Piet Mondrian, landscape, plein-air, still life
Read MorePiet Mondrian, landscape, plein-air, still life
Read MoreOct 28, 2022
nature as atelier, composition, atmospheric perspective, saorge, oil on paper
Read MoreOct 26, 2022
Plein air studies, nature studies, learning from nature, studio practice, nature as atelier
Read MoreOct 26, 2022
Oct 15, 2022
Aug 12, 2020
Presenting two videos conveying two versions of a sunset experienced at Baie des Anges in Nice. The names are PEBBLES and SEA VIEW (each 1’ 14s). While making these, I was asking myself what “reality” is and what different mediums may mean to the artist and the viewer.
A few quick notes on Painting and Video…
These two videos were created to respond to each other as two views of the same experience. The videos attempt to speak about different overlaying realities, reality as seen by the human eye, reality through the means of painting, reality as seen by a digital recording device (iPhone) or a software program, and the reality of a person’s emotions and thoughts. These are all taking place simultaneously.
The SEA VIEW is also a video about painting; I believe that the
practice of painting (and other handmade art forms) is very important
right now because of the experience it provides the painter him/herself.
For the painter, a painting can hold many different realities
simultaneously. Below, find a few thoughts on painting that came to my
mind as I was making these videos.
- As a painting is made, it provides an instant trace of the human hand and serves as a tactile proof of existence in real-time and space. Every painting carries a personal story and memory to the person who made it. It is a form of a recording of a person’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences conveyed through gesture, line, and color by means of very simple tools and materials. Therefore, a very open, affordable, and egalitarian medium accessible to most people.
- While viewers often tend to compare paintings with photographs, for the painter, it is rather an experience that unfolds through time. So, in that sense, it might be appropriate to compare painting to video, a medium that also may hold memories unfolding over time.
- In contemporary life, Painting (and other “handmade” art forms) can act as a counterbalance to the virtual world. It may serve as the dialectic opposite to the virtual and digitized reality.
- For viewers who are not painters or familiar with the painterly process, video medium can be very alluring and may convey stories and different realities in a more convincing and direct way than a painting itself. However, the production of a digital video requires a camera, a computer, knowledge of software, etc. The artist is dependent on technology, and the artist’s voice is mediated through technology. Video is a medium made through technology to be viewed through the means of a technical device; a screen or a projector. It is a medium that indirectly perpetuates and accentuates our civilisation’s dependence on technology.
- When a painter looks at a painting, he/she looks at the structure, composition, brush strokes, the materials, the reflections, the color compositions, etc. He/she also thinks of the process of making it. This is a world of its own that is less accessible to the general public unless explained by other means such as language, film, or immersive environments.
- A painting can only be appreciated fully in person and through time. No technical device is necessary to experience it. To view a painting is an intimate experience and ought to be valued as such. Because of this, paintings should not be treated as objects of “mass consumption.” In my opinion, it isn’t possible to fully experience a painting in a group or in a crowded environment. Also, a photograph of a painting cannot, by any means, replace the experience of the painting itself.
- On the web, paintings are presented, but the images are digital photographs of paintings, not the paintings themselves. The web is, therefore, a celebration of photography above and beyond any other medium. The photographs act as substitutes of the real objects, and only part of the story is therefore conveyed. Many times, the wrong story is conveyed. Paintings and art that don’t translate easily into photography will suffer from this.
- A painting is an object that remains rather unchanged through time. The painting can carry a monetary exchange value; therefore, the cultural value of a painting is often confused with its monetary value. The market and the art world participants (artists, galleries, curators) benefit from upholding this vision. In my opinion, the cultural value of a painting, as noted above, is not related to the monetary value.
- If an artist strives to create immersive experiences as a means to engage a wider public in art, a good gesture would be to make viewers paint their own paintings. In this way, the viewer will be personally engaged in the process of making art, and as a result, will acquire a different understanding and appreciation for the painting medium and art in general.
Aug 07, 2020
written in preparation for the installation LA POETIQUE DES LAVOIRS held in three wash basins in the village of Saorge in 2013.
NARCISSUS HUBLOT EST2013 ECHO SYSTEME TURBO
VIDAGE
Rêvez, rêvez de moi !... Sans vous, belles fontaines,
IMPERMEABILISER
Ma beauté, ma douleur, me seraient incertaines.
