely distributed to audiences. Media can include, but is not at all limited to: posters, stickers, stencils, zines, stamps -- ink and postage -- buttons, CDs/DVDs, postcards, t-shirts and manifestos.

We are working with a grassroots, anti-authoritarian philosophy that includes the anti-capitalist, non-competitive principle of mutual aid.

Much more at the Audacity of Desperation blog.

[via Just Seeds]

The Philosophers' Rebellion

2008-02-21T20:00:00.001-05:00

"Every significant artist is a metaphysician, a propounder of beauty-truths and form-theories."
~ Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"All art is a revolt against man's fate."
~ André Malraux (1901-1976)

Art Machine

2008-02-21T01:51:00.002-05:00

Sol LeWitt, "Brushstrokes" (2000); gouache on paper, 22.5" x 29.5"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."
~ Sol LeWitt (1965)

Links:

Sol LeWitt: obituary in New York Times (9 April 2007)
Sol LeWitt: retrospective at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (February - May, 2000)
Sol LeWitt: "Sentences on Conceptual Art" (1969)

ConFest: 1 to 6

2008-02-19T17:43:00.008-05:00

Inspired by Mark Cameron Boyd's 101 Conceptual Art Ideas, I've been brainstorming my own little list. Whether I'll reach 101 or not is anyone's guess. Note: I do not have a Fine Arts degree, so my concepts may be invalid, risible, or otherwise unsuitable for human consumption.

Concept #1:
Represent political candidates as condiments

#2:
Make a color without a name

#3:
Design a uniform for nonconformists

#4:
Design a symbol for meaninglessness

#5:
Portray a dramatic situation, using just three eggs

#6:
Design a monument commemorating all that has been forgotten

Spontaneous Expression

2008-02-19T00:40:00.000-05:00

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, "Lemon and Glass" (1922); oil on canvas, approx. 14.5" x 19"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"That word, 'art', is that what made the essence of my disagreement with ... all the rules and habits -- secular, academic, and iconographic; already as a boy I wanted the free, full, frank and spontaneous expression, which makes art."
~ Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, from Prostranstvo Evklida (Euclid's Space, transl. Yuri Mataev)

Aesthetic: Experience

2008-02-17T19:44:00.012-05:00

sleeveface: "one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion."

.o0O0o.

The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, by David Dodd
Project begun: January, 1995.
Suspended: June 26, 2007.

Where else could you find an essay on "'Dark Star' as an Example of Transcendental Aesthetics":
"Developed largely from the ideas of Schopenhauer, and later in the early 20th century by [Bennedetto] Croce and [R. G.] Collingwood, this theory sees art as that which produces a holistic sense of 'going beyond' normal life experiences. This transcendence is called the aesthetic experience and things that cause the aesthetic experience are called art."
~ by Steven Skaggs

.o0O0o.

Mr. Skaggs seems to espouse the aesthetic philosophy known as Expressionism. I might be mistaken; I'm new at this.

Five Philosophies of Aesthetics
~ adapted from Lesson Seven ("Should Art Be For Art's Sake") of Protest And Persuasion, at Chicana and Chicano Space; clearly this list is specific to the visual arts.

Imitationalism: Good art imitates the appearance of things. Art should be realistic: it should look like something.
Formalism: Good art affects its viewers because of the relationship among the visual elements in the artwork (lines, shapes, colors, values [lights and darks], textures, volume, and space). It's interesting to look at. Art is valuable in itself -- art for art's sake.
Expressionism: Good art expresses the emotions of the maker and has an emotional impact on its viewers. Art is about emotions.
Instrumentalism: Art should lead to some social good. Art has a function: it does something.
Institutionalism: Good art is determined by the responses of people with authority in the artworld (artists, critics, curators, scholars, teachers, etc.). Art is what art experts say it is.

.o0O0o.

Something that caught my eye while skimming over Joseph Kosuth's "Art After Philosophy" (1969): his parenthetical mention of "the apparent other 'functions' of art":

depiction of religious themes,
portraiture of aristocrats,
detailing of architecture,
etc.

Hmm... An interesting set of possibilities, especially when one considers what constitute the "religious themes" and "aristocrats" of our own culture, here and now. Not the conventional definitions of "religion" or "aristocracy," but what institutions in our own era truly function as analogs to the pre-Industrial concepts represented by those words.

I suspect, for example, that the genuine "religious themes" of present-day American culture are better represented by the advertising industry than by any nominally religious institution.

And what's hiding behind that "etc." at the end of the list? You have piqued my curiosity, Mr. Kosuth! I've been reading John Berger's Ways of Seeing, so I have all kinds of crazy ideas.

Whatchamacallit

2008-02-16T04:44:00.000-05:00

Fernand Léger, "Project Tapisserie" (circa 1945); gouache on paper, 9" x 12.25"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic -- this is by no means the same thing."
~ Fernand Léger (1881-1955)

February Futility, with Photographs

2008-02-15T08:11:00.005-05:00

A few more from my own œuvre: this time, digital photographs which have been digitally modified. Some more than others. Click on images to see larger versions in a new window.

Helquin, "Fountain" (2008); digital, 622px x 466px

Here in snow-covered southern Ohio, I'm fighting February Futility -- that final 30 days of white-knuckled holding on for Spring. But we've been having one heck of a freaky February, veering from highs in the 50s to lows in the teens.

That's Fahrenheit. For you Celsius folks, the range is roughly +10 to -10.

