Robyn Thomas

Praxis Enrichment Refresher Workshop

Session Two 3-day Morning Workshop

Instructor:  Andrew Cooks

Praxis Enrichment Refresher Workshop

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Summer 2015 Writing Assignments Day Two

One word re-writing of previous year’s assignment: What is it about your work that is important to you?

Inherency.

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100 words on where I’m from after: Thomas McEvilley, Mute Prophecies: The Art of Jannis Kounellis

Garrison Keillor called Columbus the mid-west’s eastern defence. Government paper-pushing or educating the next generation of ‘“ahians” and NFL hopefuls at the big farm are still ‘good jobs’. Areas of urban blight have fallen victim to the wealth of gentrification and new urbanist hipsterdom. The rich fled back into high-rise condos with views of the re-naturalized river. The ‘middle clss’ glued together dream homes in the hay fields once home to youthful romances. Pseudo-small town-retail spaces and masqueraded big box stores keep out the poor, trapped in the now decaying neighborhoods of my childhood, through their remoteness.

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READING DIARY

Chapter Four :Breaking the cycle: the dictatorship of image (excerpt) Robert Nelson, 2010.

"Allegory is perhaps as old as language itself and certainly as variable as the languages and styles in which it has been written. . . . Between occasional pinnacles, allegory has maintained a constant presence in artistic forms and humanistic study. All on its own, allegory inspires great works of literature and insightful commentary." (Brenda Machosky, Thinking Allegory Otherwise. Stanford University Press, 2010)

Visual artists make images. Allegory is image making. Artist should not be leary about applying allegory to their writing about their art. Even when the image might not be ‘successful’, it might even be downright horrible, the image can be made memorable via an allegory. In fact, the image can be made so memorable the reader/viewer might never be able to look or even think about the object or idea around which the allegory was formed without considering its allegorical role. [rt]

Takeaway: Engagement of the entire being...arms, legs, torso...to maintain balance--putting the whole self into the act, while recognizing the independent and ever changing role each part plays to create the whole. Differentiation between the roles the parts play relevant to the task at hand. Some tasks, or modes require greater engagement and fluidity than others. In allegory as in all things “form follows function”. Allusion to other possible metaphors via intentional word choice, that could be developed off the allegory can be helpful in reinforcing the allegory itself. 

Steve Jobs said, "a bicycle for our minds."

Sorry Mr. Jobs, compared to the previous text, that’s a rather weak metaphor on how one can engage with an object. However because I have now associated it with the previous text I will more likely remember that you made this comparison, or not. [rt]            

That joke isn't funny anymore Adrian Searle The Guardian January 11 2005

Searle’s use of concrete, descriptive language to reveal the paradoxes found in the situation within his writing and how a similar approach to the exhibition's installation reveals the paradoxical relationship of the objects thus creating a memorable experience both in the seeing of the exhibit as well as reading about seeing the exhibit. [rt]

“I’ve seen these things before, but not like this. This room, I know, is going to stay with me.” [5]

Choice of language that is descriptive and expresses the situation...in this case the juxtaposition of the old and new work in its installation; language that takes a close up look and then steps back and looks again from a distance.[rt]

“He can’t escape his history, and nor can we.” …, “...,he has crammed too much in…”..., “Maybe this is his idea of artistic generosity.” [5]

The final sentence, potentially read as a question, written as a rhetorical statement.  The failure of the opportunity to deliver on the possibilities it contained as the result of lack of or imprecise editing.[rt]

History, shock, numbness and branding; what are the ways to navigate around these? Is understatement the answer to the numbness...avoid the shock, the history, the brand? How do we avoid the repetition of ourselves that turns the artist to a brand, instead continuing to create work that “disturbs”, “makes us think” and consists of “memorable images”? Can it be avoided? What language can we use to avoid the pitfall of theatricality? Is theatricality sometimes to be desired? [rt]

“The thing is, I find myself fascinated by the bones and forget about any artistic pretensions this cabinet of curiosities might have.” [6]

What if the joke, the theatrical, is applied in a way that artistic pretensions are dropped? Can be a bit of unintentional success within the failure of the intentional? In the case of Hirst, this would be the returning of a greater meaning to the objects than that which he intended...which began to happen for Searle. But can Hirst do this intentionally, or does the non-reality of his ‘brand’ get in the way of reality? Perhaps it is good that these brands exist, because their existence provides more space for unpretentious discussion of the non-brands? I realized I started this article looking at the author's approach to language specific to this review, yet ended it looking more closely at the possibilities of language in a general discourse.       