ANTI-FROISSAGE
Je chercherais en vain ce que j'ai de plus cher,
BASKETS
Sa tendresse confuse étonnerait ma chair,
LAINE
Et mes tristes regards, ignorants de mes charmes,
DEPART PAUSE
À d'autres que moi-même. Adresseraient leurs larmes...
ESSORAGE
Vous attendiez, peut-être, un visage sans pleurs,
AIR CHAUD
Vous calmes, vous toujours de feuilles et de fleurs,
SYNTHETIQUES DELICATS
Et de l'incorruptible altitude hantées,
RINCAGE CONDUITS
Ô Nymphes !... Mais docile aux pentes enchantées
90°
Qui me firent vers vous d'invincibles chemins,
1200
Souffrez ce beau reflet des désordres humains !
RAJOUT DE LINGE
Heureux vos corps fondus, Eaux planes et profondes !
MARCHE EXPRESS
Tout texte en majuscules: machine à laver générique
Tout texte en minuscule: Fragments du Narcisse, Written by Paul Valéry
NARCISSUS SHORT
(short version installed as vinyl lettering at Fontana de Medge)
VIDAGE
Rêvez, rêvez de moi!…Sans vous, belles fontaines,
IMPERMEABILISER
Ma beauté, ma douleur, me seraient incertaines.
ANTI-FROISSAGE
Dites, ne suis-je pas celui que vous croyez…
RINÇAGE CONDUITS
Souffrez ce beau reflet des désordres humains !
RAJOUT DE LINGE
Heureux vos corps fondus, Eaux planes et profondes !
AUTRES OPTIONS
Profondeur, profondeur, songes qui me voyez,
LAINE
O semblable!...Et pourtant plus parfait que moi-même,
OPHELIA WHIRLPOOL ULTRA WITH SENSE LIVE TECHNOLOGY
SUPER DELICAT
There's rosemary,
SENSING
that's for remembrance.
WARM HIGH SPIN
Pray you, love, remember.
QUICK DRY
And there's pansies, that's for thoughts.
HOLD DOOR OPEN
There's fennel for you, and columbines.
TOUCH UP
There's rue for you, and here's some for me.
ALL COLD RINSES
We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays.
HEAVY DUTY
Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.
MORE LESS DAMP
There's a daisy. I would give you some violets,
TIMING
but they withered all when my father died.
DOOR LOCKED
They say he made a good end.
HOLD THREE SECONDS
OPHELIA 1598 HPP HAMLET PLUS PRO :
SOIE ET VOLAGE
Voici du romarin
JEANS
c'est comme souvenir:
VIDAGE EXPRESS 15 MIN
de grâce, amour, souvenez-vous;
RAJOUT DE LINGE
et voici des pensées, en guise de pensées.
EXPRESS TACHES
Voici pour vous du fenouil et des ancolies.
SYNTHETIQUES
Voilà de la rue pour vous, et en voici un peu pour moi;
COTON AVEC PRELAVAGE
nous pouvons bien toutes deux l'appeler herbe de grâce,
REPASSAGE RAPIDE
mais elle doit avoir à votre main un autre sens qu'à la mienne...
SPORT INTENSIF
Voici une pâquerette. Je vous aurais bien donné des violettes,
ECO TIME
mais elles se sont toutes fanées, quand mon père est mort...
DEPART PAUSE LAINE
on dit qu'il a fait une bonne fin.
