I am using the format of the blog for a thesis. The blog format encourages dissemination. The blog is open to collective constants through the ability for anyone to comment on what is said at any time rather than the traditional review period of an individual vision. I don’t believe in separating art forms. What I write about and how it is written I consider in creative terms to be art as well. The thesis is an open framework. Something that is constantly being added to and edited, changing over time just like the art it references. I have chosen to write entries that are self-contained. Each entry has something to do with the other but are individual moments. In this way I have shown what in my art practice is a very important thread, the macro/micro concept of something being read as itself and as a connector to a greater self. Things close up and far away are at once dissimilar and compatible.
My work deals with issues of marginality, structure analysis, multiple meaning, and style diversion. I am attracted to the cast off and overlooked.
It is my practice to view things metathetically. When visual constants representing everyday reality (perspective, depth perception, light direction) are viewed as instances of meaning rather than absolutes reality itself becomes a tool. With this an understanding of Cartesian approaches to what is considered real is offset. I often manipulate the make-up of visual signifiers, often referencing (art) history, to generate a terminal in which the viewer freely draws lines of meaning. By staging events in Synesthetic environments and mixed cultural sites my pieces are permitted to express the state in which people, Places, and the elements are transitory. People see sounds, still lives coalesce with their surroundings, and thoughts, structures, and organisms are interchangeable.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
love notes
Romanticism between 1790-1830.
“what I see first of all in Romanticism is the effect of a profound change, not primarily in belief, but in the spatial projection of reality. This in turn leads to a different localizing of the various levels of that reality. The drunken boat: the revolutionary element in romanticism. Northrop Frye p. 5
---aristotelian thinking---connection to nature—the sublime
From a tumul of anguished doubts, new convictions, which could not be reduced to simple formulai, began to emerge-belief in the primacy of imagination, the potentialities of intuition, the importance of the emotions and emotional integrity, and, above all, the uniqueness and unique value of every human being in a constantly changing cosmos.
Romanticism Hugh Honour pg.21 1979 Harper & Row.
-aesthetics move to the forefront, mimesis replaced by expressiveness.
-after appropriation, which is a kind of mimesis, of romantic imagery i.e. animals in nature etc. we have a representation of dissolution. The mimetic romanticism is more a yearning or call to romantic modes of thought rather than a conjuring statement of them. This is because most of the imagery is either nostalgic old thrifty paintings or or mass produced, like clip art, or flattened like Ryan Mcguiness’.
1755 Dr. Johnson defines Romantick (sic) as:’resembling the tales or romances; wild…improbable; false…;fanciful; full of wild scenery.’
--romanticism as transcendental decorative painting as meditative mandala.
-transcendental pantheism
Blakes myth of Urizen the sky god is a fuller and more sophisticated version of the myth of Frankenstein. In Europe. W. blake.
Quotations from: Romanticism Reconsidered selected papers from the English institute
1963 Columbia University Press:
The Drunken Boat by Northrop Frye
“It is obvious that in pre Romantic poetry there is a strong affinity with the attitude that we have called sense. The poet, in all ages and cultures, prefers images to abstractions, the sensational to the conceptual. But the pre-Romantic structure of imagery belonged to a nature which was the work of God; the design in nature was, as Sir Thomas Browne calls it, the art of God; nature is thus an objective structure or system for the poet to follow.”
“Rousseau represents, and to some extent made, a revolutionary change in the modern attitude…in his assumption that civilization was a purely human artifact, something that man had made, could unmake, could subject to his own criticism, and was at all times entirely responsible for. Above all, it was something for which the only known model was in the human mind…The effect of such an assumption is twofold. First, it puts the arts in the center of civilization. The basis of civilization is now the creative power of man; its model is the human vision revealed in the arts. Second, this model, as well as the sources of creative power, are now located in the mind’s internal heaven, the external world being seen as a mirror reflecting and making visible what is within. Thus the ‘outside’ world, most of which is ‘up there,’ yields importance and priority to the inner world, in fact derives its poetic significance at least from it. ‘In looking at objects of Nature,’ says Coleridge in the Notebooks, ‘I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language for something within me that already and forever exists, than observing anything new.’… Hence the emphasis is not on what we have called sense, but on the constructive power of the mind, where reality is brought into being by experience…Romantic poets sought to defy external reality by creating a uniformity of tone and mood…Such a poetic technique is , psychologically, akin to magic, which also aims at bringing spiritual forces into reality through concentration on a certain type of experience.” P. 10,11
-characters become psychological projections and the setting a period in the past just recent enough to be re-created rather than empirically studied. P. 11,12
Keats : “Man should not dispute or assert but whisper results to his neighbor… and Humanity… would become a grand democracy of trees!” p. 13
Blake’s Vehicular Form- that which carries the message in metaphor usually: frequently it is an image of a boat being driven by a breeze or current. See Shelley’s Ode and the figure of the “correspondent breeze”.
-the myth typically is a story of a god who's character lays within the human as well as non-human worlds.( axis)
“I have remarked elsewhere that the romance,, in its most naive and primitive form, is an endless sequence of adventures, terminated only by the author’s death or disgust.” P.16
English Romanticism by M.H. Abrams from Romanticism Reconsidered
“the Romantic period was eminently an age obsessed with the fact of violent and inclusive change,” referencing Hazlitt p.28
“Old things seemed passing away, and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race.”
