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landingtree'That sounds like something to take me on beyond Gombrich,' I thought, running across a very brief description of this book. Well, yes, in a sense... I should probably attempt to describe its attitude to art, instead of just running away screaming. The formless, or informe, as described by Georges Bataille around 1930, is not a concept, and god forbid it should be a theme; it is instead a process, a means of attacking how we mean things. There is art which is about formlessness, but that's not what's being done here; once the art is about something, it is not performing the operation of the informe.
Sorry, this description is still part of the running away screaming: I did not finish the book. It is structured as a dictionary; I read about a third of the entries with full attention and a third of them skimming. I'm glad to have read as much of it as I did, because it's nice to have something in my head in this territory more specific than 'many people have found modern art pretentious and navel-gazey', but I don't feel a need to fill in the details. I would happily have wandered about the exhibition this book is based on. I may come back to read something about modern art some other time that is not about Georges Bataille.
Unlike in Gombrich, little mention is made here of what it's like for anybody in particular to look at art. Much mention is made of Freud, without any discussion of the idea that Freud's saying something might not make it true. Art is on a vertical axis, don't you know; partly because of gallery walls but also because the human body is erect, unlike the animal body, whose field of view is horizontal, and we are forever chained to our own feet, which are in the mud. Form is what can support things vertically against gravity, so the art of the informe horizontalises. Throwing paint down at a canvas such that it does not drip, as Jackson Pollock did, is significantly different from throwing it across at a wall. And text is a horizontal medium because it is read primarily at tables, as I read in a book held vertically on my lap...
Some of what's in here strikes me as more than arbitrary, although that doesn't. The idea that by depicting the violence of a slaughterhouse you're implicitly claiming that the violence isn't all that shocking, isn't all that repressed, because after all, it's hanging on this here gallery wall... So, in Eli Lotar's photo series, the slaughterhouse is presented merely as a line of leg bones in a large dark street, making banality and indifference sinister. Whether or not I think it works (I don't find the images particularly effective, but I'm eighty years on) that seems to me a transparent rationale for the images which are in the book.
There is also much abstract conceptual play which I like, without finding it to provide transparent anything, and some which I find entertaining in a, 'Why would anyone think that?' sort of way. The chapter on Entropy had both. It imagined a sandpit with black sand in one half and white in the other, and a child whose running in circles destroys that clear division and then can't recreate it just by turning around and running back the other way. Thence, entropy erases the distinction between figure and ground in art. Thence, the mimicry of leaves by an insect is a form of psychosis in which the insect loses its own sense of boundedness. (Which I simultaneously stared at incredulously thinking, 'Your metaphors are now attacking your reality,' and tossed about happily in my head seeing if it would become an idea for a story. Metaphors are fun to literalize). On to the idea that in falling from Grace we have become inaccurate copies of God, and the fact (which I have not sourced) that a praying mantis plays dead to escape predators, but that when its head is cut off it continues the behaviours of life for long enough that, while dead, it may play dead... Heading to the final paragraph, which describes the ambition to present sight as itself an artwork in the absence of the see-er. Only it took me a while to click to that, because what it says is, 'The entropic, simulacral move, however, is to float the field of seeing in the absence of a subject.' A phrasing which does not come down very hard on the matter of whether the move has actually been made, or whether it has succeeded.
I have less sympathy for the conceptual tile-sliding that leads gold and God to equal shit (because the sacred and the excremental are alike in their otherness). But it is true, I have thought less about the artistic properties of shit than the artistic properties of mirrors and simulacra, interesting things can probably be said about that fact.
