...AND IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, GOD CREATED THE LINE

Nobody knows for sure why Rembrandt drew this errant line beneath his signature in his famous picture of Adam and Eve:



The line seems so incongruous, some print collectors who preferred "tidy" art trimmed Rembrandt's line off the bottom of their print. Apparently they thought they were doing Rembrandt a favor.

Me, I adore this line. It's the only line in the entire picture not employed in the service of content. Instead, Rembrandt turned it loose in all its abstract glory, as naked as the day God invented lines.

We see it separated from the picture of Eden as the tool Rembrandt uses to perceive the world. It is the means by which he performs miracles. It underscores his signature, but for me it tells us more about Rembrandt's identity than his name does.



Abstract expressionist Barnett Newman was famous for painting wall-sized canvases, blank except for a single bold line. A friend who was trying to educate me about how to understand Newman's work raved, "When he painted that stripe his balls must have weighed 20 pounds apiece."


"Eve" by Barnett Newman

Well, I understood what he was trying to say.

You'll find echoes of Rembrandt's line in some of his other drawings. For example, in the following two pictures, after Rembrandt completed the careful, controlled portion of the picture he scraped a bold, powerful, almost abstract line across the bottom of the page.





The line in Rembrandt's tiny drawings seems more powerful to me than Newman's ten foot stripe. A line doesn't need to be physically large to be compelling, and it is not necessarily diluted by sharing the page with a subject matter. Note how Rembrandt's eyes sought out the strongest most fundamental line in those landscapes, distilled it to its purest and simplest form, and recorded it on paper as the exultant mark you see above. Read more "...AND IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, GOD CREATED THE LINE..."

Wooster Group's Hamlet (aftermath)

This is not a review. And it will probably remain incomprehensible if you don't at least read what the Wooster Group show is about. So you might want to start off with a positive review and/or a negative one.
(And, possibly, move to an insight into how they prepared it. And an insightful interview about the group. And an interview with Kate Valk.)

I had been waiting to see this for a long time. This is the group I always talk about during workshops and I have never seen act live. This particular show, well, could be an experimentum crucis of my (wavering) faith in theater as a live form of live art. I leave you with my transcribed raw notes from the show, and below, a couple of ideas.




Theater as reproduction
- of what?
of our reality
=> cinema (is our reality)

other way: reality reproduces art
body is our basic reality

body as choreography

BUT it's first and foremost a SHOW

spaces of absence

The dance of the impotent body

to perform = to enact

puppets

retro

conventionality of movement

performance as video art or rather as
echo of image
=> afterimage

--

The action lies between the acts

--

Playing on the players like on instruments
The players accompany a great
video
Is that bad?

"They killed theater" (audience member, calmly)
(So many deaths of theater before)
Good Heavens,
if that be so,
if this is the thing,
I humbly thank you.

Musical work - when works.

Women (Cate Valk, really) have more problems with show formula- because of
more emotional roles?

2nd part much better - uses the new convention.
(but also ends up more conventional)
Hamlet - actor - manipulates the actors - logical gesture.
Strong
--
search for an
aesthetic experience
(e.g. songs)
showSHOWshowSPECTACLE
---

Warping time/space

But then it becomes simply multimedia entertainment.

+ + +


A man crosses the stage, says Peter Brook, and you have theater.
Pathos. That's what you get when a man crosses the stage. Anthropocentrism. The idea that it's all about us, really. The sin of vanity in all its splendor.


Who are we, really (on stage)?
How do we conduct our paths (on stage)?
What can we see if we introduce breaks into the surface of our behavior (on stage)?

The body becomes heavy.
It becomes an accessory. An object more than a tool. An instrument that cannot be played in a clean way is more of itself. It is less melody, and more instrument.
This body that struggles to fit into the image that will always outsmart it.

Their "on/off" stage presence (in the middle of a scene: "Let's skip this dialogue") is not shocking, it is part of the language of contemporary performance. It is part of our thinking, feeling of the frame/work of art as ambiguously present, intermittently present. Nice: it's when it turns us on, not the other way around. Hence the decadent flirt, hence the false opening, hence the play outside of a play outside of a play.



______________________________


What do you want out of this? Out of this experience? What do you want out of a play?


Try this: Say: This is silly. Say: Theater is the essence of the misconception that it is all about the human. It is the place of the old-fashioned, stubborn faith in 1) the communion of the believers, and 2) the hierarchy of presentation. It is a stage which seems so enchanted with the universal human condition, it forgets the subtle yet profound changes of the aesthetic, the sensible, the eye of the beholder. It is a place whose very existence in these times is so out of joint, it is funny.