The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, ed. Edward Dowden (Dublin, 1881), p. 52
M.H. p.31
"The formative age of Romantic poetry was clearly one of the apocalyptic expectation, or at least apocalyptic imaginings,” p. 37
It’s a common misconception that Romanticism is often described as a mode of escapism. The poets were obsessed with the realities of their era.
“ Whatever the form, the Romantic Bard is one “who present, past, and future sees”; so that in dealing with current affairs his procedure is often panoramic, his stage cosmic, his agents quasi-mythological, and his logic of events apocalyptic. Typically this mode of Romantic vision fuses history, politics, philosophy, and religion into one grand design, by asserting Providence-or some form of natural teleology-to operate in the seeming chaos of human history so as to effect from present evil a greater good…from which will emerge a new man on a new earth which is a restored paradise.” P.46
The Fate of pleasure by Lionel Trilling in Romanticism Reconsidered
“This we of our time can quite understand. We are repelled by the idea of an art that is consumer-directed and comfortable, let alone luxurious. Our typical experience of a work which will eventually have authority with us is to begin our relation to it at a conscious disadvantage, and to wrestle with until it consents to bless us. We express our high esteem for such a work by supposing that it judges us. And when it no longer does seem to judge us, or when it no longer baffles and resists us, when we begin to feel that we possess it, we discover that its power is diminished.” P. 89
Romanticism Re-Examined by Rene Wellek from Romanticism Reconsidered
Morse Peckham introduces “negative romanticism” despairing, nihilistic romanticism
Peckham influenced by Ernest Tuveson’s The Imagination as a Means of Grace: Locke and the Aesthetics of Romanticism (1960)
“Reading Peckham, one is tempted to give up the problem in despair. We might come to agree with Lovejoy or even with Valery, who warns us that it ‘is impossible to think seriously with words such as Classicism, Romanticism, Humanism, or Realism. One cannot get drunk or quench one’s thirst with labels on a bottle.’ But of course these terms are not labels: they have a range of meaning very different from Pabst Blue Ribbon or Liebfrauenmilch. Modern logicians tell us that all definitions are berbal, that they are ‘stipulated’ by the speaker. We certainly cannot prevent Communists from calling dictatorship ‘popular democracy,’ a baby from calling any strange man ‘daddy,’ or even Phckham from calling romanticism ‘Enlightenment.’ But ‘there is a sense’- I am quoting Wilbur Urban-‘in which the distinction between verbal and real definition is a valid one. There comes a point at which variation ceases to be merely inconvenient and unpragmatic; it becomes unintelligible. It leads to contadictio in adjecto, in which intrinsic incompatibility between subject and predicate destroys the meaning by an implicit denial.’
Urban quote from the intelligible world (New York, 1929), p. 124
P. 111, 112
German Romanticism operated more with dichotomies, thesis and antithesis
Max Deutschbein, in Das Wesen des Romantischen Coethen,(1921)
Aims at a phenomenological intuition of the essence of Romanticism by showing the agreement between English and German Romanticism in their concept and use of the synthetic imagination: the union of opposites, the finite and infinite, eternity and temporality, universality and individuality. The scheme serves the conclusion that English poetry translated German theory into practice,…this neglected little book has stressed one central and valid concept: the reconciling, synthetic imagination as the common denominator of Romanticism.” P. 113
Adolf Grimme, in Vom Wesen der Romantik Braunschweig, 1947 defines Romanticism as a breakthrough of what he calls “the vegetative strata of the soul” : the preconscious rather than the subconscious. The preconscious includes the imagination, which is raised to consciousness by Romanticism.” P. 117
Jesuit Philosopher Romano Guardini comes to a similar conclusion: Romanticism is ‘an upsurge of the unconscious and primitive.’p. 11 7
“Erscheinung und Wesen der Romantik,” in Romantik: Ein Zyklus Tubinger Vorlesungen, ed. Theodor Steinbuchel (Tubingen, 1948), pp. 237-49.
“what I see first of all in Romanticism is the effect of a profound change, not primarily in belief, but in the spatial projection of reality. This in turn leads to a different localizing of the various levels of that reality. The drunken boat: the revolutionary element in romanticism. Northrop Frye p. 5
---aristotelian thinking---connection to nature—the sublime
From a tumul of anguished doubts, new convictions, which could not be reduced to simple formulai, began to emerge-belief in the primacy of imagination, the potentialities of intuition, the importance of the emotions and emotional integrity, and, above all, the uniqueness and unique value of every human being in a constantly changing cosmos.
Romanticism Hugh Honour pg.21 1979 Harper & Row.
-aesthetics move to the forefront, mimesis replaced by expressiveness.
-after appropriation, which is a kind of mimesis, of romantic imagery i.e. animals in nature etc. we have a representation of dissolution. The mimetic romanticism is more a yearning or call to romantic modes of thought rather than a conjuring statement of them. This is because most of the imagery is either nostalgic old thrifty paintings or or mass produced, like clip art, or flattened like Ryan Mcguiness’.
1755 Dr. Johnson defines Romantick (sic) as:’resembling the tales or romances; wild…improbable; false…;fanciful; full of wild scenery.’