PAUSE 3h
Tout texte en majuscules: machine à laver générique
Tout texte en minuscule: Ophélia in Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5, written by William Shakespeare, 1598
NEVER ENDING SPINCYCLE
(text based on a compilation of washing machine texts)
Hot
Warm
Cold
High
Medium
Low
On
Off
Spin Speed
End of Cycle Signal
Hold 3 seconds
Lock/Unlock
Control
Wash temp
All cold rinses
Start
Press and Hold
Pause/ Cancel
Door locked
High
Medium
Low
Extra Low
Air Only
Temp Adjust
More Dry
Normal
Less Dry
Dryness
Autocycles
On
Off
End of Cycle Signal
Sensing
Wet
Damp
Cool Down
Cycle Complete
Wrinkle Shield
Power
Auto
Dry
Damp
Super Delicate
Delicate
Casual
Normal
Heavy Duty
Touch Up
Quick Dry
Timed Dry
Timing
Add a garment
Wash
Rinse
Spin
Cycle Complete
HOT
LOW
END
ALL
AIR
DRY
OFF
WET
ADD
HOT AIR
DRY OFF
WET END
ADD ALL
LOW
WARM
HIGH
SPIN
HOLD
WASH
TEMP
DOOR
LOCK
HOLD
ONLY
MORE
LESS
DAMP
COOL
AUTO
DAMP
DUTY
WASH
WARM HIGH SPIN
HOLD DOOR OPEN
COOL WASH DUTY
AUTO LOCK ONLY
MORE LESS DAMP
Charge
Dosage
Court
Hydro Plus
Séchage doux
Autres Options
Taches
Autre programmes
Air chaud
Repassage rapide
Défroissage
Vidange
Essorage
Rinçage Conduits
Coton
Synthétique
Jeans
Laine
Express
Chemises
Automatic
Séchage
Séchage Délicat
Défroiss. Vapeur
Nett. Cuve
Imperméabiliser
Chemises/ Chemisières
Express 15 min
Arrêt
Vidage
Coton
Coton éco
Synthétiques
Mix
Délicat
Soie
Laine
Rinçage Essorage
Rajout de linge
Départ Pause
Programmes Quotidiens
Coton avec prélavage
Coton blanc
Coton
Coton couleurs
Synthétiques
Synthétiques délicats
Spéciaux
Laine
Soie et voilage
Jeans
Express
Sport
Sport intensif
Sport léger
Baskets
On Off
Eco time
90°
90°
60°
40°
60°
40°
6 kg
400
500
600
700
800
1000
1200
3h
6h
9h
12h
marche
pause
CHARLES BEAUDELAIRE
LE JET D'EAU
three translations
Le Jet d'eau
Tes beaux yeux sont las, pauvre amante!
Reste longtemps, sans les rouvrir,
Dans cette pose nonchalante
Où t'a surprise le plaisir.
Dans la cour le jet d'eau qui jase,
Et ne se tait ni nuit ni jour,
Entretient doucement l'extase
Où ce soir m'a plongé l'amour.
La gerbe épanouie
En mille fleurs,
Où Phoebé réjouie
Met ses couleurs,
Tombe comme une pluie
De larges pleurs.
Ainsi ton âme qu'incendie
L'éclair brûlant des voluptés
S'élance, rapide et hardie,
Vers les vastes cieux enchantés.
Puis elle s'épanche, mourante,
En un flot de triste langueur,
Qui par une invisible pente
Descend jusqu'au fond de mon coeur.
La gerbe épanouie
En mille fleurs,
Où Phoebé réjouie
Met ses couleurs,
Tombe comme une pluie
De larges pleurs.
Ô toi, que la nuit rend si belle,
Qu'il m'est doux, penché vers tes seins,
D'écouter la plainte éternelle
Qui sanglote dans les bassins!
Lune, eau sonore, nuit bénie,
Arbres qui frissonnez autour,
Votre pure mélancolie
Est le miroir de mon amour.
La gerbe épanouie
En mille fleurs,
Où Phoebé réjouie
Met ses couleurs,
Tombe comme une pluie
De larges pleurs.
— Charles Baudelaire
The Fountain
My poor mistress! your lovely eyes
Are tired, leave them closed and keep
For long the nonchalant pose
In which pleasure surprised you.
In the court the bubbling fountain
That's never silent night or day
Sweetly sustains the ecstasy
Into which love plunged me tonight.
The sheaf unfolds into
Countless flowers
In which joyful Phoebe
Puts her colors:
It drops like a shower
Of heavy tears.
Thus your soul which is set ablaze
By the burning flash of pleasure
Springs heavenward, fearless and swift,
Toward the boundless, enchanted skies.
And then it overflows, dying
In a wave of languid sadness
That by an invisible slope
Descends to the depths of my heart.
The sheaf unfolds into
Countless flowers
In which joyful Phoebe
Puts her colors:
It drops like a shower
Of heavy tears.