But what if we accepted this as part of the game? What if we played this game, using this as a platform to inquire into what conditions we are in, as the humans that have no choice but to, at one point or another, remain anthropocentric? What if we surrendered to the collision of times, this our present time of, say, having to read this text one line at a time, and the time of too many lines behind, and the time of too many lines besides, after, above? What sort of figures are we once we let go of our need for the unique now? Entirely?

Sensation> This our too too solid flesh is extremely flexible. And it goes along with the lines of tension, it follows the cracks and bounces off whatever is left as the aftermath.
Abstract? No, this is not abstract. It means: somehow, miraculously, we deal with change, since we live through it. And yet, we do not melt, we do not resolve ourselves into a dew. If we manage to tune in - we dance. Every step, stumble, vibration becomes a choreography of ourselves.

Sensation> We are not enough. The body fights to correspond to the twitches of the images, yet it lags behind. The eyes go back to the screen. We have no way of knowing how correct we are, yet the need of knowledge unveils our total, complete inadequacy. We are but thinking puppets, we are but repeating Plato, we are but warming up the stage for the image that comes behind. Whatever surrounds us is more powerful, and yet -

Sensation> The eye of the beholder might make a difference. The beholder as object, the beholder as a weaker alter ego. The beholder as the one who submits to the role of a prop, and whose tragedy, a subject realizing he is an object, becomes the juiciest work, the perfect crack in the façade of the perfect spectacle.

Oh, and don't pay attention to the ending. Don't pay attention to the illusion that the slave has become the master, that the technology is, after all, a tool, that we can use the past, control the present, cope with the future, that things are what we want them to be. Don't fall in the trap of theater, which numbs us into believing it's okay, images end, we are here, devising our entries and winning our exits.
There is a stage behind that one. But on it - well, take a peak.




Read more "Wooster Group's Hamlet (aftermath)..."

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 27

If the electricity ever goes out at your house and it's pitch black in the middle of the night but you need to find "one lovely drawing," the safest thing to do is to grope for your Noel Sickles file. The odds are pretty good that anything you touch there will qualify.



Man oh man, that wispy grass is rendered every bit as powerfully as those oxen.

The legend is that Sickles taught cartoonist Milton Caniff how to draw in this high contrast chiaroscuro style. Caniff continued to employ this style effectively for another fifty years on his famous comic strips Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Sickles, on the other hand, quickly abandoned this approach and went on to do other things.

Many years later, Sickles briefly revisited chiaroscuro for this drawing. After all those years, he still remained the master. Read more "ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 27..."

THE PRICE OF MINT CONDITION

The world is divided into those who seal their comic books in mylar containers and those who do not. This division is more fundamental than politics, race, religion or gender.

At last week's San Diego Comic-Con, collectors with the foresight to preserve their comics in mint condition reaped huge economic benefits. Comic books that had been hermetically sealed, unread, in climate controlled environments sold for hundreds of times the price of battered, well read comics.

Still, I'm baffled by those who moaned, "if only I had kept my comics in mint condition I could be rich now." I've never seen any comic book, no matter how perfect its condition, sell for enough to buy back those missed hours spent reading comics under a shady tree during our childhood.

In fact, as we become older and richer, and our pleasures become more complex, that youthful form of ecstasy slips further and further away. Its distance in the rear view mirror seems to increase exponentially in proportion to the value of the car we are driving. We can't take it with us, even in that Mint 10.0 copy of Detective Comics no. 27 vacuum sealed in a lucite block on the front seat next to us.

Still, you have to respect the fact that people collect comic books, like they collect other art, for all kinds of reasons. I took good care of my own comics because I respected their magic pictures and stories and wanted to visit them again and again. Today they are no longer in mint condition but they do have the additional glow that all things acquire from being seasoned by love over a long period of time.

I was particularly interested by the numerous comics business services at Comic-Con. Rating and scoring experts. Insurers. Appraisers. Economic consultants promising to fit your comic book "inside an archival-quality interior well, which is then sealed [through a combination of compression and ultrasonic vibration] within a transparent capsule" where you can no longer see the drawings.

This may make economic sense for some. For me, the best economist remains the great Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "economy does not consist in saving the coal but in using the time while it burns."

Read more "THE PRICE OF MINT CONDITION..."

Lapidating Modern Art

A few days ago I witnessed an excessively sad event. A huge group of merchants was thrown out (by the police) of a hall in the center of Warsaw (which they had been renting for several years), and the events turned violent and nasty, with throwing of stones and fights and tear gas and general havoc.
Although it did look like some sort of incomprehensible flash mob or other performative party, one could hardly squeeze it into the “new art” category, were it not for one significant detail: the commercial hall is to be substituted by the Museum of Modern Art. Of course, the city authorities claim the undoing of this most hideous hall is necessary for the construction of a second line of the metro, but the fact is: the temple of 90’s-style small, bad quality commerce will be replaced by the temple of contemporary art.
The obvious implication of this week’s events is: the Museum of Modern Art will arguably be the most despised building in Poland. So far, the only (extremely heated) debates about its character, name (Contemporary or Modern?), and, of course, its shape, interested only fairly elite circles. The building itself raised most controversy, with its austere, “modernist”, or, as some put it, uninspired look. But all this was nothing compared to what happened last Tuesday: the masses moved. There was naturally no talk of the museum. Yet sooner or later, the topic will appear. The Museum will be built, and the tens of thousands of people around the country who considered what happened an act of injustice will have a surprizingly clear symbolic enemy: Modern Art.

But the hundreds of people gathered at the hall entrance would not be customers anyway. Meaning, they don’t fit the profile. Not the current one, and not any potential profile of someone “we” seem to want to educate into (our) art, into (our) culture. Why? Because the social differences are so big, it is still unimaginable for the common art curator/cultural agent to think of these people as spectators, art amateurs, partners. Just as they were hardly a partner for negotiating a new commercial deal (they rejected several offers and refused to participate in further negotiations). We will hear: They are outside of the reach of... of us, the cultural people, the elites, the-educated-ones. They are a lost case.

This is obviously the moment when the conflict becomes helpless. Each party is convinced that the others are barbarians, their entire world is wrong, corrupt, and unworthy of any contact.

Do these people need us to defend them? I believe this is not a question of need. It is a question of true access to culture. Of initiatives, or rather, structures, which would allow for a potential integration of all citizens.
The Museum of Modern Art has already had many great exhibitions. But these initiatives are clearly focused on a prestigious audience, they are intellectually sophisticated, but beyond that, they don’t seem to reach out to a “larger” audience. This reaching out has been happening in many museums around the world (take the Brooklyn Museum, with their great program of interactive activities where once a month visitors can have a totally different experience of art, which includes, for instance, making their own art prints and parties with known DJs).
In Warsaw, we have a truly outstanding exhibition relating to the great Alina Szapocznikow, an artist whose work is largely unknown outside of Poland, yet here is already considered as a crucial reference for anyone interested in modern art (the exhibition ends Sunday). Her works combine eroticism with power, femininity with a great understanding of structure and drama. Possibly the most impressive among the works presented at the show is the huge female belly sculpted in marble (actually it's a double-belly), which impresses, attracts, scares, and ultimately leaves us at a (as always unbearable) distance. What is made to counteract this distance in terms of programming? Some lectures, discussions, guided tours, and a new documentary film. All this is great for me or you. Interesting indeed.
But what about the reaching out? The search for new, active audiences?
Well, many of the women present during the events at the commercial hall were convinced to join in the creative thinking about stone – they reached out, grabbed the pavement stones, and threw them at the police. I claim they did it not only because they were “part of the mob”, but also, because they were hardly ever offered any serious alternatives.
Isn’t it time we thought about those others as true potential consumers of culture, who can be sought just as we seek the already accustomed artsy amateurs?

A friend of mine suggested that the 2000 salesmen thrown out on Tuesday be hired at the Museum Store.
Beyond this ironic (and hilarious) take lies the feeling that something is going terribly wrong in the way we are approaching the idea of social change.
I have been often showcasing projects with social agendas. They were more out-going, accessible, they were social sculptures or other initiatives which claimed a different approach to the audience-connection.
But at such instances, I wonder: can't social sculpture strive for effectiveness? Isn't it terribly passé to hide behind our we-are-only-poor-artists shields?


PS. The Museum of Modern Art does attempt to create a social space of dialogue, as in the initiative of a Park of Sculpture in a poor part of Warsaw. One can see the idea. Yet paradoxically even an artist like Rirkrit Tiravanija seems to have transformed of his relational aesthetics here into a... well... esoteric sculpture.
Hopefuly, this cube, and tens of other artcubes, can make a difference. Yet for the moment its futuristic, mirror-like shape seems all but ironic. Read more "Lapidating Modern Art..."

DANGER IN THE PATH

A mediocre painter who wants to portray danger on the road ahead is likely to spell out the danger, perhaps even highlighting it with some corny lightning bolt.

But more talented artists achieve far more powerful results using a diverse array of imaginative solutions to the same problem:

In the following illustration, all that the brilliant Bernie Fuchs requires to create a sense of melancholy is a dangerous bend in the road and forlorn colors. This is the site where a football hero committed suicide by stepping in front of an onrushing truck. Fuchs' depiction of the merciless road is subtler than painting a body lying in the road or an ambulance speeding away, but it is far more effective and universal.



Here is how the illustration looked when published as a double page spread in Sports Illustrated (teamwork by Fuchs and famed art director Richard Gangel).



Next, rather than spotlight the danger (or illuminate it with a lightning bolt), the ingenious Phil Hale understands that it is far more frightening to speculate about what waits in the darkness, just beyond the reach of the beam of light:

Below, the talented Greg Manchess takes a different approach: look at how effectively he uses fog and shadow and eerie light to cast a sinister aura on an otherwise normal road.



It's not that difficult to paint realistically; it must have been far harder for Manchess to decide when to deviate from the safety of realism in order to disorient the viewer. He had to be selective in order to make us feel that the scene is taking place in an otherwise normal world where something is coming unglued. That is the point where an artist has to rely upon judgment and imagination, leaving behind technical manuals on perspective and lighting.

Each of these artists recognized the inadequacy of a literal approach for conveying menace. Each of them used ambiguity and restraint to draw the viewer's imagination into the creative process. Each of them had the technical skill to master a variety of elements to craft just the result they wanted.

Read more "DANGER IN THE PATH..."

ILLUSTRATORS ARE WAY SMARTER THAN EINSTEIN

Everyone thinks Albert Einstein was such hot stuff because he shattered Isaac Newton's classical model of an objective universe in which all matter conforms to quantifiable laws of physics.

In his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) and other works, Newton postulated a universe that operated much like a giant mechanical clock governed by mathematical formulae for time, space, gravity and motion. For centuries Newton's explanation seemed to work just fine.

Then along came Einstein who demonstrated that no matter how accurate Newton's laws appeared on the surface, they failed to account for the behavior of matter at either the subatomic or cosmic ends of the spectrum. His special and general theories of relativity transformed our perception of light, energy, time/space and gravity. Together with Planck, Heisenberg, Bohr and others, Einstein established the foundations of quantum mechanics which opened our eyes to an unpredictable universe of quarks and neutrinos. We now know that classical concepts of causation are an illusion; that light can simultaneously be a particle and wave; that a subatomic particle can move from point A to point B without passing through the space in between; that under the principle of complementarity, matter can have two or more mutually inconsistent characteristics.

Well, I say big deal.

Illustrators, with their sharp eyes and keen powers of observation, already detected many of the same phenomena for which Einstein now claims credit.

For example, Einstein uprooted Newton's concept of gravity by explaining that gravity is not a universal "force" but only the movement of objects along paths in space/time that have been curved by the presence of matter. Below we see how theoretical physicist Art Frahm recorded an event contrary to the rules of Newtonian gravity:



Obviously, this young woman curved the path of space/time. It is likely that Einstein stole his theory from Frahm, whose numerous observations of this phenomenon were well documented as The Falling Panties Collection. Yet, to this day Frahm is ignored by the history books.

Illustrators were similarly prescient about the physical properties of light. The history books would have you believe that Einstein's Equivalence Principle first showed that light is not straight but bends around masses as a result of the curvature of space/time. But look at the aura of light that physicist Frank Frazetta discovered bending around these masses as a result of the curvature of space/time:



Once again, the scientific community has conspired to deny an illustrator the credit he is due.

As another example, illustrators were the first to discover that Newton's explanations for the properties of matter were inadequate to account for the behavior of flowing cloth on beautiful women. Only cloth engineered at the subatomic particle level using the latest nanotechnology could simultaneously flow so freely and yet cling so tightly:





Sadly, it is probably too late for illustrators to receive the credit they deserve for their important contributions to theoretical physics. The history books have been written and there are too many jealous scientists standing in the way.

But illustrators have identified other anomalies in the physical world that could affect other scientific disciplines. For example, note the following unusual behavior of plants that seems to contradict all known rules of classical botany:

Durer

Harold von Schmidt

Could we be far from a quantum theory of botany? And when that day comes, will illustrators finally get the credit they deserve?

Read more "ILLUSTRATORS ARE WAY SMARTER THAN EINSTEIN..."