--romanticism as transcendental decorative painting as meditative mandala.
-transcendental pantheism
Blakes myth of Urizen the sky god is a fuller and more sophisticated version of the myth of Frankenstein. In Europe. W. blake.
Quotations from: Romanticism Reconsidered selected papers from the English institute
1963 Columbia University Press:
The Drunken Boat by Northrop Frye
“It is obvious that in pre Romantic poetry there is a strong affinity with the attitude that we have called sense. The poet, in all ages and cultures, prefers images to abstractions, the sensational to the conceptual. But the pre-Romantic structure of imagery belonged to a nature which was the work of God; the design in nature was, as Sir Thomas Browne calls it, the art of God; nature is thus an objective structure or system for the poet to follow.”
“Rousseau represents, and to some extent made, a revolutionary change in the modern attitude…in his assumption that civilization was a purely human artifact, something that man had made, could unmake, could subject to his own criticism, and was at all times entirely responsible for. Above all, it was something for which the only known model was in the human mind…The effect of such an assumption is twofold. First, it puts the arts in the center of civilization. The basis of civilization is now the creative power of man; its model is the human vision revealed in the arts. Second, this model, as well as the sources of creative power, are now located in the mind’s internal heaven, the external world being seen as a mirror reflecting and making visible what is within. Thus the ‘outside’ world, most of which is ‘up there,’ yields importance and priority to the inner world, in fact derives its poetic significance at least from it. ‘In looking at objects of Nature,’ says Coleridge in the Notebooks, ‘I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language for something within me that already and forever exists, than observing anything new.’… Hence the emphasis is not on what we have called sense, but on the constructive power of the mind, where reality is brought into being by experience…Romantic poets sought to defy external reality by creating a uniformity of tone and mood…Such a poetic technique is , psychologically, akin to magic, which also aims at bringing spiritual forces into reality through concentration on a certain type of experience.” P. 10,11
-characters become psychological projections and the setting a period in the past just recent enough to be re-created rather than empirically studied. P. 11,12
Keats : “Man should not dispute or assert but whisper results to his neighbor… and Humanity… would become a grand democracy of trees!” p. 13
Blake’s Vehicular Form- that which carries the message in metaphor usually: frequently it is an image of a boat being driven by a breeze or current. See Shelley’s Ode and the figure of the “correspondent breeze”.
-the myth typically is a story of a god who's character lays within the human as well as non-human worlds.( axis)
“I have remarked elsewhere that the romance,, in its most naive and primitive form, is an endless sequence of adventures, terminated only by the author’s death or disgust.” P.16
English Romanticism by M.H. Abrams from Romanticism Reconsidered
“the Romantic period was eminently an age obsessed with the fact of violent and inclusive change,” referencing Hazlitt p.28
“Old things seemed passing away, and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race.”
The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, ed. Edward Dowden (Dublin, 1881), p. 52
M.H. p.31
"The formative age of Romantic poetry was clearly one of the apocalyptic expectation, or at least apocalyptic imaginings,” p. 37
It’s a common misconception that Romanticism is often described as a mode of escapism. The poets were obsessed with the realities of their era.
“ Whatever the form, the Romantic Bard is one “who present, past, and future sees”; so that in dealing with current affairs his procedure is often panoramic, his stage cosmic, his agents quasi-mythological, and his logic of events apocalyptic. Typically this mode of Romantic vision fuses history, politics, philosophy, and religion into one grand design, by asserting Providence-or some form of natural teleology-to operate in the seeming chaos of human history so as to effect from present evil a greater good…from which will emerge a new man on a new earth which is a restored paradise.” P.46
The Fate of pleasure by Lionel Trilling in Romanticism Reconsidered
“This we of our time can quite understand. We are repelled by the idea of an art that is consumer-directed and comfortable, let alone luxurious. Our typical experience of a work which will eventually have authority with us is to begin our relation to it at a conscious disadvantage, and to wrestle with until it consents to bless us. We express our high esteem for such a work by supposing that it judges us. And when it no longer does seem to judge us, or when it no longer baffles and resists us, when we begin to feel that we possess it, we discover that its power is diminished.” P. 89
Romanticism Re-Examined by Rene Wellek from Romanticism Reconsidered
Morse Peckham introduces “negative romanticism” despairing, nihilistic romanticism
Peckham influenced by Ernest Tuveson’s The Imagination as a Means of Grace: Locke and the Aesthetics of Romanticism (1960)
“Reading Peckham, one is tempted to give up the problem in despair. We might come to agree with Lovejoy or even with Valery, who warns us that it ‘is impossible to think seriously with words such as Classicism, Romanticism, Humanism, or Realism. One cannot get drunk or quench one’s thirst with labels on a bottle.’ But of course these terms are not labels: they have a range of meaning very different from Pabst Blue Ribbon or Liebfrauenmilch. Modern logicians tell us that all definitions are berbal, that they are ‘stipulated’ by the speaker. We certainly cannot prevent Communists from calling dictatorship ‘popular democracy,’ a baby from calling any strange man ‘daddy,’ or even Phckham from calling romanticism ‘Enlightenment.’ But ‘there is a sense’- I am quoting Wilbur Urban-‘in which the distinction between verbal and real definition is a valid one. There comes a point at which variation ceases to be merely inconvenient and unpragmatic; it becomes unintelligible. It leads to contadictio in adjecto, in which intrinsic incompatibility between subject and predicate destroys the meaning by an implicit denial.’