Oh you whom the night makes so fair,
How sweet, bending over your breast,
To listen to the endless plaint
Of the sobbing of the fountains!
Moon, singing water, blessed night,
Trees that quiver round about us,
Your innocent melancholy
Is the mirror of my love.
The sheaf unfolds into
Countless flowers
In which joyful Phoebe
Puts her colors:
It drops like a shower
Of heavy tears.
William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
The Fountain
My darling of a sweetheart, close,
For a long time, your great, tired eyes,
Keeping them in that languid pose
Where pleasure took them by surprise.
Out in the court the fountain chatters
And does not cease by day or night.
The swoon of ecstasy it flatters
In which love plunges me tonight.
Its sheaf uprears
A myriad flowers,
While Phoebe sheers
Through pearl-flushed hours,
To rain down tears
In glittering showers.
So does your flashing soul ignite
In lightnings of voluptuous bliss
And rushes reckless up the height
As though the enchanted sky to kiss;
Then it relaxes, grows more fine,
And in sad languor falls apart
Down an invisible incline
Into the deep well of my heart.
Its sheaf uprears
A myriad flowers,
While Phoebe sheers
Through pearl-flushed hours,
To rain down tears
In glittering showers.
O you whom night so beautifies
How sweet unto your breast to bend
And hear the water as it sighs
Into the ponds without an end
Moon, singing water, blessed night
And trees that tremble up above —
Your melancholy charms my sprite
And is the mirror of my love.
Its sheaf uprears
A myriad flowers,
While Phoebe sheers
Through pearl-flushed hours,
To rain down tears
In glittering showers.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
The Fountain
Thine eyes are heavy. Let them close.
Lie without opening them. Lie
Still in the lovely thoughtless pose
Where pleasure found thee. The long cry
Of moonlit waters that caress
The evening, languorous as thou art,
Lives on: So does the tenderness
Love has awakened in my heart.
The fountain leaps and flowers
In many roses,
Whereon the moonlight flares.
Their crystal petals, falling,
Falling for ever,
Are changèd to bright tears.
Even thus thy spirit, briefly ht
With the strange lightnings of desire,
Once more into the infinite
Flings up its pure forgetful fire,
As if the dusty earth to flee —
And blossoms there, and breaks apart,
And falls, and flows invisibly
Into the deep night of my heart.
The fountain leaps and flowers
In many roses,
Whereon the moonlight flares.
Their crystal petals, falling,
Falling for ever,
Are changèd to bright tears.
O thou, so fair and so forlorn,
How sweet, my lips upon thy breast,
To hear within its marble urn
The water sobbing without rest.
O moon, loud water, lovely night,
O leaves where the soft winds upstart,
O wild and melancholy light,
Ye are the image of my heart.
The fountain leaps and flowers
In many roses,
Whereon the moonlight flares.
Their crystal petals, falling,
Falling for ever,
Are changèd to bright tears.
— George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)
PAUL VALERY
FRAGMENTS FROM NARCISSUS
Narcissus Speaks
To placate the shades of Narcissa.
0 brothers, mournful lilies, I am dying of beauty
For having desired myself in your nakedness,
And, Nymph, it is to you, 0 Nymph of the fountains, I come offering vain tears to this utter silence.
A great calm listens to me, where I listen to hope.
The voice of the springs changes, and speaks to me of evening; I hear the silvery grass growing in the holy shade,
And the traitorous moon lifts up her mirror
Even into the secrets ofthe exhausted fountain.
And I! Flinging me down bodily in these reeds, I am dying, 0 sapphire, of my own sad beauty!
I can love nothing now but the bewitching water
Where I forgot laughter and the rose of former times.
How I rue your pure and fatal glitter, Fountain so softly surrounded by me,
Where my eyes drank in, from a mortal azure, My own image crowned with moistened flowers!
Ah, that image is vain, and tears are eternal!
Through the blue of the woods and their fraternal arms
A tender gleam of time ambiguous exists,
Where from an ember of day is fashioned a betrothed
Naked, on the pale space where the water draws me.... Delicious demon, desirable and icy!
Here in the water is my body of moon and dew, Form compliant still opposed to my gaze!
Here are my silvery arms of purest gestures....
