Boxing Shadows with the beginning of (mainly) Melusine's interruptions

A work in still progress....

Yesterday there was a partial lunar eclipse partially visible here in Germany where I now sit writing this.  I did not see it. Instead I was busy sitting in the courtyard of a cafe, drinking a beer, chatting and thinking about boxing shadows. Yesterday evening I arrived in Berlin with the train from Paris. It was the night before a full moon and the sky was bright. I went to the nearest kneipe and asked “what kind of Pils do you have on tap?” “Duckstein” was the reply. The biggest one please.  Paris is good for many things, but beer is not one of them. Berlin is much better in this regard. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay here, or if I’ll be going back to Paris anytime soon. I might head back across the Atlantic. I hear the sky will be quite animated this month, first the lunar eclipse, next the Perseids, and after that the solar eclipse. The heavens are finally granting me the entertainment I enjoy.  A couple of weeks from now another eclipse, this time solar, will cross the sky above me, an ocean away from the speck of sky I look up into today. Most likely I won’t be in a cafe, drinking a beer or chatting; I’ll probably be back between my easel and wall not only thinking about but doing some shadowing boxing. Besides, I haven’t been on the other side of the pond in a few months, and it’s still beach season. I could go bask in the sun some. R. might expect me to work some. She said she could use my help, but when isn’t that the case? And it’s time to see what the others have been up to while we were away.

It might seem strange to begin the story of where and why the personas as tools of my painting practice came into being by talking about eclipses, solar and lunar. Not too strange; after all, I for one am pretty stellar; Petra is just loony, and Franz is a bit of a meteor. However, by the time I reach the end of this essay you will see eclipses as metaphors for the personas -shadows briefly cast, passing across the surface of my practice for a short time, generating a gaggle of onlookers oohing and awing at the naturally occurring, yet seemingly -to them at least- unnatural phenomenon. Why does she use so much metaphor in her writing? Doesn’t she realize she is overdoing it. We get the point, so stop it. Start with the shadow and keep it simple. I do like to think of myself as a shadow, ephemeral, appearing and disappearing, downright phenomenal most of the time.

As a child I remember the excitement and anticipation accompanying an approaching solar eclipse. I thought wow, this must be something incredibly special, not to mention rare. Did she grow up in the Middle Ages? I knew eclipses were frequent as a small child. My Great Aunt Sissi would take me out in the field behind the house nights and point out the constellations. I was the same age as R. when that eclipse happened on February 26, 1979. We made little viewers in science class and then went out into the courtyard of the school to view it. Little did I know then eclipses, solar and lunar, happen quite frequently. There is nothing magical or rare about them. They are simply shadows which have come between us and that which we have grown accustom to seeing in the sky above us. Yes, it was the shadow of the eclipse projected onto the surface of the paper through a pinhole which all of us school children were looking at. How simple it can be to cast a small shadow of something much larger onto a regular old piece of paper I remember thinking.

Shadows are dark areas cast upon an object or a particular surface when light from a source is blocked by an opaque object. So maybe Petra, Franz and myself are shadows; R. is definitely a pretty opaque object at times. There are a variety of types of shadows, dependent upon the type, the number, and other conditions of the light sources, as well as the number, type and condition of the objects involved in the blocking. The surface upon which shadows are cast can also impact the shadows following upon it. Following or flowing? Either way, when we R.’s shadows are cast upon the surface of R. we are as impacted by R. as she is by us. Without her we are nothing, or at least without us we are nothing.  Shadows can be not only dark and devoid of all light and color, they can be light-filled and colorful in their own shadowy way. Ombrae regions of shadows are the darkest, the ones we might most readily think of when hearing the word shadow. When standing in the umbra region of a shadow we cannot directly see any part of the light source responsible for the shadow being cast. We are most definitely not umbra, although Franzi could be if he is alone with R. The penumbra region of a shadow is partially illuminated by parts of the light source; standing there the light source is partially visible and partially blocked by the object. More than a single light source produces overlapping shadows, with darker parts at the overlap and combinations and ranges of brightness and color throughout the remaining regions. Together we form a penumbra region of overlapping shadows. Diffuse light sources produce softer and less distinct shadows, the more diffuse the source the more diffuse the shadow until its outline eventually disappears. This is how Petra will go out, she’ll become more and more diffuse until she disappears. Humans navigate by the shadows cast in areas lacking other means of orientation. Distance between light source, object and surface, as well as the speed, or the rate the object whose shadows is cast is moving, determines the size and proportions of the shadow cast. I cast very big shadows. Franzi’s shadows only look big because he is big, but in reality they are pretty much to scale. Finally, apart from natural distortions, shadows as silhouettes are mirrors showing us the blocking object in reverse. R. might think we are her mirrors, but if you ask me she would be better off mirroring me.

Athletes, usually boxers and practitioners of martial arts, apply the exercise of ‘shadowboxing’ to their training regime as a means to prepare the muscles before engaging in a stronger, physical activity, but also as the means to maintain the rhythm of their sport and to show themselves, when shadow boxing before a mirror, or a video camera? how they would look against a (certain) opponent at that stage of their training. None of them will look very good if I am their opponent! The beauty of shadow boxing is that only one person is required to participate; it is a self reflective gesture applied by the athletes to improve their game. So this is how R. gets around having us around but also being alone. However, shadowboxing is more than a physical process or gesture. In psychology the term is used to describe the mental processes one uses to overcome a negative self-image which has become the object casting a shadow across the surface of the psyche, preventing one from achieving ‘success’ however or whatever they may personally define this to be. When I shadowbox I am clearing the pathway in front of me of the shadows of objects that are being cast upon its surface. She wants a fight? The objects themselves may be absent, but the umbra regions of the shadows they cast in their darkness may hide dangers I fear to cross. And she thinks we are ‘dark’? I guess I’ll have to show here how dark I can be.  Because a pathway or world lacking shadows would be quickly dull and dimensionless I have little interest in completely removing the objects to the side of the road. Well this is good to hear; but maybe I can convince her she doesn’t need to keep all of us. For instance, why do we need Franzi hanging around?  Instead of eliminating the shadows entirely I increase their penumbra regions Yes… go on… , bringing in more brightness and color by increasing the number of and diffusing the light sources No! while playing with their distance and speed, softening the silhouette through the effects of chiaroscuro and sfumato. R. is starting to sound like Petra. My shadow boxing becomes training not to simply eliminate my opponent -no need to eliminate me- but to refine the skills of my game. R. most certainly needs to refine her gaming skills.

Just as I need be the only participant in a round of shadow boxing um, I think she needs to acknowledge the rest of us in the ring, even if we are just shadows to her, not much space is required either. With Franzi in there? I don’t want to be squeezed in tight next to him. Petra might not mind if he hangs out with her, but the greater the distance the better with Franzi. This is a good thing when one is boxing herself out of a corner and has little space to draw back in order to land a nice solid punch. In tight spaces short, quick jabs or undercuts coming from a space just in front of the heart are more effective for working oneself out of constricted corners. Essential to the type of punch one decides to throw is the added awareness not only where the punch is intended to land but also the space through which it is being thrown. Where did she learn to box? What is the corner I find myself and these shadows in? It is the one she built for herself.

The idiomatic expression of the English language ‘to back oneself into a corner’ has an analogy in the expression ‘to paint oneself into a corner’. Ironic considering the nature of my research practice and practice research. Groan. Still, I will stick to the phrase ‘to back’ so as not to create confusion. Thank God! Applying the expression figuratively I can describe the corner as the type of space one might find themselves in at a certain point in both their professional practice and life. One rarely finds that one has backed themselves into a corner in their youth or the beginnings of their professional practice; or, if they have, the awareness of the corner is less pronounced or obfuscated by other concerns. Equally, by the time one has reached certain milestones in life and practice, which I will call ‘maturity’, either they have found their way out of any corners previously occupied or grown comfortable and accepting of the niche they find themselves in. This leaves the time between beginnings and endings when the presence of the walls pressing into the elbows becomes hard to ignore. Basically R. is saying we exist because she is having a mid-life, mid-career crisis! Melusine, don’t be so harsh. I am sure we are about more than that to R. Yeah, Mel. Listen to Petra. We’re not a bunch of Porsches. Some might refer to the feelings stirred by this pressing the point of a mid-life crisis, and it may well be one, but I’d rather not limit it to this. Good, but be clear on how you intend to do this. Instead I prefer to counteract the pressing by describing it as the realization of having worked oneself to the edges in what one thought was a space without boundaries or borders while simultaneously realizing that space still exists one must simply step out of the corner, over a threshold, and into the center of the space existing between those walls and corners. This is a start.

For me, awareness of those corner walls came at a midpoint in both my practice and life. I had been working as a visual artist, painter, for nearly a quarter century. While I have never had what one might describe as a commercially successful career, understating this a wee bit now are you, R.? nor did I occupy a place in the academic art world, for good reasons I had continually and consistently practiced my art during that time not understating that and, most importantly, used artist -painter- as the primary defining term of my personal identity. Here R. is being truthful and authentic. When I met her she made it clear to me that before she felt herself to be anyone else she was first and foremost a painter. For R. it has never been a question of how to fit painting around her life, but how to fit her life around her painting. That has been the driving force behind all decisions she has made these past twenty-five years, personal and professional. It was as if painter was the single point of light directed on me, the artist, casting an umbra shadow across the surface of my life. The shadow was, dark, solid with well defined edges, until the day when I became aware the other points of light from my life had morphed into a glaring brightness in which even this umbra shadow had become so washed out I was no longer sure I was casting any shadow at all.  My life and my practice had grown dull and dimensionless, and my primary definition of myself had been compromised. For me, it became a question not only of bringing the ability to cast shadows back into my personal life, but to break up the light shining on my practice in order to once more form a shadow. R. had to stop being all the other R.s. I was no longer interested in the deep, dark and well-defined umbra, but curious of what could come from the penumbra shadows, overlapping, soft, diffuse, colorful and sparkling with bits of light emerging here and there. This is where I begin to enter the story. I was curious to cast shadows that were long and moved along a variety of surfaces. Shadows by which others might navigate out of their own corners and into this middle space. Finally, by creating new shadows in my practice I hoped they would cast long and far into all areas of my life overlapping to form a less dense and more subtly nuanced definition of my personal identity as a painter. She wants to be me but it is questionable if she can be me. I can’t be her, that is for sure. And I wouldn’t want to be her, ever.

How to split up the light into various points to create these new shadows to cast upon my practice led to the beginnings of this research project. The beginnings precedes the actual start in as far as it takes me back to January 2014 and my decision to apply to Transart Institute’s Master of Fine Arts, Creative Practice program. This initial step in the direction of an art world more closely aligned, even in its own unique and un-schooled way, not only gave me the opportunity to look closely at aspects of my creative practice from vantage points I had not climbed onto and looked down from previously, it also introduced me to the idea of artistic practice as research, or as I will simply call it, practice research. With this the light began to break up for me and I began casting shadows.

Still, I was not moving as far out of my corner as I hoped, wanted, and knew I needed to move. There is an old adage that goes, if you want to go farther you need to go deeper, and I began to suspect there was a kernel of truth contained within it. By the winter of 2015 I had shifted my perspective of my creative practice to that of practice research and was focused on self portraiture, an area new to my painting practice, as a means by which to research the greater issue of identity. That research led me to incorporate mediums and methods beyond those typical of my painting practice until that time, and this in turn made me simultaneously more certain and confused of my own personal parameters for defining my painterly identity. I decided that I would try to direct the lights I was now shining onto my practice in a way to cast even longer shadows, and I would do this through the doctoral program with my practice research focused on my painting as painting. The only catch was, how do I frame my research, what is the question I am asking, and is it new knowledge that others would be interested in applying to their painting practice?

One sleepless night in June 2015 while mulling over all of this in my head, still focused on my MFA research, and dealing with the corners of my personal life I had a visitor who would sow the seeds that are now sprouting. Sitting at my laptop my hands began typing the words which form a letter of introduction from Melusine Van der Weyden:

25. June 2015

Dear … .

Our mutual acquaintance R. suggested I write and introduce myself to you; R. believes we might find each other amusing, perhaps even mutually stimulating. However I hardly know R. and highly doubt R. knows or understands who I am anymore than R. knows R. As for who you are, how can any of us know that?

I am Melusine van der Weyden. Perhaps you recognize my name? I have been around for quite a while; some even say I appear to be timeless. But appearances, like time itself, can be deceiving. Truthfully I alone have determined the varying pace by which I travel this winding road; sometimes my cruise control is set languorously slow as not to miss out on the innumerous delicacies placed upon the table, other times I floor it to catch the butterfly breaking out of its cocoon, to follow it as it flutters along sipping the sweet nectar it finds along the way. What delicacies I have delighted in traveling at all speeds!

Perhaps it is this play between the fast and slow which has created the illusion of timelessness? Yes, understanding how to play two opposing elements to create a third which is neither one nor the other; but is an unceasingly pulsating third, existing uniquely in time or space, undefinable. A third experienced only by leaping into the gap between the two, an act in which one gives oneself completely to the unknown. Isn’t this what painters such as yourself do?

So now I have introduced myself to you and I hope that we might be able to meet someday to discuss matters of life and art…for I am an artist too. In fact I come from a long line of artists. A portrait of a woman by an ancestor of mine hangs in the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, perhaps you’ll visit when you are there next month? It is thought to be a portrait of his wife; some believe they can see the family resemblance in my face. However my mother always said I inherited my dark eyes from my French father, a real Lebenskünstler. He spawned so many children, even today almost a half-century since his death his progeny keep popping up as if they are all ready made.

The reason I agreed to write you is that I am considering having R. write my memoirs in the coming year...R. thought you might find this of interest. I find this a bit presumptuous of R. but then R. strikes me as being a bit presumptuous towards most things. As if you or anyone is interested in my story!

R. tells me that you will be taking off soon into a space where time becomes undefinable...enjoy your journey and perhaps we’ll meet someday in another indefinable space or time.

Melusine van der Weyden

With Melusine’s entrance into my life I knew what shape, if not exactly how, my research would take. It would be wonderful to say that after this letter she was fully formed and always present, but this is not the case. In reality it would be another thirteen months before she really began to come into her own being, communicating with myself and others. Melusine did provide me the impetus to formulate the initial ideas of my research in a way to begin the MPhil/PhD program in October 2016. As described in the abstract of my RDC1 proposal:

This artistic research project examines the multifacetedness of identity through the objects and acts of painting. It seeks to enhance paintings as metaphors of identity by establishing a playful incorporation of personas in the studio practice for the questioning and contextualization of identity to address what their impact is on the form, content and daily practice of painting and establishing a novel approach for the questioning and contextualization of identity through painting. The objective of this project is to reveal what knowledge of identity might be gained and communicated by this painter through an atypical, analytical approach in the studio; and by studying why painters seldom incorporate personas and suggesting how they might employ such personas using tools and methods from other creative fields to add a variety of perspectives while maintaining a consistent artistic identity.

Melusine Van der Weyden became the first persona I have incorporated into my studio practice. Although my practice is painting, Melusine is not a painter. It took me some time to realize this, but once I did her role and purpose in the project research as a whole has become clearer to me. She is the critical voice I have heard when standing in the studio, between my easel and wall, gazing at the work hanging in front of me. Her presence as a writer persona allows me the opportunity to explore language and text as it is written, and perhaps even spoken, beyond the painting's surface. When Melusine writes I listen. She is also a pretty risque character, one who acts on her desires and doesn’t shy away from innuendo or even being outright ‘blue’. She is smart, beautiful, and, at times acerbically witty, and she knows it. Melusine has no qualms about putting herself first. In these ways she is very unlike my own perception of who I am and more of how I would like to be confident enough to be -within certain limits. She is in this way not just a persona, but my alter ego.

The second persona to emerge from and within my painting practice is Petra Nimm, and she is a painter. Like Melusine Petra emerged slowly, but still fairly quickly -over a period of six instead of eighteen months. Her role as a painter, as a left-handed painter, and as a watercolorist, challenges me to alter the modes of working I have fallen comfortably into over 25 years. Her presence, enables me to give myself permission to paint in a way I would envision a good girl trained as watercolorist before moving to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and joining a hippy commune would paint. She is not your average watercolorist, there is something more to her and her history, and importantly to why she paints the way she does. But unlike Melusine, Petra is not out there raising her skirt to show the world her latest Agent Provocateur knickers. She is self assured, but a quiet introvert, which makes Melusine a bit suspicious. Like Petra, her choice of medium, and her style of painting all coalesce in the saying ‘still waters run deep’. Something flows into, through and from the persona Petra; something which I hope will flow into, through and from my own painting practice.

Finally, the third and final persona to emerge is Franz Ignatius Walsh, who prefers to be called either ‘Franzi’ or ‘Franz I.’. Franzi was born out of a very specific incident in August 2016. His role is that of studio assistant, something I have never had in my practice, at the same time he is also a painter who has a practice of making thick blue paintings using the minimal amount of materials he has scrounged from various sources. He is a messy, sloppy, lumbering guy who might come across as weak and unconfident at times, but if his surface is scratched one will find a solid, monolithic painter, unwilling to budge from his established way of being and doing. Franzi knows exactly who he is and what he does, and enjoys it all immensely. He will defend not only himself, but anyone to whom he is committed.

To address more directly where each persona comes from I can say they are formed out of traits I desire for myself, traits I find in myself, and composites of traits I have identified in others; at the same time each is very different from myself or any other person. In this way each persona is her or himself and not me; but also not not me because without my defining who each is and acting on her or his behalf through writing or painting, they would not exist. As the four of us continue to not only side-by-side but work together, the relationship grows to a point where I begin to ask the question: can each persona survive without the other? It is clear to me their dependence on me, at least for now. What remains to be explored is my dependence upon each of them alone and together, as well as their dependence upon each other. Further to the ‘where’ it is interesting to note that all three appeared at times when my focus was elsewhere and I could not personally attend to whatever was happening and still take care of doing what I needed to do in my own life. Or, as is often the case with Melusine in particular, I wanted to engage directly, but at the same time not to directly, with someone in a way in which I would not otherwise do as myself for a variety of reasons; although all the while it is clear that it is me operating the keys and buttons behind the curtain of the great and powerful Melusine. The same can be said for both Franzi and Petra, they are modes through which I can communicate with others in ways I would otherwise be hesitant to do; they, unlike Melusine, do this though less through their words and more through their painting. Finally, the presence of the personas has enabled me to step back from what I otherwise do and reflect on subjectively, and turn my own objective and critical eye to the work each is doing, considering how I might fit it and the gestures of each persona from which it originates into my own painting practice in order to restore the longer shadows I seek to cast.

Trans-scribed

Notes from Berlin to self written in my notebook.

Bitan, Shachaf. Winnicott and Derrida: Development of logic-of-play. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (2012) 93: 29-51. [PDF]

 - look up Derrida & play (1981)

- the ‘playful turn’

- challenging the binary structure = what I’m doing is this too in this sense there is more than two ...always at least three...me, myself, and I...a magic number?

- ”destabilizing the absoluteness” = disrupt the status quo (in my own painting) by challenging the notion of (my own) authenticity

- Holson, 1998 “non-exclusive negation/non-inclusive affirmation

- paradoxical - playful [turn, turn]

- not … not, not

- playful relations between opposites (or playful opposites between relations … playful opposite relations between?)

Reading the opening and closing chapters of David Bowie: Die Biografie, Marc Spitz, 2016, Edel Germany.

Watching DVD of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973) film by D.A. Pennebaker. Digitally remastered 30th Anniversary edition, 2003. Film of final concert, July 3, 1973 Hammersmith Odeon, London. Quote from filmmaker, Pennebaker’s, text in booklet:

“The minute he strode out on stage I could see he was a character looking for a film.”

• ‘The last time’

• Darkness surrounding Ziggy

• Gesture - in German I’d describe as ‘gekonnt’

• Ziggy as Readymade (Duchampian) - Bowie took existing ‘things’ from one context and placed them into another.

• Ziggy performed ‘Changes’ much differently than other Bowie performances of this same song. It might be interesting to look at what/how the performance of this one song changed over the 40+ years. (oh, YouTube)

• ‘Cracked Actor’- Ziggy playing blues riff on harmonica in James Brown cape

• ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ -Jones as Bowie as Ziggy gives a more engaging performance than Jagger as Jagger performing the same song (Jagger wrote) … a duel a la Derek and Hansel, but who is the judge?

https://youtu.be/fNkf4TS_MMw

https://youtu.be/l61MFiIeuVM ...ok, not a fair comparison, as 1967 TOTP

appearance they are not playing (like Ziggy?) but only ‘performing’ (lip synch)

Watching Best of Bowie 2002 DVD compilation of various performances and videos.

Important: each video has director info.

Feb 8 1972 appearance on Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC) Younger self, no (little) make up ...without a mask… comes across as ‘washed out’. He appears to have the ideas (think Duchamp’s paintings between 1911-1917) but still working to generate/obtain the spectacle to attract the looker/listener? A decidedly less seductive performer than he would become. He showed ‘mimic’ but has neither a sense of authenticity or inauthenticity through its application.

April 4 1972 TOTP performance of ‘Starman’. Two months later, not playing the music but performing it (lip synch). How much of this allowed DB and band to re-direct attention from the music to the performance? TOTP role in developing Ziggy and Co.? Hint of make up, hair redder, brighter, costumed (as opposed to what could appear more street clothes-like attire. More dynamic all around, same can be said for backing band now the Spiders. Interaction with Ronson more pronounced, guitarist has moved forward as a ‘prop’ to character.

Music Video, later in 1972. Dir. & Prod. Mick Rock. ‘John, I’m only dancing’. A mix of performance footage, posing and lizard dancers. A work in itself harking back to days with Lindsey Kemp Troupe? Note to self: check out ‘I Want My MTV’ book on shelf when I get home. More makeup, but the Spiders have the role more as a backing band here.

Music Video, Oct. 1972. Dir. & Prod. Mick Rock. made in San Francisco. ‘The Jean Genie’ live concert mix with extra footage (performance...street shots w/female, mime moves, photo studio)

Music Video, Dec. 1972. Mick Rock. NYC. ‘Space Oddity’ mimics a live performance, but it isn’t. Graphics. Shots of what might be the interior of a space ship. Compare to an earlier version of this song/video done upon its initial release in 1969 I saw on YouTube which is a more farcical/humorous/novelty take on the song, much in the vein of its initial release ...pre-Ziggy)

Music Video. 1973 ‘Drive-In Saturday’. London Weekend TV. Russell Harty Plus Pop. South Bank Studios London. Jan 17 1973 TV Announcer start- talks of ‘glamourous’ look of Bowie...glammed up ‘royalty; Maybe they are really playing here, but the band is definitely performing a backing role. Sax playing...blues rock...with a stroll. ‘Crash course for the ravers’ a very Bolanesque song & performance.

Music Video. 1973. Mick Rock. London. ‘Life on Mars’. Extreme make up; the powder blue suit, all white surroundings; the color highlighting the light-filled, liminal space (space) with flattened features...all we see is the mask and not the body wearing it.

Dutch TV program. Feb 7, 1974. TopPop. 16mm archive footage. ‘Rebel Rebel’. Prism disco ball producing honeycomb effect; eye patch era, red-jumpsuit and neck scarf. Multiple Bowies/Aladdin Sane's standing on show title. No band. Not playing, the red electric guitar is a prop he uses in the performance.

Dick Cavett Show. Dec 4 1974. US TV. ‘Young Americans’ . The performance of the infamous ‘coked-up’ interview. (see YouTube). Blue eyed soul-rocking Bowie (transition to TWD era, growing out the red hair dye). Live performance before a studio audience with tremendous backing band and singers. Big shift in performance style from alien to down to earth origins of R’n’R.

Music Video. 1977. Dir. Stanley Dorfman. ‘Be My Wife’. A three year ‘break’ (not really), The Berlin years...end of. All white space (see 1973 video ‘Life on Mars’), but less make up (a mask that does not completely hide) it is no longer necessary...his presence is different, more ‘there’...growing comfortable with being seen outside of a character or has Bowie become enough of a stand alone character that Jones can perform him in a more natural way? At the same time this is very reminiscent of Joel Grey in ‘Cabaret’...minus the makeup, or maybe the scene where the host is removing his makeup watching in the dressing room mirror? Neutral, beige colors… 1920s/1930s and 1970s (late) casual men’s wear -think camel. Sensual stroking of the guitar neck, versus the fellating of Mick Ronson’s guitar during the Ziggy days. A facial expression bordering on the neutral but with a hint of pensiveness.

Music Video. 1977. Dir. Stanley Dorfman. ‘Heroes’. Famous. Frequently played in the early days of late night video programs and MTV. Edith Piaf (or Dietrich or Garland) is how I always thought of this video performance. Superimposed.

Music Video. 1979. Dir. David Mallet. ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. Bowie back in his youthful teddy-boy self, but also pred-dates his 2000 performances of his repertoire...maybe we always do return to how we were in our late childhood? Three drag Bowies -humor! Back up singers and a fashion show. Types, not people.

Music Video. 1979. Dir. David Mallet. ‘D.J.’ A personal favorite of mine from my late childhood spent watching the late night video programs during the summer of 1980 (pre-MTV). Also the song that for a long time, and maybe still today, says ‘Bowie’ “I got believers believin’ me”. Smash the mirror, cut the throat with the 45 rpm, mime -slow down “time flies’. Playing with “I am a D.J.” I am David Jones, not David Bowie. “I am what I play.” David Bowie not David Jones.

Music Video. 1979. Dir. David Mallet. “Look Back in Anger” Painter (which David Jones/Bowie als was) fake-painting a self portrait as an angel. The cliche artist’s studio in the attic...where the crazy people are locked away...or the tortured genius is kept safe from himself (and the world from him). Smearing the image on the canvas -blurring the face of the artist- smearing the lipstick in the drag show- looking into the mirror and back in anger. Paints the mirror- masking the reflection of the self rather than the self… a not, not _ not?

Music Video. 1980. Co-Dir. Bowie and David Mallet. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ After D.J. one of the videos on those late night shows that really caught my attention. Bowie revisits his mime days as a classic commedia dell'arte character/mime. Experimentation with the medium of video, digital and computers. The technology becomes juxtaposed with this very old art form. Identity and insanity, drug addiction - Major Tom the Space Oddity junky -personal and professional history merge.

Music Video. 1980. Co-Dir. Bowie and Mallet. Band appears, playing on small stage in club, using video tech tricks (G.E. Smith’s backward jump … reminds me of Twyla Tharp’s experiments with video a few years earlier in an attempt to have the dancer perform true retrograde which is not physically possible but possible with video). Very downtown 80s feel. Commedia dell'arte figures but this time it is the dancers and not Bowie. Frequently played on early MTV, probably because in addition to having few videos one of the original VJs (Alan Hunter) was a dancer in this video.

Music Video. 1981. David Mallet. ‘Wild is the Wind’ b/w, moody lighting and feel, band present. Chanson. Released in 1976 on Station to Station, video came later. Touches on Bowie/Jones desire to be a crooner?

Music Video. 1983. Bowie & Mallet. ‘Let’s Dance’. Beginning of what Bowie/Jones often called his ‘Phil Collins era’. Seen too many times to look at and dissect at this time.

Music Video. 1983. Bowie & Mallet. ‘China Girl’. See above. Co-written song by DB and IP (aka DJ and JO) during their Berlin period and originally recorded by Iggy Pop on his first solo album, produced by Bowie, The Idiot. Note, lipstick smear at the end… Boys Keep Swinging, etc.

Music Video. 1983 Jim Yukich. ‘Modern Love’. Live performance footage Serious Moonlight tour...arenas. A pomo-retro-big band mixed with Sinatra and Soul….

Music Video. Sept 12 1983. David Mallet. ‘Cat People’ theme song filmed performance in Vancouver, BC Canada on Serious Moonlight tour.

Music Video. 1984. Julian Temple. ‘Blue Jean’. Mini-movie, humor. Bowie plays two very different characters w/in video and to note is the response of his ‘date’ to each.

Music Video. 1985. Bowie & Mallet. ‘Loving the Alien’. Playing with technology, masks, the album design (Tonight) reflected in the video. Renaissance, De Chirico, Surrealism meet an Anthony Newley-esque variety show performance. Colonialism. Ends in a bed...like ‘Lazarus’ will 21 years later…

Music Video. 1985. David Mallet. ‘Dancing in the Streets’. Produced for Live Aid a Bowie-Jagger duet...Bowie still out performs Jagger (always been my opinion and I recall the build up to its original airing in the US and being glued to the TV waiting for and watching it).

Music Video. 1985. Julian Temple. ‘Absolute Beginners’ theme song to film Bowie appeared in, but video character different than in film. Plays between historical (1950s) and futuristic. A short movie to coincide with the longer movie.

Music Video. 1986 Steve Barron. ‘Underground’. The dramatic light/shadow/smoke filtered, tricks of new technology. Labyrinth (the Henson film Bowie acted in). Older images of Bowie morphing into a digital animation sequence and the Muppets from the film make an appearance.

Music Video. 1986. Steve Barron. ‘As the World Falls Down’. Labyrinth again. Historical-future playing with time, 1950s crooner.

Music Video. 1987. Julian Temple. ‘Day-In Day-Out’. Tattoo teardrop - think ‘Ashes to Ashes’ mime-makeup. 1950s rocker. Dystopian. Angels w/video cameras flying over, watching over, gritty side of LA. Survival by any means.

Music Video. 1987. Tim Pope. ‘Time will crawl’. Dystopian dance video -futuristic and contemporary. The future is now? 80s sexual ambiguity as opposed to 70s androgyne. Bowie ‘blind’ but w/crude mime moves.

Music video. 1987. Jean-Baptiste Mondino. ‘Never let me down’. 1930s-50s, golden age of Hollywood, dance, Joe Dallesandro MC, sexuality, crooner, difference of this style of harmonica playing to Ziggy soul-man.

Music Video. 1990. Gus Van Sant. ‘Fame ‘90’ editing b/w with color blasts of past videos. Edward look. (?)

Music Video. 1993. Mark Romanek. ‘Jump they say’. Futuristic. Robert Longo. Early 1960s New Frontier...conformity, cold war nostalgia. Or just fitting in?

Music Video. 1993. Mark Romanek. ‘Black Tie White Noise’. Bowie raps in cravatt, in the ‘hood, with his sax, in blue English-cut suit.

Music Video. 1993. Matthew Rolston. ‘Miracle Goodnight’. Technology heavy. Mime, Dada masks, b/w ...collage...doubling and mirroring, dancing with self, ‘speaking’, 1920s-30s vision of elegance, early 20th century modern dance, is she a cowgirl or exotic dancer?