Urban quote from the intelligible world (New York, 1929), p. 124
P. 111, 112
German Romanticism operated more with dichotomies, thesis and antithesis
Max Deutschbein, in Das Wesen des Romantischen Coethen,(1921)
Aims at a phenomenological intuition of the essence of Romanticism by showing the agreement between English and German Romanticism in their concept and use of the synthetic imagination: the union of opposites, the finite and infinite, eternity and temporality, universality and individuality. The scheme serves the conclusion that English poetry translated German theory into practice,…this neglected little book has stressed one central and valid concept: the reconciling, synthetic imagination as the common denominator of Romanticism.” P. 113
Adolf Grimme, in Vom Wesen der Romantik Braunschweig, 1947 defines Romanticism as a breakthrough of what he calls “the vegetative strata of the soul” : the preconscious rather than the subconscious. The preconscious includes the imagination, which is raised to consciousness by Romanticism.” P. 117
Jesuit Philosopher Romano Guardini comes to a similar conclusion: Romanticism is ‘an upsurge of the unconscious and primitive.’p. 11 7
“Erscheinung und Wesen der Romantik,” in Romantik: Ein Zyklus Tubinger Vorlesungen, ed. Theodor Steinbuchel (Tubingen, 1948), pp. 237-49.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
lines
My art making practice is ecotonal. Ecotones are areas of transition between different adjacent ecological communities. If we consider mediums to function as ecological communities then the matrix functions as the terrain (and the artist is the ecotone). This is our definition of a world. According to Wikipedia: "Ecotones are particularly significant for mobile animals, as they can exploit more than one set of habitats within a short distance. This can produce an edge effect along the boundary line, with the area displaying a greater than usual diversity of species." Diverse species are dissimilar organisms. If we look at objects from a Hylozoic point of view they are organisms. The concept of objectification may be moot. I like the analogy of the mobile animal in reference to the artist. The mobility may be more mental than say a Geselle or journeyman but no less active.
I use the moniker woodcliffe. It's a bardic name. Woodcliffe is the name of the street that I grew up on in Lancaster, Ohio. It was an appropriate title. Behind our house was a large stretch of woods and in front was the street that led right into the center of town. In her book Color: A Natural History of the Palette Victoria Finlay tells us about traveling Glaziers. When a new cathedral was in the finishing stages Glaziers would arrive to create the stained glass windows. Townspeople, often suspicious of strangers, were particularly wary of these traveling artisans because they would camp out by or in the forests or woods near the town. They did this in order to be close to the fuel supply for the furnaces they would build to heat and make the glass. The edge of the woods is an ecotone between the wild and civilization. These artists lived on that edge, the cliff of the woods.
I feel as though I exist there too.
yet to be titled 2007, Marys 2006, yet to be titled 2006 © R. Sullivan
Thursday, March 29, 2007
windows through the soul
Paul Klee's work has been said to have created, through its pictographic forms, a mythology outside and beyond any one, or particular culture. His forms are variable, archetypal, and have multiple meanings. The simplicity of Klee's forms allows for a complex ambiguity. Simplifying forms like the human figure or structures into basic signifiers provides freedom and openess. When there is abstraction there is more possibility or potential for viewer participation; because the work isn't based within a context of illusion but representation. Simplified or symbolic forms have traditionally been referred to as "primitive". I was taught in school that Medieval art looked the way it did(flat and disproportionate) because it was made in the "dark ages"; people were uneducated barbarians who weren't sophisticated enough to deal with perspective. This is lazy thinking. The middle ages were a time of "reformation". The church was avidly trying to convert pagan peoples. Force isn't the most effective or Christian way of doing this(although obviously not always the way chosen) so what's left is the appropriation of key events, dates, styles, etc. Most people know that this is why in Catholicism Christmas is around the winter solstice. Light festivals in nature religions during the darkest time of year conveniently fit into the Christian idea of Jesus as the light of the world. Nature religions are just what they sound like, about nature, they are a Cthonian focus on the cycles observed around us and how humans fit into that cycle. Rather than an Appolonian Christian idea that nature is lower than the spirit and inherently inferior because it "dies" and the spirit is "eternal". Simplification of the world around you into symbols provides a language that is easily reproduced, understood, and projected. Doesn't it make more sense that this is where this style of religious iconography may stem from? What we are talking about here are priorities, not knowledge. Folk art is more in line with practicalities and typically seen as a lesser form than that of academic or fine art. Art that I find interesting is idiosyncratic. And if you consider Folk art any art that comes from a non-academic context, then a lot of folk art comes from a very deep, personal, and idiosyncratic place. That, combined with an artists intuitive sense of beauty, is more interesting than a masterwork from the Renaissance that, beautiful and illusory as it may be, seduces us in a way that is still sensual; one's body still gets involved in a very Cthonian way. We want to touch it, gaze at it in admiration and declare how majestic it is.