Helquin, "Book" (2008); digital, 700px x 466px

85% of the page hits for this blog are from people using Google Image Search to find work by Andy Goldsworthy. Well, more power to him, but I'm starting to think that this whole "global village" thing ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Helquin, "Dawn" (2007); digital, 374px x 500px

"The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers."
~ Man Ray (1890-1976)

"Money changes everything."
~ Tom Gray, of The Brains

Stains & Wishes

2008-02-14T07:00:00.006-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day.

Here's a poem by American poet Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966).

What Is to Be Given
by Delmore Schwartz

What is to be given,
Is spirit, yet animal,
Colored, like heaven,
Blue, yellow, beautiful.

The blood is checkered by
So many stains and wishes,
Between it and the sky
You could not choose, for riches.

Yet let me now be careful
Not to give too much
To one so shy and fearful
For like a gun is touch.

Twee

2008-02-13T09:00:00.003-05:00

twee [twē]
adj. Chiefly British.
Overly precious or nice; affectedly dainty or refined.
[Origin: 1900-05; apparently reduced from tweet, mimicking childish pronunciation of sweet]

"As recently as 30 years ago, painting was not [just?] a twee, aesthete's diversion, cloistered in the museum; it was a mass medium of daily communication."
~ Greg Allen, "Painting Was Not Dead:
Manfred Kirchheimer's Stations Of The Elevated"

Fine Art on Album Covers

2008-02-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

I've been compiling some data about painters, collagists, illustrators, and fine-art photographers whose work has been featured on album covers. I hope to have a more coherent post (or series of posts) on this topic later, but for now here's a patchwork of visual artists, with links regarding their musical connections.

The artists are...
Top row (left to right): Salvador Dali (for Jackie Gleason), Peter Blake (for the Beatles), R. Crumb (for Big Brother & the Holding Co.), Andy Warhol (for the Rolling Stones).
2nd row: H.R. Giger (for Emerson, Lake & Palmer), Peter Schmidt (for Brian Eno), Robert Mapplethorpe (for Patti Smith), Frank Frazetta (for Molly Hatchet).
3rd row: Norval Morrisseau (for Bruce Cockburn), Winston Smith (for the Dead Kennedys), Robert Rauschenberg (for Talking Heads), Howard Finster (for R.E.M.).
4th row: Gerhard Richter (for Sonic Youth), Stanley Donwood (for Thom Yorke), Banksy (for Blur), Darren Waterston (for Silversun Pickups).

Art Beyond the Art World

2008-02-11T04:11:00.000-05:00

The Ontological Museum (Fort Worth, TX)
includes:
> International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction
> FluxMuseum
> The Flux Case

Fluxus Indian Museum (Coon Rapids, IA)

The Museum of Temporary Art (Tübingen, Germany)

American Folk Art Museum (New York, NY)

Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe, NM)

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (Chicago, IL)

Rudy Rotter's Museum of Sculpture (Manitowoc, WI)

American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore, MD)

The Prinzhorn Collection (Heidelberg, Germany)
art by patients of psychiatric institutions, circa 1880-1933

Roadside Art Online (online only)

Polaroid: R.I.P.

2008-02-10T01:08:00.000-05:00

"It's a sad day," said Ed Nute: Polaroid has announced it will cease production of its instant-camera films by the end of this year. As one NY Times blog commenter asks: "What will Andre 3000 shake it like now?"

See also:

Chris Stangland's Formerly 669: "A Polaroid a Day, Every Day" (2002-2006)
Polaroid_Billy's Primitive Photography fotolog
Stefanie Schneider's Polanoir: "contemporary Polaroid art"
Polaroid Photography of Grant Hamilton
Mark-Steffen Göwecke's Polapola-Project
David Hockney's Polaroid photocollages
Life-size photomosaic of Talking Heads made of 529 close-up Polaroid photographs (concept by David Byrne), for the front cover of their 1978 album More Songs About Buildings and Food
Michael Kennedy's Passport to Trespass Polaroid photography [via wood s lot]
The Polaroid Photography Collection [also via wood s lot]

Choosing. Preferring. Judging.

2008-02-09T04:07:00.000-05:00

Richard Hennessy, "Leaping Laocoön" (1985); oil on canvas, 60" x 66"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"... [N]o matter how long you have painted, no matter how much experience you have accumulated, you can never completely predict what the mark you make with your brush will look like. You make the mark and then you have to react to it. And your reaction may not be immediate. It may take a while -- for me, at any rate, because I never start with a plan for how to proceed.... A painting acquires interest by becoming a record of the interaction of mind, matter, and physical activity. Choosing. Preferring. Judging. Making."

~ Richard Hennessy (b. 1941), from a conversation with Carter Ratcliff, in The Sienese Shredder #2

Reference:

Laocoön in Greek mythology.
William Blake's "Laocoön"
500th Anniversary of the Finding of the Laocoön on the Esquiline Hill in Rome (2006: Institute of Design & Culture, Rome)

Art Jukebox

2008-02-08T01:08:00.000-05:00

Max Ernst, "Albertus Magnus" (1957); oil on canvas
See a larger version of this painting -- and much more from
Max Ernst -- by clicking the links for Giornale Nuovo, below.

What makes a great portrait?
Jörg M. Colberg asked a selection of "photographers, fine art and commercial, bloggers, curators, editors, and gallerists," and posted their answers on his fine-art photography blog, Conscientious.
[via wood s lot]

.o0O0o.

Though now defunct, Giornale Nuovo has a wonderful series on Max Ernst, with biographical information and lots of pics:

Decalcomania (23 Feb 2004)
"Misfortunes of the Immortals" and "The Hundred-Headless Woman" (3 July 2004)
Max Ernst's Blues (14 Oct 2004)
The Late Max Ernst (2 January 2005)

.o0O0o.