Only that the purpose of the whole movement of this book is to lower, to attack, not just to tell stories about shit but to perceive shit as storiless. it's all artists opposing each other, 'attacking the castle of Modernism at the point it seemed strongest', etc, while walking a sort of 'don't think of a pink elephant' tightrope away from the things it seems intuitive to me that art would wish to have: theme, metaphor, meaning, beauty. Art becomes text describing the interpretive grid in which it is seen. When Bataille says that his aesthetic rivals aim at transcendence, it's an accusation. Now, this book does a lot of finding sex in the concept of rhythm, penises in photos of heads, shit in gold. But even if I thought its idea of the fundamental was a true one and not just another set of metaphors switched in to replace those which shine, I would be unsympathetic to its project. To quote, referring to the collages of an artist whose name I didn't note down:
“It is thus hardly surprising that this suppression of glue – the gluey reverse side of the figure that sticks it to the paper, the way roots are a hidden aspect of the flower – escaped him.”
On the one hand, to see collage as the suppression of glue is genuinely interesting to me. I have not thought much about what you could do with glue in collages. On the other hand, that's because I have tended to be distracted by looking at them.
The one sentence version of this post would be, 'You know, I really like form.”
Sorry, this description is still part of the running away screaming: I did not finish the book. It is structured as a dictionary; I read about a third of the entries with full attention and a third of them skimming. I'm glad to have read as much of it as I did, because it's nice to have something in my head in this territory more specific than 'many people have found modern art pretentious and navel-gazey', but I don't feel a need to fill in the details. I would happily have wandered about the exhibition this book is based on. I may come back to read something about modern art some other time that is not about Georges Bataille.
Unlike in Gombrich, little mention is made here of what it's like for anybody in particular to look at art. Much mention is made of Freud, without any discussion of the idea that Freud's saying something might not make it true. Art is on a vertical axis, don't you know; partly because of gallery walls but also because the human body is erect, unlike the animal body, whose field of view is horizontal, and we are forever chained to our own feet, which are in the mud. Form is what can support things vertically against gravity, so the art of the informe horizontalises. Throwing paint down at a canvas such that it does not drip, as Jackson Pollock did, is significantly different from throwing it across at a wall. And text is a horizontal medium because it is read primarily at tables, as I read in a book held vertically on my lap...
Some of what's in here strikes me as more than arbitrary, although that doesn't. The idea that by depicting the violence of a slaughterhouse you're implicitly claiming that the violence isn't all that shocking, isn't all that repressed, because after all, it's hanging on this here gallery wall... So, in Eli Lotar's photo series, the slaughterhouse is presented merely as a line of leg bones in a large dark street, making banality and indifference sinister. Whether or not I think it works (I don't find the images particularly effective, but I'm eighty years on) that seems to me a transparent rationale for the images which are in the book.
There is also much abstract conceptual play which I like, without finding it to provide transparent anything, and some which I find entertaining in a, 'Why would anyone think that?' sort of way. The chapter on Entropy had both. It imagined a sandpit with black sand in one half and white in the other, and a child whose running in circles destroys that clear division and then can't recreate it just by turning around and running back the other way. Thence, entropy erases the distinction between figure and ground in art. Thence, the mimicry of leaves by an insect is a form of psychosis in which the insect loses its own sense of boundedness. (Which I simultaneously stared at incredulously thinking, 'Your metaphors are now attacking your reality,' and tossed about happily in my head seeing if it would become an idea for a story. Metaphors are fun to literalize). On to the idea that in falling from Grace we have become inaccurate copies of God, and the fact (which I have not sourced) that a praying mantis plays dead to escape predators, but that when its head is cut off it continues the behaviours of life for long enough that, while dead, it may play dead... Heading to the final paragraph, which describes the ambition to present sight as itself an artwork in the absence of the see-er. Only it took me a while to click to that, because what it says is, 'The entropic, simulacral move, however, is to float the field of seeing in the absence of a subject.' A phrasing which does not come down very hard on the matter of whether the move has actually been made, or whether it has succeeded.
I have less sympathy for the conceptual tile-sliding that leads gold and God to equal shit (because the sacred and the excremental are alike in their otherness). But it is true, I have thought less about the artistic properties of shit than the artistic properties of mirrors and simulacra, interesting things can probably be said about that fact.