After reading Shrines, Curiosities, and the Rhetoric of Display by Stephen Bann I was thinking about medieval triptychs and the Renaissance practice of the cabinet of curiosities in relation to a piece I did recently. The paintings I've been doing are very simple. They remind me of Paul Klee. I put a few of them along with Xerox photos I've taken in a wall mounted poster display unit like that you would find at a head shop or department store. What I find similar in medieval triptychs is that the wings are often hinged and double sided; they are meant to be opened and closed like a cabinet. Also, they almost always depict religious scenes from the bible, typically the crucifixion, which suggests the containment of a utopic vision. The poster display unit is interactive. With 15 double sided wings there is a possibility of 30 works on view to be flipped through. The usual use for the unit is to present posters that are for sale. The posters in the wings at department stores represent utopic vision as well. Each wing encapsulates a desire; whether it be the whimsical world of cartoons, a sports star, a psychedelic black-light poster, a musician/band, or a scantily clad female/male. People flip through the case and find what they want; something that is a signifier of themselves. It is a literal construct of the process of looking at art. It is as Bann so elegantly puts it, a "sacred prototype", "an endlessly transformed and transforming agent". There is a metaphysics of presence contained here. The display is a terminal where one passes through their desires. Like a window through which the eye must pass to reach its goal.Triptych of the Family Moreel 1484 by Hans Memling
Bann sites Norman Bryson's use of this metaphor in his book Word and Image. Bryson describes this situation as resulting in "the supremacy of the discursive over the figural". Bann goes on to say that: "With the irresistable(sic) rise of the theory and practice of perspective from the Renaissance onwards, the Word will become predominant: color and form will be valued not in their own right, but only insofar as they enable and facilitate the telling of a sacred tale." Color and form are their own sacred tale. The question is, what's yours?
Paul Klee's epitaph: "Here lies the painter Paul Klee, somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual, but far from close enough."
Monday, March 26, 2007
mind your god
(Quantum)Physics in the past century has become more and more comparable to ancient religious or spiritual beliefs that typically revolve around a deep spiritual "knowledge" or experience. Studies in Particle physics seem to show that simply the act of thought and observation could be the only reason a particle of matter exists. This is like saying looking for something is the same as creating it. At the very least, it means it is impossible to observe reality without changing it. Issac Newton was a very religious man; but the church took a dim view of his motto: "Hypothosese non fingo" or "I make no hypotheses". He based his laws on sound experimental evidence that anyone would be able to reproduce. This is still the way scientific theories are accepted and validated(The idea that the atom was the building block of nature was proposed about four hundred years before Christ by Democritus, but until the late 1800s remained just an idea), but the findings of physicists keep getting stranger and leading to hypotheses that seem too psychedelic to be real. Newtonian physics are still applicable to the large scale world, but don't work on a sub-atomic level where common sense and intuition have no place. This disconnect is what led Einstein to denounce quantum theory and declare "God doesn't play dice", but Einstein also said "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen". Although Newton disproved Aristotle's view of matter's natural state being that of rest, He was very Aristotelian in his rejection of the(very eastern)idea of Hylozoism , the belief that all life is inseparable from matter; in other words, all matter has life. I do believe in Hylozoism. I believe plants think and that rocks live, and that thought alone is living matter, that prayer and meditation have a very real and physical effect in the world. In Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth Campbell says: "God is a thought, god is a name, god is an idea, but it's reference is to something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all catagories of thought." How can a thought think about itself? Perhaps Consciousness itself is our concept of God. And with the findings of quantum physicists one could conjecture that consciousness, at the most fundamental levels, is a quantum process. It is information like this that leads me to say we must accept science as mythology and mythology as science.
In this day and age we need a personal mythology just to survive. Our old mythological constructs and rituals have broken down to such a degree that out of human nature grows personal or what I'll call prescriptive mythologies. Some of the largest and most obvious people practicing this are artists. Indologist Heinrick Simmer told Joseph Campbell: "The best things can't be told...the second best are the misunderstood. Because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about, and one gets stuck with the thoughts. The third best are what we talk about." Visual artists of course know this. It's one of the reasons we do what we do. When someone asks what ones work is about one might say "if I could put it into words I'd be a writer." I might say "If I could put it into words I'd be a physicist". I consider scientists artists. In fact, there are far more interesting things going on in the scientific community than in art. This is one of the motivations behind my proposal that if someone wants one of my works they must start an art magazine, of which I will serve as editor and chief, in which all of the articles are written by scientists.
I like the story about President Eisenhower going to see one of the first computers. Upon walking into the room one of the scientists explains to the President that the computer has been programmed to answer any question he may have. Eisenhower asks the computer "is there a God?" and the computer responds "now there is".
And the scientist is the new Yogi.
Yogi 2006, oil pastel on paper © R. Sullivan
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
the poetry of motion
In physics, motion means a continuous change in the position of a body relative to a reference point. Newton's third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, is common knowledge. If we can consider an accumulation of smaller actions one large action, such as the creation of a work of art, then it only makes scientific sense that the following work of art would be an opposite reaction to it. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but it feels that way to me. I mean this isn't an ADD thing. It seems to be a part of a natural order that when I finish a piece the next one must be contrary to it somehow. Why am I having trouble with this situation one may ask. Well, because people tend to distrust an artist who moves around a lot. It's taken as a sign of indecisiveness or immaturity. Like just about everything else in America(the whole concept of suburbia) this situation seems to be directly linked to war. It doesn't seem to be until after WWII that this idea of the artist brand comes into play. It has been conjectured that after the war American artists, in order to separate themselves from European artists, began to paint in a solid identifiable style revolving around common imagery or concept. Whether this was consciously done or not is beside the point; it happened, it was the sense of the times. Take two of the patriarchs of their eras as an example. Picasso painted two very different paintings(on display adjacent to one another at MOMA)in the summer of 1921: Three Musicians and Three Women at the Spring.