This appeared on D. Hirst in The Guardian shortly after I read this piece and wrote the journal entry. Ten years later I don’t think Hirst can do this intentionally, and I don’t think it matters if he could. Reality in this case does not matter. Is it good that such brands continue to exist? Yes, they are the shiny object that distracts the easily distracted which in turn keeps those with little to add to the conversation out of it.  Hirst’s ‘return to curating’ is his attempt to regain control of the discourse, because he has realized that the non-reality of his brand has gotten in the way of where he truly wanted to be...but he can’t get there anymore via the path he chose, so he is going back another direction. But will he have any more credibility as a curator than he currently has as an artist? Can he buy back his credibility by curating exhibitions with artists who originally disdained Hirst’s work and later befriended it (and him)? Or is it just another shiny object he is spinning around? My vote is ‘shiny object’. [rt] 

I intended to just address Searle's writing/use of language in this article, but I found myself distracted by the shiny object that is his subject. [rt]

The Future Needs Us Rebecca Solnit (published in Tom Dispatch Dec 22 2013)

The future remains unknown, silently before us, needing us unlike the past which can only guide us; the present is always an unfinished state…

“The arc of justice is long.” [8] “The span of time is not as long as you might think.” [9]

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.” [9] (Foucault)

The future remains unknown…

“Hope is a sense of the grand mystery of it all, the knowledge that we don’t know how it will turn out, that anything is possible.” [10]

Narratives are unpredictable...they can only be done, and that “is the crucial thing”.[11]

To the writing: a building of what cannot be known on that which is known-- facts scientific and historical, contemporary and not so long ago; made between the facts at different periods which led to the current events, supporting the thesis statement of the unpredictable nature of the future...we don’t know what will happen, only that if we continue on something will happen. The writing fits the direction of the thought.[rt]

Image and Idea John Crowe Ransom. The World's Body. Charles Scribner and Sons ASIN B00085M7DA 1938

Image= wild, existing as its own thing

Idea= tame, a derivative put there

“We think we can lay hold of the image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.” [11]

Short, to the point writing reflective of the thesis, vividly stating the weakness of the idea in relation to the image through language which emphasizes the strength and wildness of the image over the weakness of the idea. [rt]                

Notes on Beauty Peter Schjeldahl

Surrender to the beautiful-- it is in control. Words Schjeldahl uses to describe and/or in relation to beauty:  strangeness, novelty, bizarre, unexpected, simple, overwhelming, mercy, odd, ugly, alien, violent, exalting, intense, conversion, capitulation, pleasing, sacred, inviolable, taboo, reverence, crazy, stubborn, standoff...the range and contradictions reveal the nature of beauty he wishes to express.

“‘Beauty’ versus beauty. Platitude versus phenomenon.” [13]

Beauty is in the mind….intoxicating...it’s what makes life worth living...available and necessary to all...to the survival of our species (Baudelaire).

Did the expansion of the definition of art also expand the definition of beauty? Or did the expansion of the definition of art make room for a recapturing of a previous, more all encompassing definition of beauty; meaning did art get out of the way so that we could once more take an unencumbered look at beauty? [rt]

“Visual beauty has been escaping non-visual art into movies, magazines, and other media much as the poetic has escaped from contemporary poetry into popular songs and advertising.” [14]

No argument that technology simulates experiences that once were hard to come by and as our [Western, high tech and economically advantaged] daily lives become more sanitized beauty beomes a less precious, a less valuable commodity. But how is this among cultures still lacking indoor plumbing? What’s their take on beauty? [rt]

“I do not discuss beauty with curators. It would only discomfit them and embarrass me.” [14]

Beauty does not conform to systematic structures, therefore those bound by such structures are unable to address Beauty; they are unable to lose themselves in beauty for fear of losing themselves to beauty.

“The self you lose to beauty is not gone. It returns refreshed...It gives you something to be intelligent about.” [14]

And why would systematic structures want to be refreshed or intelligent about anything? [rt]

“An experience of beauty entirely specific to one person probably indicates that the person is insane.” [15]

Is there any truth in the inverse of this statement? Could a person be considered insane if an experience of beauty specific to many people does not resonate as such with an individual? That statement could be quite dangerous in the wrong mouth. [rt]

“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty”?