New York-based Photographer Bill Wadman, creator of 2007's 365 Portraits, has announced that he's "going to to start shooting lots of portraits again" -- and he's looking for subjects. See "Daily Portraits, or Nearly So, Redux" for more information.

.o0O0o.

I'm not quite sure where he's going with this, but Mark Cameron Boyd (of Theory Now) has launched a new blog: 101 Conceptual Art Ideas.

.o0O0o.

"In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it."
~ Ernst Fischer (1899-1972), The Necessity of Art

A Human Constant

2008-02-07T02:15:00.000-05:00

Giles Lyon, "Strange Days" (2003); acrylic on canvas, 76" x 74"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"I predict that painting will outlast techno-industrial civilization -- unless humanity changes in very radical ways how it relates to our planet. In other words, even if the species hangs on somehow and doesn’t destroy everything, painting will still be there. Just like writing and singing and dancing and storytelling around a fire. Painting and looking at handmade images are a human constant."
~ Giles Lyon (b. 1967)

links:
Giles Lyon at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen gallery
Giles Lyon interview at Henri Art Magazine (30 January 2008)
Giles Lyon on Artnet

A Freedom Or A Confusion

2008-02-06T07:33:00.000-05:00

Jasper Johns, "Corpse and Mirror II" (1976);
color lithograph on paper, 30.75" x 39.625"
Click on image to open a new window showing larger versions available at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

"As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion."
~ Jasper Johns (b. 1930)

Links:
Jasper Johns at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Timeline of Art History"
Jasper Johns at the Museum of Modern Art
Jasper Johns at Artchive

Autumn

2008-02-05T06:50:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know... Autumn is now four months gone. But I'm slow about posting my own pics. These are from October 2007, if I recall correctly. As always: click on images to see larger versions in a new window.

Finally, from the same time period, here's a painting more or less inspired by the afternoon walks represented in these photographs.

I cringe every time I think about posting one of my own paintings. Frankly, I know that I'm not rockin' the painterly skillz, and I'm even worse when it comes to photographing paintings. But since I so much enjoy looking at work that others post, I figure it's only fair that I share something from my own easel. And it's been my motto (from way back in my performance days) to "face the flame" -- that is, to confront those fears & anxieties and just get on with the show already!

Helquin, "Fall" (2007); acrylic & silver ink on linen, 18" x 24"

Sylvie Barco

2008-02-04T04:17:00.000-05:00

Sylvie Barco, "True Colors" (2007);
digital print mounted on aluminium, approx. 39" x 59"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Lomoscope
"Sylvie Barco [a.k.a. 'Lily B.'], a young, talented and creative photographer, is known for her crisp, high-definition landscapes and shorelines. Her latest work leads her to photograph urban spaces using 'lomo' cameras which have the novel quality of multiplying the photographed subject, and to use the latest techniques to create colorful kaleidoscopic images. These meticulously constructed collections of images, these personal prisms, are the expression of an original and confident œuvre. Sylvie's photographic style pushes her to travel in order to reconstruct in these photo-mosaics the impression of the urban panorama which she observes and analyzes with a curious eye. She feels the city and looks for what it can offer her: shapes, colors or graphic elements which she will then put together in a rhythm that is harmonious or chaotic according to her inspiration."

Links:
Sylvie Barco - Photographe (in French)
Sylvie Barco at Artalk (an oddly translated English-language page)

Grids

2008-02-03T03:08:00.000-05:00

"All art begins with grids. All artists long for grids."
~ American poet John Taggart, from "Chicago Breakdown"

Click on images to see larger versions in a new window.

Above, left: Bridget Riley, "C" from Nineteen Greys, 1968.
Bridget Riley at Wikipedia.
Right: Ewerdt Hilgemann, "Lichtrelief," 1974
Ewerdt Hilgemann at Galerie Kai Hilgemann.

Left: Ray Johnson, "Calm Center," circa 1951.
The Estate of Ray Johnson official site.
Right: Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand, "Le Hasard et La Nécessité (Chance and Necessity)" 2001.
Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand: Site Officiel (in French only).

Left: Chema Madoz, untitled, 1998.
Chema Madoz Fotógrafo (in English).
Right: Paul Klee, "Chess," 1931.
Paul Klee Database at Zentrum Paul Klee (in English).

Above: Piet Mondrian, "Compositie Dambord, donkere Kleuren (Checkerboard Composition, Dark Colors)," 1919.
Piet Mondrian site maintained by Art Science Research Laboratory, Inc.

More: see "Grids" at Radical Art.

Whatever It Takes

2008-02-02T09:58:00.000-05:00

Banksy Defaces Hirst, "Keep It Spotless" (2007)

"I use whatever it takes. Sometimes that just means drawing a moustache on a girl's face on some billboard, sometimes that means sweating for days over an intricate drawing. The efficiency is the key."
~ Banksy (Profile at Design Is Kinky)

Links:

Banksy's website
Banksy at Art of the State
Banksy at Damn Cool Pics

The Gap

2008-02-01T05:42:00.000-05:00

Emmet Gowin, "Wasp Nest Paper Arrangement. Newtown 1972";
gelatin silver print, approx. 8" x 10"

"Of course, this is one of the really important things about art, that you can make more than you can understand at the moment the thing is being made. But the gap between what we recognize inside ourselves -- our feelings -- and our ability to trust ourselves and to trust exposing ourselves to those ideas, can be great.

"Now when I look at my students I see that the old uncertainties are still in business -- this is the real dilemma for them. Their program has been to never be wrong. You get bad grades for being wrong. So you have to be right. It's a potent conflict."

~ Emmet Gowin (b. 1941)

Emmet Gowin, "Barry & Dwayne, Danville, VA" (1970);
gelatin silver print, approx. 6.25" x 6"

Click on images to see larger versions in the Emmet Gowin Series at George Eastman House.