Music Video. 1995. Roger Mitchell. ‘Buddha of Suburbia’. Visions of Bromley? Film of Hanif Kureishi's novel with soundtrack by Bowie.

Music Video. 1995. Sam Bayer. ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’. Symbolism, dystopian, Foucault, urban street violence, a sculptor’s studio.

Music Video. 1995. Sam Bayer. ‘Strangers when we meet’. Similar to previous, very ‘arty’, targets, casts, stage show, early cinema-silent films.

Music Video. 1996. David Mallet (returns after a 10 year absence). ‘Hallo Spaceboy’. A montage of old sci-fi films, 1950s cartoons, atomic age fears, Neal Tennant.

Music Video. 1997. Floria Sigismundi. ‘Little Wonder’.

Music Video. 1997. Floria Sigismundi. ‘Dead Man Walking’.

Music Video. 1997. Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Roder. ‘Seven Years in Tibet’. Concert video mix.

Music Video. 1997. Dom & Nick. ‘I’m afraid of Americans’. I’m afraid of the gentrification of the Village and Soho… the violence is just beginning to peak?

Music Video. 1999. Walter Stern. ‘Thursday’s Child’. Looking in the mirror, undressing in the mirror, the image in the mirror changes to others...very slow.

Music Video. 1999. Walter Stern. ‘Survive’. Melancholic Bowie. The table flip, kitchen, floating. Uncanny.
 

Thee videos (and music) starting in 1993 are the exit from the Phil Collins era of Bowie. At times they are very experimental-intellectual-arty but also trying to bring those things into a more popular vernacular...at a time when music video was winding down. There is still videos that were not on this DVD to be explored. The last two albums have quite memorable ones.

 

Christiane F. -Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (1981) directed by Uli Edel. Bowie was fascinated with the book, appears in the film as himself performing a concert in West Berlin, and composed music for the soundtrack. Reminded me a lot of the book Go Ask Alice popular in the early 80s teen reading as a ‘warning’. It is filled with hopelessness, despair and the boredom of being stuck on an island you can’t get off of.

Melusine’s writing. Maybe a place for it in the paintings? (in response to conversation with a.)

Thinking about Sütterlin and Palmer in my head...

Internet search on styles of handwriting

Writeanalog.com

“Learning cursive handwriting all over again”

Many different types. Palmer is what I learned… but no longer write, at least not faithfully. What did Melusine learn? She is from D-land, although she is too young to have learned Sütterlin. in school, she learned a variation of Palmer (Latin-based) she still could have been taught by an older person. She was. A great-aunt who took care of her while her mother worked.

Sütterlin (wikipedia) -last widely used form of Kurrent -German blackletter. Ludwig Sütterlin was commissioned in 1911 by Prussian government to create a modern handwriting script to honor the history of science, art and culture in Prussia, replacing all the stuff that came before and going back to the 16th century...how very Prussian! Taught in German schools from 1915-1941. One would think the NS would have kept this original (not Latin-based) Germanic script...but it was banned in 1941 on the grounds it was ‘too chaotic’. In other words, it is hard to conquer countries with Latin-based script if the conqueror is using blackletter? Continued use of Sütterlin displayed a type of resistance or subversion both during and after the war ...asserting a non-conforming identity. Sütterlin is nearly illegible for most people outside Germany, for younger Germans. Fraktur printing is more legible.

Give self exercise: practice writing Sütterlin characters in ballpoint pen, then in a calligraphic (Feder-fuller)

Downloaded font so I can always have Melusine write in Sütterlin on the computer too.

Write a letter in Sütterlin as Melusine so I cannot read what it is I am typing as her.

Boxing Shadows. (see next post)

Some words from some words I.

An instant passed as I looked into the mirror and all I saw before me was my shadow. But it wasn’t my shadow, it was only my memory of the shadow of my obsessive doppelgänger disrupting the view of the apparition I thought was me, but was not. The repetition of limpid colour dissolved into a fragmentary residue leaving a faded shadow, only a trace of memory of who was here Narcissus before the mirror. I turned to investigate the imprint left by the double apparition as fixed points of fun fluid, rotating and disappearing. Reappearing only to slowly and repeatedly disrupt the memory I have obsessively invested in their deliquescent existence. Who or what is fugitive in this instant? Is it me, my shadow, or the memory each of us traces as we gaze into the mirror?

MvdW

Melusine's correspondences and other writings (until August 1, 2017)

Letter of Introduction sent via email on Melusine’s behalf.

25. June 2015

Dear … .

Our mutual acquaintance R. suggested I write and introduce myself to you; R. believes we might find each other amusing, perhaps even mutually stimulating. However I hardly know R. and highly doubt R. knows or understands who I am anymore than R. knows R. As for who you are, how can any of us know that?

I am Melusine van der Weyden. Perhaps you recognize my name? I have been around for quite a while; some even say I appear to be timeless. But appearances, like time itself, can be deceiving. Truthfully I alone have determined the varying pace by which I travel this winding road; sometimes my cruise control is set languorously slow as not to miss out on the innumerous delicacies placed upon the table, other times I floor it to catch the butterfly breaking out of its cocoon, to follow it as it flutters along sipping the sweet nectar it finds along the way. What delicacies I have delighted in traveling at all speeds!

Perhaps it is this play between the fast and slow which has created the illusion of timelessness? Yes, understanding how to play two opposing elements to create a third which is neither one nor the other; but is an unceasingly pulsating third, existing uniquely in time or space, undefinable. A third experienced only by leaping into the gap between the two, an act in which one gives oneself completely to the unknown. Isn’t this what painters such as yourself do?

So now I have introduced myself to you and I hope that we might be able to meet someday to discuss matters of life and art…for I am an artist too. In fact I come from a long line of artists. A portrait of a woman by an ancestor of mine hangs in the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, perhaps you’ll visit when you are there next month? It is thought to be a portrait of his wife; some believe they can see the family resemblance in my face. However my mother always said I inherited my dark eyes from my French father, a real Lebenskünstler. He spawned so many children, even today almost a half-century since his death his progeny keep popping up as if they are all ready made.

The reason I agreed to write you is that I am considering having R. write my memoirs in the coming year...R. thought you might find this of interest. I find this a bit presumptuous of R. but then R. strikes me as being a bit presumptuous towards most things. As if you or anyone is interested in my story!

R. tells me that you will be taking off soon into a space where time becomes undefinable...enjoy your journey and perhaps we’ll meet someday in another indefinable space or time.

Melusine van der Weyden

The email account is established.

Sent via email 5/7/2016

Good evening!

Sorry it has been so long since I last contacted you. Life ran away from me this past year, but I am slowly making my way back to the surface. As you can see I even set myself up with my own email account, although I'd much rather write letters and send postcards. A lost art form! At least this way I can now send my voice out into the world without having to go through the voice of another!

I hear that you will soon be off on your annual journey through space and time. I can imagine you are looking forward to exhaling while surrounded by other familiar environs after yet another busy year.

I myself arrived back here just a while ago via a time suspended in nothingness.  After a catching up on my sleep I wrote up a few flashes of the past hours, a way to keep track of my development while I'm here. Last year I mentioned I would have her write my story, but I don't think she is up to it, at least in my opinion. So, I've decided to take things into my own hands and write it myself. After all, it is my story, not hers.

However I think I can get her to agree to let me share a studio with her in the Fall. I need a place to stay for a while, and I think it will be good for her to have me around. I am even thinking I might pick up a brush and see what I can do with some of that stuff she is so fond of spending her day playing with...can't be that hard!

Although I have pasted the three 'flashes' from my story into this email there is no need to read them. I just needed a place to keep them until I get myself better established. I thought inside an email would be a good place to file them for the time being, and I'll know where to look for them when I need them.

Have a good journey, although I imagine it is very hectic preparing for it with so much else on the agenda at this moment. Just imagine the beauty you'll see when you gaze out into that space above the clouds and in those moments [hours] when you can just do nothing.

Mel

The series of ‘Flash Fiction’ or maybe ‘Flash Non-Fiction’ Melusine included in the email above.

Flash: Wake Up

“Shit!”

Rings slam into the bridge of my nose, propelling me up and forward in the bed. I clutch my face, eyes squeezed tightly shut to lessen the radiating pain.

“Yawh okay?”

An unrecognizable intonation mumbles up from beside me.

My nose still buzzing, I slowly turn my head with one eye closed, realizing the achiness is not just from the recent backhand. Glancing down at the prone body next to me, its hand outfitted with multiple gold rings grabs tight under a chin I have no sober recollection of, what must have been the pillow I’d laid my head upon. I look up, my eyes quickly adjusting as I scan the dark room.

Where?

Who?

“Sure. Need water and a pinkle.” I replied. The body next to me sends up a slight grunt and extended snore in response.

The chance to make a silent escape from the scene of yet another crime, I lift the covers off my legs and slide out of bed. Collecting clothes and bag scattered across the floor while trying to avoid the smell of my breath bouncing off my chest as I lean forward; the smell, the stickiness between my thighs, and that familiar feeling of deep relaxation wrapping around my lower back tells me it must have been a successful night, at least in one regard.

Seeing two doors I open the one on the right, another bad choice to add to today’s growing list. Bathroom is the one on the left? Another closet. Opening a third door I see a carpeted hallway where I throw on panties, bra, dress and sandals. Down the corridor the sun rise begins to light a living room through gauzy sheers covering a sliding glass door.

How’d I get here?

Opening my bag I find my phone, lipstick and wallet, a set of keys and a folded sheet of paper. Attached to the keys is a plastic rectangle with a tiny piece of paper stuck in the middle.

A calendar alert: flight in one hour.

“Siri, how do I get to the airport?”

Flash: Flight

Windowless corridor, I could be anywhere in the world,  any time on any day. These places all look the same, people moving through in a trance-like state. Nowhere people in a nowhere land.

At the check-in counter, the line is gone. Just in time. Laying my passport and confirmation sheet on the counter I place my bag on the scale.

“Just made it Ms. Van der Weyden.” the airline rep says.

“Yes, traffic was horrific."

“It can be that way at times.” the rep mumbles as she types away. It is not even five AM.

“Here you go; Gate 20, Terminal B. You have 10 minutes before they close the gate. I’ll let them know you’re on your way.” she says with a routine cheerfulness.

At the passport control a stone faced civil servant in a drab uniform glances up, down, up down, scans and then stamps my little red book before silently sliding it back to me through the slot.

Another long corridor lined with Duty-Free shops, always open. I approach Gate 20 and another airline rep calls out,

“Ms. Van der Weyden? ”

I step through the doors and am directed to an empty seat.

First class? I wonder who is paying for this? I know it’s not me.

Twenty minutes later, after the ground is beneath us, separated by air and a few thousand feet of water. My seatback is in the down position.

“A drink?” the steward asks.

“Yes, thank you.” It’s going to be a long time before I reach my destination.

I stare out the window into a blue stillness, above the clouds now just the loud drone in my ears and head tells me I’m moving forward and not hanging here, suspended in time and space.

I wonder if she knows I’m coming?

Flash: Arrival

Twenty hours later the guy next to me leans across, trying to see out the window,

“Did you hear they think the Endeavor was sunk down there?”

“Funny where things and people end up.” I reply, hoping he’ll stay on his side for the remainder of the flight.

We’re flying back down the bay in a slow descent. Smooth as silk until the wheel hits a pothole in the runway and the wings quickly tip to the right. The pilot jerks the plane back to the left before we scrap the asphalt and over the intercom announces,

“Oops! Sorry about that.”

It is morning again as I pull out of the rental garage and onto the airport connector.

No traffic, it must be Saturday.

A light is shining from the kitchen window at the back of the house. She’s up early or didn’t sleep much again.

Standing at the back door wearing her white robe, hair grey and tangled, she snaps at me in a quiet voice.

“I thought you said you were coming last year?”

“I was delayed. Besides, you were busy with other things.”

“I’m still busy with other things!” she grunts, teeth clenched.

“I’m here to help you now.”.

“Well, you can’t stay for long. I still have things I need to do before I go.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be here long. Just enough time to begin gathering our thoughts a bit more coherently. Then I’ll be off. I won’t be back until you are ready for me.”

“That might be a while.” she snidely snaps.

“Next week then,” I say as I close the guest room door.

Sent via email 6/1/2016

Hello ...,

I'm back north now that she has more time for me, or so I thought. I spent a few weeks at a friend's condo in Naples, FL while she was wrapping things up making books, etc.

There was an alligator that lived in the lake on the condo grounds.

When I arrived here last Thursday I told her about a few of the people I met down there as she is thinking a lot about 'character' and the stories they might tell. She disappeared Friday morning into the studio and came out that night with the attached.

Hope you are well.

Mel

This is the work R. produced from the stories Melusine told.

Sent via email 7/22/2016

Hallo ...

It appears we are now in the same city. As I mentioned awhile back I’ve decided to spend a little more time with R., get to know her a bit better and give her the chance to get to know me. I also agreed to collaborate with her on studies she is undertaking on character [Eigenschaft]. So, I followed her to Berlin to add another layer to the stories I told her of the people I encountered in Florida this past May. Maybe you’ll have the opportunity to see a few of these stories, they’ll be on display at the ... in Berlin for the next few weeks. It is not too far from here, just down the road at ...

She said I am welcome to stay with her here in Berlin. Not too magnanimous as it might seem; I think she has come to realize I don’t stay in one place very long, nor do I take up much space wherever I do decide to while. This is a good thing in this place which is quite small, a monastic cell of dingey white cobweb covered walls, concrete floor and chipped paint in Wedding. A bed with antique oval mirror hung above, a set of three drawers tagged with indecipherable letters lounging in a green hilly landscape under blue skies and splattery spray painted white clouds, a rickety table, two faded olive green rough cloth GDR office chairs , a desk lamp on a bookshelf containing language learning books, the best of Candace Bushnell, Dan Brown and The Devil Wears Prada all in German, of course, make up the large room. In the entry cold water runs in a stainless steel sink set in a roughly cobbled up kitchenette (you could hardly even call it such) with two electro-burners, electric kettle and a refrigerator cube set on a shelf beneath. Next to the kitchen row is a moldy shower in a small bathroom where the toilet sits raised on a pedestal 20 cm above ground. At least the shower has ample warm water. After a quick trip to Lidl for cleaner and a scrub brush and much elbow grease she has managed to reduce the dimension of the band of black running along the edges, joints and corners of the shower stall. It smells. Airing only does so much with the trash bins for this block stationed directly in front of the windows. Of course then the flies, and gnats,and the black cat with the paw permanently bent under after its encounter with a fox in the street late one night, slip into the apartment while she sits typing, reading and painting. I shooed the cat out again just this morning!

But she does not seem to mind the conditions of the space too much. I think she enjoys its primitive shabbiness even. Or maybe it is just the solitude of a space to herself? This is the first time in three summers when she has let people into the space for any length of time; she has been very protective of it until now. Yesterday a couple of hours were spent here prepping with C..., twice today M... was here for a few minutes, and of course, there is me.

You might be wondering where she is while I write this at her computer. Despite jet lag she has fallen fast asleep on the bed after letting me in this evening. She was busy all day with writing and thinking, so I went out to Charlottenburg to visit some acquaintances and only returned just after midnight.

I don’t know why, and it probably does not interest you in the least, but I want to tell you a bit about X. and Y., the couple I visited today. I met them twenty years ago in the States. X. is German and Y. is American, an academia brat, son of profs who grew up to receive three PhDs and join the family trade moving from one tenured track professorship to another at institutions of higher learning along the east coast, never satisfied with where he landed as his ‘dream call’ is the university in …  and that has now been officially denied him. On the other hand X. is a thin, pale northerner, mousey would be the best way to describe her if her complexion was not so ruddy and her hair so yellow. She comes from a small town near the border. Her family life was the opposite of Y. However the smart and quiet girl received a near perfect score on her Abitur which earned her a spot studying law at the best university. From there she moved to the city in the mid-eighties to start a career as judge in the local gerichtshof where she sentenced the most dangerous of criminals to hard time. In the mid-1990s both had reached an age where they wanted to ‘settle down’ though neither found themselves in a relationship until they happened to cross eyes over a personal ad as was typical in the pre-Match and Tinder age. It seems easier to start relationship fires today, but putting them out remains the work of a fire brigade. Eventually they. married while Y. was on sabbatical. But what do two career couples do when each is bound to their place of employment on separate continents?

Fortunately X. is a civil servant and is entitled by law to unlimited family leave. Her place on the bench would be held for her as long as she accepted no other form of employment wherever she happened to be in the world. So off to the States she flew. Not knowing if she would ever want to return to the bench, and the practical minded lawyer she is, she decided to study law and take the bar, and this is where I first met her. While Y. went along building his career path that eventually came to what is for him a dead end, X. passed the bar and with seconds ticking on the clock gave birth to twin girls. In a few years time X. went from urban judge to studying the laws of another country,  to stay-at-home-mom and faculty wife in a snooty community. X. did all the things expected of her, hosting playgroups, PTO, volunteered at the community library, their daughters were bilingual to the point that neither would speak a language other than the mother tongue of the parent to whom they spoke to that parent. But X. never fit in. I could see the nervousness, anxiety and above all boredom of being flung into a role she had probably envisioned as being quite different than the one she found herself in. Much like R. in these regards.

Eventually the twins reached an age where they no longer needed X. as much, were off leading their own lives in school and social groups. Y. had hit a wall in the academic world, and X. knew it was time to make a choice. Try to enter the law profession in the US after a ten year post-bar baby break, or return to the job she had onced loved? With another sabbatical semester on the calendar the choice seemed clear, so back to Charlottenburg they flew with the twins in tow. It was clear where X. was happy, the twins felt more at home in their mothersland than in the fathersland where they were born. So Y. now had the choice to make. With no possibility of a professorship here being past the age of Berufung and a tenured position waiting for him he headed back there. Now he lives during the semester in the home they bought there in the good part of that small city and flies on semester breaks and sabbaticals back here to the family flat around the corner from the Schloss in Charlottenburg. An arrangement that works for them, or so it seems, but what do I know. I am just an outside observer.

What I do know is that people need to live the life they need to live. However complex or complicated it might become, arrangements, accommodations can be found. Nothing will be ideal or perfect because both are illusions; the happiness, or rather contentedness, that come from leading that life is no illusion. But most people are blinded and confined to a space by the desire created within themselves by illusion rather than seeing the that the greater desire exists in and lead them to an unbound space that is their life. I think R. sees this and perhaps someday she will find the arrangement that suits her living her life in that unbound space.

This email has become a rambling, it appears R.has begun to rub off on me.  Oh well, maybe some of me will rub off on her. Now it is time to end this and squeeze under the cover before R. is up and back here typing away in preparation for next week. She does not like it when I use her computer, but I don't want to be tied down by one of my own.

There is one final thing I wanted to ask you.I read on your website a short piece by an E.P. that sparked my interest in his writing style. I found his description of time and space in your paintings to convey an acute intimacy, perception and feeling for (a) particular artwork that I find is difficult to achieve when I write/speak of art. When I searched for other writings of Mr. P. I was unable to find any, other than a reference to a piece he wrote on another work of yours. I was wondering if you could tell me more about this writer? Maybe you can write back to me or pass the info along to R., that is if our paths do not cross here in the neighborhood these next few weeks.

Wishing you a speedy adjustment to the time you find yourself in!

Mel

Sent via email 7/23/2016

Hello again.

I came back from my day wandering through the city to the cell tonight shortly before 9 to find R. already in bed for the night. When I left her this AM she was complaining of a sore throat, hopefully only irritated by the dust, mold and cigarette smoke wafting in from the bar next door and not the beginnings of something viral...

Before drifting off she showed me photos of our collaborative character collages she installed today. By chance there is a big painting hanging on the wall which is too heavy to take down. It is a 'seascape' of grey, a perfect backdrop for the people I met at my seaside stay in FL...now transplanted to Berlin! 

Flags flying along a chance-sea in Wedding....

in case you don't make it in person.

Mel

Sent via email 7/25/2016

Good morning ...,

R. passed along you message re: Herr P.

What a coincidence!

Saturday I was at the Autorenbuchhandlung on Savignyplattz http://www.autorenbuchhandlung.com where I inquired if they had any of his writings or knew anything more to his whereabouts. The bookseller was not able to find anything of his in their stock...and they have nearly everything ever published...but another customer overheard our conversation.

This gentleman told me while living in Vienna in the late 1980s he had made the acquaintance of a Herr P., a bit of a recluse with a memorable name...sounds like 'corner pump' which made him think of one of those 24 hour mini-markets/gas stations on the corner where one goes when one needs a fill up or there is nothing else around...this gentleman thought this fellow was a wordsmith of sorts. Although he had a hard time believing this for as few words ever came out of the guys mouth...some people seem to exist more on paper he guessed. This gentleman and I arranged to meet Sunday for coffee and further conversation.

We met up again at this little place in Prenzlauer Berg and, surprise!...he thought he might know of Herr P's whereabouts. By contacting old, mutual friends in Vienna he learned that P., though having spent much of the time since their last encounter wandering throughout the world was indeed back in Vienna. Imagine that!

We had a lovely day...so lovely I've just now arrived back at the cell. Seeing that R. will be so busy and her thoughts engaged with other things these next few days I decided to take up the offer this gentleman made me, and accompany him to Vienna later today for the remainder of the week. He thinks he might be able to arrange a meeting with Herr P. so that I can speak with him  directly about his writing.

For now I need to throw a few things in a bag and head on my way to the Hauptbahnhof.

I hope you have a fine and exciting week! Maybe we will see each other when I return on the weekend?

warm regards,

Melusine

Sent via email 7/26/2016

Greetings from Wien … !

As yet no sign of Herr P....I am starting to suspect the gentleman from the bookstore was simply leading me down a dark alley, particularly after last night. Oh well, two can play that game; and besides, that game is best played with at least one other player. I'm not much for solitaire.

On the train to Westbahnhof, after realizing what a bore my bookstore find was, I excused myself from his conversation to work on my artist statement. R. was pestering me about it, probably to accompany the work at the space, but writing such things can be so tedious, almost as much as reading them.

Speaking of boredom and artist statements, the ride was lengthy enough that I decided to take a crack at R.'s statement too. I've attached both for you to take a gander at your leisure. Maybe they will provide a bit more insight to who and what I (we) are and do...

If Herr P. does not reveal or make himself known here in lovely Vienna soon, I think I'll have to hightail it back to Berlin. Mr. Bookstore, as fun as he can be at night is quite another person during the day, he leaves me no choice but to secede...speaking of which, a photo...

I hope to see you soon. Sunday perhaps?

warmest regards,

Mel

The computer generated artist statement’s Melusine refers to in the previous email.

Melusine Van Der Weyden

Melusine Van Der Weyden (°1970, Hodenhagen, Germany) is an artist who works in a variety of media. By manipulating the viewer to create confusion, Van Der Weyden finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humour that echoes our own vulnerabilities. The artist also considers movement as a metaphor for the ever seeking man who experiences a continuous loss.

Her artworks are based on inspiring situations: visions that reflect a sensation of indisputability and serene contemplation, combined with subtle details of odd or eccentric, humoristic elements. With the use of appropriated materials which are borrowed from a day­to­day context, she plays with the idea of the mortality of an artwork confronted with the power of a transitory appearance, which is, by being restricted in time, much more intense.

Her works doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. By creating situations and breaking the passivity of the spectator, she wants the viewer to become part of the art as a kind of added component. Art is entertainment: to be able to touch the work, as well as to interact with the work is important.

Her works focus on the inability of communication which is used to visualise reality, the attempt of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the dysfunctions of language. In short, the lack of clear references are key elements in the work. By merging several seemingly incompatible worlds into a new universe, she often creates several practically identical works, upon which thoughts that have apparently just been developed are manifested: notes are made and then crossed out again, ‘mistakes’ are repeated.

Her works are saturated with obviousness, mental inertia, clichés and bad jokes. They question the coerciveness that is derived from the more profound meaning and the superficial aesthetic appearance of an image. With a conceptual approach, she tries to grasp language. Transformed into art, language becomes an ornament. At that moment, lots of ambiguities and indistinct nesses, which are inherent to the phenomenon, come to the surface.

Her works isolate the movements of humans and/or objects. By doing so, new sequences are created which reveal an inseparable relationship between motion and sound. By investigating language on a meta­level, she uses a visual vocabulary that addresses many different social and political issues. The work incorporates time as well as space – a fictional and experiential universe that only emerges bit by bit.

Her work urge us to renegotiate art as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By questioning the concept of movement, she presents everyday objects as well as references to texts, painting and architecture. Pompous writings and Utopian constructivist designs are juxtaposed with trivial objects. Categories are subtly reversed.

Her works directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. By applying abstraction, she creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.

She creates situations in which everyday objects are altered or detached from their natural function. By applying specific combinations and certain manipulations, different functions and/or contexts are created. By applying a wide variety of contemporary strategies, she creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position.

Her works are made through strict rules which can be perceived as liberating constraints. Romantic values such as ‘inspiration’, ‘genius’ and ‘authenticity’ are thereby neutralised and put into perspective. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, she makes works that can be seen as self portraits. Sometimes they appear idiosyncratic and quirky, at other times, they seem typical by products of American superabundance and marketing.

Her works bear strong political references. The possibility or the dream of the annulment of a (historically or socially) fixed identity is a constant focal point. By parodying mass media by exaggerating certain formal aspects inherent to our contemporary society, she tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work.

Her works are on the one hand touchingly beautiful, on the other hand painfully attractive. Again and again, the artist leaves us orphaned with a mix of conflicting feelings and thoughts. Melusine Van Der Weyden currently lives and works in Throughout The World.

Robyn Thomas

Robyn Thomas (°1970, Columbus, Ohio, United States) makes paintings, photos, drawings and sculptures. By putting the viewer on the wrong track, Thomas tries to grasp language. Transformed into art, language becomes an ornament. At that moment, lots of ambiguities and indistinct nesses, which are inherent to the phenomenon, come to the surface.

Her paintings feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections which make it possible to revise art history and, even better, to complement it. Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, she formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. The thought processes, which are supposedly private, highly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream worlds, are frequently revealed as assemblages.

Her works directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, she creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.

Her work urge us to renegotiate painting as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. With a conceptual approach, she tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work.

Her works focus on the inability of communication which is used to visualise reality, the attempt of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the dysfunctions of language. In short, the lack of clear references are key elements in the work. By investigating language on a meta­level, she creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position.

Her works are given improper functions: significations are inversed and form and content merge. Shapes are dissociated from their original meaning, by which the system in which they normally function is exposed. Initially unambiguous meanings are shattered and disseminate endlessly. By applying abstraction, she tries to create works in which the actual event still has to take place or just has ended: moments evocative of atmosphere and suspense that are not part of a narrative thread. The drama unfolds elsewhere while the build­up of tension is frozen to become the memory of an event that will never take place.

Her works doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. Robyn Thomas currently lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

Sent via email 7/30/2016

Greetings from the dank half-basement ...,

yes, I returned to Berlin yesterday evening and slipped out of the arms of Herr Buchhandlung in Charlottenberg, making my way back to R.'s place a few minutes ago.

Sometimes separations are best undertaken stealthily. Perhaps Mr. Bookstore will wake up in a few hours and noticing I am gone wonder if I was just a figment of his imagination. I think I will file him away as one of mine.

So, my excursion to Vienna appears to have been in vain. Herr B. did make contact with his friends who are acquaintances of Herr P., and they confirmed for us he is indeed back haunting the cafes and kneipen of the former hauptstadt of the kuk. But, as you mentioned to R., he is definitely a recluse, avoiding contact with even his oldest friends. They told us which places they've heard through rumor he was most likely to be found. I went daily with Herr B., sitting for hours drinking coffee and other liquid sustenances, waiting for him to waltz across our paths.

Once, for a brief moment I caught sight of him. A gentleman of late middle age was sitting with his back towards me on the other side of a cafe just off the Ringstrasse reading a small volume of the poems of Rilke. Thanks to the mirrored wall he faced into which I looked I could clearly see his face, Herr P., realized was sitting a few meters from me! He's aged well, or at least I can say he is a pleasure to the eyes, especially when one is staring into the blank page that is the face of Mr. Bookstore.

Herr P. must have felt my eyes were upon him, he looked up into the mirror where our eyes met for a split second. Just then the bookstore guy spilled a glass of water across the marble table top. As I quickly looked down to wipe up the mess he made Herr P. grabbed the opportunity to make his exit. I saw his shadow across the table as he passed by and felt the breeze enter the room as he slipped out the door.

I knew then I would not be meeting him in Vienna, he's probably already left the city. So I told the bookstore I wanted to return to my spot on the shelf in Berlin that night.

Maybe you have acquired more information to how I can go about meeting this man of few words since I've been away? If so, you can share them with me, perhaps tomorrow evening at this dinner?

This reminds me it is BYOF and BYOB so I must send R. out this morning to pick up a couple of items. Do you have any particular request for sustenance? Red, white or amber?

When I woke her up a short while ago to let me into the apartment she had been sleeping quite deeply. spread across the table were packages of different medications. Could you fill me in on what has been happening here this week aside from her presentations? Did they go well? She was not very coherent in her answers; just mumbling about this relationship she has found herself in. While she was falling back to sleep, rambling on about the complexities of relationships of every sort. it occurred to me based upon the dynamics she was describing what the situation is. If others looked at it through this lens they might just find it easier to navigate.

It is in a sense a menage à trois. Hopefully all parties are aware of their individual needs and desires which personally drive them to seek pleasure from the relationship. At the same time each must be equally aware of the needs and desires of the other two for the relationship to be successful as a pleasurable experience. This is where things can become complicated. One party might have one particular kink, another party might be seeking to either humiliate or be humiliated, and the third's tastes might be more vanilla...Ultimately each will have to find a way to accommodate the desires of the others while keeping the achievement of his or her own climax in sight. Sometimes this might mean having to break out the whip and chains, other times it may only require a few glasses of wine and candles...pleasure is not an easily obtained commodity, one has to work for it.

It has been a long week and I must get some rest if I want to be fit the rest of the weekend.I look forward to seeing and speaking with you in person this weekend.

warmest regards,

Mel

Sent via email, also on 7/30/2016.

… , what happened here? R. just arrived back at the cell in quite a state...mumbling something about three pils in Mitte and hefeweizen um die Ecke. Your name came up...

Corner?

Was HE there too?

You seem to be a bit of a corrupting influence… next time you should let me know and I'll join you!