Only that the purpose of the whole movement of this book is to lower, to attack, not just to tell stories about shit but to perceive shit as storiless. it's all artists opposing each other, 'attacking the castle of Modernism at the point it seemed strongest', etc, while walking a sort of 'don't think of a pink elephant' tightrope away from the things it seems intuitive to me that art would wish to have: theme, metaphor, meaning, beauty. Art becomes text describing the interpretive grid in which it is seen. When Bataille says that his aesthetic rivals aim at transcendence, it's an accusation. Now, this book does a lot of finding sex in the concept of rhythm, penises in photos of heads, shit in gold. But even if I thought its idea of the fundamental was a true one and not just another set of metaphors switched in to replace those which shine, I would be unsympathetic to its project. To quote, referring to the collages of an artist whose name I didn't note down:
“It is thus hardly surprising that this suppression of glue – the gluey reverse side of the figure that sticks it to the paper, the way roots are a hidden aspect of the flower – escaped him.”
On the one hand, to see collage as the suppression of glue is genuinely interesting to me. I have not thought much about what you could do with glue in collages. On the other hand, that's because I have tended to be distracted by looking at them.
The one sentence version of this post would be, 'You know, I really like form.”
no subject
Date: 2020-03-13 02:49 am (UTC)fsdlflksjkfksf
the othernesses are of diametrically opposing kinds (!): the one smooths over unties and deconstructs systematic barriers and rules, leaving a clear field for doing, learning, etc -- the other brings on complex webs of the appropriate and the inappropriate. Both are highly necessary for human existence, both depend upon each other for their virtue, and both are not the same as each other.
Yes, there is a powerful move that can be made by sumperimposing the two, breaking restriction, scorning it, even calling the nature of appropriateness into question -- and that move is made highly attractive by the cooption of systems of restriction/appropriateness/inappropriateness by oppressive power structures. And in its attractiveness it can take on its own life and momentum such that it no longer seems relevant whether one attacks the idols of domination or the gods that lead us in care and joyful life and resistance, and there's no logical criticism to be made of that standpoint, if consistently held, other than "I don't like it." (Though one can sure as hell critique the application of that thinking to the rules of care and good living and *not* to oppressive power structures.)
But even that "make it all shit" impulse depends on the relationships it destroys. What would it even mean for shit and gold or fine weaving to start out being the same? By refusing to even glance at the binary it seeks to condemn it misses the chance of actually attacking it. (And really, the binary is far more than a binary.)
Thank you, now I will stop ranting about the thing I have not read and think I understand because of passing resemblance to other things I think I understand.
Collage as suppression of glue: that is cooooll.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-16 06:33 am (UTC)the othernesses are of diametrically opposing kinds (!): the one smooths over unties and deconstructs systematic barriers and rules, leaving a clear field for doing, learning, etc -- the other brings on complex webs of the appropriate and the inappropriate. Both are highly necessary for human existence, both depend upon each other for their virtue, and both are not the same as each other.
Isn't the sacred just as likely to be structured around the creation of barriers and rules? I think I know the thing you mean, but I don't see that definition of sacredness anywhere in this book. You have got me to do the thing I thought I wouldn't, and go learn more about Georges Bataille -- so, devout Catholic for nine years. I doubt his God was the God you're referring to.
(Now I'm thinking myself in circles about sacredness and pollution. I feel as though there are already three terms, but that's only sometimes true. The opposite of sacred can be shit, or sacred can divide into halves both of which are significant, light and dark, and then shit is the category whose tabooness is trivial. Only often it isn't, thinking of dead bodies as bridging those).
(Also, irrelevantly, I have to quote this: "Fascinated by human sacrifice, he founded a secret society, Acéphale, the symbol of which was a headless man. According to legend, Bataille and the other members of Acéphale each agreed to be the sacrificial victim as an inauguration; none of them would agree to be the executioner. An indemnity was offered for an executioner, but none was found before the dissolution of Acéphale shortly before the war.")