Emmet Gowin, "Spirit Lake, Mount St. Helens" (1981);
gelatin silver print, approx. 9.5" x 9.75"

Waggle & Tug

2008-01-31T14:23:00.000-05:00

Nancy Rexroth, "Folding House, New Lexington, Ohio" (1974);
vintage silver print (from a Diana camera), 8" x 10"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"Images must reach in and waggle and tug the guts."
~ Nancy Rexroth (b. 1946)

Nancy Rexroth at Robert Mann Gallery
Nancy Rexroth at Stephen Wirtz Gallery
Nancy Rexroth at Smithsonian American Art Museum
"My Own Private Iowa" (about Nancy Rexroth), by Deborah Garwood

Dichotomy

2008-01-31T02:11:00.001-05:00

"An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion."
~ Charles Baudelaire

Beauty

Conceive me as a dream of stone:
my breast, where mortals come to grief,
is made to prompt all poets' love,
mute and noble as matter itself.

With snow for flesh, with ice for heart,
I sit on high, an unguessed sphinx
begrudging acts that alter forms;
I never laugh, I never weep.

In studious awe the poets brood
before my monumental pose
aped from the proudest pedestal,
and to bind these docile lovers fast
I freeze the world in a perfect mirror:

The timeless light of my wide eyes.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Off the Beaten Path

2008-01-30T21:20:00.000-05:00

Faces in Places
"A photographic collection of faces found in everyday places."

Lucy Pringle's Crop Circle Photograph Library
"Lucy is one of the world's leading crop circle photographers. Hers are among the best photographs available portraying the enigmatic crop circle mystery."

"An Amazing Perspective"
A sequence of images from Istvan Banyai's Zoom

Anything Is Possible

2008-01-30T07:39:00.000-05:00

Tim Davis, "McDonalds 2 (Blue Fence)" (2000)
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"A well-known art critic recently told me, 'You know, photography is over.' To which I responded, 'Actually it's art criticism that's over.' He humbly offered that it had never been here, but I'd intended genuine condolence. It must be hard to be a critic at a time when the only thing notably absent from the art world is fierce dialogue. Not only is there no Salon to be refused from, there are no camps, no ideologies, no methods, no movements. Anything is possible, and that is the definition of a heyday. Isn't it?"
~ Tim Davis (b. 1968)

Tim Davis, "Rubble Letters"

Fractal Wrongness

2008-01-30T03:11:00.000-05:00

A recent (and unfortunate) foray into the troubled terrain of U.S. political blogging reminded me of the term "fractal wrongness," which I first encountered at Artblog.net.

As the links suggest, fractal wrongness is not specific to politics, but has a wide variety of potential applications.

fractal wrongness
via Keunwoo Lee's "Lexicon of Computing"

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

Debating with a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person's opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of logic, and outright lies, that requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one. It is as impossible to convince a fractally wrong person of anything as it is to walk around the edge of the Mandelbrot set in finite time.

If you ever get embroiled in a discussion with a fractally wrong person on the Internet -- in mailing lists, newsgroups, or website forums--your best bet is to say your piece once and ignore any replies, thus saving yourself time.

a section of a Mandelbrot set

Prospects

2008-01-29T07:30:00.000-05:00

Saul Steinberg, untitled (1962); ink on paper.
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"The artist is an educator of artists of the future."
~ Saul Steinberg (1914-1999)

Tension

2008-01-29T01:38:00.000-05:00

Marlene Dumas, "Die Baba" (1985); oil on canvas on linen; approx. 51" x 43"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"No painting can exist without the tension of what it figures and what it concretely consists of. The pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it's not."
~ Marlene Dumas (b. 1953)

Jukebox Rodeo

2008-01-28T03:02:00.000-05:00

"The imperatives and questions with which we are infused do not emanate from the I: it is not even there to hear them. The imperatives are those of being, while every question is ontological and distributes 'that which is' among problems."
~ Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1968)
[cited by Larval Subjects in a post from last Thursday: "Signs, Constellations, and Ontological Insecurity"]

. o 0 O 0 o .

PostQueerProject mail art call: "public art meets queer identities." They also have a MySpace page.
[via Just Seeds]

. o 0 O 0 o .

Blurb self-publishing. Create your own softcover or hardcover book, with 4-color printing: photos, artwork, and/or text. Minimum order is only one book, with prices starting at $12.95 (plus shipping) for a 7" x 7" softcover volume of 20-40 pages. Free bookmaking software available for download.
[h/t: Andy Ilachinski's Tao of Photography]

Normally I don't care to pimp for commercial sites, but this seems like a reasonably priced way to break into an exclusive medium. Let me know if you publish anything. I may have a little spare change in the kitty.

. o 0 O 0 o .

Natural Burials: "Traditional funeral practices harm the environment; green burials let the earth rest in peace."

. o 0 O 0 o .

"... [O]ne might 'read' a mix as simply a random collection of music. For example, listening to a tape with Van Morrison's 'And It Stoned Me,' a listener can parse this ballad as a meaningful unit unto itself, even when it's followed by another ballad such as the Beatles' 'The Ballad of John & Yoko.' But this is a very simplistic mode of listening, and hardly anyone would listen in this manner exclusively. More often than not, the mixed tape is an invitation to play a game. When loosely connected songs are set side-by side, it is easy to understand the riddle being asked of the listener: 'What's the theme of this tape?' or more to the point, 'What does all this mean?'"
~ from "Mixed Feelings: Notes on the Romance of the Mixed Tape," by Kamal Fox (in Rhizomes #5, Fall 2002)

That may be the riddle of blogging as well: What does all this mean?