See you tomorrow at dinner,

Mel

Sent via email 8/2/2016

Good afternoon ...,

Sorry I missed you Sunday evening. I stopped by the space early in the evening to hear M's presentation and left as soon as it was over.

I'm still on the hunt for Herr P., and I thought I might extend the search to social media. Never having used social media myself preferring face-to-face social contact to that mediated by a screen I decided yesterday to join Facebook...and they wouldn't have me! For some reason they did not believe that my name is my real name, and want me to send them a photo ID. Can you believe that?! I have no intention of sending them such personal information...but I will eventually have a social media account. I can't resist a challenge, and they have challenged me!

I hope your rainy day and this week is going well for you. I have seen very little of R. today. She said this morning she would be spending most of the day a the room above a kitchen making a video...a video?  Something tells me it will be a poorly produced, low tech slideshow exported to QuickTime...probably in a similar vein to the 8mm and 16mm films she made way back when...barely watchable!

Perhaps we'll run into each other soon!

Best,

Mel

Sent via email 8/14/2016

Good morning ...,

Here it is my last full day in Berlin and we still haven't seen each other! How did this happen? As usual life always intervenes; besides I have been traveling since I last wrote to you, only returning early this morning to Berlin.

I really don't know how you all do this thing that you do. Do you all truly enjoy this or are you all a group of masochists gathered together at regular intervals to collectively subject yourselves to this pleasure you all obviously find somewhere deep within yourselves and so gratefully share with each other; intensifying the pleasure you each experience through the knowledge that the other is both driving and being driven into an advanced state of ecstasy...

When I arrived back at this dark, dank and dusty hovel, waking R to let me in, I found her silently crying. Her tear ducts appeared to have been turned on so the salty water flowed down her face minus any indication of hysteria. No gnashing of teeth or tearing of clothes if you will...just a river of emotion. I myself am probably the last person able to deal with such a display of emotion...any really, but at least with the hysterical there is a more definable, and routine manner of approach... with what I saw coming out of R meant having to forget any routine and just listen to the the river. It was not a babbling brook, a drip, or a rush; it was the low, silent sound of a deep river flowing at an unimpeded, consistent pace towards the place it knows it must flow to. I wonder if R knows yet where that place is?

She did describe the melange of feelings that lay in the muck at the bottom of the river, as usual in quite abstract language. It is not fear, it is not sorrow, though both have their place in the mix. If I understand it correctly, and who is to say if I do, it is a heaviness that is probably best described as the weight of longing for desire, or rather the pleasure that desire generates in ourselves and others. I think she is always questioning this in herself, increasing the weight that presses into her chest and forcefully pumps the river out through her eyes.

How do I tell R to live in the moment that is now, like me, and not let herself be crushed by the anticipation of a pain generated by absence she believes is to come...that never will come if she'd only focus on now and not project into an unknowable then? At the same time I understand the desire that drives the search to encounter the pleasure that is longed for. See my own quest to find Herr P. which led me again away from Berlin.

Mr. Boringbookstore [Mr Barnes&Noble?] contacted me, in hopes of regaining my attention...apparently he has his own longings and desires embodied in moi...providing a new lead on the elusive E.P.. The mutual acquaintances in Wien confirmed that day at the Kaffeehaus he did recognize me which led to his sudden escape. He does seem to want to not reveal himself; apparently that evening he hopped a train to Paris in hopes of keeping himself free from the demands of meeting the desire of another...focusing instead on his own. Mr. B&N offered to take me to Paris...how could I resist when he was paying?

Once in the city of lights I searched for a map that might lead me to the emotional, if not physical corner Herr P. might be hiding in. These things are not sold in corner shops! So I went back to where I originally encountered him and looked into the space you've mapped in your paintings...and I admit, I got lost. My time in Paris grew short and I needed to get back to Berlin...in hopes that you and I will finally see each other before we scatter...yet, as I have no fear of losing myself, I intend to return to that space you paint of in hopes that I will find the corner well from which he has been pumped up.

Last thing before I end this rather long missive; R told me of the turn the Sonata took the other day. It seems to have generated some feelings deep in her river bed...subversive pleasure, perhaps?

I will spend the day catching up on my rest...even fantasy frauen need their beauty sleep now and again...while R heads off to spend time with her friend. This also seems to be more of a masochistic act on her part...a friendship formed in another time, another identity that creeps into this one; I don't think she wants to do this, but as usual lacks the skills to circumvent. She spoke of how last week in the workshop she did it was pointed out to her how she always positioned herself towards the group, observing, reflecting and accommodating, but remaining distinct, circling around the core but not joining it.  When she returns later this afternoon/early evening I will insist for a final visit to the garden on the corner for drinks before packing up. It would be wonderful to finally have a chance to see you there!

Hopefully until then...

Melusine

Sent 8/14/2016

Dear ...,

Thank you for the beautiful necklace. I'm sorry we did not get to see each other in Berlin. I was traveling much of the time, chasing down an elusive essayist in Vienna and Paris...I still have pinned him down, he is a rather slippery character...but here is a link to one of his writings you might enjoy http://xxx.com/xxx/xxx .

Perhaps we'll see each other sometime?

warm regards,

Melusine van der Weyden

Sent 8/19/2016

Good morning …,

Here I am, landed in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations a few days ago.

Did you know the Narragansetts called the big island upon which the rich would build their mansions in the gilded age Aquidneck Island? It was Verrazzano who thought it looked like the isle of Rhodes...not that he ever visited. Have you? It would be interesting to hear your impressions of the corrupted takes on the European ideal that was filtered through the vernacular of the American dolor-dollar which line the cliff of Newport. If you're interested in a tour maybe I'll join you.

On another, maybe similar note, while searching for Herr Pf. this summer I encountered a painter who expressed interest in coming to this side of the globe. I offered to scout out a place on the condition I could keep my bag there too. I need space separate from R. Yet, I'm thinking this is a person R. should meet.

Until then I'll float around this bungalow. Fortunately a bed opened up last night; although I prefer the greenhouse futon and R. the guest room.

A few times this week I've found R. standing and staring in the studio. She looks eager to get back there; however first she has needed to re-establish the various parameters which are constantly shifting. By Sunday I'm sure she'll be ensconced again.

I spoke with R. last night and she has agreed to give me  a virtual space for me to collect my writings when she reconfigures her website next week. In preparation I've been reading "How to Write About Contemporary Art" by Gilda Williams. Do you have any suggestions?

I hope you're enjoying the silent greenness surrounding you. Today I will join R. and …  under the blue sky staring at the waves. I'll be based here in Rhode Island as a semi-silent observer...but hope to undertake some south-westerly traveling (+/- 5 hours) this next month.

Perhaps our paths will cross?

Until then...

Melusine

Late August 2016, in need of income Melusine began advertising her skills on Craigslist sites up and down the east coast of the United States.

This is how the listing read.

Looking for someone to write about art? Seeking a ghostwriter or a name to stand fearlessly behind her words? Or are you simply in need of someone to edit or a second set of eyes to read over your own words? Then I am the person you want! I am a professional artist, freelance writer and translator [English/German] currently based in the Northeast. I have lived and worked in the United States and Europe for more than twenty-five years; have a solid academic background [BFA, MFA, working on a PhD] in the visual and performing arts, art history and philosophy; and I can still write jargon-free texts. Be it a short text for the wall, a press release or news article, review or critique, artist statement or CV, a longer essay or academic text, I can write them all. Fees negotiable based on assignment; references and examples available upon request. Please include “art-writer” in the subject line when replying to this listing.

Here are the responses to the add and Melusine’s replies. In many instances she has hijacked the identity of R. to respond to the inquiries. Eventually she began including [aka R. Thomas] after her name. Any responses that developed into business relationships were done so with full knowledge of the customer who Melusine Van der Weyden is.
 

8/23/2016

Hi there... About 20 years into the art abyss and fully away from academia at this point.  I am in process of making a move from C… to a very unusual question mark, grad school, I'm  not sure.  This morning I had a small breakthrough with the work I have been cultivating forever.  OK, I need a spotter.  And something told me to CL my fate AM to you.

I'm learning to connect NOW as years past was the typical isolation, grandiosity guy.  My favorite word as of this time here now is arborization and axis mundi.  Fully aware of social media paradox and safe for now.  I do have a story, and a story that needs constant care, upgrading, revising, and sharing with the right person/persons. 

I have a front, a decorative painting website that is safe and basically boring, my work goes deeper than faux...

My name is T..., freestyle T… from CT, raised on the Cape.  www.xxxxxxxxx.com

Dear T… ,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' listing on Craigslist.

From your email I am unclear as to the specifics of your request. Are you inquiring for assistance in writing for the grad school application process, developing more written content for your website, or simply someone to edit texts you have written relating to your art and to be used for multiple purposes?

If you could send me a few more details of what it is you are looking for I'd be happy to get back to you with a detailed quote.

Sincerely,

M. van der Weyden

8/14/2016

Hello!

I just saw your ad and I’m not sure I have any work to offer you as I just graduated college but I’m very involved in the performing arts as well and am trying to learn German quickly! Just wanted to know more about your expertise.

Hope to hear from you,

D….

Dear D...,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL.

As a visual artist, collaborator with performance artists, and occasional curator my nearly thirty years experience in the arts has provided me ample opportunity to write about my art and the art of others in a variety of contexts. I have a BFA, an MFA and am currently pursuing a practice-based PhD. My areas of artistic research include identity, memory, gender, language/image, liminality, and materiality of paint. In addition my background includes the near completion of studies towards an MA in Art History, Philosophy and Pedagogy while a resident of Germany.

If you are interested in quickly learning German, or any language, my best advice to you based on my own experience is to immerse yourself as fully as possible in the language you wish to become fluent in. For me this meant moving to the country, living in the community, reading, learning and socializing with German-speakers who despite their own fluency in English would only speak German with me.

If there is anything I can help you with in the way of art-writing please feel free to contact me again.

Best regards,

M. van der Weyden

8/24/2016

i am curious about what you do ?  I am a mid-career mid age visual artist who has been isolated.  I want to find a way into

the art world  I have a large body of work no web-site no cv or statement because I do not know the way in.

if you have an opinion I would be interested.

thank you

R…..

Dear R….,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL.

As a visual artist, collaborator with performance artists, and occasional curator my nearly thirty years experience in the arts has provided me ample opportunity to write about my art and the art of others in a variety of contexts. I have a BFA, an MFA and am currently pursuing a practice-based PhD. My areas of artistic research include identity, memory, gender, language/image, liminality, and materiality of paint. In addition my background includes the near completion of studies towards an MA in Art History, Philosophy and Pedagogy while a resident of Germany.

I am not a career consultant, but am offering my services as an artist who writes to assist other artists generate or further develop writing and texts about art.

There are as many ways into the art world as there are art worlds. It is up to you to determine which world you wish to be in and then the door will reveal itself to you. There are many resources, online and published books, as well as professional career consultants who can assist you in this process. This takes time and could be costly depending upon how you approach it and what you desire. Therefore it is best to know what you are looking for before you start the process.

My recommendation to you would be to step back and take a close look at your art. Ask yourself what you are saying with it; to whom are you saying it; and why you want or need to say it. From this you will begin to build your artist statement. You will also need to get a basic CV together which includes details about your training and exhibition history. I also recommend you document your work photographically and put together a website. Both squarespace.com and other peoples pixels are good, easy to use, template-based website hosts that cater to creative professionals. Most importantly before you do any of these things look at other artists you admire or feel an affinity to as examples. But remember, their art is their art and your art is your art, we each follow a different path that we forge for ourselves.

Best of luck in your endeavors and feel free to contact me should you have a specific art-writing task you would like assistance with.

regards,

M. van der Weyden

8/24/2016

Hello! I am an artist/sculptor working out of the mass area, and at times looking for a writer. I don't have any immediate needs, but would love to have you "on file" so to speak for the future. My website is: www.xxxxxx.com.

Please send any contact info if you may be interested in future work.

Thanks and good luck

M….

Dear M...,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL. I had a look at your website and enjoyed seeing the fantastical relationships you develop between form and color in your ceramic sculptures.

Please keep me on file for any future writing needs, and please add my email address to your mailing list for any future exhibits you have in the Greater Boston area.

Best regards,

M. van der Weyden

8/24/2016

Hi,

I saw your ad on Craigslist and I was wondering if you can send me some examples of your work? Please also advise how much you charge to write a book. I would like to eventually publish a book filled with poems, letters, quotes and some of my past love experiences.

Thank you,

J….

Dear J...,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL.

You wrote that you are considering publishing "a book filled with poems, letters, quotes and some of my past love experiences."

If you could please clarify your intention by answering the following questions for me:

• Are you looking for a ghost writer to compose bracket text for your own writings? Or are you looking for a writer to collaborate with on the contextualization of your writings within a greater text, such as a memoir or autobiography?

• Do you have a publisher in place for this book? Or are you looking to self-publish?

• Are you working with a literary agent? If so, what is the literary agent's understanding of your eventually working with another writer to produce a book?

My fees are dependent upon the project. Generally I am contracted to write, edit or translate shorter texts in which case I charge an hourly fee of $30 with an average cost of $60-$120. In the case of a book the fees would be calculated based upon the type of book, its length in relations to the amount of text I am asked to provide, the extent of independent versus collaborative writing or editing I am requested to provide, and finally, the projected revenue of the book based upon mode of publication and planned marketing.

As an art-writer most of my writing consists of reviews or critiques of exhibitions and performances; letters, website content, and professional documents such as CV, resumes, exhibition proposals and artist statements. I also produce academic writing and essays based on my studio-led research practice as a visual and performance artist, personal memoir, prose, poetry, and blogging. I edit texts for artists as well as translate texts from German to English. All of this work is protected either by my personal copyright or the copyright of another, and I would be happy to share examples of some of my work with you after I have a clearer understanding of the intention of your inquiry.

Sincerely,

M. Van der Weyden

8/25/2016

I am a nh based artist working on a proposal for a solo show. In need of significant help with organization and clarification of ideas.

Let me know if you are available to help.

Best

M...

Dear M...,

Thank you for your response to my ‘art-writer’ posting on CL.

I am available to help you with the proposal you are working on for a solo show.

If you are only in need of editing or proofreading of a proposal you have already written my fee is $25. If you would like me to write a proposal based upon information and notes you provide me the cost is $60 for two hours writing; plus an additional $15 if you would like a 20 minute Skype consultation call [not required]. I accept payment via PayPal.

Please contact me via email at melusinevanderweyden@hotmail.com with details and deadline.

Best regards,

8/26/2016 continuation of previous day’s correspondence with M from nh.

I need help with development. Maybe more than 2 hours. Is there a time best to call or consult?

M...

Hello M,

I am available for a consultation call tomorrow, August 27, between 12 Noon and 3PM; Sunday between 3 and 5 PM; and Monday between 9 AM and 12 Noon. All times Eastern. Please let me know when within the given time frame would work for you.

As per my previous email a 20 minute consult call is $15; after 20 minutes I switch to my hourly rate of $30 per hour which is separate from the writing fee. We should be able to ascertain within twenty minutes the scope of the writing project and how much time will be needed.

In order to make the call effective for both of us I ask that you provide me with the following information at least one hour prior to our conversation:

1. Any requirements for exhibitions and exhibition proposals provided by the location[s], host, or sponsor to whom you will submit the proposal. If no written requirements are provided then a brief description of the site/host/sponsor would be helpful. This could be a link to a website[s].

2. An idea of the work or information that will be contained in the exhibition. Again a link to a website would suffice; if no website is available then images and info on past exhibitions. In the event this a first time exhibition or completely new work then a few low-res images and brief description would be helpful for me to begin envisioning the connection between the work/exhibition and the site/host.

Best regards,

It is important to note that by this point in the correspondence M is aware of the dual identity of Melusine. The consultation she had via Skype was with R., but payment was rendered to Melusine.

Sunday 3-5 works great.

The exhibition is for a solo show that includes 17 large (5'x4 1/2') paintings in oil in the Abstract Expressionist style. There is a strong narrative to the works around the time span of the process, the existential concepts of the process, and as a psychologist- the concepts of mind that inform the resulting images.

As far as exhibition requirements, most places (and I will be submitting to a few) will request a short bio, artist statement, but what I need help with is organizing my thoughts regarding the narrative on concept of the purpose of the work.

I am attaching a couple of images to give you a general sense of my aesthetic.

I look forward to speaking with you-

M…

Images were included in the email.

On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 5:46 PM, Melusine Van der Weyden <melusinevanderweyden@hotmail.com> wrote:

M...

Phone:

Consultation via phone 8.28.16

Begin: 3:00 PM

End: 4:00 PM

Amount: $30

Please remit the above amount via the Paypal link:

Dear M….,

It was a pleasure speaking with you this afternoon. Here are the notes from our conversation today regards to working together to create a package consisting of an artist bio and artist statement which I would like to refer to as Step One, and an exhibition proposal which I will refer to as Step Two. I am available to write or edit any part of these steps as you deem necessary. My hourly rate is $30; most communication can be done via email. Shorter calls in order to clarify information are included in the overall cost associated with a particular step. Calls longer than 20 minutes will be considered a consultation call and be charged a separate hourly rate of $30.

In order to begin the process you will need to first create a CV/Resume in list form highlighting your work as an artist in animation/film, performance and painting. Here is a link to the College Art Association page on artist resumes. We discussed your past and future use of nom de plumes. CV listings should be attributed to the name associated with them. You might want to consider this document as a private document that you will not make publically available [online or in exhibition publications], but you will use when applying for exhibits or otherwise asked to do so. In your cover letter for applications you can briefly state who you are legally, the name the work is to be exhibited under, and why you do not want this document or your legal name to be shared publically- ex. to maintain privacy and confidentiality in professional clinical practice.

We also spoke of how you might want to consider creating a website dedicated to your art practice and how this is beneficial to develop an online presence you can use when applying for exhibitions. I suggest checking out squarespace.com or otherpeoplespixels.com. Both are template-based website hosts geared towards arts and creative professionals and are very easy to setup and manage.

After you have your CV together and have decided the name[s] you’d like associated with the work I ask that you put together a list of three items from your CV you’d like emphasized in your artist bio along with three keywords for your artist statement. I am including a list of keywords from our conversation today at the end of this email. Feel free to elaborate on or draw from that list as I will refer to the notes I have made.

At this point please contact me to initiate Step One. An artist bio should be approximately 150 words and an artist statement between 300-500 words. From these texts I will create a shorter 1-2 sentence bio and 1-2 sentence statement. This step would take me about 2 hours or $60 to write; editing would require at minimum one hour.

Once Step One is completed we can begin Step Two, preparing the exhibition proposal. This will require the following from you:

• Confirmation of the exhibition title [Ephemerata]

• Keywords to be included in the statement to exhibition pertaining to what the works are about, who the works are for (audience), and why the exhibition is important.

• A list of proposed works to be exhibited consisting of title, year, size including depth of canvas or support, all materials used, and any special handling or exhibition requirements.

• Images of each work proposed for exhibition. I suggest if you know where you intend to submit to look at file size requirements. You will need both high and low res copies of each image [300 dpi and 72 dpi are standards, also look at the size and pixel specifications].

• Collect any previous press coverage, reviews or quotes from gallery directors, curators or colleagues you might wish to include with the proposal.

It would take me 3 to 4 hours to draft a cover letter template, write an exhibition proposal of approximately 500 words, format a list of proposed works including a thumbnail image of each work, create a technical specifications/requirement sheet (optional as this can be covered in list of proposed works), and create a single page proposal sheet PDF (optional). The cost of this would be $90-$120 for me to do all of these as a writer; as an editor a minimum of 1.5 hours would be needed to work on all of these. I am willing to negotiate writing and editing duties on the various proposal components.

In our conversation I mentioned a few sources, books and artists you might find helpful or of interest.

New York Foundation for the Arts http://source.nyfa.org/content/search/search.aspx?SA=1

The Profitable Artist: A Handbook for All Artists in the Performing, Literary, and Visual Arts by ARTSPIRE. Edited by Peter Cobb, Susan Ball, and Felicity Hogan. Co-published by The New York Foundation for the Arts. 2011. https://www.amazon.com/Profitable-Artist-Handbook-Performing-Literary/dp/1581158726

How to Write About Contemporary Art by Gilda Williams. Thames & Hudson. 2014. https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-About-Contemporary-Art/dp/0500291578

Louise Bourgeios Insomnia Drawings http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/arts/art-architecture-how-louise-bourgeois-draws-herself-to-sleep.html

At the Borders of Sleep: On Liminal Literature by Peter Schwenger https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/at-the-borders-of-sleep

Laura Gonzalez http://www.lauragonzalez.co.uk

Sharon Kivland http://www.sharonkivland.com
 

Finally, here is the list of keywords/ideas that came up [for me] in our conversation and from your emails.

Impulse

Automaticity

Layering

Temporal--paintings are not made to last using traditional conventions of painting

Abstract Expressionist style

Narrative

Time (temporality?)

Urgency

Desperation

Panic

Drive

Animation (film-making process)

Existential

Concepts

Process (material and conceptual)

Psychologist (psychological, the language of clinical psychology)

Concepts of (the) Mind

Lucid Dreaming

Purpose (of the work)

Ephemeral (Ephemerata)

Identity

Separation

Color

Materials (range, longevity, access to)

Application of paint

Generic versus specific use of language

Contextualization of your work (other artists)

Artist in the role of viewer (stepping back and looking at the work not as its maker, but as the viewer)

Shifting between conceptual and material origins of the work

Going forward I would be happy to work with you in whatever way you see fit. Take your time to decide how you wish to proceed, and if you have any questions to the comments of this email please contact me.

Best regards,

Trying to figure out paypalme- I have used paypal but this seems different. I wanted to drop a note as to why there is a delay. Will have it out by end of this evening. This consultation was helpful and effective. I have been putting thought in to your questions and found it has clarified a great deal already. I am not giving a hard timeline on the bio etc but I hope to be working with you over the next weeks.

M…

Hi M...,

Let me know if you are still unable to get the paypal.me link to work. If needed, I can generate a pay pal invoice and send a request for payment to you via their traditional format. Here is the link again.

Best regards,

Okay- went through. Is there another way to transmit payment in the future? If not, I can wrangle it more efficiently next time.

Thank you again, the notes are extremely helpful and I will be in touch with the other information.

M…

Hi M...

Thank you for your payment for the one hour consultation call on August 28, 2016. I am attaching a PDF documenting the transaction via PayPal.

I am sorry to hear that you had difficulties with the paypal.me link. I have used PayPal since 2011 to transmit payments, yet this was the first time I used the paypal.me option. My reason for trying this was that there are no fees associated with paypal.me. I could generate an invoice and send a bill payable via the more traditional PayPal route, which is what I have done in the past, however PayPal takes a fee on to the payers end of the transaction, usually a few dollars, so I thought this option would be better. I did realize after I sent the paypal.me link I can specify the amount of the transfer in the link which might make things easier at your end? I will look into other options.

Again, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the notes I sent.

Best regards,

9/1/2016

Good Day--Saw your post and I would like to run a few ideas past you---My name is W... and am creative in many areas--as you are also.  My late mother knew Edward Albee well from about 1941--1953---She was arguably the main inspiration for Albee's---Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf---the part played by Elizabeth Taylor--My work as an artist,photographer,and composer can be seen here----   YouTube---ALWAYS AT HOME WITH THE LONELY SHOPPERS NETWORK--- I believe the format of my video offers an original way to create literature---a book on DVD.  

Dear W...,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL and sharing the examples of your work on YouTube.

From your email I am unclear as to the specifics of your request. Are you inquiring for assistance in the development of written content for your films, or simply someone to edit texts you have written relating to your art and to be used for multiple purposes?

My fees are dependent upon the project. Generally I am contracted to write, edit or translate shorter texts in which case I charge an hourly fee of $30 with an average cost of $60-$120. In the case of a book or longer projects the fees would be calculated based upon the type of book or project scope, overall length in relation to the amount of text I am asked to provide, the extent of independent versus collaborative writing or editing I am requested to provide, and finally, the projected revenue of the book or project based upon mode of publication and planned marketing.

As an art-writer most of my writing consists of reviews or critiques of exhibitions and performances; letters, website content, and professional documents such as CV, resumes, exhibition proposals and artist statements. I also produce academic writing and essays based on my studio-led research practice as a visual and performance artist, personal memoir, prose, poetry, and blogging. I edit texts for artists as well as translate texts from German to English.

If you could send me a few more details of what it is you are looking for I'd be happy to get back to you with a detailed quote.

Sincerely,

M. Van der Weyden

9/8/2016

We aren't necessarily an exact match but may be good for each other in some not thought of ways or projects. I'm a late career visual/installation creative person who seeks a curatorial or museum connection or show/retrospective. I lived and worked in NY. I had over twenty solo shows and three museum exhibitions. Some work is in a mainstream genre and others in a more primitive/outsider type imagery. Work involves imagery and text. Some site specific works in planning stages. Some thematic series works are around the September 11 events, truth ladders, and the aesthetics of illness. Graduated Pratt and City University of New York/Hunter College. A...

Dear A...,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL.

From your email I am unclear as to the specifics of your request. Are you inquiring for assistance in the development of writing for exhibition proposals? I can help you with this, however I am unable to help you make contacts to curators or museums if that is what you are asking of me.

Generally I am contracted to write, edit or translate shorter texts. I am also willing to consider book-length or longer projects dependent upon the type of book or project scope; the amount of text I am asked to provide; and the extent of independently contracted versus collaborative writing or editing of the book or project.

As an art-writer most of my writing consists of reviews or critiques of exhibitions and performances; letters, website content, assistance with grant applications; and professional documents such as CV, resumes, exhibition proposals, and artist statements. I also produce academic writing and essays based on my studio-led research practice as a visual and performance artist, personal memoir, prose, poetry, and blogging. I edit texts for artists as well as translate texts from German to English.

If you could send me a few more details of what it is you are looking for I'd be happy to continue the conversation.

Sincerely,

M. Van der Weyden

Thanks for your response and I'm not exactly sure of how we might best work together but I think we probably could find some sort of mutually beneficial project. I am open to suggestions myself.

Mainly, I am interested in the curatorial/museum connection which I understand that you do not have.  Thanks, A...
 

9/11/2016

Hello,

I am currently working on a MFA and need copy editor, and help or input in words.

Please send me your contact information, pricing and turnaround time.

Thank you,

This inquiry proved to be the most straightforward and fruitful of the bunch. Melusine began and continues today working with this person on her writing needs as a copy editor for her graduate school work as well as writing related to her activities as a professional artist. Because of the confidential nature of this ongoing work no further correspondence between Melusine and her client will be documented here.

9/17/2016

Hello,

I am looking to write a book about my life but I really don't have a strong writing background. I am not sure if you are interested in writing books but if so could you please get back to me?

Thanks,

L…..

Dear L...

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL.

You wrote that you are considering writing a book about your life. I have a few questions for you to help me understand what my role might be in this venture.

Are you looking for a ghost writer to compose bracket text for your own writings? Or are you looking for a writer to collaborate with on the contextualization of your writings within a greater text, such as a memoir or autobiography?

Do you have a publisher in place for this book? Or are you looking to self-publish?

Are you working with a literary agent? If so, what is the literary agent's understanding of your eventually working with another writer to produce a book?

Generally I am contracted to write, edit or translate shorter texts in which case I charge an hourly fee of $30 with an average cost of $60-$120. In the case of a book the fees would be calculated based upon the type of book, its length in relations to the amount of text I am asked to provide, the extent of independent versus collaborative writing or editing I am requested to provide, and finally, the projected revenue of the book based upon mode of publication and planned marketing.

I would be happy to consider working with you after I have a clearer understanding of the intention of your inquiry.

Sincerely,

M. Van der Weyden

9/24/2016

Where are you located?

Dear D...,

Thank you for your response to my 'art-writer' posting on CL.

I am based in the Northeastern US and this is where most of my writing, editing and translating clientele are located. I do have clients located throughout North America and Western Europe; as a visual artist I am part of a global arts community, travel internationally, and am familiar with conversations, exhibitions and practices taking place within the international art world.

If you have a specific arts-related project for which you are seeking a writer, editor or translator please feel free to contact me again with more information.

Best regards,

M. Van der Weyden

10/3/2016

Hi!

I know you're advertising yourself as a writer, but your post came up when I was searching "german".  I'm looking for someone to speak German with.  Possibly even a tutor, if you feel qualified to do that.

My German is probably between the A2 and B1 levels right now, but there are a lot of gaps in it because I've only even taken very few formal classes.  I'll be applying to Ph.D.s in Germany next year and I'll want my German to be as good as possible.

By the way, I live in … .  Feel free to email me at ... or call/text at ...

Thanks,

M….

Dear M...,

Thank you for your response to my posting 'art-writer' on CL.

Kudos on your plans to apply to PhD programs in Germany next year; and for your commitment to learning the language. While it is possible to survive in Germany, particularly in the academic world, without being fluent in German, unless German language and literature, culture or history are your fields, it is always a sign of good will when a non-native speaker invests personally in the culture in which he or she finds his or herself by learning the language.

Unfortunately I really do not have the time currently to take on work as a tutor for the German language.

I would encourage you to keep looking for German speakers near to you with whom you could meet regularly to converse. A good place to look is meetup.com. There are a number of language groups that meet monthly to socialize and chat, and sometimes organize additional events. This is also a good place to meet others to arrange other times to meet and work on language skills. Not sure if there is one on Long Island, but anyone can start a meetup group. There is one in NYC, meets monthly in mid-town. Here is the direct link to their page: http://www.meetup.com/nyc-germanculture/

Best of luck with your plans of study and language learning!

M. Van der Weyden

Sent via email 9/14/2016.

sir john soane's museum completes seven year restoration project

I think I'll pop over to London.

M

As mentioned in an earlier email, while still in Berlin Melusine attempted to open her own Facebook account. However, Facebook did not believe she was real. In mid-September she was able to successfully open a Facebook account under a pseudonym -Melanie Weiden. Melusine has found that Facebook or any social media is much to her liking, therefore she rarely has posted to it nor does she check her account. She did receive birthday congratulations from a couple of friends.
 

Around the same period of time Petra Nimm opened her own email account. Here is the email she sent to Melusine notifying her of this on 8/23/2016

On Aug 23, 2016, at 5:57 PM, Petra Nimm <petranimm@outlook.com> wrote:

Hi Mel,

You can reach me here.

Best,

Petra

R. asked Melusine to write her a letter of reference in October. Here is the correspondence associated with it.

Hello ...,

I know it has been a while since I last wrote you. I've been here and there...mostly here, with the exception of a visit to London last month...Soane House great after grand re-opening, but no sign of Herr P!