My slow hands weary in the adorable gilding
Of luring that captive bound among the leaves,
And I shout the names of unknown gods to the echoes!..
Farewell, lost image on the enclosed, calm pool, Narcissus... the very name is a tender perfume
To the soothed heart. To the shades of the departed, Shed on this empty tomb the funereal rose.
Be my lip the rose shedding a kiss's petals Bringing a gradual peace to a shade beloved, For night speaks in a whisper, far and near,
To the flower-cups filled with shadows and light slumbers.
But the moon trifles among the lengthening myrtles.
I worship you, under those myrtles, oh uncertain Flesh, sadly offering your flower to solitude, Wondering at yourself in the sleeping forest's mirror. In vain I unbind myself from your sweet presence,
The deceitful hour is kind to limbs stretched on the moss.
It fills the deep wind with a solenm bliss.
Farewell, Narcissus....Die! Twilight is here, At the heart's sighing my image undulates,
The flute, against the entombed azure, warbles Longings of the sounding herds as they go their way. But on the mortal chill where a star is lit,
Before the mist forms a gradual tomb,
Accept this kiss breaking the water's fatal calm!
Hope alone can avail to cleave this crystal.
Let the ripple ravish me on the breath that banishes And may my breath inspire some slender flute-song Whose carefree player thinks of me kindly!...
Faint away, vanish, troubled divinity!
And pour out to the moon, humble and lonely flute
Our silvery tears in your diversity.
Quote by Andrew Joron in Flowing Uphill
"I think there is an obvious and not at all unlikely similarity between language and water: water is like language, language is like water. Both are seemingly transparent, ubiquitous, and necessary to sustain our life.
And of course the underlying meaning of water is that it is very nearly meaningless: tasteless, odorless, shapeless, its properties are very hard to nail down. Very like the shapelessness, the actual meaningless of language considered as a whole. For the sum total of all possible statements in language is not one big meaningful statement, but a meaningless multiplicity of statements. So, in considering what water really is, what language really is, we are suddenly closer than we might wish to the primeval chaos.
The Deluge drawings attempt to do the impossible, to capture and convey all of the effects of nonlinear motion by means of line drawings—that is, to represent that which is inherently fleeting by that which is inherently fixed. Leonardo’s Deluge drawings come close to abstract expressionism in their violent registration of water in a state of crisis.
And like the visual arts, poetic language also has undergone an evolution that brings it closer to the chaos patterns that Leonardo first observed in the movement and the self-entanglement of water. Once poetic language was released from the constraint of having to tell the stories of gods and kings and later, of having to express individual and social identity, it began to discover—or rediscover—its sources in the mysterious movement of language itself, in the manifestation of a meaning in words that goes somehow beyond words. In the modernist and the postmodernist poem, language is finally manifested as a self-exceeding system, and to explain what I mean by this, I’m going to resort, very much in the spirit of Leonardo, to the properties of water.
Now, self-exceeding systems are those systems that are capable of pushing themselves into a new state of being. A simple system, such as a clock or a pendulum, is not capable of such transformation; only complex, nonlinear systems are. Water and language are both classic examples of complex systems, and as such they have many properties in common—properties that, for me, relate directly to poetic attempts to say the unsayable.
In poetic language, meaning overflows or exceeds its own condition, and a saying of the unsayable takes place."
https://www.poetryfoundation.o...
Quote by Arthir Sze in On Poetry and Water
In China, water is one of the five elements and symbolizes yin, the primeval female principle. In the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the trigram for water is a set of stacked lines composed of a broken line at the bottom, a solid line, then a broken line. It is generated through a divination process that incorporates chance. In this cosmology, water is not an assemblage but, rather, a force—“Water flows to what is wet.” The water trigram helps to highlight that everything is in motion, and that each moment is unique.
If water is beginningless beginning and endless end, if water has no shape of its own but can take any shape, it has infinite possibility.
Texts provided by Poetry Foundation, link to text no longer available
Leonardo Da Vinci, A Deluge, 1517-18, black chalk on paper
https://www.rct.uk/collection/...