Abstract Household #3

2008-01-27T02:44:00.000-05:00

Some of my own work for a change: more "Abstract Household" snapshots. These are pics of olive oil and water in a saucepan. Click on images to see larger versions in a new window.

Previously:
Abstract Household #1
Abstract Household #2

Obscurity

2008-01-26T10:43:00.000-05:00

Jules Olitski, "Night and Light"

"There is value in long years of obscurity, if one doesn't go insane or suicidal, in that, simply because nobody is looking, the habit of fooling around and trying things out gets ingrained."
~ Jules Olitski (1922-2007)

Jules Olitski, "Comprehensive Dream" (1965)
Acrylic on canvas, 112.75" x 92.5"

Click on images to see larger versions in new window.

Opiate of the Messes

2008-01-25T03:45:00.000-05:00

Francis Picabia, "Edtaonisl (Clergyman)"
1913; oil on canvas, 118.75" x 118.25"; Art Institute of Chicago.
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Francis Picabia, 1879-1953.

The Cubists want to cover Dada with snow; that may surprise you, but it is so, they want to empty the snow from their pipe to bury Dada.

Are you sure?

Perfectly sure, the facts are revealed by grotesque mouths. They think that Dada can prevent them from practising this odious trade: Selling art expensively.

Art costs more than sausages, more than women, more than everything.

Art is visible like God! (see Saint-Sulpice.)

Art is a pharmaceutical product for imbeciles.

~ from Francis Picabia's "Dada Manifesto" (1920), as translated in Manifesto: A Century of Isms, by Mary Ann Caws

Today Is The Day

2008-01-24T07:12:00.000-05:00

Robert Motherwell, untitled lithograph (1967); approx. 12" x 9"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Robert Motherwell was born on this day in 1915 (d. 16 July 1991). Also born on this day: actor Ernest Borgnine (1917), televangelist Oral Roberts (1918), zoologist Desmond Morris (1928), singer-songwriter Neil Diamond (1941), and original-edition Not Ready For Prime Time Player John Belushi (1949-1982) -- which would have made for one heck of a surreal birthday party, circa 1977.

One Sentence: "True stories, told in one sentence."

The Story Of The Artists: "originally told by the sufi, Rumi."

"Readymechs are free, flatpack toys for you to print and build. They are designed to fit on an 8.5" x 11" page and printed with any printer. You'll need double-sided tape, thick matte paper, and 10-15 minutes for build time."

Librarian Chick: "a list of free resources for students and educators... and anyone else who's hip to learning."

Dada Wins!

2008-01-23T07:40:00.000-05:00

Raoul Hausmann, "Dada siegt! (Dada Wins!)" (1920)
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

Dadart: "History of Dada, bibliography of dadaism, distribution of Dada documents"
Dada at ArtLex
The International Dada Archive (University of Iowa Libraries)
Dada at Lilith Gallery's Art History Archive
Smithsonian magazine on Dada (May 2006)

Raoul Hausmann at Cut & Paste
Raoul Hausmann at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC)

Values

2008-01-22T02:02:00.000-05:00

Nicole Eisenman, "Conscious Mind of the Artist
(Subconscious Decision and Actions in Progress)"
(2007); oil on canvas, 39" x 48"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"What I value in other people's art and my own is imagination and personal things. Politics just seems to me to be mean-spirited and trendy. I don't see myself as being in a combative stance."
~ Nicole Eisenman

Nicole Eisenman at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects: "A Show Born of Fear" (October 27 - December 8, 2007)
Nicole Eisenman at Queer Arts Resource
Nicole Eisenman: review at New York Art World (by Donald Goddard, 2004)

The One We Have

2008-01-21T08:20:00.000-05:00

Peter Barrett, Untitled #7 (2003); acrylic and pencil on paper, 11" x 11"
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"As for the existing system, it's the one we have. All markets and societal structures are there to be followed, gamed, ignored, or changed as one is willing or able to do. If my work is less fashionable right now, that still means there are plenty of people who really like it. It also means that it stands a good chance of being more fashionable in the future, especially if I make it as well as I can, and I behave like a professional."
~ Peter Barrett, commenting (#117) on Franklin Einspruch's "Middlemen" post at Artblog.net (19 January 2008)

Vanitas

2008-01-20T04:01:00.000-05:00

Snowman by Keith Tyson
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"Snowmen are the first way in which children come across the idea of human vanitas and impermanence. We live under the myth that if we produce things, they're going to last. When in fact, everything we make is like a snowman -- it's all going to melt in the sun eventually."
~ Keith Tyson

Reinventing the snowman (Guardian Unlimited)

Turner Prize profile (2002): Keith Tyson
Wikipedia: Keith Tyson
Images from Tyson's Large Field Array (at Pace Wildenstein, September-October 2007)

Big Questions

2008-01-20T03:52:00.000-05:00

"Art asks difficult questions."

Can art help people reclaim pride in their area?
Can art kick-start tourism?
Can art unite a community?
Does [art] solve problems or create them?
Does art have to be good for you or your community?
What does that requirement do to the art?
Can art bridge contested spaces?
Can art commemorate and regenerate -- intelligently?
Can art look both ways: past and future?
Is this about nostalgia or a new identity?

~ "Talking point" questions regarding the seven sites selected by the UK's Channel 4 for The Big Art Project.