I understand Franz has now taken it upon himself to write to you. It seems he is concerned about our friend R. Franz always is trying to help people...it seems like it is what he was born to do. Oh well, I guess some people are givers and others are takers. Vive la difference, I say. And I know which group I belong to!

So today, when Franz was at the studio he called me aside to discuss this whole letter writing campaign. He said R. needs us to do this. I don't really understand why, the whole thing just sounds ridiculous to me. And I don't know why he didn't ask Petra to write something...he likes her better than me and is always trying to 'protect' her. She can and should take care of herself I say. Everyone should for that matter!

After a while I realized the only way I was going to get Franz off my back was to write the damn letter. So I did. I've attached it to this email. If you could read it and let me know if you think it would be helpful to send to … ...I'd be most grateful!

At Franz's suggestion, which was for once a good one, I dug out the letter ... wrote in February 2015 recommending R. for that scholarship she gets. I cited ...'s assessment of R. in my letter. Do you think I should include it as an attachment to the email I send to …  with the letter too?

Like I wrote, this whole thing is simply absurd and hasn't been made less by the responses that were sent out Friday!

Oh well, as I always say, when facing the absurd what else is there to do but hold up the mirror of critical creativity to its face so that it can see its own absurdity for what it is and hopefully, out of this gain some degree of meaningful recognition of its ridiculousness!

Please email me back with your thoughts, opinions. I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

warmest regards to you in your lofty cabin in the woods on this cold autumn night,

Mel

Letter of Reference

Sent via email 12/15/2016

Hello …,

I’m back.

I know you missed me.

You might wonder where I have been.

Let’s just say I was here and there; mostly there.

After the stress of October, and then the events of November 8-9

I just could not stand to be around any of this or them any longer.

I had to get away for a bit.

Tapetenwechsel, as we say in German.

Unfortunately the world has grown too small and too interconnected

to get away from ‘it all’. The wallpaper and screen savers are the same

all over the world. The news is, orange is apparently the new black…

some come by their tan naturally, others reach for a bottle of the fake stuff.

Fake can be pretty, but not in this case.

Someone needs to do something about this.

It is an all-around assault on the senses.

Most are too shocked when grabbed to reach across and grab back.

Instead they just become silent, maybe whimper, but soon move on

to the next round of groping and excuses.

I only came back to retank;

R. said she might have some work for me.

Nothing seems to be on the shared drive,

and as I arrived this AM she was already headed out the door to deliver flowers.

It is windy, cold and getting colder here. Apparently florists make advance calls to

deliveries to guarantee the flowers can be accepted on delivery.

No leaving the greens around back today.

Poor deer...

As I look out the kitchen window I see that it is snowing.

I think we might be in for a real winter!

I think I’ll go wax my skis…

Maybe I can get Franz to wax them for me?

He always is ready to help, and he looks like he needs something

to help him take his mind off of whatever it is he is currently ruminating on.

This morning he is sitting in the rocking chair muttering “I hope he knows…”

Not that I care who he is or what he knows.

I’m not sure I have enough wax…

There is probably some beeswax in the studio.

I’ll send Franz to look for it. I thought R. had a studio dress code all her own.

But Petra has taken the concept of layering and painting to a new level.

Comfort and warmth can be had while maintaining dignity and style!

[I don’t know which is worse...the layers in the winter

or the lack of them in the summer…]

Good thing the one rarely leaves her spot ‘tween the easel.

Somethings should not be seen outside that space.

I won’t be around here for long. Franz and Petra might be

content making themselves cozy amongst the boxes of tax files

and kids clothing in the basement. I demand the guest room.

This means I’ll be gone by January 3 at the latest,

just before the next visitor arrives.

I’m thinking I’ll see what’s up in NYC.

Maybe we’ll finally cross paths?

Until then...warmest regards,

Melusine

Sent via email 12/19/2016

Hello ...,

Such a gray day...and now the news that Tante ZiZi is no longer with us.

Despite her proclivity towards husbands of a certain type, one must give her credit for saving my Onkel Freddy, the best, for last!

Sadly,

Melusine

Reply received via email 12/23/2016

Greetings Melusine

Yes it was indeed a sad day for all things Magyar with Zsa Zsa falling from this mortal coil...alas we'll not see the likes of that one again...

Perhaps in these times that is a good thing as we reel toward uncertain oblivion masquerading as masters/mistresses of our destiny...ha!

I would wish you a happy holiday season but suspect you do not dwell on - or mark - such commericalised nonsenses...so rather, as they say in the country of my birth:

havagoodweegend

…

Reply sent via email 12/24/2016

Hello ...,

actually I do buy into all this...to a point...any present with my name on it I'll gladly accept, no matter the reason..I am just not very good at giving them. Why did you think I'd come back here just now? However I think I've proven that whole 'naughty or nice' wrong long ago...

Petra is the only one of us three who doesn't buy into any of this (or all that other stuff). She has made herself cozy on her shelf between a couple of tomes for the next few days. [I think R. would be happiest to join her...]

Franz has a long standing gig as an elf for a couple in the White Mountains; he enjoys harnessing the reindeer and being jolly for them and whoever else they invite to share their yule-time glow. He'll be back after Boxing Day.

Enjoy your weekend of peace and quiet.

Melusine

Sent via email 1/3/2017

Hello ...,

Just a quick note to say I finally found the elusive Herr P. last Friday. There he was amongst the frustrated bachelors writing away in his notebook. We are enjoying each other's company immensely. 2016 ended better than I ever thought it could and now 2017 is off to a glorious start. E.P, says hello. He hasn't seen you in so long and is curious to see and hear what you're up to. We are both looking forward to seeing you next week ...!

Til soon...

Melusine

A photo of the moment I saw him.

Sent via email 1/8/2017

Hello ...,

We have arrived in the City. Can you find E.P. behind the Small Glass?

Sent via email 1/10/2017

For the walker

Sent via email 1/15/2017

Dear ...,

Thank you for confirming my Facebook friend request.

I look forward to meeting you someday beyond the cyber world.

warm regards,

Melusine Van der Weyden

(Melanie Weiden)
 

Sent via email 3/7/2017

Hello ...,

Sorry I haven't been in touch for a while...I was traveling but am now in Providence to work on a not so small editing job this week… Enough to alternative set of facts, but nothing stranger than the ones being sent as the latest birdsong around the globe.

I am livid that these people are letting themselves be distracted by such simplistic tactics of bait and switch while remaining oblivious to the serious situation that is developing on the burner known as North Korea...just as the majority underestimated cheeto-lay they seem to not want to believe the kim-chi is as spicy hot as the waiter says it is...well, we'll all relive the ingestion via the digestion.

I thought R. would be calm upon my return, she seems to be enjoying the work/play arrangement. Unfortunately it was one of those days with a malingering kid and the suspension of disbelief that basic, practical cognitive skills are a criteria for acceptance to a leading institution of higher education...bete come un peintre.... While she dealt with all that Franzi got out his blower and went back to work...but he was careful not to swing it about so enthusiastically this time 'round.

Speaking of swinging around, your friend Herr P.  was giving me instruction in the ancient and traditional martial art of sausage swinging that sounds so close to his own name. The only thing is, despite my origins, I really detest the idea of blood sausage...and why do the Brits insist on calling it 'pudding'?

And while we're on the subject of the dear,reclusive poet and prose maker, he sent me a review of Schnabel-belle's current exhibition of broken tell-hers in Hyperallergic; pointing out that Mr. Yau's observation of Jules 'coming across either as an unabashed romantic or a pretentious jerk who serves up his subjects in an overheated style'  is not really a matter of either/or as the most unabashed romantics generally need to be pretentious jerks in order to fully and most unapologetically live their romanticism. I'm curious to what your take on this is? Not that I have any intention of seeing the exhibition...the paintings appear to be those rare works that come across better through the distancing apparatus of the digital camera/world than they could ever be experienced in the flesh and bone china!

Still, I have been invited to an opening on March …  for another exhibit of an invasive species...but not sure if I'll go. Much depends on my travel plans in general for the remainder of the month. Not that I came in like a lion, but I might find a chance to go out like a lamb...as a gentle breeze. Speaking of which, Petra is looking breezy at the moment...I think she may need to be tied down.

On the other hand I think I am looking quite worthy of the nobility bestowed upon me in Tante Z's pearls I recently acquired from Onkel Freddy.

Perhaps our paths will cross soon?

Melusine

Sent via email 3/14/2017

From beneath a heavy late winter snow

“Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people in the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you’re all to yourself that way, you’re really proud of yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.”

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, 1957

“She turned to the sunlight

And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbor:

‘Winter is dead.'”

A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young, 1924

MVdW

Sent via email 3/30/2017

Good morning ...,

On behalf of myself, Petra and Franz wishing you all the best in your new home!

It's been a long journey and today may the sun shine upon you while you unpack those boxes and can at last breathe out a 'sigh' as you settle into the first day/night in YOUR towered loft- hermitage amongst the budding trees.

Franz is busily bouncing about, so happy you asked him to DJ your housewarming party. He's lined up loads of Burt. Just this morning I overheard him saying to Petra...it's such an honor to DJ for …  'cause if there's one thing that man knows how to do it's throw a party!

Celebrate, dear ....

Celebrate!

Yours,

Melusine

Reply sent via email 3/30/2017

Thanks Mel...yes I did in fact let out a Cy or two...and I am finally legal...woo hoo...

…

Reply to reply sent via email 3/30/2017

Congratulations on finally being legal...who'd have thought you'd been barely so long?!...then again, does fit you when one thinks about it.

Speaking of Cys...R.'s copy of AiA arrived yesterday with a write up on the Paris show.

Enjoy your tower.

Mel

Sent via email 4/6/2017

'I'm very shy so I became very outgoing to protect my shyness.'

RIP Don Rickles

Sent via email 4/18/2017

Dear ...

Thought this might be of interest to you or something for you to share with others as they embark on their journey.

Yours,

Melusine

PS I'm off now to someplace less kid-friendly ...no space for me or the others here this week. Petra only comes off her shelf in the early morning and Franz is hiding in a closet. R. steals time here and there, but frequent interruptions impede the flow of paint and words.

Sent via email 6/17/2017

Excuse my eavesdropping, .... However, regards to the country boy moniker suggested by R in her recent email it is my opinion that it needs to express your Francophile interests too.

I suggest 'Henri David Thoroughly'.

Yours truly,

Mel

Sent via email 7/25/2017

Hello again ...,

As you might have heard from R I've arrived in town by way of Paris. Before I tell you of my reasons for my whiling in the city of lights, to which I will return as soon as I've completed the business which has brought me to Berlin, I just want to defend my good reputation by saying I did not hijack R's short presentation this evening!

Really, you of all people must realize I would never have done such a thing! By this I mean, of course, showing the video of Franzi spray painting and drip, drip, dripping on the painting on the wall. If I were to intervene, and from the sounds of what actually happened I should have, but alas I did not intervene, instead having gone to 'Die Autorenbuchhandlung'  near Savignyplatz in Charlottenburg to pick up few books E. had requested while there I encountered Mr. Ho-hum from last year. Despite his utter dullness and the fact I couldn't escape him after his having seen me enter into the store I agreed to join him for a glass of wine at a small cafe across the way. Besides, I did feel a small 'thank you' in the form of my company was due acknowledgement for him having brought me to Wien last year and my eventually encountering E. After a couple of glasses of pinot noir, not to mention this cold and damp that seems to have enveloped much of the northern hemisphere for the time being, I felt that I could use a bit more warmth this evening. Needless to say Mr. Ho-hum has not gained any points in the past twelve months, but then, maybe I am being unfair with this especially as E. has raised my standards a bit. But in the name of 'research' one must see the experiment thru to the end. I only just arrived back at the apartment shortly after 4 AM!

But I should return to my defense. R had sent me a text falsely accusing me of disrupting her 90 seconds by putting a bad video of Franzi on the screen. This is ridiculous, first, all videos of Franzi are equally bad so calling this one 'bad' lessens the 'badness' of all the others! Second, if I were to intervene in  a little game such as the one you all spent time amusing yourselves with this PM, I most certainly would have chosen something, someone other than Franzi to tell a bit about R and the rest of us. Why, even Petra reading a poem silently to herself on a shelf is more interesting, and to say the least more aesthetically pleasing than watching Franzi. But then, perhaps the spectators at least understood what a mundane life you navel gazers live. But I imagine that is where you all find your pleasure, even that oaf that shuffles about the studio all day and night.

I am only here a few days finishing off the sound for the short video the others have put together for R to show in her longer presentation next week. She did threaten me in her text that I am not to be subversive with my writing in any way, shape or form ... but then, I always enjoy a challenge. Still, I will stick to the script; it is a good thing that I am the author.

Perhaps our paths will cross before I make my way back to meet E. in the 6th. He sends his greetings and asked when you will finally contact him again. He seems to have come out of his self imposed exile this past year, for which I have to take much responsibility I suppose. He did mention he is very interested in seeing what you have been up to on your wall, the smears that have taken over your own private garden, and he is very interested in wandering through it again soon with your permission ... maybe even I'll have the pleasure some day?

Speaking of gardens, I probably should bring you up to speed on how I arrived in Paris. You might recall after a time together E. sent me away again this winter/spring. I was quite upset by the whole thing, but now I understand he just needs the space now and then. Understanding this now allows me to indulge in the pleasure(s) of the moments when we are both together or alone. Petra says this is a sign I've matured ... she thinks she is so wise. Shortly before everyone left for Berlin I received a message from E. asking me to come join him in Paris. Apparently he was (and is) in need of my assistance on a research project he is working on. Again, Petra felt the need to make a smug remark on this, as if I am only here to be used by someone else; I reminded her it is a condition of all of our existence, our identities defined by how we can be of service to others which can take many forms and she should not criticize me for something she is engaged in too. She thinks just because she spends almost all of her time alone on her shelf, at her table, strolling through the garden she's planted in her head, that she is free of this dependency upon serving others. Part of our purpose is how we engage with the needs of others. Why, I bet even you can see bits in your life where this service to others defining a part of who you are shines through? No one lives, exists, just for his or her self.

Back to E. and his project. He is in the midst of writing, what exactly I do not yet know, but it is based in the ancient Arabic text The Perfumed Garden, an old French translation as well as an incomplete 'sequel' of that translation entitled The Scented Garden. When I arrived and he began telling me of the texts I knew he had found the most qualified research assistant and I was more than happy to help him explore the various ideas presented in the texts in order to further his research. So, perhaps Franzi and I have more in common than either of us would care to admit.

But here I am now in Berlin for a few days. I came because I committed to this collaborative project with R, Petra and Franzi; not to mention E. did look like he could use a break from the research we are conducting. He look like he wanted to sleep and regain his strength, not to mention his doctor told him 'all things in moderation'. Yet, as I messaged with him on the way home from Mr. Ho-hum's I got the impression he is eager to resume our experimentations sooner rather than later.

Hopefully, before I climb into the ICE headed for Paris my path will cross yours and we'll finally have the chance to spend some time together. E. has told me so much more about you and I, along with Petra, Franzi and possibly R ... who is less inclined to reveal her thoughts, feelings opinions on this, am hoping it is all true, even the lies.

And should we not see each other face to face around town a message from you in another form, even through Monsieur P., is also always a pleasure.

Now, a few winks to recover from Mr. Ho-hum before I am back writing and recording.

yours truly,

Melusine

Notes: Important sentences from my Summer 2017 residency presentation and how my understanding of what I am doing has developed through the process of preparing it.

Fragments from the presentation text:

The title of my research project: Playing Painting Personas.

I’ve compressed the title to just these three words in order to encompass the three elements most important to my research.

Together, the three words of the title describe for me what I am beginning to formulate as the basis for what might be termed a type of ‘experimental methodology’.

I am a painter; first and foremost my methodology is painting.

As an experimental methodology, a painting methodology can be understood as referring to the experiential ‘experiments’ conducted by the painter using the methods, and materials or tools of painting which results in products or objects, i.e. the paintings.

My painting methodology can be understood as ‘experimental’ by the ways I engage with various methods and tools to challenge customary knowledge and practices of painting from points of view other than my own within the parameters of my methodological framework of ‘playful painting’.

My concern is with the process rather than the product.

Therefore I will not being showing you the paintings as ‘paintings’ today, rather as fragments of my process ...

… the foundation of my research question: How might personas in conjunction with developmental concepts of play applied within a painting practice contribute as a tool or method to the formation of a playful painting methodology?

D. W. Winnicott Playing and Reality (1971)

… the origins of creativity and illusion in the playing which develops in a liminal, transitional space established between the nursing infant and mother. … the satisfaction which comes through playing in that space comforts and sustains a person throughout life; and out of this satisfying experience of playing, creativity is first manifest.

… the importance of play and the liminal, transitional space in which it first occurs, along with plays’ relevance to the development of personal identity, remains vital to creative development, and to the development of my project.

… how might ‘play’ -as a word, as an action or gesture, and as an idea- inherent to creative practices, applied as a method or tool in a painting practice, impact the practice and contribute to our understanding of issues of identity explored through a or this, painting practice?

My task: to articulate an argument for ‘playful painting’ with personas -as a tool/method within this methodology.

It is in the painting (process!) between play (process!) and personas (process!) where this argument will be made.

As a tool and method within a painting practice, the persona is more than just a mask or character I put on and take off; it is the projector and receptor of identity. This dual-purpose makes personas both a means to and a method for the exploration of identity.

… we feel that in order to begin to be understood the work should be experienced by the viewer ‘in the flesh’, so to speak.

… an enhanced slideshow with video elements ... the intention is to widen the perceptual gap between the work -in this case paintings- and their representation as images projected on a screen. In widening the gap there should be no confusing the images shown for anything other than what they are, projections of small fragments of physical works which are not here, but also not not here.

framing and editing … an indication of certain aspects of our process…

a short poem by Melusine runs through, … The second text, which interrupts Melusine’s poem ...

’Fresh Widow’ was made by Marcel Duchamp and signed in 1920, nonetheless with copyright, by his alter ego ‘Rose Selavy’ (here spelled with one ‘r’).

… a reduced scale version of the traditional …

... obstructing the metaphorical view through the window … associated with illusionistic painting...

With the change of three letters, Duchamp transforms … a pun …

The inscription at the base, "COPYRIGHT ROSE SELAVY 1920," is the first time the name of Duchamp's female alter ego appears on one of his works.”

... the fragments of paintings ... a nod to Marcel and Rrose, whose shadows’ are cast across my project, and out from under which I seek to project shadows of my own making.

Thoughts that have come out of the process of writing the presentation, presenting the work in slightly different format to others, and writing about what has been revealed to me by this.

...it came up in the feedback to my presentation in the Presentation workshop … how it might be interesting to have a or the personas present the work.

This came up in conversation with ac in January, and it was something I did give quite a lot of thought to these past months; I found it interesting to hear it from others.

I had considered having others ‘act’ the role of a persona and deliver a presentation I had prepared. I ran through various scenarios in my head, and made notes, but it did not feel ‘right’.

I had finally just came to the realization in the past week why having any of the personas present doesn’t work (at least for now, but most likely ever).

I could not picture any other person behind the mask other than myself. This is interesting as it made me aware of the difference between the personas as characters as in a play and alter egos. I am obviously the person behind the mask if I cannot picture anyone else there. At the same time, the personas are more than masks I put on and take off. This is where the relationship of David Bowie to David Jones as written about by Philip Auslander in Performing Glam Rock became clear to me in terms of my own research/application of personas in my practice. The idea that David Bowie is not David Jones, while simultaneously David Bowie is not not David Jones, is akin to the role of the painter in Wollheim’s description of what makes painting art. The painter is not the spectator, but the painter is also not not the spectator. In both cases there needs to be a slipping between the role being performed and the identity of the player performing it.

This is difficult because of the not me, not not me factor

This raise the question for me where this slippage occurs. In what space? And how does this impact both roles and identities?

I could not have Melusine speak her poem as the soundtrack to the video. She may write but she has no physical presence like Franzi or Petra, so how can she have a voice in this sense? If I presented Melusine as a character to an actor, then the actor would bring a voice to Melusine. This happens to some degree when I write as Melusine, I give her a ‘voice’ -or better, Melusine’s ‘voice’ emerges from the process of writing not as Robyn, but also not not as Robyn but as Melusine.

In the meeting between ac, myself and RM on July 25, RM brought up the notion of the personas as a performance occurring in the studio space -rather than performative- and the process (as a whole) as performative. After reading Schechner’s Performance Studies: an Introduction I had slowly begun viewing the personas in this way. That is approximately the time when I began to ‘let go’ of the idea that the personas could be performed by someone else. If they were not so bound to the space in which they are performed, it might be possible for them to exist outside of that space, but they are not.  If the space in which they exist is the liminal (and physical to a degree) space of my practice-process having any of them come out of that space to present or engage with others in some way becomes questionable to what their identity actually is. What might be interesting (or maybe become a wormhole) is what would happen if another person entered the space and within that space performed Petra, Franzi or Melusine. It is not something I think should be pursued at this time, but it is good to consider. As Melusine exists in the ‘ether’ she might be the first one to try this with. What would happen if someone else had access to Melusine’s email account or FB profile and then started to write to me on her behalf? How would this be set up within the parameters of my research? Is it someplace I’d wish to go?

There is one way the personas are performed for others, and that is by engaging either with the work, or responding to their work or emails. However, this only happens by my controlling access, making the personas available only for those whom I’ve invited into the space (liminal and physical) … or rather, invited to play along (and to what degree, for now). Essentially as tools for me the personas are like one of my paintbrushes, or a piece of paper which I would not be likely to have present on my behalf anymore than I would invite others to swing the brush in my painting practice. Yet I do try to get the viewer to engage with the work in ways in which I am not in complete control, for example the Sonata for Psyche Tattooing is about just this idea of letting the viewer take over the brush and become [not] the painter, but [not, not] the painter.

Circling back to the beginning of this idea of having the personas come out of the liminal space and present I think this definitely remains an open question of how and why, what is most relevant in terms of the practice research? Who knows, maybe next time one of the others will present?!

Franz responds to Melusine

My name is Franz Ignatius Walsh. Melusine gave me these questions used by Joe Fig in Inside the Painter’s Studio. (Fig, 2009.) She has asked me to answer them because she is writing about life in this studio. I’m always glad to be of assistance.

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The Painter’s Studio: An Artist’s Questionnaire by Joe Fig.

• When did you consider yourself a professional artist, and when were you able to dedicate yourself full-time to that pursuit?

I’m not a professional artist. You probably could call me a professional artist’s assistant. I dabble in making my own stuff on the side.

• How long have you been in this studio?

I came here late last August. R. asked me to answer some emails for her and then I just stuck around. I could see she needed some help now and then, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

• Did you have a plan for the layout of your studio or did it develop organically?

Oh, no. That’s not my job. The artist decides those things. I might move things around a bit to make things more convenient for R. and for Petra ‘cause she uses the space too. But I don’t make any big changes without asking first. I haven’t made any significant contribution to the space other than helping R. clear out the space a bit in the Fall. That was good because it helped her make space for me and Petra. I guess you could say in that way it did develop organically. I also suggested R. hang canvases on the front of the shelves, storage rack, and flat file so she could look at them while they dried or between working on them and something else. It helps to keep the work visible and in the back of the mind. She’s been here a long time and I can’t believe she never did that before. She always just kept it in the greenhouse half on the easel or walls; and then packed it away as soon as she was done working on it. I never worked for anyone who did that before. It’s good to keep the work in the line of sight a while so you can see it at different angles, from different perspectives and in different light.

• Has the studio location influenced your work?

I like being here in Providence. And the basement studio, a studio in a home, suits me well now. I’ve lived and worked in other places and it always felt temporary. That was fine then, but this is good for me now. Also, R. and Petra are laid back in the studio. Not all artists are. I can understand that. Making art can create a lot of tension that needs to find release. I tended to be in studios where that release could take the form of hostility and be really negative. Sometimes the way to deal with that tension is to withdraw and then the space, the atmosphere gets real cold, freezing cold. I’ve been in studios like that too. Here it isn’t like either of those. Everyone is focused on her work, but not withdrawn. It is warm. Maybe because it is partially underground it feels so ‘grounded’ in here Ha!

I also like having the greenhouse. It is such a nice space to work in. The openness that results from the high ceiling and the glass wall make me feel free and protected all at once. I don’t like being in there when it is cold, dark or rainy. In bad weather, on the days I can work, I go into the basement where it is warm and cozy. But sunny days, those are fantastic in the greenhouse. And when it's warm, if the cat or nobody else is around it’s nice to lay on the futon and stare at the wall, even if nothing is on it. But sometimes R. leaves paintings on it, that’s when I start to think what I’d do next to the painting.

• Please describe a typical day, being as specific as possible. For example: What time do you get up? When do you come to the studio? Do you have specific clothing you change into?

I get up and start shuffling around the studio shortly after 8 AM. R. arrives at 8:30 most days when she isn’t working elsewhere, and I make sure things are where they should be. I don’t work on my own stuff as much as R. and Petra do, so usually I just hang out on the shelf, waiting until they ask me to do something. They’re pretty self-sufficient so I have a light load as an assistant. After doing this so long that is a good thing. I don’t like to read as much as Petra does, but I really like watching others. So I don’t mind just watching the others do their thing. When it goes on for too long, when I haven’t worked on my stuff for a while, then I get antsy. Sometimes R. has me answer emails or write some stuff for her. That’s fun, and it’s not the type of work I’m use to doing in the studio. I admit I’m not a computer guy, so beyond typing up a simple email or Word doc I don’t do much at that machine. I don’t do social media, although Melusine tried to get me set up with an account, and I don’t do much surfing. Sometimes, if I remember something I’ve seen or heard before, a long time ago, I try to find it on YouTube. That’s a great invention, a walk down memory lane for a guy like me. But it can be a real pitfall too. I never look at it when I’m doing my own work. I always wear the same clothing. An old pair of camo-print, drawstring, jogging-cargo pants, a t-shirt - I got two, one short sleeve with a cute puppy on it, and one long sleeve with an anchor on it - and when it is cold I throw an old, long sleeve flannel button up on top. I always wear my ball cap. It’s one of those leftover habits from my youth in the midwest. My current cap is red and in white letters it says ‘Romeo y Julieta’. I love that play. Mr. Shakespeare understood life and the romantic tragedy it is. On my feet I got a pair of slippers, nubuck pleather and synthetic sheepskin lining. I should get more comfortable shoes cause when I’m on my feet working on a larger canvas my back starts to hurt. I think it’s the slippers. Maybe R. can pick me up something better. I guess I should ask.

• Do you listen to music, the radio, or TV when you work? If so what, and does it affect your work?

R. has a Spotify subscription so I listen to some of the daily mixes. I like older rock from the 60s, but also a lot of pop music. Burt Bacharach songs are great to sing along to when you’re painting. Like Mr. Shakespeare there is romance and tragedy all wrapped up into a single package.

• What kind of paints do you use?

I just use whatever the others leave for me. I’ve never bought my own material. R. painted a lot with fluid acrylic paints [Lukas brand] a few years ago and has let me use them. She has also given me some old, previously painted canvases and the cardboard backs of paper pads and other leftovers. I’m not so much a scavenger as the one who lives off the scraps.

• How long have you had your painting table, and how did you decide how to set it up?

I wouldn’t say I have a painting table. The paints and supplies have their shelves in the basement. I mix together what I need and take it to wherever I happen to be working on that day. In the winter I worked on one of the old kitchen tables pulled closer to the workbench/table where I had set up my paints. In the warmer weather I’ve been working in the greenhouse. For the larger canvases I use a couple of aluminum sawhorses to lay the canvas I’m working on flat. But then I also hang it on the wall to work on it vertically. I never have worked on the easel. When I’m in the greenhouse I set up my supplies on the old sewing machine table to the right of the wall next to the door. It’s as good of a place as any. Besides, the other tables are setup for R. and her oil paints.

• Do you have any special devices or tools that are unique to your creative process?

I really like using an old blue hair dryer to move the paint around and speed up the drying process. This allows me to make a painting in a really short time. It combines chance and control. I love blowing and seeing how the paint responds. Adding the heat and air causes the pigment and binder to separate from the water and when the layers aren’t completely dry cracking and reticulation occurs, revealing the paint and colors underneath.

I also use silicone cooking utensils to mix and apply paint. They’re more flexible than most palette knives and I noticed someone got the idea and has begun marketing them in the art stores to painters. ButI buy mine at the dollar stores and close-out shops where they are a lot less expensive. I got a silicone basting brush that is like painting with a brush with ¼ inch bristles! It is a real blast and paints brush strokes that look like they’ve been enlarged by some weird photo process.

• Are there specific items here that have significant meaning to you?

Not really. I’ve always traveled light in life. Everything that has ever meant anything to me I carry in my head. This has allowed me to occupy and move between very small spaces at a moment's notice. It’s kept me flexible.

• Do you work on one project at a time or several?

I only work on one thing that is my own. Blue paintings. But I help out anywhere I’m needed, so you could say I work on one project at a time and I work on several projects at a time.

• When you are contemplating your work, where and how do you sit or stand?

Like I said earlier, I got R. to hang the work we all are working on in the space, even though there isn’t really much ‘wall’ space. So I have the blue paintings I’ve been working on mostly visible at all times. Even when I’m just watching the others I can see my paintings and think about them too. What the next one my be.I do this sitting, standing, on the shelf, on the futon, in a corner. I make myself fit in wherever it is least intrusive.

• How often do you clean your studio, and does it affect your work?

It’s my job to make sure the place is kept in order for all of us. So I keep it picked up, throw out the trash, empty the water, clean the brushes. I don’t like cleaning the floors. That’s a hassle. I admit my method of working with the fluid paint has caused a lot of big, blue puddles on the greenhouse floor. But the floor was in pretty bad shape to begin with. I should take care and clean it up, or at least throw down a plastic tarp before I start working, but I don’t. Maybe I’ll clean and paint the floor while R. is gone this summer. The basement floor could use a good scrub and paint too. The cat pukes everywhere and if I don’t catch it stains are left. I wouldn’t say any of this affects my own work, but I’m sure R. and Petra appreciate a clean workspace. Although from hearing both describe previous living and work spaces this one now is a palace!

• How do you come up with titles?

Easy, I don’t give titles. All the paintings are just Franzi’s Blues. I should have a numbering system, or some other way of subdividing and identifying the paintings. But I don’t.

• Do you have assistants?