Quotes from Gaston Bachelard, Eau et les Rêves
...sous les images superficielles de l’eau, une série d’images de plus en plus profonde, de plus en plus tenaces…Il reconnaitra dans l’eau dans la substance de l’eau, un type d’intimité…l’eau est aussi un type de destin…l’eau est vraiment l’élément transitoire. L’être voue à l’eau est un être en vertige. Il meurt à chaque minute, sans cesses quelque chose de sa substance s’écroule. La mort quotidienne est la mort de l’eau. L’eau coule toujours, l'eau tombe toujours, elle finit toujours par sa mort horizontale…La peine de l’eau est infini.
Je retrouve toujours la même mélancolie devant les eaux dormantes, une mélancolie très spéciale qui a la couleur d’une mare dans un foret humide, une mélancolie sans oppression, songeuse, lente, calme.
Une goutte d’eau puissante suffit pour créer un monde et pour dissoudre la nuit.
…une eau qui va du printemps a l’hiver et qui reflète aisément, passivement, légèrement, toutes les saisons.
La dialectique de l’eau
Le complexe de Caron et Le complexe d’Ophélie
Caractère presque toujours féminin
L’eau et la pureté
L’eau et la violence
Le langage des eaux est une réalité poétique directe
Elle a un corps, une âme, une voix,…une réalité poétique complète
« Les évènements les plus riches arrivent en nous bien avant que l’âme s’en aperçoive. Et, quand nous commençons a ouvrir les yeux sur le visible, déjà nous etions depuis longtemps adhérents à l’invisible. » D’Annunzio, Contemplation de la Mori
…l’eau sert à naturaliser notre image, à rendre un peu d’innocence et de naturel a l’orgueil de notre intime contemplation….
Le miroir de la fontaine est donc l’occasion d’une imagination ouverte. Le reflet un peu vague, un peu pali, suggère une idéalisation. Devant l’eau qui réfléchit son image son image, Narcisse sent que sa beauté continue…Le miroir de verre…donne un image trop stable.
…Narcisse va donc a la fontaine secrète, au fond des bois. La seulement, il sent qu’il est naturellement double ; il tend les bras, il plonge les mains vers sa propre image, il parle à sa propre image, il parle à sa propre voix. Echo n’est pas une nymphe lointaine.
Près de la fontaine prend ainsi naissance un narcissisme idéalisant… »Je suis tel que je m’aime. »
Cette fraicheur qu’on éprouve en se lavant les mains au ruisseau s’étend, s’empare de la nature entière.
La fraicheur imprègne le printemps par ses eaux ruisselantes ; elle valorise toute la saison du renouveau.
Complexe de Nausicaa…nymphes
L’eau évoque la nudité naturelle.
Le cygne, en littérature est un ersatz de la femme nue.
Contempler l’eau, c’est s’écouler, c’est de dissoudre, c’est mourir.
L’eau en sa jeune limpidité est un ciel renverse ou les astres prennent une vie nouvelle.
Ainsi l’eau, par ses reflets, double le monde, double les choses.
Le passe de notre amé est une eau profonde.
Alors la nuit est substance comme l’eau est substance. La substance nocturne va se mêler intimement à la substance liquide. Le monde d’air va donner ses ombres au ruisseau….L’eau est une substance qui boit ; elle avale l’ombre comme un noir sirop .
L’eau est ainsi une invitation à mourir ; elle est une invitation à une mort spéciale qui nous permet de rejoindre un des refuges matériels élémentaires.
« Partir, c’est mourir un peu. »
L’eau est l’élément de la mort jeune et belle, de la mort fleurie, et, dans les drames de la vie et de la littérature, elle est l’élément de la mort sans orgueil ni vengeance, du suicide masochiste. L’eau est le symbole profond, organique de la femme qui ne sait que pleurer ses peines et dont les yeux sont si facilement noyées de larmes.
La mer est maternelle, l‘eau est un lait prodigieux
L’eau nous porte. L’eau nous berce. L’eau nous endort. L’eau nous rend notre mère.
L’eau nous invite aux voyages imaginaires.
Continuité matérielle de l’eau et le ciel…l’eau porte
L’eau le matériau pure par excellence.
C’est parce que l’eau a une puissance intime, qu’elle peut purifier l’être intime .