Maringka Baker

2008-01-19T10:23:00.000-05:00

Maringka Baker (b. 1951/1953), "Ngura Mankurpa," 2006.
(Click on image to see larger version in a new window)

National Indigenous Art Triennial '07
National Gallery of Australia

Inspiration

2008-01-18T12:30:00.000-05:00

"The Perfect Future" (1972), by Ralph Gibson

Ralph Gibson Series at George Eastman House
Ralph Gibson Photography

"Photographic technique is no secret and -- provided the interest is there -- easily assimilated. But inspiration comes from the soul and when the Muse isn't around even the best exposure meter is very little help. In their biographies, artists like Michelangelo, da Vinci and Bach said that their most valuable technique was their ability to inspire themselves. This is true of all artists; the moment there is something to say, there becomes a way to say it."
~ Ralph Gibson, Deja-Vu

Start Somewhere

2008-01-18T01:35:00.000-05:00

I agree that all art begins with something.

All art begins in seeing.
All art begins with drawing.
all art begins with the proper utensils.
all art begins with a blank page or blank space
All art begins with grids. All artists long for grids.

all art begins with some kind of particular experience.
All art begins with a basic plan or idea,
"All art begins with art education."
All art begins with not knowing.
Art begins with resistance

All art begins with Chaos,
all art begins with a thought.
all art begins with a taking away
Art begins where there is mystery.
Art begins in a wound, an imperfection --

all art begins "in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
all Art begins with collaboration and participation.
all art begins with a reference point,
all art begins with imagination;
(All art is "about" relation.)

all art begins in solitude
all art begins in pastiche,
All art begins with reality.
all art begins in abstraction.
All art begins with a concept,

All art begins with the word, "hello."

~ Googled

Power Itself

2008-01-17T17:44:00.000-05:00

"For most of human history, most people could not read at all. Literacy was not only a demarcator between the powerful and the powerless; it was power itself. Pleasure was not an issue. The ability to maintain and understand commercial records, the ability to communicate across distance and in code, the ability to keep the word of God to yourself and transmit it only at your own will and in your own time -- these are formidable means of control over others and aggrandizement of self. Every literate society began with literacy as a constitutive prerogative of the (male) ruling class."
~ Ursula K. Le Guin, from "Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading," Harper's Magazine (February 2008)

Cool Stuff

2008-01-16T19:33:00.000-05:00

Degenerate art
a tabblo* by Eduardo Affonso

Tabblo: "A place to make cool stuff with your photos"

* "A tabblo is a collection of photos and words brought together by a stylized template that can be customized to your heart's content. A tabblo lives at a permanent URL and can be private, accessed by whoever you invite, or public for the whole world to see."

Headlights on the Highway

2008-01-15T10:31:00.000-05:00

Authority
"I hope the next time a person walks into the DMV or the principal’s office, or a police station, they understand how spaces are overtly constructed to socialize, herd, conform, or coax a certain behavior or obedience."
~ photographer Richard Ross (Architecture of Authority), in an interview by Nicole Pasulka at The Morning News

O===O

Hipster Bingo

O===O

© Murakami
"This acknowledgment of cultural difference does not mitigate the central critique voiced in my previous post, and the danger I see lurking on the horizon: art museums all too willing to signify as theme parks, if not petting zoos."
~ Steven Kaplan commenting (#4) at Artworld Salon

O===O

Election 2008 Astrology
"Take a look at the candidates and their astrology for election day and beyond. Perhaps you can find the winner in the stars."

From the profile views alone, it would seem that Barack Obama and Ron Paul hold commanding leads in their respective parties. Interestingly, each is a Leo with Moon in Taurus.

Libra Dennis Kucinich makes a good showing (4th among Democrats), but -- alas -- his Election Day horoscope does not bode well...

O===O

George Eastman House: Photography Collections Online
"A steadily growing digital image sampler and browsing resource for the vast photography holdings of George Eastman House."

Image: László Moholy-Nagy, "The dolls of Oskar Schlemmer's daughters." (1926). Click the image to see a larger version at the Eastman House site.

The Body

2008-01-12T03:35:00.000-05:00

Hands
"Just as with codes of looking, there are 'codes of touching' which vary from culture to culture. A study by [Dean C.] Barnlund in 1975 depicted the various parts of the body which informants in the USA and Japan reported had been touched by opposite-sex friends, same-sex friends, their mother and their father. The resulting body-maps show major differences in cultural norms in this regard, with body areas available for touch being far more restricted in Japan than in the United States. An earlier [1966] study of American students showed differences in the patterns for males and females in the amount of touching of different areas of the body by the various others. The students reported that they had been touched most by their mothers and by friends of the opposite sex; their fathers seldom touched more than their hands."
~ Daniel Chandler, "Semiotics for Beginners"

Battlefield
"So too, in the midst of what we were given to believe was an AIDS pandemic, the body became a battlefield. Young people, forcibly alienated from their sexuality, began piercing, tattooing, cutting, and scarring their bodies, employing their bodies as a kind of canvas by inscribing on their flesh the deep conflicts of our period having to do with sexuality, gender, disease, and puritanical repression; as if to assert that despite the anti-sexual edicts they still controlled their lives and would do as they choose. And if they piecemeal destroyed their bodies, it was to appropriate the large-scale destruction wrought not just by AIDS but by the AIDS ideology in its attempt to nullify sexuality of any kind outside of marriage."
~ Harold Jaffe, "Outcast Narrative," in Electronic Book Review

(via Tattoo City)

Performance
"How we perform sex, what we feel when we do particular things, depends on our cultural (not national) contexts: how we were taught to do them and by whom, what we were permitted to try out, whether we talked to others about what we were doing and what we wanted. When we engage sexually with others, we learn and teach, we influence each other and change how we do things -- often without knowing it."
~ Laura Agustín, "The Sex in 'Sex Trafficking'," in American Sexuality Magazine