Good question, after all both exist for such short, fleeting instances one could argue neither exist at all...And if they are one and the same, could one believe in the existence of one without belief in the existence of the other? [rt]

Kulturkampf --That quagmire we are forever stuck in…

Quality --Like Beauty quality is a subjective term, despite the attempt to canonize. However unlike Beauty, Quality is dependent upon its relevance to another, it is subjected to a structure...Beauty is judged by its uniqueness, exceeding the standard only relevant to itself….Quality by its meeting standards, perhaps raising the standard for all else beyond itself. We become frustrated by Quality when the standards remain un-met, or cannot be raised, or the structure fails understanding we bring to Quality. We do not become frustrated with Beauty in this way because the neither Beauty nor our understanding of it is bound in the same way to structure. [rt]

“Insensibility to beauty may be an index of misery.” [15]

or insanity? or ignorance? or uncaring? or lack of Beauty as a priority?  

ex. of politics in art---Beauty withdraws.

Beg to differ here...much art dealing with the environment is and has been political...and Beauty has been key to it...Romanticism as a political response to the Industrial Revolution is a good example. [rt]

“Beauty is a necessity that waits upon the satisfaction of other necessities.” [15]

Save the issue of Beauty and gender til the end…otherwise things might get ugly.[rt]    

Between Shadow & Memory (imagining the Garden) a ramble through the paradoxes of space Chapter 11 Andrew Cooks

The politics of Pleasure...a mid-20th Century European POV? Late 20th- early 20th Century US POV--both sides are afraid to lay claim to Pleasure, both have become equally frightened by its atopy.

atopy--emotions that are seldom experienced, highly original, making them difficult to classify; but they are observable within the self and others; but they do not depict an ideal.

An ideal is subjective to a classification, a standard, a structure. Pleasure, Beauty, Pretty:  cannot be classified, do not fit the structures which we attempt to and want to apply to them, they have no ‘clear definition’ by definition...all are paradoxical in nature. Atopy is scandalous because we are afraid of what we cannot classify, give structure to, or define. It is unreasonable. There is no ‘reason’ to making art beyond the pleasure of making art...just as there is no ‘reason’ of viewing art beyond the pleasure of viewing art. How perverse! [meanings 2 and 3]

It is perverse to make art, and making art is a perversity constructed of a number of other perversities...those things like which are contrary to accepted standards because they cannot be standardized, classified--those atopic things like pleasure, beauty, pretty...and yet within this perversity we still try to pass judgement upon those other unclassifiable perversities; leading to attempts such as drawing a line between Beauty and Pretty.[rt]

So, now to erase that line, strip away the structure which imposed a hierarchy [class structure, gender], and put the Pretty back on equal footing with Beauty. Take these to a state of anarchy? Well, maybe not that far…

“The subtraction of beauty as a standard for art hardly signals a decline in the authority of beauty. Rather it testifies to a decline in the belief that there is something called art.” (Sontag 2002) [17]

Beauty retains its authority because the authority was not applied or imposed upon it from outside, but it is an authority from within, inherent to Beauty--and this is a masculine authority. Removing Beauty as a quality which lends authority to the definition of art, does this collapse the definition of art? Unlike Beauty, art is not atopic, it is a construct. Does Beauty and these other atopic qualities lend art an atopic identity through association?

And Pretty? Removing it from the definition of art would certainly have less of an impact than the removal of Beauty if one accepts that Pretty is more superficial [read feminine] and has less depth than Beauty.

Consider Hockney and Hirst. If Hockney equals the pretty, lacks gravitas [Beauty], only vanitas [Pretty] and both Beauty and Pretty are removed from art, then is the result art lacking in both, equal to Hirst? Is his work truly lacking in both? When such atopic concepts enter the discussion we cannot discuss them under the structure of terms from which they are constantly slipping away. So what becomes the criteria? Is there criteria under which these can be discussed? Or is the solution to not discuss but to acknowledge and accept?

“Hockney--never ducking his identity--is no stranger to ideas of prettiness in art, openly and wholeheartedly embracing it.” [18]

Stand to the perversity, embrace it!