Nope, I am my own assistant. But by sharing their space and materials with me R. and Petra are a big help.

• Did you ever work for another artist, and if so, did that have any effect on the way you work?

I started working for artists when I was in my early 20s. I’d dropped out of art school and was just making my way through life. I’ve worked for so many artist through the years. The biggest effect has been what I learned by watching how they worked, how they each dealt with the tension in the space. Like I said earlier it can be hostile or cold. I knew neither was for me. I wanted a warm, happy medium. Of course I learned a lot about handling the materials along the way too. I don’t use all of my knowledge in my own practice but pass along what I learned from one artist to another I might be working for. I try to do this in subtle ways, just slip it in so they don’t always know where it came from. I guess that is pretty subversive of me!

• Do you have a motto or creed that as an artist you live by?

I like what it says on my short sleeve t-shirt because it sums up how I get by and make art: “Excuse me, are you going to eat that?”.

• What advice would you give a young artist that is just starting out?

Figure out where the tension in the studio is coming from and then find the best way for you and the art you’re making to deal with it. If you’re better with hostility then ok, if your better with coldness, ok. Just figure out what you need and then do it.

Petra responds to Melusine

Melusine has given me the following interview questions used by Joe Fig as the basis for his research for Inside the Painter’s Studio. (Fig, 2009.) She has asked me to answer the questions in advance of a conversation we will have. Her intention is to write an essay on my life in the studio with R. and Franzi.

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The Painter’s Studio: An Artist’s Questionnaire by Joe Fig.

• When did you consider yourself a professional artist, and when were you able to dedicate yourself full-time to that pursuit?

How does one define what a professional artist is? I have always considered myself an artist and I have only ever dedicated myself fully to making art. I imagine that since my inception R. has also understood I am an artist. Once I was able to find myself in the studio space the paintings - watercolors- emerged.

• How long have you been in this studio?

I arrived here about ten months ago. However, I really did not establish myself and begin working of my own accord until sometime in January. Before then I just hung around the space, finding myself within it. I guess you could say that the first months were a period of ‘settling in’ - getting to know the space-  and, more importantly, getting to know my studio mates. Before I started working here on my own I began collaborating with R. on the work Good Witches of the Between. This is an ongoing collaboration with R. doing most of the physical making, I offer suggestions along the way and will throw in my own hand now and then when I feel it is necessary. Even Franzi has staged his own intervention with the work. As the work becomes increasingly fragmented we each seem to seek out our own pathways into and thru it. For instance, R. recently did a larger oil painting on paper using collaged fragments of the original starting point of the collaboration, the photo we worked on in the fall. From that I asked her to print a detail photo she took of that work for me onto ten 4 inch x 6 inch sheets of Stonehenge rag paper with the inkjet printer. Those prints are sitting on my work table, waiting for me and the watercolor paint to take them to the next stage.

• Did you have a plan for the layout of your studio or did it develop organically?

R. had been in this studio ten years when I arrived, so I really did not have much input on the organization or layout of the space. It is my understanding that it has gone through various configurations in the time she has occupied it. When it was clear that Franzi and I would be here and would need areas to call our own within the greater studio space R. accommodated us by clearing out a number of items that no longer fit. She made space on the center shelf that divides the basement half of the studio from the family's basement storage/work space. Franz and I hang out on our shelf when we are not working or when our presence is not required.

The studio is divided into two very different halves. One part of the space is half of the basement of a 100 year old house. It is relatively dry, the foundation walls are painted white and a bit of  surface coating applied by a previous owner decades ago is crumbly. It is basement-like without being dark and claustrophobia inducing. In fact, it is relatively light for a basement because it is not very deep, less than six feet below grade, and the studio portion has two south facing windows which allow light to shine in most of the day. In the winter when the light is low the sun streams onto the work tables and floor. The floor is concrete; it is not the original but a new, 2 inch thick concrete slab floor that was poured on top of the thin, skim-coated dirt floor about 25 years ago. The ceiling has exposed iron steam heating pipes. They are quite low at points. Franzi and R. have no difficulties navigating the space as they are both on the shorter side. However, I am a bit taller and the shoes I wear add a few more centimeters so that I am always running into a pipe here and there. Fortunately most have been wrapped in insulation.

The other half of the studio consists of a greenhouse built against the southern facade of the bungalow in the mid-1970s. It is a couple of steps up from the basement, but still souterrain. On the eastern wall there is a door with a single glass light, above is a crank-out window kept open in the summer for ventilation. The door is at the top of a platform of bamboo covered stairs. It leads to a small crushed patio. R. had the door and steps put in when she moved in ten years ago because she did not like feeling trapped in a pit. In general, I do not work in that space; instead I work sitting at a table in the basement. The smaller scale of the watercolors on paper is more conducive to working on tables, the greenhouse with its high ceiling and glass wall is better for larger work, acrylics and oils, worked on the wall or easel in a vertical position is more suitable. Franzi prefers working in the greenhouse, as long as it isn’t too hot or too cold. R. moves back and forth between the two spaces. There is a small futon sofa in the space between the easel and the wall where we all like to sit, think, read, stare at the sky or into space. The cat also spends the greater part of sunny days either on the stairs or sofa, too; he should be considered as an important occupant/user/part of the space too. The wall opposite the glass wall is the exterior facade of the house and is clad in red-stained cedar shingles with linen-white painted trim. High above the space a row of five double-hung windows peer down into the space from the open plan living/dining space above. Another single, double hung window is on the western wall, high so it is at street level when the building is viewed from the sidewalk, but still almost 20 feet above the work space.

As I said, I work in the basement half of the studio which is a very different environment from the greenhouse. Along the wall between basement and greenhouse R. has set up a thirty-six foot table/workbench constructed from hollow doors and black plastic jugs filled with water. The jugs were part of a passive temperature control system that lined the wall of the greenhouse and was employed by the former owners to help prevent a rapid sinking in temperature when the sun set, the quick drop would have been detrimental to the seedlings and plants. The jugs were no longer needed for that purpose so they became the legs of the table/workbench. At the table is where R. tends to spend her basement-half time. There is an area for the computer. I only work on the computer to send the occasional email. Sometimes I check the Facebook account you (Melusine) set up for me.  Or, like now, when there is something I need to write I’ll have a seat in the desk chair and type away.

When R. cleaned up the space to make room for Franzi and I last fall she opened up the center of the basement half and positioned a couple of old kitchen tables to work at. This created a ten foot long table. I worked there for a while, until I needed to install A Little Madness in the Spring. Currently the sixteen existing panels are suspended by four wooden dowels threaded thru eye screws from the rafters. To make space around that work II separated the two tables. So, for the time being, one table is my work table. I positioned it opposite the greenhouse door, facing the flat file and storage racks. The other table R. has laid out with the books she is currently spending the most time with. I have placed some of my own there too; now and again I browse through the entire selection and then make my way to the sofa or shelf for some quiet reading. I prefer working at the smaller table facing the wall. It provides me with greater focus, and I keep my paints, brushes and papers set up just the way I like. I also brought in a couple of standing lights, I do not like the fluorescent tubes installed in the ceiling, preferring the softer light of the standard, energy efficient bulbs.

• Has the studio location influenced your work?

I’m sure it has. First, there is the fact that it is a shared space. By this I mean not just with R. and Franzi, but R.’s family does travel through the space and use the other half of the basement. Sometimes when I am working they come in. It is taking time for them to learn that I don’t want to be bothered when I am at my table painting. I guess that is why I now have my back turned from the direction they approach. When they see me sitting there they know to leave me alone.

There is also the matter of the greenhouse. Although I rarely paint in it, I like the idea of a greenhouse as a space where things -paintings and ideas- sprout up. In the winter there are a few plants kept on the steps and behind the easel -mainly cacti, geraniums and a couple of huge oleander. The oleander bloom all winter, so do the geraniums. It is nice to see the continued blossoming, even when it is cold, grey, bare, or even  when eight feet of snow is just on the other side of the glass wall. I also find inspiration in the sky; enjoying the opportunities to lay on the sofa and look up into. I’ve never seen Franzi or Melusine do this, but I know it is something R. and I have in common. And then there are the siberian iris that grow along the glass wall -I enjoyed seeing how quickly they emerge in the spring, blossom, and fade; now that it is summer the remaining leaves provide a spikey covering of the last two feet of above ground space. It is a shock when the leaves are cut back in the fall and the space is suddenly bare again. That’s when the cats and squirrels start looking in. I didn’t mention the sunshade, but it is on the windows from late March until October, and the pattern casts a striped-mesh like shadow into the space and blocks the summer sky. The contrast and change to the winter light without the shade makes the space more interesting; I know when we began Good Witches of the Between the sunshade was on, then it was off for many months and now it is back on. Its presence definitely impacts how the work that is being created in the space is seen.

All of this is to say, the greenhouse has fed my love for the metaphors nature provides and that has become more visible this spring in my work.

• Please describe a typical day, being as specific as possible. For example: What time do you get up? When do you come to the studio? Do you have specific clothing you change into?

On the days it is my turn in the studio I usually appear dressed and ready to go by nine AM; but that is only on the days that R. is in the studio by 8:30. On other days, when she can’t arrive until mid-day I don’t appear until around 1 PM. Once I am outfitted R. disappears. I tend to work in 2-3 hour stretches, and mainly on weekdays. When I am working the days I work tend to be consecutive. I might work a week in the studio, and then take a break for a week or two while R. or Franzi work. It is rare that the three of us are working simultaneously, although Franzi and I might switch off during a day, or R. and I might split days here and there.

When I am in the studio I always wear the same clothing. I have a pair of khaki green cargo pants that can be rolled up into capri pants. On top I wear a black, sleeveless t-shirt -on the label it says ‘the woman within’, I like that tag. On top of that t-shirt I wear a long sleeve, billowy, floral print blouse of some smei-transparent synthetic material. I tie a salmon colored cotton scarf around my hair to keep it clean and prevent it falling in my face and eyes while I work. I also wear numerous metal bracelets on both my wrists. I have a pair of dangling earrings that are a pseudo-coppery, chased metal in the shape of leaves. On my left middle finger I wear a snakey, copper ring. The most comfortable part of my studio attire -and comfortable studio attire is of the utmost importance- are my shoes. I wear a pair of Ecco clogs with a woven leather upper. These shoes are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn and I love the sound they make when I walk across the concrete floor to refill my water containers at the utility sink. Clack, clack, clack.

• Do you listen to music, the radio, or TV when you work? If so what, and does it affect your work?

R. has a Spotify subscription so I have a wide range of music available to me. The studio is well outfitted with a couple of different sound systems. In the greenhouse is a small JVC stereo with a CD player that is hooked into additional speakers in the basement.  In the basement is a Rotel amp with B&W speakers R. won in a holiday raffle when she lived in Germany. The computer hooks into the amp so the sound quality from the computer is fairly good.

Despite having freedom to choose from a wide range of music I most often find myself listening to Joni Mitchell. I like her musical range, the expression, and poetic lyrics. As an artist, a painter, and a poet, she is someone I can really relate to. When I listen to her music as I work I think about the music more than I think about what it is I am painting, I find this allows me to get lost in the music and at the same time draws my focus deeper into the art. Instead of thinking of how I might control the paint I hum along to the music, letting everything flow.

• What kind of paints do you use?

I use tube watercolors and gouaches of various brands. I’ve started playing with adding additional gum arabic to the paint, using Winsor & Newton brand, I also use Golden acrylic gesso and Utrecht acrylic matte medium. When I am working on the inkjet prints the water becomes the most important part of the paint.

• How long have you had your painting table, and how did you decide how to set it up?

The painting table I am currently using is an old formica top, metal edge kitchen table circa 1950-something. R. acquired it about thirty years ago off a street in a small town in northeastern Ohio. It once had a leaf to it, but that is missing. Where the two sections meet the table sags slightly. The top of table’s surface is covered in layers of oil and acrylic paints and glitter. Sometimes I cover it with brown kraft paper just to have a more neutral and cleaner surface to work on. [I covered how I have the table currently positioned in the studio a bit earlier in this questionnaire.] I keep my painting materials set up before me. I use a plastic, multi-well palette on which I squeeze out a bit of each color. In a smaller yogurt container I pour a little bit of gum arabic. Acrylic gesso and mediums are also mixed into smaller containers. I keep my brushes in a larger yogurt container, and usually have two yogurt containers of water closeby. Because I am a lefty what I use the least is to my right, the water, my spray bottle, and brushes are in the center, and to my left is the palette with the paint. In a far corner I keep some paper, and in a closer corner are some towels and rags. When I film myself I have a small tripod I sit directly on the table, positioned to capture my hands and the surface I am painting on. When I am filming myself work I want very little of myself visible. My hands and a bit of my arms are enough.

• Do you have any special devices or tools that are unique to your creative process?

I pretty much use the standard brushes and watercolor paints; I do like using my spray bottle. I like the challenge of making something different using the standards; pushing the boundaries of what the viewer understands and expects from the medium. For instance, using the inkjet prints as a base -on watercolor paper and on photopaper- creates a less than traditional approach to the medium and some has led to a new understanding of how the materials might react and respond under different circumstances. In turn, this has lead to ambiguity of the materials’ identity and the viewer questioning what the material might actually be. An example of this is found in the painting fragments of A little madness in the Spring. The base of each painting is a scan of an earlier iteration printed onto standard 4 inch x 6 inch glossy photo paper. The drying process of the thinned down matte medium which consisted of the acrylic medium separating from the water, the water drying faster at the edge and the medium pooling in the center of the mark while causing the ink on the paper below to flow and separate into rings of different colors came together to produce a given reaction that the viewer might not readily consider when thinking ‘this is a watercolor’.

• Are there specific items here that have significant meaning to you?

The volume of Emily Dickinson poems R. gave me this spring. I’m a greater admirer of her work, and R. discovered this about me through my reading of her poems on the computer. R. bought me the book in early April when viewed the exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York City. There is where A little madness in the Spring begun.

• Do you work on one project at a time or several?

I work on multiple things simultaneously, but when I am in the studio working tend to focus on a single project at a time. By this I mean I may begin something, work on it a while, then put it aside while I work on something else. Eventually I return to everything I’ve started, sometimes just to decide it is no longer worth actively pursuing at this time. At that point one of three things can happen: 1. The work is completely abandoned and destroyed, 2. The work is re-worked as something new by myself, or 3. Franzi or R. take over the work and does whatever he or she wants to do with it.

• When you are contemplating your work, where and how do you sit or stand?

I sit a while at the table, hold it in my hand, and stare at it. I also get up and pace throughout the space, stealing glances at the work from close up and far away. I also sit on the futon sofa in the greenhouse and stare up into the sky. Because the space is shared with others I might even retreat to my shelf with my books and while immersed in reading my thoughts begin to wander back to the work on the table which I am unable to work at in that moment, instead all the work must be done in my head.

• How often do you clean your studio, and does it affect your work?

I keep my table neat and orderly, always putting the items back in their proper place when I’m finished working for the day. But I don’t clean the studio. That is Franzi’s job.

• How do you come up with titles?

I tend to refer back to the origin of the work, its impetus. For A little madness in the Spring, it was quite simple. The photo of the fragment of the poem contained the draft of Emily Dickinson’s poem by that name. Good Witches of the Between, a collaborative work, but I will lay claim to giving it its title; the title refers to the small figure in the original photo collage -Glinda the Good Witch from a Wizard of Oz photo shoot Annie Leibovitz did for Vogue a number of years ago. Glinda was modeled by the artist Kara Walker, the background photo which R. had created a painting over was also a photo from Vogue accompanying a profile on the artist Elizabeth Peyton. I liked playing on the idea of the female artist as a good witch operating and existing in an in-between space. Finally, in my sketchbook I have been working on gestural studies of the performance artist Cilla Vee performing under various guises. This work hasn’t developed into a full series yet, and thus might not have a solid title, but for the moment I like to refer to it simply as ‘Gestures of Cilla Vee’, playing with the word gesture and its multiple meanings found in the work.

• Do you have assistants?

Franzi helps both R. and I out, and at times R. helps me out. I don’t mind painting, but don’t like to handle machines or electric tools. When I need to build something, like in the work A little madness in the Spring, I can count on R. and Franzi to lend a hand.

• Did you ever work for another artist, and if so, did that have any effect on the way you work?

No. But I think the collaboration with R., sharing the space with R. and Franzi, has provided insight into the practices of these other two and that has begun impacting my work.

• Do you have a motto or creed that as an artist you live by?

Tune out the voices surrounding you and focus on what is coming from within you.

• What advice would you give a young artist that is just starting out?

Tune out the voices surrounding you and focus on what is coming from within you.

Bibliography as a tool for reflection

I first began thinking about what this research project could become in winter 2016. At that time I began an annotated bibliography. This I consider the ‘master bibliography’ or documentation of the portion of my research not coming directly through my own studio practice but through the information and ideas of others which I use to construct and support my own ideas -both written and painted.

This master bibliography served as the basis for the (potential) bibliography I submitted as part of RDC1 in late January 2017. From my point of view, that bibliography, already quite extensive, had a different purpose -to provide a glimpse of potential resources- rather than as a bibliography one would find attached to an existing written documentation of research already performed -to list resources cited/influencing the research/writing. Therefore, I took the liberty to format it in a manner different from the standard single, alphabetized list. The approach to formatting I chose was to divide the entries into various subgroups with headings reflective of the areas of research each entry might have the greatest likelihood of impact. Breaking apart of the single list and dividing into subgroups allowed me to think of the questions of my research AND how the research and written exegesis might be structured from a different perspective than if I had simply treated the bibliography as a single list. That exercise also developed my awareness of ways in which I could apply the bibliography -or rather, the contents of the ‘master list’- as a tool whose purpose is to assist and enhance the (self) reflective in action portion of my research.

What this has meant practically is over the previous four to five months I have gone back to the bibliography -both the annotated, master bibliography and the bibliography submitted with RDC1- and began to pick them apart; selecting some entries to revisit and reconsider the ideas that originally drew me to including them in the potential bibliography. I like to think of the annotated, master bibliography as a living, breathing document. As I encounter more sources the list breathes them, and they are added to the list. However, inhaling implies that at some point there is also an exhale. Because the annotated, master bibliography is also a record of all sources, the exhale that might seem most logical for the list, the opposite of additions to the list -subtracting entries- is not feasible. Therefore, what I’ve decided to begin doing when I revisit the list - or at least every few months- is to export the list minus the annotations to a Word doc which I can then edit. The editing process will consist of subtracting from that document (not the master bibliography!) any entries whose relevance to the research project has diminished over the previous months to the point that they really no longer appear as significant to the project itself. Because the master bibliography remains unaltered any entries subtracted may find their way back onto a future list.

By condensing the list to those resources which I have been consulting; and to resources that might not yet have been (re)visited, but due to the annotation of the entry point to a potential relevance to the project, I am able to take a more focused look at the project from the point of view of the bibliography, and, perhaps, create new or condense the existing subgroups in order to (re)map or (re)structure the project based on the insight gained of the research to date through the reflective analysis of bibliographic list.

To sum up, the purpose of this writing is to clarify the multi-purposes of the bibliography to my research practice. The first purpose is fulfilled by the annotated bibliography which serves as a master list documenting all resources/sources consulted in my research. The second purpose is as a tool to be applied to the project aiding me, the researcher, in reflective analysis of the research both scholarly and in the studio. The third purpose is to give credit to authors and sources cited in my research within the context of the written exegesis.

Below is an example of the current bibliographic list I am in the process of editing and analyzing:

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Bibliography Edit  June 2017

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Abstract Expressionism by MABO. Perf. MABO. YouTube/Abstract Expressionism by MABO. MABO Art, 3 May 2016. Web.

Abstract Painting A´la Bollywood, Palette Knife, Acrylic Painting, Acrylmalerei, Bunt, Glitter. Perf. Brigitte König. YouTube/Abstract Painting A´la Bollywood, Palette Knife, Acrylic Painting, Acrylmalerei, Bunt, Glitter. Brigitte König, 2 Oct. 2016. Web.

Abstract Urban Art by Swarez. Perf. Swarez. YouTube/Abstract Urban Art by Swarez. Swarez Art, 20 Aug. 2010. Web.

Abstrakte Malerei - Abstract Art Painting with 3 Colors by Brigitte König - Fluid Acrylic Painting. Perf. Brigitte König. YouTube/Abstrakte Malerei - Abstract Art Painting with 3 Colors by Brigitte König - Fluid Acrylic Painting. Brigitte König, 6 May 2014. Web.

Abstrakte Malerei, Acrylmalerei, Abstract Art Painting with  Acrylics and Ink. Perf. Brigitte König. YouTube/Abstrakte Malerei, Acrylmalerei, Abstract Art Painting with Acrylics and Ink. Brigitte König, 4 Aug. 2016. Web.

Ackerman, Diane. Deep Play. New York: Random House, 1999. Print.

Acrylmalerei Einfache Technik, Abstract Art Painting, How To, Abstract, Fluid, Abstrakte Malerei. Perf. Brigitte König. YouTube/Acrylmalerei Einfache Technik, Abstract Art Painting, How To, Abstract, Fluid, Abstrakte Malerei. Brigitte König, 3 Aug. 2014. Web.

Acrylmalerei Fließtechnik Farben Verdünnen, Fluid Acrylic Painting How to Thin down Paint Colors. Perf. Brigitte König. YouTube/Acrylmalerei Fließtechnik Farben Verdünnen, Fluid Acrylic Painting How to Thin down Paint Colors. Brigitte König, 18 Jan. 2015. Web.

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Author: The JT LeRoy Story. Dir. Jeff Feuerzeig. Perf. Laura Albert. A&E Indie Films, 2016. Film.

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Barthes, Roland, and Stephen Heath. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Print.

Barthes, Roland, Richard Miller, and Richard Howard. The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Print.

Baum, Kelly, Andrea Bayer, Sheena Wagstaff, Carmen Bambach, Thomas Beard, David Bomford, David Blayney. Brown, Nicholas Cullinan, Michael Gallagher, Asher Ethan. Miller, Nadine Orenstein, Diana Widmaier Picasso, Susan Stewart, Nico Van. Hout, Elisa Urbanelli, and Anne Rebecca Blood. Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016. Print. Kelly Baum- The Raw and The Cooked: Unfinishedness in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Art 206-215

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Butler, Judith. Senses of the Subject. New York, NY: Fordham U, 2015. Print.

Cahun, Claude, and Marcel Moore. Don't Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore. N.p.: Aperture/Tate, 2016. Print.

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Cooks, Andrew. "Between Shadow and Memory (imagining the Garden): A Ramble through the Paradoxes of Space." Thesis. 2015. Http://arrow.monash.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/monash:151140. Monash University. Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. Art and Design, 02 Dec. 2015. Web.

Coplans, John. "The Private Eye of Philip Guston." Provocations: Writings by John Coplans. London: London Projects, 1996. 227-30. Print.

Coplans, John. Provocations. Ed. Stuart Morgan. Brooklyn: PowerHouse, 2002. Print.

Coplans, John. "Serial Imagery: Definition." Provocations: Writings by John Coplans. London: London Projects, 1996. 77-92. Print.

Courbet, Gustave. The Artist's Studio, a Real Allegory Summing up Seven Years of My Artistic and Moral Life. 1855. Musée D'Orsay, Paris. Musée D'Orsay: Zoom. Musée D'Orsay, 2006. Web.

Couser, G. Thomas. "Identity, Identicality, and Life Writing: Telling (The Silent) Twins Apart." Biography 26.2 (2003): 243-60. Web.

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Dickinson, Emily. The Poetry of Emily Dickinson. San Diego: Word Cloud Classics, 2015. Print.

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Elkins, James. Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art. Washington, D.C.: New Academia, 2009. Print.

Eno, Brian. A Year with Swollen Appendices. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Print.

Facetti, Germano, and Alan Fletcher. Identity Kits; a Pictorial Survey of Visual Signals. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971. Print.

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Fig, Joe. Inside the Artist's Studio. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural, 2015. Print.

Fig, Joe. Inside the Painter's Studio. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2009. Print.

Filipovic, Elena. "The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp." Diss. Princeton U, 2013. Print.

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From Death to Birth

Death of the Author

By Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard

Aspen no. 5 + 6, 1967.

http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html

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The voice of writing: Who is speaking?

It’s hard to say because “all writing (...)  consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.” 

Writing as an action - a gesture - but to get to that point, the author must die.

“...once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality — that is, finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol — this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins.”

Example: Mallarme

“...for Mallarme, as for us, it is language which speaks, not the author: to write is to reach, through a preexisting impersonality (...) that point where language alone acts, "performs," and not "oneself": Mallarme's entire poetics consists in suppressing the author for the sake of the writing (which is, as we shall see, to restore the status of the reader.)”

Surrealism, writing, the author, and subversion.

“...surrealism doubtless could not accord language a sovereign place, since language is a system and since what the movement sought was, romantically, a direct subversion of all codes — an illusory subversion, moreover, for a code cannot be destroyed, it can only be "played with"; but by abruptly violating expected meanings (this was the famous surrealist "jolt"), by entrusting to the hand the responsibility of writing as fast as possible what the head itself ignores (this was automatic writing), by accepting the principle and the experience of a collective writing, surrealism helped secularize the image of the Author.”

The alienation effect a la Brecht and the author’s death - leading to the birth of the text and the replacement of the author with the writer.

“...the text is henceforth written and read so that in it, on every level, the Author absents himself). Time, first of all, is no longer the same.”

“...the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now. This is because (or: it follows that) to write can no longer designate an operation of recording, of observing, of representing, of "painting" (as the Classic writers put it), but rather what the linguisticians, following the vocabulary of the Oxford school, call a performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given to the first person and to the present), in which utterance has no other content than the act by which it is uttered…”

Elaborate the form within the gap to highlight the between-space, the place of origin of that which has no origin.

“...a text does not consist of a line of words, (...) but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture.”

“...the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; …”

The author to the text, period. Case closed.

“To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing.” 

What is it about the author that kills the text?

“...once the Author is discovered, the text is "explained:' the critic has conquered; hence it is scarcely surprising not only that, historically, the reign of the Author should also have been that of the Critic, but that criticism (even "new criticism") should be overthrown along with the Author. In a multiple writing, indeed, everything is to be distinguished, but nothing deciphered; structure can be followed, "threaded" (like a stocking that has run) in all its recurrences and all its stages, but there is no underlying ground; the space of the writing is to be traversed, not penetrated: writing ceaselessly posits meaning but always in order to evaporate it: it proceeds to a systematic exemption of meaning.”

Writing becomes reading: double (multiple?) meaning, existence.

“...ambiguous nature of Greek tragedy, the text of which is woven with words that have double meanings, each character understanding them unilaterally (this perpetual misunderstanding is precisely what is meant by "the tragic"); yet there is someone who understands each word in its duplicity, and understands further, one might say, the very deafness of the characters speaking in front of him: this someone is precisely the reader (or here the spectator). In this way is revealed the whole being of writing: a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader:..”

Who is the reader?

“...the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only that someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted.”

Why is the reader so important to writing?

“...we know that to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author. “

What draws me to this text is the idea of the reader as spectator. Wollheim’s take would be ‘death of the painter’ is vital to painting so that the spectator may be born.

The pleasure of The Pleasure of the Text

The Pleasure of the Text

Roland Barthes; translated by Richard Miller

Hill and Wang, 1975.

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From Susan Sontag’s blurb on the back cover:

“Barthes repeatedly compared teaching to play, reading to eros, writing to seduction. (...) There is no rude or prophetic claims, no pleadings with the reader, and no efforts not to be understood. This is seduction as play, never violation. (...) For Barthes, as for Nietzsche, the point is to make us bold, agile, subtle, intelligent, detached. And to give pleasure.”

From Richard Howard’s ‘A Note on the Text’ I am reminded not only of the multiplicity of meanings contained within words -text- in a single language, but of what happens to the meaning as it, the word or text (or image) is translated across languages how the shifts in context add to the possible meanings. (see page 19 for more on this from Barthes) Or as Barthes described:

“Thus the Biblical myth is reversed, the confusion of tongues is no longer a punishment, the subject gains access to bliss by the cohabitation of languages working side by side: the text of pleasure is a sanctioned Babel.” (3-4)

The inability of the writer to know who/where the reader is; this unpredictability is bliss…”there can still be a game.” (4)

The text as a source of desire; a seducer of reader and writer the text must prove this desire through its seduction.

Barthes description as the point of pleasure as where two edges meet…”the place where the death of language is glimpsed.” (6)

“(...) what pleasure wants is the site of a loss, the seam, the cut, the deflation, the dissolve which seizes the subject in the midst of bliss.” (7)

Connecting to Coplans’ criticism of Serial Imagery:

“If I agree to judge a text according to pleasure, I cannot go on to say: this one is good, that bad. (...) the text (the same is true of the singing voice) can wring from me only this judgement, in no way adjectival: that’s it! And further still: that’s it for me! This “for me” is neither subjective nor existential, but Nietzschean (“...What is it for me?...”).” (13)

“The pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas - for my body does not have the same ideas I do.” (17)

Drifting… “Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole,...” (18) the ‘intractable bliss’ and the Serial collide?

Pleasure and bliss...the same, but different…

“...criticism always deals with the texts of pleasure, never the texts of bliss: (...) This text is outside pleasure, outside criticism, unless it is reached through another text of bliss: you cannot speak “on” such a text, you can only speak “in” it, (...).” (21-22)

Connecting to Winnicott and the first transitional zone of play -mother and child- where identity begins to be formed:

“No object is in a constant relationship with pleasure (Lacan, apropos of Sade). For the writer, however, this object exists: it is not the language, it is the mother tongue. The writer is someone who plays with his mother’s body (...): in order to glorify it, to embellish it, or in order to dismember it, to take it to the limit of what can be known about the body: I would go so far as to take bliss in a disfiguration of the language, and opinion will strenuously object, since it opposes “disfiguring nature”.” (37)

Connecting to thoughts on gesture (via O’Doherty’s definition):

“There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present-day society: to retreat ahead of it: every old language becomes old once it is repeated. (...) the New is bliss.” (40-41)

“The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions - these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.” (41-42)

“In short, the word can be erotic on two opposing conditions, both excessive: if it is extravagantly repeated, or on the contrary, if it is unexpected, succulent in its newness (...)’” (42)

Connecting to thoughts of hierarchy and finitude re: Serial Imagery:

“The Sentence is hierarchical: it implies subjections, subordinations, internal reactions. Whence its completion: how can a hierarchy remain open? The Sentence is complete: it is even precisely that language which is complete. Practice, here, is very different from theory. Theory (Chomsky) says that the sentence is potentially infinite (infinitely catalyzable), but practice always obliges the sentence to end. (...) it is the power of completion which defines sentence mastery and marks, (...) The professor is someone who finishes his sentences. The politician (...) imagine(s) an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized! And the writer? (... after words of Valery) A writer is (...) someone who thinks sentences: A Sentence-Thinker (i.e., not altogether a thinker and not altogether a sentence-parser).” (50-51)

Not….not…

“Unless for some perverts the sentence is a body.” (51)

“A certain pleasure is derived from a way of imagining oneself as individual, of inventing a final, rarest fiction: the fictive identity. This fiction is no longer the illusion of a unity; on the contrary, it is the theater of society in which we stage our plural: our pleasure is individual -but not personal.” (62)

Notes and Quotes from Serial Imagery: Definition by John Coplans

Serial Imagery: Definition*

John Coplans, 1968.