Remedios Varo

2008-01-10T03:26:00.000-05:00

Remedios Varo (1908-1963), "Spiral Transit," 1962.
(Click on image to see larger version in a new window)

Ordinary

2008-01-07T11:49:00.000-05:00

"Rot-Blau-Gelb" ["Red-Blue-Yellow"]: 1972, oil on canvas, 59" x 59"
by Gerhard Richter (b. 1932)
(Click on image to see larger version in a new window)

Beauty in the Ordinary
"Unlike American artists Richter wasn't interested in the purity of art. Idealism had disillusioned him from an early age. Instead he painted images without glory; images that rendered the ridiculous, ordinary; the tragic, ordinary; the beautiful, ordinary. Throughout his career Richter has shrunk from giving a psychological insight into his art, leaving his admirers and critics guessing and at times confused. According to him, his work forms from structures and ideas that surround him, nothing more profound than that."
~ from the biography page of the Gerhard Richter website

Life Lesson

2008-01-06T12:11:00.000-05:00

"Gravity" (2006, oil on wood panel, 48" x 36")
by Darren Waterston (b. 1965)
(Click on image to see larger version in a new window)

"Just as I'm getting the image down, I feel it can almost slip away into something else instantly. If you turned your head, the painting might just keep evolving. They're very volatile in that way…there's only so much I can do, and then at a point I have to acquiesce. That's the part of the studio practice that for me is always a powerful life lesson."
~ Darren Waterston, from an interview with Jacquelynn Baas on August 18, 2003.

Grattage

2008-01-05T04:22:00.000-05:00

grat·tage (gră-tazh') n. A surrealist technique in painting in which (usually dry) paint is scraped off the canvas. It was employed by Max Ernst and Joan Miró. [< Fr. "scraping"]

"With Miro's help, Max Ernst pioneered grattage in which he troweled pigment from his canvases." ~ surrealism.org

Examples: Grattage works by Mario Deluigi.

Mario Deluigi (1901-1978); oil on wood, 1955, 48" x 48"
(Click on image to see larger version in a new window)

"It is not exact: my procedure involves spreading the chromatic values in such a way as to retrieve them when I scrape. So it is not that I go digging for the white, I might find pink, green, black or any other color that I deliberately put there. This is precisely what I do: spread the colors according to a prior chromatic plan, then as a next step, discover the soul of this or that color -- which has a light, one that I must construct -- which is why I cannot make a mark more imposing than that which occurs in the pre-ordained plan." ~ Mario Deluigi

End of An Era...?

2008-01-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

"With Builder in Bankruptcy, Buyers Are Left Out," New York Times (January 3, 2008):

"Levitt & Sons, a unit of the Levitt Corporation... ran out of cash in October and declared bankruptcy in November."
"The collapse of Levitt, the first big home builder to fail in the current slump, illustrates how the turmoil in real estate is spreading far beyond subprime borrowers who cannot pay their mortgages."
"Sixty-one years ago, Levitt began mass-producing homes on a patch of Long Island potato fields. It quickly built tens of thousands of houses in Long Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, creating the modern suburb in the process."
"William J. Levitt, son of the company founder and chief engine of its success, took the company public in 1960. It was acquired by International Telephone & Telegraph in 1968, and then sold in a court-ordered divestiture three years later. The company went through a succession of owners, relocating to Florida in 1979 and declining into insignificance."

From Wikipedia:

"[William] Levitt subsequently lost much of his wealth in unsuccessful investments."
"Levittown [NY -- built between 1947 and 1951] was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country."

"Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb"
Levittown Beyond: "The unofficial reference for Levitt & Sons communities after 1957"
The Time 100: William Levitt

Headlights on the Highway

2008-01-02T20:15:00.000-05:00

I love the idea, but the instructions crack me up:
"Get Mud. Find or make some mud. I mixed soil and water then beat it with a whisk. Make sure your mud is not watery. It should be about the same consistency as peanut butter."
~ Jesse Graves, Mud Stencils blog, "How To Do It" (via Just Seeds)

O===O

Boldest works of art in recent history (from MakeFive): "Every once in a while a new piece of art startles, moves, or makes us simply take notice. I always find it interesting to think of which pieces really break our every day and make us look."
Take a look at the current Top 5. You'll laugh, you'll cry. Or break your every day, anyway...

O===O

... But it does seem to support the contention of Guardian Unlimited art-blogger Jonathan Jones:
"Although a critic today might champion certain serious practitioners of art -- a Richard Serra, a Cy Twombly -- that kind of artist is losing out to art that is brighter, louder, closer in sensibility to TV. This decade has seen the end of high art, in that there is no longer any distinction between art and mass entertainment. Art follows the same rules as the fashion industry and has the same clients."

If I read him correctly, Jones regards this as a good thing. Wait till you get to the part where he effuses that Damien Hirst's work "crystallises the deepest human fears and longings with a grandeur and lucidity that eluded 20th-century artists."

Oy. I need to find or make some mud. Surely Jones is overlooking 20th-century masters such as Nudie Cohn, Robert Crumb, and Stanley Mouse.

O===O

"[T]here are three classes of men -- lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour, lovers of gain."
~ Plato, The Republic

O===O

Luis Barragán's Gilardi House (Tacubaya, Mexico City); photo by
Armando Salas Portugal, © Barragán Foundation

"Art is made by the alone for the alone."
~ Luis Barragán, as quoted by Robert Adams in Why People Photograph

Even better with pickled shark!

Beyond Modernism

2008-01-01T06:57:00.000-05:00

From Lee Siegel's "The Blush of the New" (a review of Peter Gay's Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond), NYT Sunday Book Review, 12/30/07:

We have exhausted Romantic individualism, and we have twisted the uniquely individual, modernist escape from the self into "self-expression."