Willem DeKooning spent the majority of his career making biomorphic paintings. Certainly everything he did after 1945 applies to this description.
Woman 1, 1952-3 / The Visit 1966-7 / Untitled XXIV, 1983
It's pretty obvious that there is more variation in Picasso's two works painted at the same time than in the three DeKooning's spanning thirty years. Of course this idea of the brand and American consumer identity was taken head on with the advent of Pop Art. If it was a national sense of solidarity due to America's enormous economic "success", having virtually a monopoly on manufactured goods and agricultural exports, after WWII that was part of this consistency in artists' practice what's in store for the America of today? The America that is virtually split in two because of war. The America in which the dollar consistently declines in comparison to the English Pound and the Euro. The America in which the average person spends 10% more than they earn with 70% living paycheck to paycheck. Keeping Newton's ideas from 1687 in mind might be a pretty progressive idea.
Newton, Painted C-Print on paper, tagged pinecone w/seeds, 2006 © R.Sullivan
Willem DeKooning spent the majority of his career making biomorphic paintings. Certainly everything he did after 1945 applies to this description.
Woman 1, 1952-3 / The Visit 1966-7 / Untitled XXIV, 1983
It's pretty obvious that there is more variation in Picasso's two works painted at the same time than in the three DeKooning's spanning thirty years. Of course this idea of the brand and American consumer identity was taken head on with the advent of Pop Art. If it was a national sense of solidarity due to America's enormous economic "success", having virtually a monopoly on manufactured goods and agricultural exports, after WWII that was part of this consistency in artists' practice what's in store for the America of today? The America that is virtually split in two because of war. The America in which the dollar consistently declines in comparison to the English Pound and the Euro. The America in which the average person spends 10% more than they earn with 70% living paycheck to paycheck. Keeping Newton's ideas from 1687 in mind might be a pretty progressive idea.
Newton, Painted C-Print on paper, tagged pinecone w/seeds, 2006 © R.Sullivan
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Romancing the rock-hard
Romanticism came on the scene in the late 18th century. In the beginning of the nineteenth century Romance novels were birthing their own genre. Novels like Pride_and_prejudice were popularized by the woman of that century. Housewives or..ehem "domestic engineers" were the ones who were buying and reading the tales and poetry of romance that led to the romantic kitch that sells in grocery stores now. These types of "trashy novels"(according to Wikipedia)are most popular in the United States and Canada, where it is the best-selling genre. In North America in 2002, sales of romance novels generated US$1.63 billion and comprised 34.6% of all popular fiction sold - by comparison, general fiction comprised 24.1% and mystery,
detective and suspense fiction comprised 23.1%. Over 2000 romance novels were published, and there were 51.1 million romance novel readers. Scary, but beside the point. What I'm interested in is the progression of the novels from the period of Romanticism to today. Basically they haven't transgressed in audience, only in media. The Romances that people, probably still mostly women, take in today are still experienced at home with the auspice of day-time television(soap operas etc.). The longest running soap opera started as a radio program in 1937. As of Feb
23rd 2007, Guiding Light aired its 15,115th episode; it premiered as a television show June 30th, 1952. I consider workout videos to be day-time television. They have a strange permissible sexuality about them. One of my earliest sexual feelings was directed toward Jane Fonda in a leotard from her 1982 video Workout. I didn't feel guilty about it at all, and I was raised Catholic! Literally, these videos are intended to get you worked up, flushed; and with the long term intention of making one more sexually attractive(good health=stability/virility= sexy). Which brings me to the presentation of the body at such a state. In body building one's body is representative of their ultimate physical power, beauty, and strength. These final products are presented in an often fantastical way. Hardbodies take on the persona of characters from Norse or Medieval tales or imagery when posing for pictures, an imagery littered with romantic signifiers of the individual and the sublime, adventure, mythical presence, etc . The most interesting aspect of body building is in its psychology. It is quite the opposite of aerobics which is meant to keep one slim and trim. The
super-human levels to which body builders take their physical appearance is mind-boggling to most people. It seems that this is simply the point: to be super human(body building isn't about how strong you are, but how much control you have over your ridiculously sculpted vehicle, including...your mind); that and being addicted to the endorphin rush you get from such activities may help too.Art practices are similar. These days artists who seem to have
"complete control"(again, Matthew Barney, a body builder in his own right, or Matthew Ritchie , or Danica Phelps)over their work do quite well. The work is self contained and although referential to much "outside" information, still very much insular with an explanation for every movement made. This doesn't mean the work isn't interesting, just limited. Aerobics must be a routine practice in order to be effective. Artists who have identifiable work due to a regular practice also do very well. The monetary success of art these days means that comodification can equal success. If you make work that's identifiable then you can act as a brand. I assume it must be an especially nice feeling to have paid thousands of dollars for a work of art that you can display and have people say "oh, you've got a so and so". So and So, I'm not one of these artists. My work varies, sometimes drastically. More often than not I hear about obsession being a criteria for quality art to be made. A person can be obsessed with many things; one of which is a rapacity for knowledge which inevitably leads to different ways of thinking which leads to different work. Some of my favorite artists, and the most important artists, have had a history of making dissimilar objects. Picasso, Picabia, Kipenburger, Polke, Duchamp, the list goes on and on. The act of experimentation, wandering, testing oneself, surprising oneself, to me is the practice of a true artist. An artist who isn't concerned with control, but contribution.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
twist and flex
In the previous post I mentioned Relational Aesthetics. This is a term associated with the artist Rirkrit Teravanija. Rirkrit associates his work to the term social sculpture. The process of fitness and sport is social sculpture as well. In simple terms people are sculpting their bodies towards an ideal that is very much based in art history a la Classical sculpture. There is also a psychological sculpture taking place within these social contexts of sport. Hierarchies are constructed(leaders, captains), there is a constant state of comparison amongst the participants, the body is often forced into uncommon positions
or process', etc. A kind of Class
icism through Hellenism.