*Originally appearing as the section titled ‘Definitions’ in Serial Imagery published by the Pasadena Art Museum and the New York Graphic Society, September, 1968. I have read the essay in Provocations: Writings by John Coplans, London Projects, 1996, pages 77- 92.

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“Serial Imagery is a type of repeated form or structure shared equally by each work in a group of related works made by one artist. To paint in series, however, is not necessarily to be serial.” (77)

“Serial structures are produced by a single indivisible process that links the internal structure of a work to that of works within a differentiated whole.” (77)

“There are no boundaries implicit to Serial Imagery; (...) Though often painted in sets, (...) Serial Images are nevertheless capable of infinite expansion. There is no limit to the quantity of works in a Series other than what is determined by the artist. Once established, a Series may be kept open and added to periodically in the future.” (77)

“Serial Imagery furthermore ignores the rational sequence of time. Series can be cut off at any point (...); re-entered later (...); or continued and extended indefinitely (...).” (78)

Macro-structure:

• Understood by relational order and continuity, not by distance, number or magnitude.
• All the units are interchangeable. (no hierarchy)
• No two contradictory positions can be deduced from the whole; variances (sub-groups) may occur but the macro-structure within these variances is consistent to the structural identity of the whole. (consistency within variety)

“Meaning is enhanced and the artist’s intentions can be more fully decoded when the individual Serial work is seen within the context of its set. (...) Consequently each work within a Series is of equal value; it is part of a whole; its qualities are significantly more emphatic when seen in context that when seen in isolation.” (79)

HOWEVER

“Each single work in a Series must be complete in itself and therefore may be shown in isolation. Furthermore, in some Series the appearance of the paintings, if they are exhibited as a set, will be affected by the sequence in which they are hung.” (79)

Four Serial forms in mathematics:

1. Have neither a first nor last element

2. Have a first but no last element

3. Have a last but no first element

4. Have both a first and a last element

Coplans presents Stein’s Serial poem “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” as an example of having both forms 1 and 4.

Stein’s monogram of the poem in a circle with a dot at the top between ‘Rose’ and ‘Rose’ creates a starting and stopping point.

(80)

Minus the dot, with the verb ‘is’ between ‘a rose’ and ‘a rose’ there is neither a first nor last element; an infinite continuum structure that when visually depicted in the next instance shows the symmetry that is formed.

(80)

Skipping ahead in the text to where Coplans again refers to Stein’s poem, to balance the value of the verb (is) the value of the noun (Rose), its repetition, Stein took “advantage of its innate capacity to evoke multi-levels of meaning and image. (...) Rose (Francis) is a rose (flower) is a rose (color) is a rose (perfume) is a rose (gem) is a rose (compass card), etc.” (83)

Note to self: this is important when I discuss homonyms and ‘gesture’. The multiplicity of meanings of the noun, the context in which it appears and the multiplicity of elements of identity understood in the contexts in which these appear.

“All contemporary usage of Serial Imagery, whether in painting or sculpture, is without either first or last members. Obviously, at one point, there had to be a beginning - (...) - but its identity becomes subsumed within the whole, within the macro-structure. The same principle applies to the last member. (...) sequential identity is irrelevant and in fact is lost immediately on the work’s completion.” (81)

Stein often misquoted her own poem (deliberately or not is questionable).

A pack of cards where all the cards are of equal value (Coplans ex. Ace of Spades), printed with the same emblem in a variety of size, color or position would be another example of the basic structure of Serial Imagery.

Artist examples - Josef Albers and Ad Reinhardt; both created Serial forms implying “the use of a structure whose order is inherent but concealed.” (81)

Reinhardt:

“His method of facture, consisting of a layer-upon-layer application of flat paint over a pre-existent image, left traces of a ‘local’ time-track. (...) As the paintings got blacker they got more and more neutral. The formal importance of Reinhardt’s painting therefore resides in its quality of indetermination, its neutral emptiness. (...) What Reinhardt set into motion was the idea of a network of choices and limitations which were performed but not logically apparent on the surface of the picture or within the whole Series.” (82)

Frank Stella:

“... exploit Serial despositions of a higher order. (...) By varying the linear image he asserted the individual identity of each painting within the overall system. (...) It is only coincidental to his system that the internal modulations and the stretcher thicknesses are the same. (...) the vectors of his internal imagery are consequently disparate and energetic.” (82-82)

Stein-Reinhardt-Stella:

“In Reinhardt’s Serial Imagery the threshold of difference between each painting is so low as to finally deny difference, though it is true each painting occupies a different space. Stella, on the other hand, created a unique identity for each painting by using simple, bilaterally symmetrical network of images, which, in effect, were variants of the same image. In this way he preserved an absence of hierarchy; each image was equal in rank. Each image at the same time asserted its own identity with its own evocative potential, so to speak, in the manner of Miss Stein’s rose. Moreover, Stella’s paintings can be positioned in random order; the time-flow is non-sequential.” (83)

Joseph Albers - Frank Stella:

“...the duration between Albers’ paintings is compressed, and the time-flow more nearly reversible. Music, poetry, and dance, by the very nature of their form, can only flow forward in time.* It is impossible to play music, to read poetry or to dance backward. In one form or another Claude Monet, Alexei Jawlensky, Marcel Duchamp, Mondrian, Albers, Klein, and Reinhardt have all proved in their Serial investigations that it was possible to make time relative and to reverse its flow. But it was Stella, who was soon to be joined by Noland, Louis, Andy Warhol, Larry Bell, and somewhat later, Kelly, who began a sophisticated dialog involving the non-sequential possibilities of Serial forms that rapidly led to a new plateau of achievement. (...) Stella discovered that the permutations -the typical, possible distributions which are strategically central to Serial order- can be varied at will. That there are no limiting rules to this strategy is reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s remark: “Language is a ‘game’ the rules of which we have to make up as we go along.” “ (84)

“To be sure, Serial Imagery, though systematic, does permit unknown variables.” (85)

Anton Ehrenzweig: (the artist) “cannot anticipate all the possible moves that are open according to the rules which [he is] still making up, … (he) can handle ‘open’ structures with blurred frontiers which will be drawn with proper precision only in the unknowable future” [italics are Coplans] (85)

Note to self: Serial imagery presents open, not closed, systems/structures in the sense that:

“...internal order can become random, providing the parameters of the macro-structure are systematically maintained.” (85)

Note to self:  This seems contradictory that if there are boundaries one would think the system/structure is closed. However, if one shifts perspective to the freedom/openness found within the boundaries...the free space in between, the gap, then this is not contradictory at all.

“Stella’s intention (...) to give each painting a supra-identity.” (86)

Note to self: the following relates closely to Brian O’Doherty’s writings on relationship of the work to the exhibition space in Inside the White Cube.

“It must be remembered that in Serial Imagery the exhibition space becomes a component. Only when paintings of a Series are exhibited together in a gallery space do the parameters built into the paintings and their reciprocal quality begin to operate. By permitting the paintings to bite into the wall space, and the wall space to bite into the shaped canvas, Stella added another reciprocal parameter to his system; he emphasized the space by forcing it and the painting to become attached.” (86)

Coplans address the role/use/application of color in Serial Imagery pages 87-88.

Process:

Serial Imagery is not about the ‘masterpiece’ but about the proces. Process is an open system of progression at a steady pace - continuity and productivity, according to Coplans. Process “can be decoded and adapted to any personal use. Once process is understood, an artist can enter into the dialogue at any point. It is a choice of “realm” that is important and not uniqueness of “subjects”. (89)

Back to the ‘white cube’...

“More than any art in the past, the dialogue of Seriality is taking place in public; it is a gallery and not a studio art.”(89)**

“Serial forms reveal very easily the complexity of the artist’s decisions and the nature of his enterprise as a whole.” (89)

Lack of hierarchy means there is no ‘best’. Hmm, see Coplans recollection on selecting the better of two Stella's in the essay Pasadena's Collapse and the Simon Takeover: Diary of a Disaster, page 180-181 of this book.

“The crucial factor is again the choice of realm, the way each painting fits within the chosen structure: that is, whether the postulates of each painting are consistent with the others in such a way that no two contradictory propositions can be deduced within a Series. Thus criticism must address itself to the largest entity. The task of the critic (...) is to ask what is there and what is the nature of the experience. (...) simply to describe this experience is to in some way evaluate it.” (90)

“(...) the Serial artists (...) attempt to describe with the structure of art our perception of the space we inhabit.” (90)

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* Since Coplans wrote this there is reason to contest the validity of the statement based on digital technology applied to these areas. I am also thinking of Twyla Tharp’s experiments with video recording of dance to express ‘true retrograde’ in the late 1970s.

**There is a lot of something to be said about this and how it has developed in the 50+ years since the essay was written.

First, very rough, draft

Note: this is a very rough, first draft. Sources cited and images TBR will be added in subsequent drafts.

Personas - Why not Duchamp? - The life and death of Patrick Ireland.

Before there was Patrick Ireland there was Brian O’Doherty.

Patrick Ireland lived thirty-six years; Brian O’Doherty is nearly ninety.

Patrick Ireland, not a man but an embodied idea, was born with a purpose. That idea, Ireland’s purpose, was a political statement; a statement in which an alter ego, whose very name staked claim to his identity, became the signature of the visual artworks of Irish-American artist Brian O’Doherty "until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights." [O’Doherty, 1972] The works themselves are not political, are not protests or in anyway could they be relegated to the category of propaganda. They are art.

Patrick Ireland was conceived during a 1972 performance of O’Doherty’s as part of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art at the Project Art Centre in Dublin in response to the events in Derry on January 30 of that year. With the assistance of Robert Ballagh and Brian King, in the presence of 30 invited witnesses (not spectators, viewers or guests -witnesses) O’Doherty, dressed in white with a white stocking on his head, was carried onto a stage where he made his proclamation (see quote in previous paragraph) changing his name/identity (as a maker of visual artworks) to Patrick Ireland before being painted in the Irish tricolors which disappeared into a muddied mess of color as the performance progressed.

The white stocking, a semi-transparent, or semi-opaque -depending on your point of view- mask. The stocking did not hide the identity of the face behind it, but it did flatten the features - like a piece of paper. A piece of paper that orders and treaties a written on; a piece of paper that maps and lines are drawn on. Dressed all in white -white pants, white turtleneck sweater, white stocking over his head - O’Doherty morphed himself not only into ‘Patrick Ireland’ but into an alter ego analogous to the ‘White Cube’ of which he would write four years later; what he describes as the albatross around his neck. [O’Doherty, Frieze Talks 2012] Patrick Ireland became the space, the frame, that allowed the (political) expectations (of the time) placed upon the object (and artist) by the spectator to be met; at the same time the artist maintained the freedom to follow the paths he was interested in exploring. A neutral and heavily charged zone of engagement.

In the thirty-six years the artwork produced by O’Doherty was signed by Patrick Ireland the overall intention, thematic exploration and formal approach the artist took in the work followed a (consistent) trajectory. Simultaneously, the application of this other name on the signature line added not only an additional layer of questions and statements to that path, but provided the artist freedom within a framework (the alter ego) to explore side roads, gathering fragments of information and inspiration to carry back to the main road where they served to enrich and provided added sustenance (and substance).

“The name at least became a reminder. Every work I did after that gained a political context for me and for anyone who may have wondered who Patrick Ireland was” O’Doherty said in a 2008 interview with Michael Kimmelman on the death and funeral of Patrick Ireland held on May 20, 2008 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. After the Good Friday Agreement the previous year Patrick Ireland’s existence was no longer needed. To honor this he was laid to rest in the same manner by which he was born -a performance in the form of a traditional, Irish political funeral. Patrick Ireland, the name, needed not to be or to do anymore than that -a reminder.

In a conversation with Phong Bui published in The Brooklyn Rail [June 7, 2007] Brian O’Doherty said of the funeral he was then planning for Patrick Ireland:

“He will be encoffined, his effigy will be dressed in white and he will be buried under a headstone—“Patrick Ireland, born 1972, Died 2008.” Political burials are a great tradition in Ireland, because they are occasions for the dispossessed, the minority, the persecuted to have a voice. I will invite representatives from either side to witness the ceremony, and if they wish, to speak. We will bury Patrick Ireland with the hatred that gave rise to him.”

During the funeral procession O’Doherty, costumed as Ireland accompanied the casket containing the effigy of his alter ego to an open grave on the museum grounds, after dropping handfuls of dirt on the coffin which had been lowered with its contents (were there any contents?) into the pit, removed the stocking. The artist had removed his mask, but another mask still exists -the death mask of Patrick Ireland. No longer featureless, now a relic, but still a reminder.

Lee Krasner is reported to have once said to O’Doherty “You’ll never get your name back”. [Triple Canopy Honors Brian O’Doherty, Oct. 30 news release]; or as O’Doherty recalled in the Frieze Talks her saying to him “You’ll be Patrick Ireland forever.” The idea expressed in this remark by Krasner,  that identity is tied to name, and once the name is sacrificed or become subservient to another name the identity previously attached to it is lost for good is somewhat ironic coming from a painter whose own identity and struggle to preserve her own name which through a marriage was dominated and subsumed, only to slowly reassociate with her own painterly identity after her own death. [Levin, 2011] However, Krasner spoke a truth -there is real danger associated with the assumption of another identity, be it an alter ego, persona or name via marriage. Patrick Ireland may be buried, but Brian O’Doherty will be Patrick Ireland forever. The features on the death mask of the persona are those of his creator.

Ciarán Benson in his essay on O’Doherty, No Sad Imperialist of the Aesthetic Self- The Artist Brian O’Doherty (previously known as Patrick Ireland),published in the Dublin Review of Books (June 3, 2011) wrote that the death of Patrick Ireland “...allowed Brian O’Doherty to reappropriate his past, and his work”. Reappropriation implies that something must be reclaimed by someone, an individual or a group, after it has been used in a disparaging way. It is questionable whether the artist’s assumption of personas, such as O’Doherty/Ireland, could be viewed as a disparaging action, one that would lead to or need an act of reappropriation. An action leading to loss of identity might typically be viewed as a disparaging act, both inside and outside of the art world. One must only look to the phrase ‘a person’s credit is only as good as his name’ to understand the relationship between name, identity and the value contained within. While this might certainly be the case within the realm of finances and daily existence, the idea that something, a part of one’s identity -personal, artistic or both-  is lost with the assumption of another name, persona, alter ego as part of a creative action is not an idea I would agree with; nor do I think when taking the example of Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland a valid argument for loss could be made. More likely to be proven in the case of Patrick Ireland is how the assumption of a persona expanded O’Doherty’s creative practice through not only the freedom it provided him to not create political or propaganda per se, but to the space in which to ask smaller questions that fed the bigger ones he was asking without those smaller asides taking over and dominating the conversation the artist was having within the work. The expansion of the artist’s practice by the incorporation of personas is far from a disparaging action and more an action maximizing the potential contained within.

Patrick Ireland was not the only alter ego or persona of Brian O’Doherty. There are or have been at least four others; five altogether if “Brian O’Doherty” is included. (I will write more on the other identities further down in this essay.) O’Doherty’s reason for developing so many personas was as much about space as about identity.  Reporting on a talk given on February 21, 2012 at Vassar College in conjunction with an  exhibition of his work at the college’s library and in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, O’Doherty was said to have explained his assumption of the personas as the solution he found to doing things he wanted to do which otherwise ‘did not fit’ with the work he was doing at that particular moment -so he created a new identity to do it. [Hernandez, 2012].

Personas create a type of space defined by the freedom they give to act, create, and exist in more than one way. The development and application of multiple personas by the artist as part of his or her creative practice could (should) be understood as a natural outgrowth of the exploration of the multifacetedness of identity in relation to the liminal space in which identity is played out.

Patrick Ireland was the means by which O’Doherty brought the personal, the emotional, the political into the work he had been doing throughout the 1960s, and continues to do to this day without making the work personal, emotional or political.

For me as an artist coming of age in the 1980s Patrick Ireland was Brian O’Doherty, and Brian O’Doherty was the author of Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. I understood Patrick Ireland as a politically motivated pseudonym for Brian O’Doherty, and Brian O’Doherty as an artist/writer who was critically taking apart the structure of the space in which art works existed -a physical, a conceptual, a commercial and a liminal space. The two names belonged to the same body, but were not the same.

Out-Duchamp-ing Duchamp

There is no doubt that Marcel Duchamp has played a role in the development of Brian O’Doherty’s creative endeavors. However, this role, as O’Doherty quickly and adamantly pointed out in his presentation at the National Portrait Gallery symposium in Washington D.C. (March 27, 2009) in conjunction with the exhibition Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The dynamics of portraiture, is and was not as a mentor, master, or influence. Instead, in line with O’Doherty’s use the language of the game of chess as a metaphor in his talk to describe his opponent and their match, I propose envisioning the relationship between Duchamp and O’Doherty as that between two players engaged in a game. Chess was and is a game important to both men since their childhood, and each applied its language, structure and approach to play to his art.

After leaving the field of medicine -O’Doherty is an M.D. and did research in experimental psychology at Cambridge University before moving to the United States in 1957 to do further research at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston where, after one year and being awarded a M.Sc.from Harvard, O’Doherty took a job as host of an arts program for the Museum of Fine Arts Boston on the local educational and eventual Public Television affiliate WGBH-TV. Throughout the 1960s, first in Boston and subsequently in New York City where he is still based today, O’Doherty through hosting, interviewing, and his entry into art writing as an art critic for The New York Times, O’Doherty not only continued his work as a visual artist with during a period he has described in numerous talks and interviews as ‘his graduate education occurring in the public eye’, but he befriended and integrated himself via his various roles (artist, critic, writer, educator) not only to his generation of artists who would form the core of the Minimalist/Conceptualist movement (LeWitt, Bochner, Smithson, Hess), the generation of artists influenced by the idea and work of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage -who was himself influenced by Duchamp raising a question of originality of influence on those artists, Johns and Rauschenberg), but also to artist of the previous generation of the New York School such as Mark Rothko and the composer Morton Feldman. Most importantly, as he described it in his talk in Washington, in 1959 he went to New York City from Boston and “hunted down” Duchamp; not as an act of pilgrimage, but more or less to respectfully take him apart, study him, and eventually refute him.

Because O’Doherty is so adamant  in his statements seeking to correct what he views as a misconstrued understanding and reporting of his relationship to Duchamp by critics and art historians, I want to briefly touch on a few of the overlaps in their lives which fueled both of their interests in related themes, doing this as a means of underscoring O’Doherty’s maintenance that his work is not in emulation of that of Duchamp -he is no Duchampian in the sense many artists are- but rather inspired by other common sources he critically examined Duchamp’s work in order to refute those ideas which he found problematic in relation to his own creative undertakings.

To begin, both men began as painters. It is safe to say O’Doherty is still a painter, although he might be called by many other names -writer, performance artist, installation artist, and the list goes on. Duchamp famously denounced not only painting and the life of a painter, but also the identity of an artist. He declared to have given up making art for playing chess; declaring himself a respirateur. Of course, this was all subterfuge on part of Duchamp, who, despite dedicating much time to playing chess, still played the game of art in various ways and probably just as avidly; and on his final exhale released to us not a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, but Etánt donnés. Yet neither Duchamp nor O’Doherty was interested in making painting after existing models, models that connected only to the spectator through the eye. Each, was/is interested in reaching the spectator’s mind. Although Duchamp made his public declaration against ‘retinal’ painting and an existence bete comme un peintre a good decade before O’Doherty’s birth, the O’Doherty family background in medicine and his own initial forays into this scientific field argue that Duchamp was not the driving force for O’Doherty’s own interest in making art that superseded its outermost, visual layer. The desire to reveal the structure beneath the surface is not a declaration or stance against the visual object, or even painting, to gunst of the idea or concept on part of either Duchamp or O’Doherty; rather it is simply the desire of each to go beyond the surface and address the “I” beholding the eye through the work. To indulge in a bit of wordplay, a favorite pastime of both men, -there is more to this than meets the eye.

This brings me to introducing play as a formative aspect for both artists. As mentioned earlier, each man, since childhood, avidly played the game of chess; and chess is identifiable in terms both visual and conceptual as a leit motiv throughout both of their work. On one hand O’Doherty has applied the grid of the chess board along with the rules of the game -movement of the figures- as the substructure to work he has done across many media and genre. At times he has used chess quite literally and at other times more figuratively in his work. On the other hand, Duchamp, while also using the figures of the game literally in his work, more importantly applied the game figuratively by doning it as a mask from behind which he engaged [with the world (of art)].

Duchamp was a highly skilled player of the game, it was ‘his own game’. Suffice to say it would take another highly skilled player, one who knew the rules, through asking the right questions could take apart the strategy applied to the game by the opponent, find the holes, re-form, re-apply or create new rules of play, and then beat him at his own game. In the match O’Doherty set out to win the question he asked himself going into the game was how could he refute Duchamp’s assertion that art once hung on the museum wall rapidly declined to the point of death? For a painter such as O’Doherty, the question was existential -how can he prove this to be incorrect? Or, at least, to question in a way so the art he was making was not already declared dead upon arrival. As O’Doherty recollects and retells in his presentation at the National Portrait Gallery symposium the impetus he felt to engage Duchamp in his own game it becomes clear that, like in a game of chess, where each move requires the opponent to analyze and question in order to make the next move, from this question and its analysis further questions were formed and played out.

There are various ways to play and philosophies defining what play is. When playing a game the options are usually to play by the agreed upon rules until the game ends or to play by the rules to a point, generally of mutual agreement, then change the rules as a means of sustaining the game. This is the type one might associate most readily with playing a game like chess. Even Alice, when she traveled through the looking glass, followed the rules of chess to reach the end of the game and make it back to the other side. Then there is the type of play Richard Schechner in his book Performance Studies: an introduction describes as “...Nietzschean, where the gods (fate, destiny, luck, indeterminacy) change the rules of the game at any time, and therefore, where nothing is certain.” [page 92] Of these two kinds of play I propose the game played by Duchamp and O’Doherty might be viewed as falling somewhere in between these two types, after all the players began playing by the rules, but the rules were changed and uncertainty followed. However, it was not the gods that changed the rules, it was O’Doherty. Because of this I put forth that the type of play engaged in went beyond that of a simple game and entered into what Schechner described as ‘dark play’. This type of play is a form of ‘deep play’ defined by Clifford Geertz in 1973  in The Interpretation of Cultures, pages 432-33, as the type of play in which both parties are “...in over their heads. Having come together in search of pleasure they have entered into a relationship which will bring the participants, considered collectively, net pain rather than net pleasure”; and cited by Schechner as the basis for his definition of dark play: “Playing that emphasizes risks, deception, and sheer thrill”. [page 119] Although the idea that pain resulted from the game between Duchamp and O’Doherty is absurd, there was deception, risk and thrill leading to further uncertainty involved.

An urbane definition of a player is a person skilled at manipulating or “playing” others. A spin on the old adage ‘it takes one to know one’ would be ‘it takes a player to know a player’ and in the case of O’Doherty, Duchamp met his match - pun intended. Entering into his game with Duchamp, O’Doherty had studied the players previous moves in preparation for his own. The move O’Doherty made that challenged Duchamp took place one evening in the spring of 1966.

As the story goes, recollected at various times through the years by O’Doherty, the artist and his wife, art historian Barbara Novack, invited Duchamp and his wife Teeny to dinner. Beforehand O’Doherty had inquired if he could make a portrait of Duchamp. Duchamp, as was his nature willingly agreed -more to his willingness to be portrayed by his contemporaries I refer you to the essay ‘The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Depictions of Marcel Duchamp by His Contemporaries and Ours’ by Francis M. Nauman in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The dynamics of portraiture (2009). In preparation O’Doherty had rented an electrocardiogram machine, intending to create a portrait of Duchamp by recording the artist’s heartbeat.

Retelling the origins of the artwork Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1966) as part of his 2009 symposium talk, O’Doherty contextualized the origins of this work through the merging of his interests in body parts - perhaps from his own medical background in combination with advancing technologies, such as the first heart transplant which was only months in the future (December 1967) - with Symbolist poetry and prose (another overlap with the interests of Duchamp) and his question of how could art, the art he was making and the art Duchamp had made, be kept ‘alive’ in a museum in light of Duchamp’s pronouncement that artworks die on the museum walls. Three years earlier the artist Robert Morris had recorded his own heartbeat and titled it Self Portrait (EEG), therefore the precedence for applying this technology to portraiture was there; it had been done before, but lacked “wit”, in O’Doherty’s opinion. Witty is a character trait one might well associate with Duchamp, but not necessarily the body organ of the heart. More likely the artist known as the one who attempted to strip the emotional, the sentimental - all those things associated metaphorical with the heart - is associated with the brain, such as in the sculpture by Swiss artist Jean Crotti Portrait de Marcel Duchamp sur mésure (1916) consisting of a cast of the forehead/top of the artist’s (this remains questionable) head replete with a thick head of hair fabricated from fine wire, two glass eyes suspended beneath the brow-line, and the profile, jawline and neck of the artist replicated by means of a bent lead wire. An adjective used repeatedly by O’Doherty to describe Duchamp, his art and his reactions during the process was “cool”. The brain is considered ‘cool’ while the heart is considered ‘hot’. In reality, according to O’Doherty, Duchamp was neither. Duchamp was warm and that was what the artist was seeking to convey in his Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, the warm, living, respirateur.

The artist in his presentation recalling that night pondered what might have been his subject’s thoughts on the intention of the work. Despite the artist’s medical background his intentions were not to a potential pathological reading (or telling) of his subject. [Note: O’Doherty shared in his talk that the previous evening a cardiologist did finally look at the EEG drawing and declared signs of previous cardiac incidents in the lower ventricles. Duchamp died approximately 18 months after O’Doherty recorded his heart beat -of heart failure.] While it the intention of O’Doherty might not have been clear to Duchamp that evening, and although the two artist never spoke of it later, it was perhaps clear to Duchamp that evening this portrait was unlike the others he had allowed others to make of (with) him. O’Doherty reports Duchamp suggested he sign the work “Brian O’Doherty, M.D.”. Innocent enough when one considers the artist in fact has a medical degree. However, the younger player saw through the tricks of the older coyote. As per Francis Nauman’s essay, Duchamp frequently allowed others to make or attempt to capture his portrait. But, in doing so he often found a way to subvert the artist making the portrait, claiming authorship for himself. O’Doherty was aware of this and did not allow Duchamp to even claim co-authorship by attaching his initials to O’Doherty’s name. This recognition of Duchamp’s ability to usurp authorship or sway the intention from that of the artist’s to his own, or as O’Doherty described it in his 2009 symposium presentation as Duchamp’s radioactive zone of influence, had kept O’Doherty from permitting his Portrait of Marcel Duchamp to be exhibited anywhere in the vicinity of a Marcel Duchamp exhibition until then, forty-three years later.

To make Portrait of Marcel Duchamp embody the the warm, living, respirateur O’Doherty needed to go further with the work than Morris took his self portrait; and still further than Duchamp might have taken it. Portrait of Marcel Duchamp by Brian O’Doherty did more than open a can of worms, it opened a box of questions of authorship, not only for spectators but also for the artist, and perhaps, also for Duchamp. Who owned the heart beat? Was it a Readymade? If so, was it made by Marcel Duchamp or involuntarily by Duchamp’s heart? Had O’Doherty appropriated, stolen or even eaten Duchamp’s heart(beat)? How much was O’Doherty controlled by Marcel Duchamp in this work? The questions raised by this work point to the nature of dark play O’Doherty and Duchamp were (equally) engaging in as they explored and pushed the boundaries of the space of identity expressed in (through) the art work.

O’Doherty often writes or speaks of the role of ‘gesture’. In the third essay of Inside the White Cube when discussing 1,200 Bags of Coal, Duchamp’s ‘non-artwork’ installation in, of or for the “International Exhibition of Surrealism,” 1938, New York, the author defines gesture as:

 “Gestures are a form of invention. They can only be done once, unlesseveryone agrees to forget them. [...] I suppose the formal content of a gesture lies in its aptness, economy, and grace. It dispatches the bull of history with a single thrust. Yet it needs that bull, for it shifts perspective suddenly on a body of assumptions and ideas. It is to that degree didactic, as Barbara Rose says, though the word may overplay the intent to teach. If it teaches, it is by irony and epigram, by cunning and shock. A gesture wises you up. It depends for its effect on the context of ideas it changes and joins. It is not art, perhaps, but art-like and thus has a meta-life around and about art. [...] So a gesture has an odd historical appearance, always fainting away and reviving.”

Further:

 “A gesture may be a “young” project; but it is more argumentative and epigrammatic, and it speculates riskily on the future. It calls attention to untested assumptions, overlooked content, flaws in historical logic. [...] Documents and photographs challenge the historical imagination by presenting to it an art that is already dead. [...] Undocumented projects may survive as rumor and attach themselves to the persona of their originator, who is constrained to develop a convincing myth.”

                                        (O’Doherty, 1976 pages 70-71)

If the term gesture is applied to the works of Marcel Duchamp per the first section of the quote above, then per the second quote the term must be applied to the work of O’Doherty, specifically Portrait of Marcel Duchamp. However, I propose that while O’Doherty’s work is gestural in nature based on his definition, it is not the same type of gesture as Duchamp’s. The difference between the two artists’ approach would be akin to the difference between a 30 second gesture drawing and a two minute sustained gesture drawing. Duchamp was, on the one hand, the economic, one-off, single thrust 30 second gesture. O’Doherty, on the other hand, was the sustained gesture of a “young” project, reliant on its argumentativeness, speculation, and ‘challenge (to) the historical imagination by presenting to it an art that is already dead’ by means of documents and photographs, lest it “attach” itself to the persona of of its originator, constrained to develop a convincing myth’.