"99 Cent," chromogenic color print by Andreas Gursky (1999).

Expression is everywhere nowadays, but true art has grown indistinct and indefinable.

"Iraq Female Mujahadeen," by Scott Nelson, WPN (Baghdad, 2004)

We seem now to be living in a world where everyone has an artistic temperament -- emotive and touchy, cold and self-obsessed -- yet few people have the artistic gift.

"Ecataepec," C-print by Scott Peterman (Mexico City, 2006)

We are all outsiders, and we are all living in our own truth.

"A US soldier swims in the south fork of the Euphrates River,
Ar Ramadi," by Joel Preston Smith; from Night of a Thousand
Stars and Other Portraits of Iraq

Goodbye 2007...

2007-12-31T03:17:00.000-05:00

Hello 2008.

Happy New Year!

Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), "Carnival Evening," 1886
(Click on image to see larger version in a new window)

Thanks to all of you for visiting my blog in 2007. Best wishes for a happy, peaceful & prosperous year ahead!

-- Helquin

Because I need to hear it...

2007-12-29T12:12:00.000-05:00

"If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we'd live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all … why then, perhaps we must stand fast a little -- even at the risk of being heroes."
~ the character Sir Thomas More, in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons

Incidentally, it's interesting to note that the somewhat abbreviated version of this speech in the 1966 film adaptation omits envy, sloth and lust among the vices, and substitutes charity and modesty for the virtues humility, chastity and fortitude. Hmmm...

Hmmm....

2007-12-25T23:00:00.000-05:00

"To lead apes in hell (1579) was the fancied fate of one who died an old maid."

Pantone Selects Color of the Year for 2008:
"As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic. Look for it artfully combined with deeper plums, red-browns, yellow-greens, grapes and grays."
(Color of the Year for 2007 was Chili Pepper.)

The Zymoglyphic Museum: "The world's only repository for the study and display of Zymoglyphic art, artifacts, and natural history."

File Magazine's collection of unexpected photography: "We publish images that treat subjects in unexpected ways."

The List Universe presents: Top 10 Color Classical Reproductions. Commenter angelina astutely notes that "Apollo's carpet and curtains match."

Blond, of course. ;-)

Winter Solstice

2007-12-22T05:43:00.000-05:00

Piet Mondrian, The Gray Tree (1911, oil on canvas, approx. 31" x 42")
Click on image to see larger version in a new window.

"The winter solstice has always been celebrated in China as the resting time of the year -- a custom that survives in the time of rest observed at the new year. In winter the life energy, symbolized by thunder, the Arousing, is still underground. Movement is just at its beginning; therefore it must be strengthened by rest, so that it will not be dissipated by being used prematurely. This principle, i.e., of allowing energy that is renewing itself to be reinforced by rest, applies to all similar situations. The return of health after illness, the return of understanding after an estrangement: everything must be treated tenderly and with care at the beginning, so that the return may lead to a flowering."
~ The I Ching, Wilhelm-Baynes translation

Happy Solstice!

Notes for a Manifesto, #2

2007-12-14T04:24:00.000-05:00

Politics
"Our blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society."
~ Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative

Theory
"We no longer are confronted or challenged by ideas -- instead we are entertained by them once they are packaged by the delivery systems."
~ from Rough Trade Art's "Theoretical Disengagement" series:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

A Visual Record
"It seems to me that in my several long-ago days among these paintings [Matthias Grünewald's 16th-century Isenheim Altarpiece], I saw nothing less than a visual record of how we know ourselves from beasts, of our moral imagination, our knowledge of suffering and love, our striving towards redemption -- however we may understand that -- and transcendance."
~ commenter Elatia Harris, regarding this post at 3 Quarks Daily

I'm not familiar with the Isenheim Altarpiece (and it's said to fare poorly in photographs), but -- wow -- what a prescription for the aims of art!

Figure & Ground

2007-12-12T04:07:00.000-05:00

From "Haptic Visuality" by Laura U. Marks:

"... I hope you get a sense of the political stakes between these two kinds of visuality, haptic and optical, and the two kinds of space they intend, smooth space and striated space.

"Optical visuality sees objects as distinct, distant, and identifiable, existing in illusionary three-dimensional space. It maintains a clear, crisp relationship between figure and ground. Optical visuality is necessary for distance perception: for surveying a landscape, for making fine distinctions between things at a distance. That's how the object of vision is constituted in optical visuality. The subject of vision -- the beholder -- is also conceived as discrete, as having solid borders that demarcate the beholder from the thing beheld. So you can see why optical visuality is needed, for example, for firing a missile. It conceives of the other, the object of vision, as distant and unconnected to the subject of vision. Optical visuality is necessary. But it's only half of vision.

"Haptic visuality sees the world as though it were touching it: close, unknowable, appearing to exist on the surface of the image. Haptic images disturb the figure-ground relationship. The early twentieth-century Viennese art historian Alois Riegl borrowed the term from psychology, haptein, for a kind of vision that 'grabs' the thing it looks at. I think it's important that Riegl was a historian of textiles, and that he came up with this word when he was poring over his Persian carpets. These carpets with their endless, interleaved patterns don't allow the eye to rest in one place; they invite the eye to move along them, caressing their surface. Contemplating these patterns does something to dissolve the boundaries between the beholder and the thing beheld."

~ as published in Framework: The Finnish Art Review (#2, Nov. 2004)

Main image: by Man Ray (1890-1976), from Rayographs 1922-1927
More from Man Ray...
(Click on image to see larger version in a new window)

Right: from Les Champs Délicieux; left: "Juliet et Margaret"