(Though one can sure as hell critique the application of that thinking to the rules of care and good living and *not* to oppressive power structures.)
Well, Bataille wrote on politics and economics too -- I climb out of the swimming pool before it gets dark, and do not learn what he wrote.
But even that "make it all shit" impulse depends on the relationships it destroys. What would it even mean for shit and gold or fine weaving to start out being the same? By refusing to even glance at the binary it seeks to condemn it misses the chance of actually attacking it.
So this is the point of decision between 'coherent ideas I don't like' and 'incoherent ideas'. I think your discussion up to this point well summarises what I understand of the thought. but I think the reason they don't glance at the binary, if they don't, is that so very much thought and art does, and that's what they're trying to destabilise. (I wrote 'destable', and I think that means 'open the stall door and let it gallop away'. Thinking about these people does terrible or wonderful things to my metaphorical tendencies). If people will always fall into arbitrary but powerful patterns, then pointing out that the patterns are arbitrary will always be a true statement, and one may not need a greater rationale than that. If the patterns are arbitrary, that is. Even so, I'm enthusiastic about most art and philosophy being about something other than quarks, most of the time.
(Oh, I take it that you're my sister? It was the way you spell 'cool' at the end there that made me pretty certain -- before that I was thinking, "I mean, it's probably her. But could it be Tony? ... I don't think this bit could be Tony. Is it someone who hasn't commented much?" If you are not my sister then I have just assumed a great deal of shared language we don't have, and presumably been at least somewhat confusing. But honestly I may have been confusing no matter who you are, I did not try very hard not to be.)
no subject
Date: 2020-03-16 12:23 pm (UTC)Ha. I meant that the sacred *is* structured around barriers and rules -- though I'm not sure I'd use those words, quite. In the moment that the statue is alive and holds the god, it's not in my experience that one's range of options is expanded -- it's the reverse, that it becomes apparent that there are right things to do, and if you can follow your feeling to them then you pass back in to everyday life in freedom and fulfilment, and if not then by acting inappropriately you break the criteria of appropriate/inappropriate and fall back into everyday life in a negative way, even if only mildly.
Whereas when you shit, none of that applies -- as an activity it's the opposite of that, simple and straighforward and unbound by considerations beyond the practical. I mean, considerations of sacredness do apply, because, say, smearing shit on your face or on a painting would break the respect due you or the painting, but to me those concerns aren't inherently of the shit, but of the face or painting -- the shit would be equally happy in either of those places or in the sewer. I'm inclined to think those are actual qualities of those things, more than just my personal feelings about them -- but I could be wrong.
Personally I wouldn't separate those two sides of the sacred, or not for this discussion anyway, and I'd see dead people as squarely within sacred territory. But I guess I'm not really talking about pollution, myself, though I see it might be interesting in these terms. Shall give thought to.
Well. I think one of the big reasons one would want to destabilise that hierarchy is if one knows a god who comprises *both* customary care, and exploitative domination -- not to say that the god he worshipped does, but that's so much in the Catholic tradition imo that it seems likely. One can perfectly well worship both of those, or worship the one while tolerating or even fighting its intertwining with the other -- but I think the combining of the two can as well give quite a powerfully negative view of all customary orderings, or that at the same time as the complex positive. And more than that, I guess it can make customary orderings seem not just tied to bad things, but weak and irrelevant, because contradictory? That is the explanation my head goes to for why one would not just reject the sacred but treat it as nonexistent -- not because it's hurt you, but because in hurting you it's exposed itself as incoherent.
And that I think is simply false. It's based on the failure to see through the lie that systems of care, of right doing, of wellness, don't actually function -- a powerful lie well backed up, but the truth it obscures is so good at making itself evident I have trouble having sympathy with the failure to see it.
I guess what I'm saying is I don't think the patterns are arbitrary. More than that: I'm convinced they are not arbitrary.
Aaaahh I should go to bed. Apologies if this does not make sense!