In fitness instruction videos there is a more complex social and psycological situation occuring; this is largely due to their direction outward. Fitness videos are meant to be projected outwardly for the purpose of improving an audiences own personal health, not for entertainment as most sport is. The people in aerobics and other fitness videos are usually women. Most people buy videos such as these because they feel they need help, thus a matriarchal construct begins to emerge which raises Feminist issues of control, submission, role reversal, and sex dialectics. Getting in shape has to be an individual choice, not one that someone on television can help you make. This doesn't stop people from looking for mentors or saviors however, and can account for why most of these videos are dust collectors and thrift shop staples. I collect, mostly aerobic, fitness videos as well as pictures of female body builders. I find them to be interesting examples of human conditions of what I'll call requesite desire and essential potential. It's pretty simple: humans need to desire to survive, it's inherent in us, we wouldn't be at the top of the food chain if it weren't. Essential potential refers to the need for imagination and hope in order to maintain a healthy average human psychology. The potential of a thing is the most exciting signal that that thing can emit. The potential of the body and the desire to reach that potential are the driving forces for bodybuilding as well as fitness practices. I relate aerobics videos and female bodybuilding to Romanticism which is what I'll continue with in the next post. For now, please join me in some Social Sculpture.
images on right and video by r.sullivan 2006 digital c-prints 14x11"
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Califormal
Tom Wesselman painted LA paintings but lived in NY. Tom Wesselman looks like Larry David. Larry David lives in LA but makes NY comedy in an LA setting (he is from NY). An artist and a comedian, where does one stop and the other begin? Comedy seems to be very comfortable in art these days; not so much in music however. Remember Frank Zappa's "Does Humor Belong in Music" Video? Well, even with someone like Zappa, the comedy was rooted in technical virtuosity. Most of the music that is funny today (mostly rap and country) contains lyrics that may or may not be intentionally funny or is music that is just cute. This is because music that is comical usually relies on lyrics for it's comedy. Funny sounds are hard to make into something someone wants to listen to as "music", although, I still want to make an album composed entirely of animal noises. The advantage that art has is in it's silence. It can act as a sort of text or narrative that the reader connects themselves. I was talking with Gary Stephan about art and humor and he brought up a good point. I was questioning how one can differentiate between variation and flailing in the work of someone who changes styles drastically in their practice. Gary had the opinion of some of his favorite work being like jokes and food. The idea is that you don't pontificate about whether a joke is funny or food tastes good, it just is. We both agreed that we didn't like art that you have to be talked into liking. There should be enough information within the piece visually or otherwise that is attractive. This is one of my real hangups with Relational Aesthetics. When philosophy enters into visual art as the main catalyst for a work the art essentially becomes an illustration for the ideas. I'm more attracted to philosophy as something that broadens a work, gives it the context to help it be understood in addition to it's own attractiveness. I'm simply more interested in people who open doors than those that close them (Carolee Schneemann vs Matthew Barney). When everything is "explainable" in a specific way the work closes in u
pon itself. One could argue that this is an ouroborosian situation making the work its own sort of universe, feeding off of its own interconnections.But the point to the symbol of the snake eating its own tail is to be a metaphor of the actual universe, all inclusive. Why simplify something so wonderfully complex by excluding things? What's wrong with a general structure that is open ended? Why not leave something up to the imagination? Like Larry David's meandering comedy or Tom Wesselman's egoless women.
