An Arduous Perigrination

On Friday, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago and spent the entire two and a half hours in one room--not one gallery or wing, but one room (and it was not the bathroom). This was new for me, as I usually browse casually, moving from room to room within 10 minutes on average, some rooms holding me for about 20 minutes if I am truly interested in the art or artist.

While there, I had a few thoughts I had never had before, some that I probably should have thought but which never occurred to me for one reason or another. I thought about them for the past few days and decided to share them briefly here, not because they have particular merit, but because to me they were unique.

1) Art museums are jarring. You jump from one worldview to another to another in the turn of the head. Blink once and you experience the Shang Dynasty in a wine vessel; twice you see Crivelli's Crucifixion; three times you are blindsided by Max Ernst's surrealist works. It's like going to the library for the purpose of looking through the dust jackets. If the works are good enough to deserve being placed in an art museum, they merit contemplation of some sort. Perhaps I am merely weak-minded, but I start getting a headache when I try to think about too much at once. Granted, some works are not meant to be contemplated, such as the wine vessel, but there is still an element of depth to the piece that ought to be considered for a brief period at least. I am not suggesting that you search for the meaning of a piece, or try to "get the feeling" that it gives. All I am suggesting is something that Aesthetic theorists since Plato have posited--the good or great aesthetic experience that defines a well-wrought thing is not a passing thing, but something that pervades you and impels you to continue the contemplation.

2) Art actualizes the desires of the culture. Walter Benjamin suggests (and I am not by any means fully in agreement with his theory!) that art is essentially cultic. Take for an easy example the first two pieces above: the wine jar for funeral purposes and the painting of the crucifixion for purposes of prayer. These things arose out of the need for religious action. Traditionally the artwork has arisen from the desire to create a symbolic representation of the divine ends. The art becomes more and more elaborate as the deities become so. Yet with the advent of a distant deity, or a deity stripped bare of niceties, what replaces him in the human urge for aesthetic beauty is naturally whatever else actualizes the desires of the culture. More recently (say mid-19th through the 20th century) the art has come to reflect the desire of the culture to reinvent the individual as the deified creator of his or her own particular idiom. Even more recently there has been a trend of "rediscovery" of the human inter-connectedness, but this trend is still heavily weighted down by the individualistic purposes that preceded it. In the Ernst example, desire itself is what is actualized.

3) My last point is really just a reiteration of the above points: if art actualizes the desires of the culture, then the effect that it has on the viewer is to evoke the same desire. In some cases this desire is confrontational, in others soothing, in others merely passive. However, and this is one of the main reasons I spent 2 1/2 hours in one room and would gladly spend it again in the same room, the most important thing in contemplating art is to process the experience. I am not good with rationalizing things into logical formations internally, but that is the beauty of art--it is not philosophy and therefore does not have to be fully processed to be understood.

I am not so good at explaining the visual aspect of experience, but I definitely feel that these new realizations have helped me to seize the penetrating aspects of art in a new fashion.

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #2

O Florida, Venereal Soil

A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.

The dreadful sundry of this world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The negro undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish...
Virgin of boorish births,

Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting,
Insatiable,

When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness,
Sequestered over the sea,
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red,
Sparkling, solitary, still,
In the high sea-shadow.

Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover ---
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.

-Wallace Stevens

(I thought it fitting considering my recent vacation!)

Signs and Metaculture, explained

The series "Signs and Metaculture" ended up being a bit too dry to appeal to any readers whatsoever, or at least to those who might be reading blogs like mine. And let's face it, no one is going to stumble on my blog unless they are googling "metaculture". Originally, the series was meant to explore differing aspects of representation through literary devices and terminology. For example, the word "Sign" was the first and I discussed how there were differing opinions on how "Sign" could be interpreted.

The second word I wanted to discuss was the word "Mimesis", a word that obviously lends toward the same meaning as "mime", that is, to imitate. Many philosophers and theorists (from Plato to Erich Auerbach, to Michael Taussig) have come to the conclusion that reality is formed by the imitating of other things.

However, the word Mimesis does not only mean "to imitate" in the sense of a re-telling, rather, it means to actualize and participate in the thingness of the object or idea being represented. In this sense, all cultures, all images, all words, essentially everything, participates together in reinterpreting and taking part in those things which came before.

I hope to delve more into this idea of representation in the future with more or less boring content, but it will be interspersed with other random things. If you have anything to contribute to the site (my wife said she can't read white on black, but I like it), let me know. While you have time on your hands, check out this odd fella.

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #1

This thing, that hath a code and not a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now,
Disturbeth his reflections.
-Ezra Pound

Welcome

This is a continuation of my participation in the effort of the former Ante-Occidents. Many posts found here are from that site. I hope to begin posting with more regularity. If the color scheme or content is bothersome, let me know soon. This blog I hope to make more "personal" than the last and less overtly intellectual. Most of this is due to my being out of school for the time being, but it also has to do with the lack of time. I don't have as much time to read or think now that I am quite busy with this job. Feel free to peruse the old posts until I come up with new ones.

The Active in the Making

Schopenhauer says in his first part of "The World as Will and Representation" that to consider the object as separate and prior to the subject is a false assumption. Indeed, the object comes simultaneously with the subject yet "presupposes" it.

So what the hell is he talking about? Basically this, the object is the representation of the subject, and yet exists as the very subject itself in its entirety. That is to say, the representation of a thing contains the thing in its fullness. Why? Because, according to the Schop, objects exist because of the active will of the subject; subjects exist as continuous emanations and participations in ACTIVE will.

In a painting (or some of my friends here might think of an icon), the image is said to represent something. Yet, Schopenhauer claims that that representation contains the fullness of the thing represented. Why? Because both the original subject and the representation of it both exist because of the same emanation of will. Because neither the subject nor object can exist without being active separately and active in their participation with each other (object drawing from the will of the subject and vice versa), the subject is pure action exertive and the object is pure action receptive.

Here is the problem: understanding. I have not yet read enough of the Schop to know what he thinks of when he says "understanding", but I do know that the knowledge of the existence of the subject fully within the object representing it presupposes an understanding of the subject itself. The issue here is that Schopenhauer clearly points out that all subjects are pure energia and no essence. Those in the Eastern side of the world would say that this cannot be, as one can never understand God outside of his energies, his actions. In other words, his fullness, his "being" as Schopenhauer calls it, cannot be known by man. While Schopenhauer gets a lot of points very close to the mark, I believe here is one where he goes a bit to the far side of his point. Yet, my problem is that I have not yet come up with a philosophical argument, though I know someone else already has and I just haven't read it, to counterpoint the argument for pure energy as being!

If I can figure out a simple way of explaining it, maybe I will apply it to my gradually forming definition of the "making" of words. What I have so far is this: in creation, everything is always in motion; the motion defined here is constant movement of the active will in supporting objects (or representations); words themselves are nothing but representations of the subjects (thoughts, physical things, images, etc.); language is made up of words; thus language is constantly subjected to the active supporting will of the subject. Conundrum: two opposing subjects actively projecting their individual wills upon the same phrase, thus creating opposing representations out of identical objects. The solution is not always that there is a faulty premise in one speaker's projection.

Well, I will leave it at that for today.