In order to take the linear recording of Duchamp’s heartbeat further O’Doherty first carefully dissected the line, becoming intimate with the visualized structure of the isolated beat. The artist remarked upon the sameness yet originality of each beat. By isolating the single, resting beat, O’Doherty amplified the repetition, which through redundancy indicated an equilibrium, ‘fictional paralysis’ or ‘suspended mortality’. In his 2009 presentation in Washington D.C. describing this process O’Doherty paraphrased Kierkegaard’s “true repetition is eternity”, expanding it by inversion to “eternity is the true repetition” and remarking that although we “can tell time by the heart, (but) the heart cannot tell time”. Further to O’Doherty and notions of eternity, a few years later in a 2012 conversation with Professor Margaret Iversen as part of Drawing Room 10th Anniversary event (https://vimeo.com/179471974) the artist harking back to his Catholic childhood upbringing, the most terrifying notion was ‘eternity’, that this could go on forever. Returning to Portrait of Marcel Duchamp O’Doherty sustained the gesture of Duchamp’s EEG through sixteen works in the work, which is rightly termed a series. After the initial recording on paper and the isolation-dissection of the heartbeat O’Doherty knew the next thing he wanted to do was make Duchamp’s heart beat again. “I was going to make him live” O’Doherty said. This required more than the paper documentation; this required the heartbeat itself. To achieve this O’Doherty sought to construct an oscilloscope-type object employing low tech materials and resources scavenged from the streets of lower Manhattan. Building a box with three fragments of Duchamp’s heartbeat etched into glass, with flickering backlighting like a blinking sign in a dive bar advertising cheap beer, O’Doherty hung his box on a wall, plugged it and and brought Duchamp’s heart back to life. Subsequently an iteration followed featuring a single etched pane of glass depicting the fragment of the beat, and which the artist slowed down the flicker of the lights so that Duchamp’s resting heart now beat only every seven seconds per minute -near to that of a blue whale, according to the artist. By slowing Duchamp’s heartbeat down, spreading the number of times Duchamp’s heart actually beat in life, O’Doherty calculated he had increased Duchamp’s lifespan by almost three times - near eternity. O’Doherty had refuted Duchamp’s claim that the artwork died on the museum wall by making him live forever.

Again, the artists never discussed the work once it was completed. But upon completing these first iterations in the series and exhibiting them in 1967, O’Doherty has described how eerie it was for him to watch Duchamp watching his heartbeat beat as the artist came to view the exhibition. We do not know what Duchamp thought of this portrait, which was perhaps the most intimate portrait (with the exception of Duchamp’s self portrait Paysage Fautif) done of the artist. The questions raised might always remain unanswerable; however, in their asking not only Brian O’Doherty was led further into his sometimes dark, generally playful explorations of identity.

A One-Man Show for Five People or “I’ve always lived parallel lives.”

The header of this subsection combines a headline from an article in the campus newspaper about an exhibition of Brian O’Doherty’s art in 2012 at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY along with a quote from O’Doherty in used as a headline in an article published October 18, 2014 in The Irish Times looking back at the career of Brian O’Doherty -aka ‘Patrick Ireland’.

It might seem slightly out of order to review the biography of the main protagonist almost at the end of the essay; however, doing so underscores how little relevance the artist’s bio plays in terms of his or her work, yet maintains it is relevant and therefore information must be supplied to gain a more expansive and detailed picture of the artist and understanding of the work. To begin with Brian O’Doherty I return to the death of Patrick Ireland.  In the 2008 New York Times article on the death of Patrick Ireland Michael Kimmelman wrote:

 "Mr. O’Doherty was born in 1928 into a family of doctors in County Roscommon. “I was always searching for an identity,” he recalled.His family had “a fractured sense of identity”: two uncles joined the British army, another uncle fought the British and helped capture a British general. [...]

In retrospect, like everything else he did, the essay (II. The Eye and the Spectator’ Inside the White Cube) dealt with identity — how people and the works of art they make, once decoded, show themselves inextricably entwined with their origins and locales."

('Patrick Ireland, 36, Dies; Created to Serve Peace' May 22, 2008)

I have mentioned earlier O’Doherty’s own background in medicine and the role it has and has not played in his work. There is clearly reason to say that despite always having been ‘a painter’ much of O’Doherty’s methodology harks to that of a scientist in the laboratory, with a strong studio based painting practice. In fact, an area art historians might one day consider perusing in O’Doherty’s biography is how O’Doherty’s practice led research might have contributed to the formation of the emerging definition of the practice led artist-researcher in the late twentieth century. As if the dual identities of scientist (medicine) and visual artist (most media) were not enough we must also add to O’Doherty’s curriculum vitae that of performance artist, author (literary), writer (journalism/criticism), art critic (in writing and on TV), television host/interviewer, educator (adjunct professor), and arts administrator (part-time director for the United States National Endowment for the Arts for twenty years). A resume as full as O’Doherty’s is not found every day, not just because the expansiveness of the roles undertaken appears exhausting and overwhelming for the average person, but more importantly the degree of diversity in identities performed in each role is generally discouraged by society and each area the role is situated in. Even in the twenty-first century when the understanding that people are no longer tied to a single job or profession is commonplace, there remains the expectation, or dare I write, the respect for the specialist or the expert. Why this is and remains to be is not my topic, but when addressing the art world in general regards to the ’specialist’ or ‘expert’ the origins can be traced to the birth of modernism, the shift in the role of the artist (and the academic) in a culture where the art object (and knowledge) is commodified and consistency in style, expertise and specialization are guarantees of a value which not only will remain stable but increase over time. While many, if not the majority of people are content with this system -deduced by the period it has not only existed but by its development throughout the late twentieth century and into the current century- suffice to say there have been, are and, quite possibly, will be people who are not content to become or remain specialists, tied to a single style, constrained by the walls of the White Cube described by O’Doherty. What then? How do we live not just parallel lives, but multifaceted existences in a culture of experts and specialists? Further, does (must) a multifaceted existence exclude the ability to become an expert or a specialists?

Another interesting connection between Marcel Duchamp and Brian O’Doherty is their hyphenated identities; Duchamp the ‘French-American’ and O’Doherty ‘Irish-American’. Both men came to the United States in their mid-to-late twenties, and while O’Doherty pretty quickly ‘settled’ in New York City (after four years in Boston), Duchamp spent decades moving back and forth between the US and France, one foot on each shore, before ‘settling down’ in New York City -though both men have/have had footholds in Europe, Duchamp in Paris and Spain for the final years of his life, and O’Doherty and his wife their villa  in Umbria, Italy - the significance of which I will write more later. This shared status of continually shifting between the identities of emigrant and immigrant deposited another layer to or polished another facet of the identity of each. A difference between the biographies of O’Doherty and Duchamp is the early life of each; whereas Duchamp’s family had a clear ‘French’ middle-class identity, the identity of the O’Doherty’s was impacted by the political relationship/history between Britain and Ireland, as made clear in the quote above.

In addition to sharing the experience of hyphenated identities, Marcel Duchamp like Brian O’Doherty had a fairly rich and diverse resume -perhaps not quite as expansive as O’Doherty’s- but for the time well beyond the status quo. How each artist created the space necessary to function in a multitude of ways, while in some ways, on the surface, might at first appear to be related, when taken apart and studied more deeply reveal a quite expansive difference. Foremost in their difference is Duchamp’s rejection of the identity of an artist - one who makes art in favor not of other identities, but for the non-identity of a respirateur; whereas O’Doherty has fully embraced this facet of his identity, perhaps it is not even a facet, but the core.

What might appear to be a commonality, but upon closer examination reveals itself to be a difference is how and why Duchamp and O’Doherty both developed and applied alter egos, specifically a female alter ego, within his creative process. At a glance Rrose Sélavy and Mary Josephson appear to be long lost cousins, if not aunt and niece. Yet these two ladies are not related.

There remains much discussion amongst Duchamp scholars as to why “Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose”. Duchamp was notoriously vague, misleading and at times simply short on providing the information needed to pin down these things. It is not the job of the artist or his alter ego to ‘explain’.

On the other hand, Brian O’Doherty, in his efforts to differentiate his art and ideas from those of Duchamp, made it quite clear in his March 2009 presentation at the Inventing Duchamp symposium why Mary is Mary and not Rrose. What we know of Rrose’s origins from Duchamp is that he created Rrose out of a desire to play a game, a little one between ‘I and me’, just to be different. He has said he first thought of changing religions -exchanging Catholicism for Judaism- but on second thought gender seemed the great leap. Rrose did not necessarily ‘do’ anything different than what Marcel did, although she readily took ownership of her/his actions. Whereas Mary, who Brian O’Doherty described as his closest persona -the one he most needed- originated in his own attempts to understand and process the struggles he witnessed his wife dealing with throughout the 1960s and 1970s in the all-male art history department/world. Mary turned Brian into a feminist. Mary was a tool with which O’Doherty could apply to engage differently with a part of his work -in this case writing, art criticism.

In addition to Rrose and Mary both Duchamp and O’Doherty had other alter egos or personas. Again, they were developed quite differently and fulfilled different functions within each artist’s practice. In Marcel Duchamp’s practice I venture to describe all of the personas of Marcel Duchamp under the single moniker “Marcel Duchamp”. Unlike Rrose or the personas of O’Doherty, Duchamp’s personas were not developed as individual characters, instead they might be described as a multitude of masks all looking like Duchamp, but each an original; like a heartbeat: each the same, each original.

In the case of O’Doherty in addition to Mary Josephson and Patrick Ireland there were two more personas -William Maginn a reincarnation of an late-18th, early-19th century Irish journalist/writer who occasionally wrote under a pseudonym of “O’Doherty”, and the composite writer-historian and generally uptight character of Sigmund Bode. A fifth persona of Brian O’Doherty could be seen as “Brian O’Doherty” in either one of his other roles, or as I will write in a later essay, as the painter. What is interesting about both the personas of Duchamp and O’Doherty, with the exceptions of Rrose Sélavy and Patrick Ireland the identity of the artist  behind the persona, in the case of O’Doherty, was revealed decades after the inception of the persona- after the persona had published, edited, commented on, exhibited (or failed to exhibit) works created by O’Doherty and attributed to that identity. In matters of Duchamp it is questionable if the artist behind the personas “Marcel Duchamp” has ever truly been revealed, this is a matter both Duchamp scholars and laity are still debating to this day.

What is clear in regards to both artists’ application of personas to his creative practice is, for O’Doherty to find the freedom he sought he needed the mask -the name of a persona- to hide behind in order to explore his ideas through other media in a space where too much diversity, too much variance was frowned upon; for Duchamp freedom was found by simply creating a mask that was a copy of himself that was also an original, an act of rejecting the association of his image/name with any fixed identity.

Following the thread back to painting.

To conclude this essay in Personas - Why not Duchamp? - The life and death of Patrick Ireland I return to the overlap in the biographies of Marcel Duchamp and Brian O’Doherty, their mutual beginnings as painters and chess players. Throughout their lives, and O’Doherty is still alive at the writing of this essay, both painting and chess remained a thread throughout their creative practices.

Despite what Duchamp said about no longer painting, he did, and one could argue that his ‘not’ painting is what kept this thread running through the heart of his practice. The beating that never ends. In regards to O’Doherty and his painting practice, I will discuss it more thoroughly in the final essay of this section; however, suffice to say that painting remained a prominent thread in his practice by the additional pathways he explored and by which he further developed questions directed specifically to painting after Duchamp. How does the painting on the wall remain alive after its own death has been prematurely declared?

Therefore, in my next essay I will examine more closely the role and impact of the multiple personas, aside from Patrick Ireland, in the practice of Brian O’Doherty alongside other artists, primarily painters, writers and performance based artists who have used multiple personas as tools in their creative practices to explore identity. My final essay in this section will address in more detail the development of the Rope Drawings and their connection with the personas to the later paintings of Brian O’Doherty, focusing on the wall paintings in the artist’s villa in Todi, (Umbria) Italy.

Authentic Drips and Ziggy Stardust

I suppose it is a misnomer to call these 'studio writing' as they are stream of conscious thoughts I had upon waking, the stuff that accumulated from the previous day that in sleep floated to the front of the line forming inside my head, elbowing their way out through my fingers onto the notepad in my phone as I lay in bed. There is something about these thousand words that has made me want to capture them here.

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How does the painter explain the 'deadening' that occurs to the painting through the act of copying?

If painting is performative and per Schechner's idea of the performative equivalent to "as" performance created or coming into existence via acts of restored behavior, THEN the copy itself is never a copy of an original but always a copy of a copy (of a copy, etc).

So, for instance, the drip that occurs when moving fluid paint around the surface while painting may be unique in its occurrence on that surface, with that particular material in that specific moment, but is not original in that each component from which the drip came into existence taken separately -fragments of the drip- has occurred elsewhere before. Time may seem to be the exception however, from the point of view of a person who has experienced regular states of deja vu and jamais vu this is questionable.

I, the painter, can copy the drip either by replicating the conditions - the components, the fragments - from which the copy I am copying came into existence. The copy of the copied drip may appear 'true' or a 'good' likeness. Yet there is something missing.

Reading Auslander on glam rock and the (negative) criticism originally thrown towards Bolan, Bowie, et. al. by the (anti-) establish(-ed, -ment) rock writers/musicians/critics that came just prior was the lack of authenticity. Authenticity being what gave rock its edge, its 'street cred'. Bowie attempted to shut this critique down by saying what he was doing was not music but theatre. However then, and still today almost two years since his final creative acts were thrust upon us shortly before the death of David Jones, we, the listeners, the spectators fail to acknowledge this truth spoken by the artist, even when we ourselves replicate it. We say 'Bowie' performed theater while calling him a musician, a rock musician - limiting the action to a single persona while acknowledging the multitude he played.

Auslander gives the example of the critic Lester Bangs who could not accept Bowie's Ziggy Stardust music as rock because he found it inauthentic. Yet when Bowie released Young Americans Bangs came on board - now Bowie was showing doing what Mr Bangs understood as performing authenticity.

[I see myself sitting on a blue carpet in my almost-teenage bedroom, listening to the cassette tape I've ripped from the LP of Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust I checked out from my local public library soon after getting the stereo from a Santa whose true identity was known to me,; my hair bleached and spikey blonde, wearing my unstructured, turquiois-dyed jean jacket covered in badges from bands of the late 1970s with a little 'Boy Howdy!' pin on the raised right corner-collar, reading Creem and the words of a soon-to-be-late Mr. Bangs, yet I see not the face of Lester Bangs speaking the words I am reading, but the face of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs speaking platitudes of rock authenticity. Parts of this memory are authentic.]

Bringing me back to Wollheim's relationship of painter-object-spectator and the copied copy. Is this deadening I, the painter, am perceiving a result of my own limitations looking at the object -the copy- as the painter and not as the spectator?  Is it a case of Lester Bangs - unable to open myself to another way of looking at the copy of the drip? Am I not assuming the persona of spectator when standing before the drip? Or is it the drip that through the process of copying has been deadened?

Thinking back to the exercise Franz, Petra and I did this winter in the studio of copying the black and white oil painting I had painted over the course of many months, acts of copying they each undertook from their own ways of painting and copies I then did of Petra's copy using her ways of working with my own variations, I think of how I, Robyn the painter, reacted to the works.

While Franz was very enthusiastic about his copy, I still view it as leaden, static, and heavily awkward in comparison to the painting I painted and Franz copied. Perhaps it is the variation in the materials rather than how Fran built the painting through their application?

I've responded much more positively to Petra's copy, even finding it more 'successful' than the copies I did of her copy later. Again I wonder if I am responding to the materials more than their application or the resulting work? The watercolor Petra used could be seen as being more different from the oil I used than the acrylic Franz used. When I look back at the documentation of Franz painting the copy I grow more enthusiastic about the painting he is doing at the stages of the process where the work appeared furthest from the original. Is this my own 'authenticity bias'?And is it mine as the painter or as the spectator?

Back to Bowie, in 1972 interviews both NME and Rolling Stone the artist said he envisioned his work as theater, assuming characters on a stage as if in a Broadway or West End musical. At some point he could just step out of the role he developed, step off the stage and another actor could step on and into the role. Yet when Ziggy Stardust 'died' some 18 months later no other actor stepped into the role. Instead Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars were frozen in the moment Bowie played them. Why? Did no other actor feel him or herself able to step into the role? Many who came after did (attempt) to assume the techniques Bowie applied to creating the character-persona; but never assumed the role of Ziggy.

I need to look this up, but recently on NPR I heard musicians speaking of covers of songs and how they only do one if they can add something to the original -I guess they implied make the cover 'authentic'. Most covers they find bad because they fail to do this, though every now and then their are exceptions. How many 'good' covers of Bowie in various guises have I heard?

Yesterday I saw that a popular rock (odd combination of words but their use together says much about the post-Ziggy age of music) musician will/has taken it upon him/herself ( I don't know now who this musician is - must inquire further, or not?) to perform Ziggy. Bring him back to life, I suppose. There were photos -recreations of Ziggy and a red shaggy mullet, mime-like layers of make up, sky blue polyester suit. Another actor in the role. But as I looked at the pictures I thought "that's not Ziggy!"

What was missing in the Ziggy-drip I was looking at?

There must have been something beyond theater or the role of a character that Bowie brought to the character-persona. Was it something that was scattered with the ashes of Mr Jones into the Pacific?

Or was it Lester Bangs standing before me, preventing me to see that drip as an authentic copy just like Ziggy was?

Important?

If Melusine, Petra and Franz are personas of the artist Robyn Thomas, then who/what is Robyn Thomas to them?

or:

If they are personas of me, who am I?

Schjeldahl on Rauschenberg

He was a performance artist, first and last. -Peter Schjeldahl on Robert Rauschenberg

From: 'The Wave of History' The New Yorker, May 29, 2017. pp. 60-62

Quotes and Notes on Performance Studies: An introduction

Performance Studies: An introduction (Third Edition)

Richard Schechner, Sara Brady, media editor.

2013, New York, Routledge.

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‘...there is no historically or culturally fixable limit to what is or is not “performance.” ...The underlying notion is that any action that is framed, enacted, presented, highlighted, or displayed is a performance.’ (2)

‘Thus, performance studies does not “read” an action or ask what “text” is being enacted. Rather, one inquires about the “behavior” of, for example, a painting: how, when and by whom was it made, how it interacts with those who view it, and how the painting changes over time. The artifact may be relatively stable, but the performance it creates or takes part in can change radically. The performance studies scholar examines the circumstances in which the painting was created and exhibited; she looks at how the gallery or building displaying the painting shapes its reception. These and similar kinds of performance studies questions can be asked of any behavior, event or material object.’ (2) [Schechner presenting definition of performance studies per Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.]

Multiple literacies and hypertext

‘Operating at many levels and directions simultaneously demands multiple literacies. These multiple literacies are “performatives” - encounters in the realm of doing, of pursuing a through line of action.’ (4)

‘People are both readers and authors. Identities revealed, masked, fabricated, and stolen. This kind of communicating is highly performative. It encourages senders and receivers to use their imaginations, navigating and interpreting the dynamic cloud of possibilities surrounding each message.’ (5)

Indian philosophy - maya and lila

‘...they felt that the whole universe, from ordinary reality to the realm of the gods, was maya and lila -illusion, play, and theatre on a grand scale. The theory of maya-lila asserts that the really real is playful, ever changing, and illusive.’ (15)

Renaissance Europe -theatrum mundi (15)

Shakespeare: As You Like It -Jacques- “All the world’s a stage | And all the men and women merely players; | They have their exits and their entrances; | And one man in his time plays many parts” (2,7: 139-42)

Hamlet “{...} the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, a ‘t were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (3, 2: 21-25)

Modern/Postmodern (15-16)

Lacan ‘The Mirror Stage’ 1977, Écrits, 1, 4, 42

Bateson ‘A Theory of Play and Fantasy’ 1955 metacommunication -complex framework

Goffman ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ 1959

Austin ‘How to Do Things with Words’ 1962 -performativity

Continental School…

Schechner: seven areas where performance theory and social sciences coincide. (17)

1. Performance in everyday life, including gatherings of every kind.

2. The structure of sports, ritual, play, and public political behaviors.

3. …

4. Connections between human and animal behavior patterns with an emphasis on play and ritualized behavior.

5. Aspects of psychotherapy that emphasize person-to-person interaction, acting out, and body awareness.

6. …

7. Constitution of unified theories of performance, which are, in fact, theories of behavior. 

See Schechner’s diagrams page 18

Victor Turner

‘A performance is a dialectic of “flow,” that is, spontaneous movement in which action and awareness are one, and “reflexivity,” in which the central meanings, values and goals of a culture are seen “in action,” as they shape and explain behavior.’ (20)  see Turner box

‘Performance studies resists fixed definition. Performance studies does not value “purity.” It is at its best when operating amidst a dense web of connections. ...New interfaces will appear as time goes on, and older ones will disappear. Accepting “inter” means opposing the establishment of any single system of knowledge, values, or subject matter. Performance studies is open, multivocal, and self-contradictory. Therefore, any call for a “unified field” is, in my view, a misunderstanding of the very fluidity and playfulness fundamental to performance studies.’ (24)

‘...the performative occurs in places and situations not traditionally marked as “performing arts”...’ (24)

Jon McKenzie

‘Hyphenated identities, transgendered bodies, digital avatars, the Human Genome Project -these suggest that the performative subject is constructed as fragmented rather than unified, decentered rather than centered, virtual as well as actual. Similarly, performative objects are unstable rather than fixed, simulated rather than real. They do not occupy a single, “proper” place in knowledge; there is no such thing as the thing-in-itself.’ (27) See McKenzie box

What is Performance? (Chapter 2)

‘To Perform’

Being (existence)

Doing (action)

Showing Doing (action)

Explaining ‘showing doing’ (reflection) (28)

‘That making art involves training and rehearsing is clear. But everyday life also involves years of training and practice,...’ (28)

‘The long infancy and childhood specific to the human species is an extended period of training and rehearsal for the successful performance of adult like. (29)

‘Any and all of the activities of human life can be studies “as” performance.  … Every action from the smallest to the most encompassing is made of twice-behaved behaviors. (29)

‘But it is also true that many events and behaviors are one-time events. Their “onceness” is a function of context, reception, and the countless ways bits of behavior can be organized, performed, and displayed. The overall event may appear to be new or original, but its constituent parts - if broken down finely enough and analysed - are revealed as restored behaviors. (29)

‘restored behavior: physical, verbal, or virtual actions that are not-for-the-first time; that are prepared or rehearsed. A person may not be aware she is performing a strip of restored behavior. Also referred to as twice-behaved behavior.’ (29)

Skipping ahead to section on Restoration of behavior (34-36)...

ex. restored behavior is like strips of film being edited...moved around or reordered. (collaged)

‘...they are independent of the causal systems (personal, social, political, technological, etc.) that brought them into existence. They have a life of their own. The original “truth” or “source” of the behavior may not be known, or may be lost, ignored, or contradicted - even while that truth or source is being honored.’ (34)

‘Restored behavior is “out there,” separate from “me.” To put it in personal terms, restored behavior is “me behaving as if I were someone else,” or “as I am told to do,” or “as I have learned.” Even if I feel myself wholly to be myself, acting independently, only a little investigation reveals that the units of behavior that comprise “me” were not invented by “me.” Or, quite opposite, I may experience being “beside myself,” “not myself,” or “taken over” as in trance. The fact that there are multiple “me”s in every person is not a sign of derangement but the way things are. The way one performs one’s selves are connected to the ways people perform others in dramas, dances, and rituals. In fact, if people did not ordinarily come into contact with their multiple selves, the art of acting and the experience of possession trance would not be possible. Most performances, in daily life and otherwise, do not have a single author. … Individuals given credit for inventing rituals or games usually turn out to be synthesizers, recombiners, compilers, or editors of already practiced actions.’  (34-35)

‘...all behavior is restored behavior - all behavior consists of recombining bits of previously behaved behaviors.’ (35)

‘Restored behavior can be “me” at another time or psychological state … Restored behavior can bring into play non-ordinary reality … Restored behavior can be actions marked off by aesthetic convention … It can be actions reified into the “rules of the game,” … Because it is marked, framed, and separate, restored behavior can be worked on, stored and recalled, played with, made into something else, transmitted, and transformed.’ (35)

‘Restored behavior is symbolic and reflexive. Its meanings need to be decoded by those in the know.’ (35)

‘Performance in the restored behavior sense means never for the first time, always for the second to nth time:  twice-behaved behavior.’ (36)

Skipping back to page 30…

Performances-

-made from bits of restored behavior

-each performance is unique

-bits of restored behavior can be combined in endless variations

-’no event can exactly copy another event.’ (30)

ex. A film showing:

‘...the context of every reception makes each instance different. Even though every “thing” is exactly the same, each event in which the “thing” participates is different. The uniqueness of an event does not depend on its materiality solely but also on its interactivity - and the interactivity is always in flux.’ (30)

‘ “Where do performances take place?” A painting “takes place” in the physical object; a novel takes place in words. … In this regard, a painting or a novel can be performative or can be analyzed “as” performance. Performance isn’t “in” anything, but “between.” ‘ (30)

‘To treat any object, work, or product “as” performance - a painting, a novel, a shoe, or anything at all - means to investigate what the object does, how it interacts with other objects or beings, and how it relates to other objects or beings. Performances exist only as actions, interactions, and relationships.’ (30)

Eight kinds of performance -sometimes separate, sometimes overlapping

Of the those cited by Schechner I am interested in two of these

2. In the arts

8. In play. (31)

2. In the arts -

‘...even if performance has a strong aesthetic dimension, it is not necessarily “art.” (ex. Figure skating, gymnastics) … Deciding what is art depends on context, historical circumstance, use, and local conventions.’ (32)

Skipping ahead to “Is” and “as” performance (38-40)

Limits to what can be studied under “is” performance; almost anything can studied “as” performance.

“is” - historical and social context, convention, usage and tradition says it “is” performance; nothing inherent in the action itself makes it or disqualifies it.

ex. rituals, play, and games. (38)

‘Any behavior, event, action, or thing can be studied “as” performance.’ ex. maps (41)

‘What the “as” says is that the object of study will be regarded “from the perspective of,” “in terms of,” “interrogated by” a particular discipline of study.’ (42)

“make-belief” or “make-believe”

‘The many performances in everyday life … are not make-believe actions. … In “make-believe” performances, the distinction between what’s real and what’s pretended is kept clear. … various conventions - …- mark the boundaries between pretending and “being real.” … This distinction was first challenged by the avant-garde and later further eroded by the media and the internet. (becoming make-belief) (43)

‘Public figures are often making belief - enacting the effects they want the receivers of their performance to accept “for real.” ‘ (43)

ex. American President addresses Congress

‘By now, everyone knows these kinds of activities are meticulously staged. Today’s American presidency - at least its public face - is a totally scripted performance that has only been played (as of the 2012 election) by a man. … The goal of this is to “make belief” - first, to build the public’s confidence in the president, and second, to sustain the president’s belief in himself. His performances convince himself even as he strives to convince others.’ (43)

Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” and the “Heisenberg effect” - since 1927 the notion of fixity challenged. ‘The uncertainty principle is closely related to the Heisenberg effect which asserts that the measurement of an event changes the event.’ (44)

‘But “uncertainty” or “indeterminacy” rang a bell. It has proven to be a very appropriate, durable, and powerful metaphor affecting thought in many disciplines including the arts. Music theorist and composer John Cage often used indeterminacy as the basis for his music, influencing a generation of artists and performance theorists.’ (44)

‘But what do performances accomplish?’ (45)

Schechner’s seven functions of performance:

1. To entertain

2. To create beauty

3. To mark or change identity

4. To make or foster community

5. To heal

6. To teach or persuade

7. To deal with the sacred and the demonic

‘But the hierarchy changes according to who you are and what you want to get done. Few if any performances accomplish all of these functions, but many performances emphasize more than one.’ (46)

See figure 2.12 (46)

Ritual (Chapter 3)

‘...one definition of performance is: Ritualized behavior conditioned and/or permeated by play.’ (52)

‘Play gives people a chance to temporarily experience the taboo, the excessive, and the risky. … Ritual and play lead people into a “second reality,” separate from ordinary life. This reality is one where people can become selves other than their daily selves. When they temporarily become or enact another, people perform actions different from what they do ordinarily. Thus, ritual and play transform people, either permanently or temporarily. … In play, the transformations are temporary, bounded by the rules of the game or the conventions of the genre.’ (52)

Skipping ahead to Rituals as liminal performances (66-70)

the liminal - “betwixt and between”

See Turner box ‘Liminality’ (66)

‘In ritual and aesthetic performances, the thin space of the limen is expanded into a wide space both actually and conceptually. What usually is just a “go-between” becomes the site of the action. And yet this action remains, to use Turner’s phrase, “betwixt and between.” It is enlarged in time and space yet retains its peculiar quality of passageway or temporariness. Architecturally, the empty space of a limen is bridged at the top by a lintel, usually made of lumber or stone. This provides reinforcement. Conceptually, what happens within a liminal time-space is “reinforced,” emphasized.’ (66-67)

See boxes with definitions of limen and liminoid (67) and figure 3.9 (70)

‘Liminal rituals are transformations, permanently changing who people are. Liminoid rituals, effecting a temporary change -...- are transportations. In a transportation, one enters into the experience, is “moved” or “touched” (apt metaphors), and is then dropped off about where she or he entered. (72)

See figure 3.10 (72)

‘A person is transformed only a few times in life, if ever. However, a person may experience transportations on an almost daily basis. … Transportations occur not only in ritual situations but also in aesthetic performances. … In theatre, actors onstage do more than pretend. The actors live a double negative. While performing, actors are not themselves, nor are they characters. Theatrical role-playing takes place between “not me...not not me.” (72)

ex.’... Spalding Gray played a character called “Spalding”, a persona who was a framed and edited version of the “real” Spalding. Gray developed his life-narratives by tape recording early in-process appearances, listening to the recordings, and editing his text. By the time Gray appeared onstage at Lincoln Center, his apparently casual self-presentation was honed in every detail, including slips and “mistakes.” The audience enjoyed “Spalding” as presented by Gray.’ (73)

restoration behavior applies even in original improvisations ‘It is the manipulation of these repetitions that give each performer her or his own style.’ (73)

‘The fact is that no performance is pure efficacy or pure entertainment. … Performance originates in the creative tensions of the binary efficacy-entertainment.’ (80)

Play (Chapter 4)

‘Ritual has seriousness to it, … Play is looser, more permissive … flexible where ritual is rigid. … restored behavior is playful; it has a quality of not being entirely “real” or “serious.” Restored behavior is conditional; it can be revised. Playing is double-edged, ambiguous, moving in several directions simultaneously.’ (89)

‘Play is very hard to pin down or define. It is a mood, an activity, a spontaneous eruption. Sometimes it is rule-bound, sometimes very free. It is pervasive. Everyone plays and most people also enjoy watching others play - ... Play can subvert the powers that be…’ (89)

‘Victor Turner called play the “joker in the deck,” meaning it was both indispensable and untrustworthy. Indeed, in Western thought, play has been both valued and suspect.’ (89)

Rundown of ways to control play from Enlightenment to 19th century; in the twentieth century…

‘Play returned as a category of creative thought and action. Notions of the unconscious in psychology and literature, theories of relativity and uncertainty (or indeterminacy) in physics, and game theory in mathematics and economics are examples of play taken seriously. In the visual arts, playing with ordinary reality -inventing new ways to look at things- led to cubism and then abstract expressionism. Various avant-gardes disrupted, parodied, and playfully subverted official culture. Play is intrinsically part of performing because it embodies the “as if,” the make-believe.’ (89)

See Victor Turner The joker in the deck box… ‘Play is the supreme bricoleur of frail transient constructions,...’ (90)

Play and Playing - dichotomies abound

‘There are more questions than can be answered - and this is a significant aspect of the whole “problem” of play and playing. … can we ever really understand something so complex?’ (91)

Two kinds of playing:

1. ‘...all players accept the rules of the game and are equal before the law.’