L’union du sensible et du sensuel vient soutenir une valeur morale…Elles ont marque la jeunesse de notre esprit. Elles sont nécessairement une réserve de jeunesse.
Les mythes de la naissance, l’eau dans sa puissance maternelle
La parole de l’eau
Nous n’hésitons pas donc pas a donner à plein sens a l’expression qui dit la qualité d’une poésie fluide et animée, d’une poésie coulée de source.
Leonardo da Vinci, A deluge, pen and black ink on paper
RUBBER-BAND WORK-OUT
warm up
3 crunches
6 pushups
9 squats
20 knee high running
strap band around something at medium height
face the rubber bands pull back and squat each leg at a time
back towards the rubber-bands, take step forward and punch both arms at the same time
put strap under feet walk right (15 steps) pull out straight right leg 5 times
repeat to the other side
squat using the bands and stretch out overhead
3 crunches
6 pushups
9 squats
20 knee high running
strap band around something at medium height
face the rubber bands pull back and squat each leg at a time
back towards the rubber bands, wing flap both arms towards the center
stand on rubber band, do curls
stand on rubber band, extend one arm at a time do back of arm muscle with arm overhead bending back
crunches, attach band to door behind, do sit-ups
on all four, fit handle on foot, hold rubber band with two hands against floor, stretch leg back and up
hold rubber band with hand, flap bent leg (diagonally across from hand)
repeat on other leg
put strap under feet walk right (15 steps) pull out straight right leg 5 times
repeat to the other side
band crunch
repeat as needed
Aug 06, 2020
Besides continuing developing my painterly skills and my understanding of pictorial space, part of me finds a need to start classifying or make some sense of the work I've produced for the past six months. Also, while I would like to keep my process completely unpredictable, open, and based on intuition, I would like to find a way to present my research and all the information that I have gathered. When one employs an intuitive process that isn't goal-oriented or censored, one ends up with an impressive amount of work and information. I think the reason for this is that when one works towards a "goal," this actually reduces the output, meaning it takes away the "flow."
Today, I started to count what I've produced in my studio during the past six months:
- 345 drawings and paintings in various mediums
- seven sculptures in wood, cardboard, and paper
- various displays and installations of my artwork in my studio
- eight small sketchbooks with notes and drawings
- 3,200 iPhone photographs (featuring my process in the studio, daily walks)
-926 videos (studio process, daily walks, videos of Instagram feed), a few edited to short videos placed on social media
- daily posts on FB and Instagram
- daily reading of critical articles in the NY Times, le Monde and various art magazines (on average two-three articles per day)
- several hundreds of pages of printouts of artworks by other artists
- daily reading of academic articles
So, it feels a little overwhelming. I now think that the time has come to start looking at these different things I've produced and start thinking of what they represent. I'd enjoy presenting my research into the meaning of Painting in a more cohesive format that can be shared with others. At the moment, I'm thinking of using my artistic output (paintings, photos, videos) in three ways simultaneously, inserted as images into a video, compiled into a book, and used as materials for collage paintings or sculptures.
To not feel overwhelmed and discouraged, my mind turned to Carl von Linné, the botanist who invented the two-name system, binomial nomenclature, which gave a generic and specific epithet (genus and species) to organisms. During his lifetime, he named and organized over 14,000 plants. (His work interests me also because the naming of plants coincided with an increase in the transportation and dispersion of plants across the globe fueled by colonization, a subject I touched upon in my Plantes Voyageuses exhibition in 2014.)
I did a little search and found an article written by James Prosek in the New York Times that traced Carl von Linné's journey in Lapland in northern Sweden. I thought it was well written, and it made my mind travel. I hope you will enjoy it. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
Once we put a name on something, as Linnaeus did compulsively, we've identified ourselves as the observer and the named thing as the observed — a barrier is placed between, lines are drawn. If I am observing, it suggests that I am separate from nature, but in some of my best and most memorable moments, I am part of it, when a certain amount of the knowing is shed. Such a moment happened on the vast lake in Lapland as we watched a thousand shades of day flirt on the horizon with darkness in colors beyond names and perhaps even beyond language. "
James Prosek, "A Botanist in Swedish Lapland"
By observing, describing and naming the artworks I've made, I will create a distance between myself and the intuitive process, however, by naming I also recognize the existence and unique qualities of these intuitive artworks.