“They think that pretty can’t be serious…” (Hockney) [18]

“To be sure, I’m very serious about my prettiness.” [31]

Openness to being, obliged to nothing.

If the Pretty is a derivative of Beauty, a lesser, associated quality lacking the authority of Beauty, then removing Beauty from art means that the Pretty is also removed from art. Yet this would acknowledge a reciprocity in the relationship; reciprocity among unequals is a tricky thing.

“..if pretty implies gender, what else might be determined about collective standards by which we measure, or at least adjudicate visual experience?” [19]

collective standards--if these are misogynistic and/or paternalistic does the elimination of these eliminate issues of gender? With the examples of Minimalism and Pattern, Decoration and Ornament apparently not. However awareness of the composition of these collective standards does impact how we discuss the experience, and how the artist embraces or rejects the results of the discussion in his or her work.

To the paradoxes within the prettiness of the Rococo….leaving the external, theoretical basis of the discussion and moving into the internal, practical discussion of the ideas and their application both in a broader, historical context and in the artist/writer’s work.

Rough analysis of chapter structure---topic, external definitions surrounding point of discussion [third person], restatement of topic and its historical contextualization of its practical application in both visual and related creative fields supporting and defending the artist’s position [enter the first person] towards topic and the resulting practical impact on the artist’s work while leaving open a door…

The writing becomes more interesting with the shift to first person in large part to the mixture of phrasing and literary devices that enter into the writing more readily than in the first part of the chapter. Example:  The first two paragraphs of “pretty painting...painting pretty: a decorative effect” with insertion of something that seems at first to be a ‘misfit’, yet fits because it doesn’t appear to...’misfits’ always have a place somewhere, even if that place is as a ‘misfit’, at least that was the lesson I took when Bob McGrath sang the song. The Sesame Street quote amongst the Fragonard, Hôtel de Soubise, Frick Collection, and Twombly creates a memorable mental image with its own perversity.

The difference to the others emphasizes the complementary relationship which is formed and amplifies both. We see red more vividly when it is paired with green. When paradoxes are closely paired, their individual nature is more memorably revealed. Beauty and Pretty together compliment each other.

Throwing the whole argument out the window...what about people who live in glass houses? Is the defenestration an act being taken upon oneself here?

If the pretty is charming, it is meant to charm...if something is meant to charm, it is pretty...and there is intention of purpose in both, existing within a range that is both immense and human in scale.

Pretty girls use their prettiness deceptively. And if the pretty is removed from art does this make art any less deceptive? How much truth is in either? Pretty is a control issue...but who is controlling whom?

Proverbs 31:30 (RSV) Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

“Unlike beauty, pretty is conditional and light, bound up with gender.” [23]

Anything bound up with gender is bound to get ugly, especially if it is John Currin’s idea of his identifying himself as the “only feminine male artist” and his concept of ‘pretty, elegance, and other feminine qualities’...he does a great job of revealing the ugly side of ‘pretty’ though!

Gender, like all structures, cannot be applied to atopic concepts and function as criteria by which to pass judgement on those concepts. Attempt to embrace these misapplied structures as a means of showing their slipperiness.                                 

pattern, decoration, ornament            

“...the cultural chestnut of who deems what important, when and for how long…” [24]

Who's in control? Who is imposing or tearing down the structure, this will determine the reading.

“Relegating the work of women to secondary importance it is often damned with faint praise.” [24]

Is Pretty Girls the ‘yarn bombing’ of hip-hop? Or is it just another dud in the gender war, performed by a floral pseudonym plucked off the street for a real gem of a deceptively pretty girl and another whose prettiness has long since been deceived by its own ugliness?

To the floral...the shift in writing to a very subtle, allusion to gender evokes a pre-sexual revolution hygiene film with all its metaphorical use of bees and flowers, and it feeds well into the visualization referenced with the film ‘The Age of Innocence’.

“That resilient flower, the rose, endlessly rewards with her blooms, the bush itself unremarkable for the most part.” [25]

Why does that sentence make me think of Kant and his criteria for the judgement of beauty in Critique of Judgement? This sentence does reveal the dark side of pretty in regard to gender.

The picturing and cataloguing of flowers as a celebration of their individuality...gender positive? ‘form follows function’ the flower attracts the bee?

Modernist house--charm versus character?  With age the number of ‘characters’ dwindles and those attributes once defining the ‘character’ can become ‘charming’. As the number of modernist houses dwindle...and distance to their lack of charm is gained....will their existence as ‘architectural characters’ become ‘charming’ and thus leading to a consideration of them as ‘pretty’? Yesterday my younger son out of the blue mentioned when he grows up he wants a "pretty house like in the David Hockney painting". Hockney is his favorite painter and he is still young enough to not carry the prettiness baggage around with him.

“Pattern, decoration and ornament-...-are used to counterbalance structure, system and reason; stereotypically a feminine foil to masculinity.” [27]

ex. Combination of the two in the French formal garden; viewed not statically but in motion so that the boundaries, the structure dissolves from the Baroque, to Rococo, to Naturalism.

flights of fancy...poetry of space

“He [Pope] exploits poetic language precisely in order to create effects.” [28]

Poetry as the written form of pattern, decoration and ornament, containing both the positive and negative attributes of the pretty, and as revealing of the fleeting nature equivalent to that of beauty.  Beauty and pretty are one and the same; both elicit response, generate effect.                                

shortly afterword                

word play?        

 “So finally for their own sake, some other (pretty) words I keep in-mind and in-studio, too:” [31]  

A “daily visual diet” of eye candy fortified with words? Are the words to add substance to the sweetness? 

The final paragraph I felt did come back around to the opening paragraph from Barthes, but I also felt that the argument regards to gender were undermined a bit, or simply did not end where I thought they were going.

“...my advocacy is never a moral campaign but an artistic and speculative one based on cultural blundering.” [31]

I thought this statement affirms the tearing away of the structures from the unstructured, and not separating the inseparable.

“I want to create confections-- of space, of pattern and light, of frivolity and sweetness-- in a masculine way. I want my paintings to be pretty and muscular, robust and fragile, earnest and light-hearted.”[31]

Yet this comes across as an expansion of the gender structure applied to pretty, neither feminine nor masculine...inclusive of both...leaving me to question my reading of a deconstruction of the structure as a mis-reading when what is really being advocated is a re-construction. I am still thinking about this…

Final thought, the more overt masculine voice coming through the writing which appeared in this final section of the chapter did hark back to the more subtle masculine voice appearing in the floral section [to my ear, 1950s sex education films, even when narrated by a woman, always sound like they were written by a man, which they most likely were]. However that voice became neutral in the poetry section which separated the two sections. This leads me to question, is there a neutral occupying a space in the pretty between the masculine and the feminine; or does the co-existence of the two merge to form the neutral; or is the gender structure of pretty one that is a steady flow between the two ends, masculine and feminine? [rt]

From Work to Text Roland Barthes

Change in our conception of language. Interdisciplinarity. neither/nor

Can’t be pinned down to a single structure.

The creation of a mutant, not a ‘break’ but a ‘slide’. Perhaps answer to my final questions on the previous text?[rt]

Break- 19th/20th Century and Slide- 20th/21st Century

“relativization of the relations” [1]

Where the ‘text’ can be located, or ‘found’

1.    Text is an expanse that could be the whole or a part of a greater, without boundaries and indeterminable, unspecifiable thing. Work is a specific something, a part of a greater whole, but a determinable part, with boundaries. Work is the object, text is a description of the objects process of becoming...but it is not the object.The process has ended for the work whose existence is beyond the process of becoming, that is the realm occupied by the text...and it is a realm of movement.

2.    Text is non-hierarchical. subversive, non-classifiable (atopic?), challenges the limits; it is always paradoxical.

3.    Work is the sign. Text exists responsively to the sign. Work is moderately symbolic...it ends. Text is radically symbolic...unending.

4.     Plurality- text cannot be reduced to the singular; it is a composite of all texts, the text between text. Work is singular.

5.    Work is a product of and belongs to the author (father)...the single beholder of the work...and thus pays respect to whom it belongs. Text is fatherless and if the author has a presence within the text is beyond that of the father...just a part...no respect is needed because their is no one to give it to. Text is an organically forming network, fed by many, belonging to no one. A colony of feral cats.

6.    Work is an object to be consumed, and thus exists passively. Text is to be read and written, both inseparable, and in active relation. ex. Music’s simultaneous performance and listening of music by the performer.

7.    The Pleasure of the Text is an active creation inseparable from the pleasure of its creation. The pleasure of the work is passive consumption.

This piece was a text and not a work...