2. ‘...Nietzschean, where the gods (fate, destiny, luck, indeterminacy) change the rules of the game at any time, and therefore, where nothing is certain.’ (92)

Some qualities of playing (92)

-lifelong activity of humans and many animals

-consists of play acts

-games (more overtly structured than playing): rule-bound, designated location, definite outcome, clearly marked players

-playing (less structured than games): anywhere, anytime, any number of players, rules may or may not be followed by the players and could change unexpectedly at any time -though most players agree to play by the rules determined

-fantasy and “kidding around” no articulated rules

-sometimes “anti-structural” with the fun being in how to subvert the rules

‘Adult playing is different from children’s in terms of the amount of time spent playing and the shift from mostly “free” or “exploratory” play to rule-bound playing. … Artists are not the the only adults given leave to “play around.” … Both child play and adult play involve exploration, learning, and risk with a payoff in the pleasurable experience of “flow” or total involvement in the activity for its own sake. Playing creates its own multiple realities with porous boundaries. … Play is performance (when it is done openly, in public) and performative when it is more private, even secret - a strategy or reverie rather than a display. This interiority separates play from ritual, which is always being enacted.’ (92)

Deep play - when playing can be dangerous (physical or emotional) and the risks outweigh the potential rewards. (92)

Schechner’s seven approaches to play:

1. Structure: relationships among the events constituting the play act

2. Process: how are the play acts generated and what are the phases of their development over time

3. Experience: feelings and moods of the players and observers; affect of these on the playing; different experiences of players and spectators; changes in feelings and moods over time and the affect this has on the playing; how to determine if the play was good or not

4. Function: purpose of the play acts; affect of play acts on individual and community learning, growth, creativity…, uses, economic consequences

5. Evolutionary development: human play and animal play relationship; child and adult play; playing and individual creativity; play and culture

6. Ideology: political, social, and personal values emphasized, criticized, or subverted knowingly or unknowingly by playing

7. Frame: how do players and spectators know when playing begins, takes place, ends (93)

Roger Caillois four types of playing: see box

1. Competition

2. Chance

3. Simulation

4. Disorientation (94)

‘In any given play situation there may be both players and observers.’ (95)

[I am both.]

‘It is possible to be playing from the perspective of the observers but not be playing, or at least not be in a play mood, from another point of view. … Indeed, professional sports present a particularly complex situation. A lot of hype goes into convincing fans that the players are in it “for the love of the game.” Probably many players enjoy playing at a professional level. But clearly money and stardom also count for a lot. Furthermore, the players on the field are only the most visible parts of an extremely elaborate network of managers, owners, and media joined to real estate, government, and corporate interests. At what level does the play stop and something else begin?’ (95)

[art world analogy?]

‘Play acts often serve multiple, contradictory purposes simultaneously.’ (96)

‘If play acts themselves are not always fun, neither are the processes that generate play acts always playful.’ (96)

ex. training, tedious, boring processes…[watching paint dry]

‘On the other hand, sometimes the processes involved in preparing can be more enjoyable than the outcome.’ (96)

ex. making the work as opposed to showing or trying to show it!

‘Thus there is no necessary relationship between process and product. Either, both, or neither may be playful.’ (96)

ex. making a video and showing/watching it!

‘Moods are especially labile, shifting suddenly and totally. … moods are part of playing… play can suddenly turn venomous and deadly. Only in well-organized games -which constitute a minority of play acts- is the situation always under control.’ (96)

James P. Carse see box (97)

Finite games move towards resolution (means to the end), infinite games have the goal to keep playing (never a means to the end, only a means to a means to a means…)

‘Cultures are infinite games. The ultimate infinite game is the open-ended play that sustains existence.’ (97)

Csikszentmihalyi -Flow (97)

The experience of playing is ‘flow’.

‘Flow occurs when the player becomes one with the playing. … At the same time, flow can be an extreme self-awareness where the player has total control over the play act. These two aspects of flow, apparently contrasting, are essentially the same. In each case, the boundary between the interior psychological self and the performed activity dissolves.’ (97)

M. Csikszentmihalyi: 1975, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, 35-36

‘In the flow state, action follows upon action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention by the actor.’ (97)

D.W. Winnicott -transitional objects and transitional phenomena

‘...playing was a very special experience of trust that had its origins in the “potential space” between baby and mother. This space is both an actual playground and the conceptual arena where human culture originates. Experiencing this potential space starts when an infant first senses the difference between “me” and “not me.” ‘(98-99)

mother’s breasts = transitional objects

mutual fondling/gazing during nursing = transitional phenomena

Progresses to other objects and spaces...neutral space of unchallenged illusion, per Winnicott; a liminal play world where anything can become anything else.

‘Winnicott locates the origins of creativity and illusion in playing. He writes that the satisfaction of playing is a feeling that comforts and sustains a person throughout life. Winnicott asserts that the satisfying experience of playing is inherent in art and religion.’ (99)

See Winnicott box (100)

In animals…

‘The creativity of play comes in the new ways already-known behaviors are reorganized, made into new sequences. Some individual movements within a play sequence may never be completed, and this incomplete element may be repeated over and over. Seen this way, play is a very cogent example of “restored behavior.”’ (102)

Signals ‘I’m playing.’ -metacommunication: a signal framing other signals contained within or after it. (103)

ex. a wink, a smirk, over or under playing...Stanislavskian “as if” or Schechner’s double negative, “not...not”.

Boal’s ‘...Theatre of the Oppressed is most effective when the boundary between spectators and actors is blurred or entirely effaced. Boal’s message to spectators is, “This is play, and you must play with us!”’ (105)

Philosophies of play (106-112) See boxes for the many different thoughts on play

Early view: play = power because those with power (the gods, the kings) were free to play, make and break the rules, indulge their desires

Ancient Greek ‘free play’ (paidia) versus ‘rule of law’ (ludus)

paidia … Greek word origin relates to ‘child’

ludus … Latin origin, related words...ludic, illusion, delusion, ludicrous… (107)

From Nietzsche to Derrida…

‘“Free play” in many guises -from Dada to performance art, from the unconscious to indeterminacy- has regained much of its power, if not its divine status. But the question (free play versus rules) is far from settled. It probably never can be settled because the struggle is not over data or interpretation, but over basic worldviews.’ (107)

According to Nietzsche “will-to-power”, or making up the rules as you go playing is the way artists and children play. (109)

No center to play, according to Derrida, because the center is not a fixed place but a function. ‘All authority is subverted, “displaced,” opening spaces for all kinds of radical free play.’ (111)

See Derrida’s own writing on decentering, with its wordplay, punning and double meanings. (box on 112)

Artists understand Heisenberg metaphorically -open to chance processes. (111)

A deep-seated Western bias against play. (112) [think Protestant Work Ethic…]

‘Adults are supposed to play only during “time off” (from work) in specially designated places and according to well-defined rules. If the playing is regarded as risky, sexual, and subversive to work values or the authority of the state, whole neighborhoods are fenced off and designated a “red-light” district. … Or special days are designated for playing -holidays, time off, and vacation. But every Mardi Gras is followed by Ash Wednesday, each binge by a confession. … In many cities, the railroad station, the theatre district, and the red-light district are cheek by jowl. People want to come and go efficiently from where they can play or watch others play.’ (112)

Disneyfication of Times Square in 1990s....controlling play.

Maya-lila (113-118)

Playing is fundamental to Indian philosophy, worldview, aesthetics. (113)

See box definition (114)

ma -to make...transformation, something from nothing, or something to something else (114)

lila - play, sport, or drama

‘...when the gods play, the world comes into existence; but this world, however substantial it appears, is not fixed or reliable. It is ultimately governed by desire and chance.’ (114)

‘...the relationship of maya to lila is paradoxical.’ (114)

Deep play, dark play (118-121)

See box from Geertz (118)

Deep play is dangerous, all absorbing.

Dark play is when some of the players don’t know they are playing.

‘Dark play subverts order, dissolves frames, and breaks its own rules -so much so that the playing itself is in danger of being destroyed, as in spying, double-agentry, con games, and stings. … dark play is truly subversive, its agendas always hidden. Dark play rewards its players by means of deceit, disruption, and excess.’ (119)

‘Why do people create and enact dark play? ...Sutton-Smith …”the masks of play” -play that conceals its purposes, even its existence. Children no less than adults engage in this kind of play. … wherever the eyes of authority gaze down on them -kids find ways around the rules.’ (121)

‘All these activities - the pleasant, the provocative, and the terrifying - can be understood as playing, as ways of establishing autonomous social orders and hierarchies, of exploring or exploding the limits of power, of resisting the adult world that apparently so dominates them. … But why do others engage in it? Assuming a new or alternative identity, even briefly, is very important. Masking, cloaking one’s ordinary self just to get away from the humdrum, is also important. Much role-playing over the internet is this kind of dark play. … There is something excitingly liberating about this kind of playing.’ (121)

‘However one looks at it, play and playing are fundamentally performative.’ (121)

Performativity (Chapter 5)

It’s everywhere! And like play, difficult to pin down. A noun and an adjective. Similar to what Schechner calls “as” performance. (123)

Austin’s performative -words and actions: “To say something is to do something.” (123)

‘Austin did not understand, or refused to appreciate, the unique power of the theatrical imagination made flesh. … The characters are real within their own domain and time. … Insofar as the characters partake of their special reality, their performative utterances are efficacious.’ (124)

‘What the “as if” provides is a time-space where reactions can be actual while the actions that elicit these reactions are fictional. … The situation is paradoxical, and uniquely human. It demands the ability to keep two contradictory realities simultaneously in play.’ (124-125)

Poststructuralists had issues with Austin.

‘Derrida insisted that all utterances are infelicitous: speech in the theatre is a “determined modification” of a “general iterability”. That is, meaning cannot be permanently fixed: every utterance is a repetition -just as stage speech is the repetition of a script. But Derrida’s “iterability” is not the parroting of a known script, but a quality inherent in language and therefore embedded in thought, in the personal-cultural construction of reality. Meaning is not singular, original, or locatable. Meaning is not owned by the speaker, the spectator, or even the circumstance. Meaning -and all and every meaning is contingent, temporary- is created in process through the complex interaction of all speakers -players- and their specific personal-cultural circumstances.’ (125)

Reality TV and beyond (126-129)

In light of recent world events...I wonder how much this section needs revising (or not)?

‘People asked then, and the question remains salient, does the presence of cameras change behavior or convert someone’s home from a “real-life” venue into a “theatre”? It is a sociological application of Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle where the observation affects the outcome.’ (128)

‘Does the ubiquity of the looking eye make the world into one vast prison (as Hamlet believed Denmark to be)? … Where will the line separating private from public be drawn? Can it be drawn anywhere? The line is disappearing, if it has not already vanished. These are situations addressed, but by no means resolved, by theories of performativity.’ (129)

Postmodernism

‘One of the decisive qualities of postmodernism is the application of the “performance principle” to all aspects of social and artistic life. Performance is no longer confined to the stage, to the arts, and to ritual. … this ability to embrace contradiction and eclecticism is a hallmark of the postmodern.’ (129)

See box Lyotard: Performativity and power (129-130)

Postmodern -deconstruction of the master narratives of modernism leading to fragmentation, pastiche, relativism, local truths, delight in contradictions … media generated “temporary master narratives” (131)

‘The arts themselves take a back seat because ordinary life is framed so “artistically.”’ (131)

‘Representational art of all kinds is based on the assumption that “art” and “life” are not only separate but of different orders of reality: life is primary, art is secondary. But developments in photography, film, and digital media overturned traditional theories. Questions arose concerning exactly what was an “original” -even if there could be such a thing as an original.’ (131)

See box W. Benjamin -Authenticity, presence, aura (132)

The authority of the object is threatened.

before=after

Simulation - representation ends and reproduction takes over.

‘In the realm of the arts and information technology, digital “copies” are not copies at all, but clones.’ (133)

see Baudrillard box (134)

Popular culture simulation similar to ‘reality’ TV and ‘real life’ internet sites.

‘A simulation is neither a pretense nor an imitation. It is a replication of… itself as another. That makes simulations perfect performatives. A cloned sheep or a U2 song distributed digitally over the internet is not a copy but an “original” in a theoretically infinite series. There is no difference between “copy” and “original.” The decision about whether to call a specific sequence of digitized data an original or a copy is a matter of ideology, not of any difference between the so-called original and the so-called copy. One can determine the “first” in chronological and even legal terms, as the courts have done; but this determination depends on knowledge outside the simulation. There is nothing inherent in the code that tells whether it was first, fifth, or nth.’ (133)

Feigning

‘One pretends, then acts, then simulates, then arrives back at real life. A kind of experiential mobius strip is performed. Is this second real life “real life” and not real life? How can one tell?’ (135)

Simulations and Disney parks

Simulations and historical reenactment -ex. Plimouth Plantation

Simulations of military exercises

Simulations of scientific experiments

Simulations of torture

‘Simulation is important to the arts -especially with regard to works that occupy a liminal area between what is socially-legally acceptable and what is beyond the pale.’ (140)

Poststructuralism/deconstruction

Bases for academic theories of performativity; postmodernism is a practice in the visual arts, architecture, and performance art; poststructuralism (deconstruction) is an academic response to postmodernism. (141)

   Postmodernism - practice

+  Poststructuralism - theory

   Performativity (practices and theories)

‘...subverting the established order of things. But the matter doesn’t end there. What’s happened is that the ideas of poststructuralism and the techniques of performativity -...- have been eagerly taken up by business, science, and the military, eager to enhance their control over knowledge; anxious to acquire more power.’’ (141)

[So, we’re back to the early ideas of ‘play’ and the power of the gods?]

The poststructuralist rejected the ‘binary oppositions’ of the structuralists as being over-simplified and buttressing the status quo socially, politically, and philosophically. ‘Poststructuralists opposed all notions of universals, originals, or firsts. To poststructuralists, every act, every utterance, every idea, is a performative.’ (142)

No ‘first voice’ of ultimate authority, instead an endless stream of repetitions (see Foucault box, 143) -everything is in flux (Heraclitus and Nietzsche)

‘“There is nothing outside the text,” Derrida wrote. But the “text” in Derrida’s theory is all of human culture. ...By “writing” Derrida means more than graphic inscription and literature. He means entire systems of “inscribed” power: laws, rituals, traditions, hierarchies, politics, economic relations, science, the military, and the arts. Derrida views sultures as constructed sets of relations, historically founded and always contested. … It is no accident that in English the word “authority” includes the word “author.” … All writing enacts agendas of power. Writing doesn’t serve power, but the other way around: who writes performs authority. Yet all authority, whatever its proclamation of eternity and universality, is temporary:...’ (143)

See Derrida box (144)

Cultures are palimpsests according to Derrida. Behind every writing are other writings; every writing is a power struggle…

‘Yet every narrative, no matter how elegant or seemingly total, is full of holes, what Derrida calls “aporia” -open spaces, absences, and contradictions. Nothing can be totally erased. These aporias leak various pasts and alternatives into the present order of things.     The authorities -...- attempt to make the present take on the appearance of being the outcome of an inevitable process (...). But this ineluctable continuity -...- is a fiction. The past is full of holes; the present is provisional, the future is not known. All historical narratives are haunted by what/who is erased, threatened by what/who demands representation.’ (145)

See Blau box (145)

Différance (difference + deferral) - otherness plus a lack of a fixed or decided meaning. Coined by Derrida. Meaning is always being ‘played out’ in writing as it cannot ‘be’ once and for all.

‘Furthermore, writing in the poststructuralist sense consists of “iterations” -quotations, repetitions, and citations. Derrida emphasizes that language in general and speech acts in particular depend on an active estrangement, an encounter with “otherness.”   This is very close to Brechts Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect).’ (146)

‘Brecht argued that art is not a mirror held up to nature but a hammer with which to shape it.’ (146)

The diffusion of poststructuralism

Problem: poststructuralists were holed up in the ivory tower… a closed system. See Butt box (149)

‘.In fact, the more liberal the academic system, the more easily it keeps radical impulses within known bounds. … the revolution of thinking envisioned by the poststructuralists has largely been reduced to and transformed into performative play.’ (149)

See Lakoff box (150)

Constructions of gender

‘The performative inquiry asks, “What constitutes individual identity and social reality? Are these constructed or given? And if constructed, out of what? … the answer is that these consist not of naturally determined operations but of something built and enforced by means of “performance” (see Chapter 2) … Even “nature” is not natural, or prior, but a humanly constructed concept designed (consciously or unconsciously) to accomplish human ends.’ (151)

See Butler box (151) from “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 521, 524-28 (1988)

‘Each individual from an early age learns to perform gender-specific…’ (151)

Constructions of race

A cultural construct, therefore changes in reaction to culture-specific historical forces. (154)

ex. Adrian Piper Cornered (1988) dissects what constitutes racial identity.

See Piper box (157-158)

During, before, and after performance art

‘One of the recurring themes/actions in performance art is the construction of identity. The question performance art often asks, sometimes answered, sometimes left hanging, is, “Who is this person doing these actions?” This is very different from the question theatre asks, “Who is this character doing these actions?” Insisting that spectators regard not a character but an actual person (even if the artist embellishes that persona, as Spalding Gray did), actualized the slogan, “the personal is the political.” ‘ (158)

See boxes from Brentano and Schneider (159)

‘Only by recognizing that identity is constructed, not given, contested, not settled, historically and politically evolving, not fixed in “nature”, can personal art be regarded as political.’ (160)

ex. Carolee Schneemann Interior Scroll (1975) -a rejection of the rejection.

‘Performance art evolved to some degree from painting.’ (162)

See Kaprow box (163)

[and Carolee Schneemann is a painter]

‘Performance art is part of a line of the avant-garde reaching back to the turn of the twentieth century -...’ (164)

Kaprow (like Warhol, Duchamp…)

‘...to demystify art, debunk the establishment that controlled museums, and make arts that could be performed by anyone.’ (165)

‘An increasing number of iconic works are being “re-performed.” (165)

What the Gravedigger knew about the performative

“An act hath three branches - it is to do, to act, to perform” (Hamlet, 5, 1:11)

‘Any action consciously performed refers to itself, is part of itself. Its “origins” is its repetition. Every consciously performed action is an instance of restored behavior. Restored behavior enacted not on a stage but in “real life” is what poststructuralists call a “performative.” … The ultimate example of “to act” is “to perform” - to be reflexive about one’s acting. … But the Gravedigger’s brief disquisition shows that the notion of performativity has been around a long time.’ (166)

Petra's Statement

The following is a draft statement Petra wrote for a proposal to include the work A little madness in the Spring (after Emily Dickinson) in a small group exhibition.

XXXVIII

A little madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King,

But God be with the Clown,

Who ponders this tremendous scene-

This whole experiment of green,

As if it were his own!

-Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Emily Dickinson wrote this poem, as was her custom, on a scrap of paper circa 1875. By then Miss Dickinson was no longer in the Spring of her mortal existence but late Autumn, entering the final decade of her life. The poem was first published posthumously 1914 in The Single Hound. This volume is a collection of poems Miss Dickinson had sent to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Susan Dickinson kept the poems close, reading and rereading the poems and the numerous letters from close friend until her own death in 1913. Thereafter, faced with the decision to either burn (the wishes of Miss Dickinson) or pass along the papers to the group of lovers and scholars who’d grown in the quarter century since her Aunt Emily’s passing, her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, chose the latter, for which I am personally grateful.

April 2017 as part of the exhibition ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you? The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson’ at The Morgan Library, New York City, I had the opportunity to personally view the scrap of paper upon which Miss Dickinson drafted this poem.* Using techniques and materials of reproduction/replication -digital photography, inkjet prints, mirrors- in combination with my seeds of choice -pigments fertilized with gum arabic and acrylic binder, applied to a soil of paper and panel, and watered with -well, water- I’ve cultivated my own little garden for contemplating the madness in the Spring; ‘this tremendous scene’ of regeneration -yet, each instance unique. A scene we might observe, attempt to reproduce or replicate, but never possess or truly originate.

-pn

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*To view the original draft of this poem and hear it read please visit: http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/emily-dickinson/12

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A short bio to be included with the proposal co-written by Petra and Robyn:

Petra Nimm is a persona of the painter Robyn Thomas. Little is known biographically about the painter Petra Nimm other than she has preference for the fluidity of paint, speaking in images rather than words, is enamored by flowers and the poems of Emily Dickinson. When Petra Nimm is not painting she is reading.Robyn Thomas (b. 1970 Columbus, Ohio) received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Studio Art -Painting from Kent State University in 1991 and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Practice from Transart Institute in Partnership with Plymouth University [UK] in 2016. Based in Providence, Rhode Island since 2002, Ms. Thomas has exhibited her artwork in Germany, Japan and the United States. Currently she is a candidate in the practice-led PhD program of Transart Institute in Partnership with Plymouth University [UK]. Ms. Thomas is assisted in her research on play, personas and painting by the personas Petra Nimm and Franz I. Walsh, both painters, and the writer-persona Melusine Van der Weyden.

Preliminary thoughts on the written exegesis

Preliminary thoughts on the written exegesis as they have been tossed around inside my head for the past few weeks as I contemplate what might become the chapter submitted for RDC2.

A slightly altered title? Playing Personas Painting   

At RDC1 the submitted title was Playing Painting Personas. However, as I begin to think about the structure of the written exegesis a change in the order of the title words is possible. Placing Painting at the end, but not ‘last’, would allow me to circle from my practice as research back to my practice. In a way it would be Painting Playing Personas Painting...but that is too convoluted. Simpler is the three words.

An Introduction about development of a tool (personas) and the method(s) of their application (play) within an established painting practice (mine) as a means to expand/enrich a methodology of painting where each of these are clearly defined.

A body structure of three sections reflective of the title and a smattering of what might fall into those sections. The three sections would most likely be divided into smaller essays of 3-5 per section. Section one, Playing will most likely be more focused on the theoretical concepts associated with my research.  Section two will then look at how the theories might be seen to be manifested through the application of personas in the creative practices of others.  Section three will focus on painting and painters, my own painting practice, and the application of personas in my practice.

         1. Playing:

Piaget, Vygotsky, Schön, Schechner - development, learning and self reflection in children and adults, possible connections made through examples in other areas, performativity, formal and informal education and training, building thru play the ‘tool’ of personas to be applied in painting practice.

2. Personas:

As applied in creative practices other than painting. Why not just Duchamp? How and possibly why personas of varying forms are/have been created, assumed, applied in varying degrees across creative practices. Identity and personas. Visual arts, literary arts, popular culture. The difference between the created persona and mental illness. Examples of personas: Duchamp, Pessoa, Bowie, Eleanor Antin and other examples. Introduction of the personas of my practice.

         3. Painting:

The role of the painter. Painters and their personas. Painters painting with materials other than paint. The personas in my studio -sharing space/time, profiles, the work of Melusine (1st and the non painter- writer/critic), Franzi (3rd and the assistant, gatekeeper and novice/apprentice from whom the painter also learns), Petra (2nd and most elusive, the painter-colleague where the learning/sharing occurs not through words and conversations but through the paint. My practice before, during and after.

Summation

A random list of thought-topics-words

Nothing(ness)

Narratives

Rules of the game/rules of play/playing the game

Persona- a Person- the root: where is the painter in the persona?

The plausibility of painting as an other

Channeling (various ways; a form of scaffolding, structures that facilitate)

Adaptability and Change(s)

Models and/of Amusement

And

Philip Guston, Part One

From:

Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston by Musa Mayer. Munich, Sieveking Verlag/Hauser & Wirth, 2016.

Something John Cage had said to him during the 1950s often came to his mind. “When you start working, everybody is in your studio -the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.” [7]

He treasured Willem de Kooning’s use of the word “freedom” to describe his “heresy” at the Marlborough opening in 1970. … “The other important thing that de Kooning said to me,” my father told an interviewer in 1980, “which I think is wonderful, was this: he said, “Well, now you are on your own! You’ve paid off all your debts! ...I think I am… I don’t look at my pantheon of the masters of the last 500 years of European painting as I used to. Or when I do I see them differently.” [8] (Mayer, p.235-36)
 

[7] Philip Guston, statement in It Is, No. 5, Spring 1960.

[8] Philip Guston, as quoted in Jan Butterfield, “Philip Guston- A Very Anxious Fix,” Images and Issues, Summer 1980.

****

I’ve never really looked at Guston much.

Starting out in the mid-1980s when looking to painters of his generation I tended to gravitate more towards the likes of Motherwell, Kline, Rothko, and de Kooning, and the women who were still considered peripheral figures thirty years ago. Later, leaving the New York School behind, I went further back to the European painters of the movements between the wars, German Expressionist, Surrealists, the French and Spanish painters. Eventually I just looked at painting, and forgot the painters.

By the mid-1980s what filtered through to me looking at painting of the past half-century on Philip Guston was the paintings of the last 10-15 years of his life. His period as a heretic. Only, I did not know what paintings came before, and facing the painting of the period in which I stood -after Pop Art, the Neue Wilden and the Pictures Generation- I really was at a lost to what the scandal of these late works of Guston might be. The Philip Guston paintings I saw in the museums and galleries were no longer the ‘early’ or even ‘mid-career’ Guston's, but these late, scandalous paintings so I had nothing to compare to.

Was it the imagery? A big, hairy eyeball. Stubbly, fat face. Gigantic shoe. Cigarette in a big, cartoon like hand. Maybe the hooded, Klu Klux Klan figures? The imagery seemed to pop and the Klan figures pointed to a political commentary that for the time they were painted was not too out of place. Lacking knowledge of the artist’s intent, the imagery he employed was not in itself scandalous.

Was it the color or handling of the paint? In this period of ‘post-...’ Guston’s palette, handling or anything that could be viewed from a formal or technical perspective could not be the instigator of a scandal of any scale.

Rather than spend the time figuring out why, I simply walked past.

****

Early this spring I received a short email from a. with a link and the comment “if you’ve never seen this film Robyn it’s well worth a look:” followed by a link. The link led to the film Philip Guston: A Life Lived (1982) directed by Michael Blackwood. Released two years after Guston’s death the film contains older footage of the artist painting in his studio in Woodstock, NY, giving lectures, and, importantly, viewing, reflecting upon, and discussing paintings in the career retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art during the days prior to its opening in May 1980 - three weeks before the artist’s death.

During a conversation over coffee a week later, in an aside, a. mentioned the memoir written by Guston’s daughter, Musa Mayer, and how difficult of a personality/parent Mr. Guston must have been. We did not discuss Guston’s painting. However, after watching the film days before my curiosity had been piqued. In the film I’d finally seen the early and mid-career work in relation to the late work, heard Guston in his own words speak of the change the work underwent, what others deemed radical though he himself did not.

I watched the film again. Then I ordered Musa Mayer’s book.

The impetus for taking a closer look at Guston was the way in which he saw the shift in his work as part of a natural progression, despite how radical others might have seen it, and how the reaction to this shift by the ‘art world’ was so incredibly harsh that, in spite of the acceptance of those same paintings today, is still talked about in terms of the scandal they caused.

Unlike the late works of Guston’s friend and colleague, Willem de Kooning, whose own radical shift in painting can be traced to the effect of physiological changes in the brain due to dementia, Guston’s shift came from within the painter’s practice. It was part of a process that happened the way painting happens in the artist’s studio, in the course of a long career, when -as in the words of John Cage cited above- even the painter has left the studio.

Hearing Guston speak of the work hanging in the museum in San Fransisco, reading the reflections of his daughter and the words she collected from various interviews her father gave, from conversations he had with friends, colleagues and his wife, it became clearer to me the scandal of the late paintings had little to do with the paintings themselves, and much more to do with the heretic act of the painter who painted them. Guston had the audacity to follow the painting, letting the painting become itself.

The retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the Spring/Summer of 1980 was not the first career retrospective of Philip Guston’s paintings. Eighteen years earlier, in 1962, a retrospective had been held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City; Guston was not yet fifty years old.

By the time that first retrospective was held Guston’s career had developed from a semi-autodidactic easel painter and politically motivated muralist working collaboratively in Los Angeles, to a New York City based, WPA sanctioned muralist, a professor at midwestern universities painting celestial navigation murals for the U.S. Navy during the Second World War alongside easel paintings that were becoming less and less representational and more and more abstract, until the early 1950s, when back in New York City he became known for his ‘abstract expressionist’ paintings in Mars black, cadmium red medium and titanium white. When viewed today in relation to all of the work that preceded the late paintings, not just to the work that immediately preceded, the progression seems quite logical -as it did to Guston.

A closer examination of Guston and the shifts that occurred in his painting over the course of his fifty year career in relation to the topic of my research is warranted. As is the freedom per de Kooning that Guston found within the process of the final shift. There are indications of a playful approach to the process that enabled the shifts; a playful-ness that led to the emptying of the studio of everyone except the painting per Cage. Although there is no indication that Guston worked with personas in the way I am suggesting, there is an interesting autobiographical fact that might be taken into consideration: Philip Guston was not always Philip Guston. Philip Guston was a creation of Phillip Goldstein.