"To name a thing is to acknowledge its existence as separate from everything else that has a name; to confer upon it the dignity of autonomy while at the same time affirming its belonging with the rest of the namable world; to transform its strangeness into familiarity, which is the root of empathy. To name is to pay attention; to name is to love. Parents name their babies as a first nonbiological marker of individuality amid the human lot; lovers give each other private nicknames that sanctify their intimacy; it is only when we began naming domesticated animals that they stopped being animals and became pets. "
Maria Popova, "How Naming Confers Dignity Upon Life and Gives Meaning to Existence"
Popova, Maria, "How Naming Confers Dignity Upon Life and Gives Meaning to Existance," Brainpickings.org
https://www.brainpickings.org/
Prosek, James, "A Botanist in Lapland," NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
Many of you have followed the artistic process that I have shared on social media during the past six months. Besides investigating what meaning painting has for me personally, and for society as a whole, my research has examined the creative process itself. I have aimed to pursue a studio practice that is open and fluid without set boundaries – where the continuity and linearity of the artistic process is continuously called into question, so to eliminate the urge to strive for a final goal.
I've allowed my process to be completely open, permitting it to change almost daily as I responded to what I saw, read, or experienced in both the real and virtual world. By applying various rules, I've challenged myself to keep the process going. I've also been fortunate to engage with artists, art historians, and other persons in various forms of dialogues relating to art. This has stimulated me to delve deeper. Further, I've resisted my urge to classify and censor my artistic output. Social media has served as both a recording device and as a means of keeping my process in a continuous destabilizing state of flux. My aim for this was to mirror, in my artistic practice, what is actually happening in the real world and to question my own habits and preconceived ideas. Through the means of art, painting, and intuition, I sought to explore hidden parts of myself. It is true that painting, because of its fluidity, may be one of the best ways to explore intuition and the subconscious of the mind. Already, after six months, I have a better understanding of my own feelings as they relate to painting and my art-making process in general.
However, when an art process relies solely on intuition and feelings, it feels very destabilizing. There are days when the process itself makes me feel "dizzy" or "disoriented" due to the lack of structure and boundaries. One also feels very exposed and vulnerable as if there is nothing there but a feeling of emptiness. It almost touches on the sublime, meaning infinitely beautiful, but at the same time, terrifying. After engaging in this for months, I feel more and more at ease; however, it still feels like a balancing act. Apparently, these feelings are familiar to artists exploring this type of creative output.
Below are a couple of quotes from an essay written by Theresa Hardman called 'Understanding Creative Intuition:'
The collective unconscious specifically is, according to Jung, the source of intuition and instinct. In his theory of the collective unconscious, Jung describes it as a fluid, sympathetic, 'boundless expanse,
a place of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic nervous system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.
According to Jung, the unconscious (both personal and collective) is therefore synonymous with ego loss, in that the unconscious eliminates boundaries between the 'I' and the rest of the world. He states that the creative person is somehow able to connect unconscious knowledge with conscious ideas, which often results in a creative product or action. Creative intuition is a communication between the conscious mind and the collective unconscious, which suggests possibilities inherent in a subject or situation.This recalls Heidegger's concept of Being, which is an openness to the world through one's state of mind. It involves self-abandonment – an emptiness of mind, not seeking, but listening, waiting and reflecting. In his essay, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', Heidegger writes that in this state of mind 'the artist remains inconsequential as compared with the work, almost like a passageway that destroys itself in the creative process for the work to emerge'. By adopting a passive and receptive state of mind, ordinary, habitual ways of thinking are annihilated, and the artists may be open to the poetic moment. In another essay 'The thinker as poet', he claims: 'We never come to thoughts. They come to us. That is the proper hour of discourse.' Heidegger describes the artist as 'one who truly knows what is', in other words, a person deeply aware of every passing moment of Being and completely open to its possibilities. A Buddhist concept related to this is sunyata, which can be described as the living void, the passing concreteness of experience, which is continually opening to us. It is understood as non-anthropocentric in that, in this void, the individual self loses its separateness and merges with reality beyond itself.
Theresa Hardman, 'Understanding Creative Intuition' is available for download here: