Monday, September 29, 2014

Jacques Derrida/Charlton Heston

The surplus of responsibility of which I was just speaking will never authorize any silence.  I repeat: responsibility is excessive or it is not a responsibility. -Jacques Derrida


A limited, measured , calculable, rationally distributed responsibility is already the becoming-right of morality; it is at times also, in the best hypothesis, the dream of every good conscience, in the worst hypothesis, of the small or grand inquisitors. -Derrida


It seems the most difficult thing in all this stuff is spelling correctly -not that I find it difficult to spell. But when I am writing using a pencil, let's say, I think of a word like Damocles, and with a sudden apprehension I begin to write it...and I start to wonder -does it have a capital D, or should it be a small d, and should it have like something fancy at the end of it like an e...


...or maybe it is oec or eoc. -a little more dramatic...I picture Charlton Heston in an early scene in a movie he never made, slowly eating while hanging directly above him is a dreadful heavy wide sword...I wonder, will he use that giant sword in his last battle with this dreadful king...will he get the girl, is that how you spell Charlton, wouldn't it look prettier with an e after the r?


...and I realize I'm writing with scrolling doo dads all over the place, I'm not spelling anything, my pencil has gone crazy in an instant, the battle has overflowed and we will be lucky to get out alive...


The end credits have run...the gallant letters have scrolled down the screen...romanesque, gothic, like an illustrated bible that has drank to much Hollywood and is vomiting all over the place.  I look at the paper, oh yuck, what a mess, the word is all crossed out -not once but twice, and now every word after that one is misspelled, all the soldiers are wounded, the field is a mess...

such sadness.   


Sunday, September 28, 2014

1 or 2 elsewhere thoughts

To pretend, I actually do the thing:  I have therefore only pretended to pretend. -Jacquess Derrida


"We loved all the words in your manuscript, but we were wondering if you could maybe put them together in a completely different order." -from a cartoon


Listening to music I always have the exact same feeling: something's missing.  Never will I learn the cause of this gentle sadness, never will I wish to investigate it.  I've no desire to know what it is.  I've no desire to know everything.  -Robert Walser


I don't want a future, I want a present. to me this appears of greater value.  You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future. -Robert Walser



Friday, September 19, 2014

the fake, the thief, the copycat

You see, most artists are great thieves, better than that at copycatting, and without a doubt the best fakes.  But sadly, some are not so good at these things.  These we call crummy artists, fakes, amateurs, idiots or best of all, Sunday painters...

They have nothing to add, nothing to say, nothing to give, no way to inspire, they are simply sentimentalists, and you should stay away from them.  Thisis a new guide, a set of guidelines, a set of rules to follow that should help you avoid them at all costs.


The first thing to ask yourself is, will this appreciate, will I make money if I purchase it?  Following that one rule will save you from ever wasting your money on some cheap piece of shit.


The next rule is are there well dressed monied individuals at this show?  Is it being written about, is it in the newspaper or on the internet or something?  ...I mean is there anybody you feel you should recognize there?


And is the artist young and vibrant, you know like you expect them to be?  Or do you see the artist in a serious conversation with collectors of art?  You know, like handsome wealthy men and women?


Is anything he has ever made in a museum or something, someplace where you can go see it?  Does anybody know who this fool is?  Well if you answered or even thought of an answer, even if you haven't, even if none of these guidelines mean a thing to you, get out of there, stay away from him, don't waste your money.

I hope this a helpful to you.  He is nobody, just a fake, a pretend "artist".  A Sunday painter.

Oh yeah, and does he make cool stuff that looks like anything?  Can he draw?  Can he paint?  He is quite simply an idiot.  Stay away.  He means nothin to nobody.  Not me. Not you. No one.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Chauvex -the cave paintings

The immense temporal separation makes it difficult to imagine why the paintings were made.  The exhibition states blandly that the meaning of the Lascaux paintings "remains obscure" pushing aside the crucial mystery with the modest suggestion that the animal depictions filled "some kind of spiritual need." -Patrik Haggren




What could be a greater experience than that wonder discovered by Marcel Ravidat, Jacques, Simon Coencas and George Agniel led by their dog into that cave down a hole left by a storm knocked tree.

This miracle of "art's birth" (as the cave is often called) certainly "chronicles our state of mind" -Herzog

...and he continues to say "this is the modern human soul emerging vigorously, almost in an explosive event" although I must say I prefer Bataille's belief that the advancement of knowledge entails a simultaneous advance toward "non-knowledge"

I believe that we can know nothing yet still appreciate poetical responses to all phenomena.


Monday, September 15, 2014

Color -in case you need it

What we want is to make something that fills utterly the sight and can't be used to make life only bearable. -Sam Francis



It's a funny thing about computers and books and the rest of it:  it just can't render scale very easily.  I could put the size, 22 X 30, but I just don't think it translates into one's vision.  Of course I could photograph it with some furniture around,  but it still won't work so well.   I could say it's four times as large as most of them I paint, yet I still don't think that would work

Sunday, September 14, 2014

things change

We don't notice things change.  We know that things change, we've been told since childhood that things change, we've witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we're still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes  -or we search for change in all the wrong places.  -Arkady Struatsky


We are all naive materialists, I thought.  And we are all rationalists.  We demand an immediate rational explanation for everything, we want everything reduced to a handful of known facts. And not one of us has even an ounce of dialectics.  It never occurs to anybody that the known facts and some new phenomenon might be separated by an entire ocean of the unknown, so we declare the new phenomenon supernatural and, therefore, impossible. -A & B Strugatsky


Look into my soul, I know -everything you need is in there.  It has to be.  Because I've never sold my soul to anyone! It's mine, it's human!  Figure out yourself what I want -because I know it can't be bad! -Strugatsky


Mankind's most impressive achievement is that it has survived and intends to continue doing so. -Strugatsky

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Byzantium

For over 1,000 years Greece was part of the vast Byzantine Empire, established  in 330 A.D.  by the Emperor Constantine, who moved the capital of the Roman Empire eastwards to a small town named Byzantium in modern-day Turkey.  Renamed and transformed into Constantinople, Byzantium would later lend its name to an empire of splendor and power the endured for more than a millennium.  Greek replace Latin as the language of the empire, and Greece itself was home to important centers of theology, scholarship, and artistic production. This painting explores those elements between the east and the west during our final days in the 21st century. 


"Today it's possible to paint one canvas with the calmness of an ancient Greek and the next with the anxiety of a Van Gogh.  Either of these emotions, and any in between, is valid to me...I work on many canvases at once.  In the morning I line them up against the wall of my studio (or on the table or the kitchen counter or the bathroom).  Some speak, some do not.  They are my mirrors. They tell me what I am like at that moment."  -William Bazotes