Monday, February 12, 2007
okay ok
Some people are upset about how the English language has been bastardized due to overuse of abreviation and text messaging. But this "bastardization" is nothing new. It seems to me that since language is a human invention and thus changing along with humans that the old trope of the generation gap is the largest reason for such hostility. This all is pretty obvious. I can imagine someone who fancies themself some sort of autodidactical linguist likening misuse of words to grafitti on a masterwork. That's a bad analogy but you get the idea. I would imagine that real linguists would find any kind of transformation of language interesting. Besides, most of the people complaining about it are probably saying "like" every other word, or squeeking out a gee whiz after they're astonied, that's Olde English, for suprized. I find it very interesting to listen to someone, provided they're not a blathering fool, misread my work. Many artists are very protective of their art and insistant upon what it is about. I have witnessed on more than one occasion someone cry or get very defensive/argumentative about what they are "saying" by making the things they make. This is very selfish, naive, and closed minded to me. How can you say you own something just because you made or bought it? Does a parent own their children? That's slavery man! I suppose you have to care enough about the psychology of the person looking to try and see it through their eyes. Does that make me a humanitarian? These are just thoughts prefacing a project that has been soley an idea so far. I plan on using multiple translations to create a sort of entropic poetry based on wartime speaches or recorded conversations. I will translate the original text into the adversary language and back again etc. Google's translation tools can be useful in this way as some are still in beta and translate into strange phrasings. Let's try one:
A line from Churchill's famous speech: "Their Finest Hour" - June 18, 1940
Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
trans. to German:
Von diesem, das ich, das, wenn wir einen Streit zwischen der Vergangenheit und dem Geschenk öffnen, wir ganz sicher bin, findet, daß wir die Zukunft verloren haben.
from German to French:
De celui-ci je qui, si nous ouvrons une polémique entre le passé et le cadeau, nous sommes tout à fait sûrs, trouve que que nous avons perdu l'avenir.
from French back to English:
Of this one I which, if we open a polemic between the past and the gift, we are completely sure, finds that that we lost the future.
This practice would be rooted in historical interactions between countries rather than a willy nilly free for all. Ohh time, are you on my side?
And here's a link to being able to understand all these bastardizing bastards:http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslator.html
how are you? You look nice this morning. Is that your lint roller?
and the translation
HOW R U??!!? WTF LOL U LOK NIEC THES MORNNG!!!!!! OMG LOL SI TAHT UR LINT ROL3R???!!!? WTF
WTF indeed!
curatorial currency
I'm supposed to be posting on here as a part of my thesis project. So starting now I'm going to do a posting every day or try to. Regardless of length or depth I think it will be a good exercise in organizing my thoughts. Something I'm not very skilled at doing. I would also love to hear from anyone their thoughts and comments on what I post.
I was thinking today about books. About those relatively nice books you can order online through apple's iphoto or quoop. I'm thinking of books as a curatorial tool. Why can't a book or a magazine function as a museum or gallery? Essentially they are meant to serve the same function. Of course a museum is more "dead" than a book. Perhaps simply because there is an inherent power structure within the museum/gallery trope; books and magazines give the viewer the power by personal presentation and intimate interaction.
So I am announcing the Little Cities project. Once a month beginning in June '07 I am going to curate a "show" that will be published in book,magazine, or blog form exclusively. The first installment will be about currency art. This is a proposal I am writing for a real show at Apex Art in NYC. I've been collecting monies that I find interesting from my various jobs throughout the years and will use those as well as more sociological and professional artistic examples. Wallpapering with notes, art made from shredded currency, etc. If anyone has interesting info on any of this I'd love to hear from you.
I was thinking today about books. About those relatively nice books you can order online through apple's iphoto or quoop. I'm thinking of books as a curatorial tool. Why can't a book or a magazine function as a museum or gallery? Essentially they are meant to serve the same function. Of course a museum is more "dead" than a book. Perhaps simply because there is an inherent power structure within the museum/gallery trope; books and magazines give the viewer the power by personal presentation and intimate interaction.
So I am announcing the Little Cities project. Once a month beginning in June '07 I am going to curate a "show" that will be published in book,magazine, or blog form exclusively. The first installment will be about currency art. This is a proposal I am writing for a real show at Apex Art in NYC. I've been collecting monies that I find interesting from my various jobs throughout the years and will use those as well as more sociological and professional artistic examples. Wallpapering with notes, art made from shredded currency, etc. If anyone has interesting info on any of this I'd love to hear from you.
Transformation Design
I stopped into a shop called Waves L.L.C. on W. 30th. The L.L.C. stands for Limited Liability, they were very touchy about me taking pictures. I noticed that most of the older radios were designed to replicate a Cathedral window. Coming from a religious background it is interesting to me when I see ideology in consumer design. In fact the two are seemingly always linked. The products we buy tend to represent what we value in ourselves, or at least aspire to. These radios are designed to be representations of beauty, symetry, solidarity, and righteousness. It seems that media has always been connected to a sense of omnipotence. Voices from afar transmitted to locations around the world into your own living room are wonderous and magical; at least they were when people could first hear and see them. The power of everpresence that the radio and telegraph represented, and what other devices represent now, is the same power that people associate with spirits and gods. People trust these voices because of that power. Only in the past decade or two have Americans, arguably the most "involved" in media culturaly in the world, on a large scale begun to distrust media. And depending on how many more accept the information here, that distrust may grow to unprecedented levels. People identify themselves by their playlists and tv shows encoded on their portable media devices. The ear "buds" alone are a social signifier. Media has replaced religion as the main facet to our belief systems as well as systems of design. There's really no difference between the two in the western world anyway.
Mobil Gods. Such power things that are connected with the "invisible" have.
One of the first purveyors of the portable transistor radio was Zenith. The "The Royalty of"
the Zenith logo is an example of this idea of media as God, brought to you by powers from the heavens riding down upon Zeus' lightning bolt.What better marketing scheme than one that scares you into feeling protected?
amen
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